Apple said it began selling Walt Disney Company movies at its iTunes online store.

"Today we are making more than 75 films available online and we will be adding more every month,"

Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs said during a press event in a San Francisco theater.


The offerings include recent releases including "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Cars," Jobs said.


The films were from Disney, Pixar, Touchstone and Miramax film studios, Jobs said.



New films would be available online for $12.99 dollars the same day of their release in DVD format, Jobs said. The price would rise to $14.99 dollars after the first week.


Library films would sell for $9.99 dollars each.






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LONDON - Bob Dylan, fresh from getting into bed with Victoria's Secret for an ad campaign, is now starring in a spot for Apple's iPod that cross-promotes his new album, 'Modern Times', the first in five years.


The ad, created by TBWA\Chiat\Day, broke this week and features Dylan performing the single 'Someday Baby', set against a stark white backdrop -- a look that runs through much of the advertising for Apple products.


It also features an almost-silhouetted dancer prominently displaying a white iPod -- a motif that runs through all of the iPod advertising.

Dylan, whose fans once were once up in arms when he started playing an electric guitar, has well and truly embraced the age of digital music.


His deal with Apple includes a Bob Dylan digital box set, called 'The Collection', only available on iTunes. It features all of Dylan's albums -- almost 800 tracks in total -- and can be downloaded in the US for $199 (£104.70).


Apple also gave US fans the chance to get advance tickets on dates to Dylan's tour later this year, if they pre-ordered 'Modern Times', which came out yesterday.


"Bob Dylan is one of the most respected poets and musicians of our time, and he is a personal hero of mine," Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, said.


"Being able to offer his new album and the exclusive box set of his works on iTunes is a real thrill for us."


Having shunned the commercial world for decades, in 2004 Dylan made his first ad -- promoting the US lingerie brand Victoria's Secret. He was then criticised for a 2005 deal with Starbucks to sell rare tracks in its US stores.

I just read an intriguing little story about how a guy dropped his iPod in a plane toilet. Its posted on World Warcraft's forum, under the title: I played WoW, I became a terrorist.


This ... is going to be a long one. And believe it or not, it's a 100% true story. Its relation to World of Warcraft will not be immediately apparent. Anyway, the gist of what happened is here: The Ottawa Citizen


It all started when I got out of my seat to go to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, and returned to my seat. A little while later the two stewardesses on the flight crossed each other in the aisle. They had a quick conversation that I was in earshot of.


I locked off the front lav. There's something in the toilet that's preventing it from flushing. Run some water and see if you can clear it." My face immediately turned red. The seat cover! I thought. It must have been too big to flush! I should have thrown it out!


I was so embarrassed. I tried to act normal ... I took a sudden interest in the contents of the seat pocket in front of me, acted nonchalant and all. I watched as the stewardess got on her hands and knees in the lavatory and did unfathomable dirty work.


Sometime later, I decided it would be best if I forgot the whole thing happened, so I went to put on my headphones and drown myself in iPod music. But ... no iPod. I panicked, checked my other pockets. Where was it? Not under the seat, not in the pockets, not ... anywhere. I looked up to the stewardesses. One of them had run past me in a decent clip. She was carrying a green handbook. She brought it to the other stewardess. They flipped through the handbook, read a page, then made a call. The other stewardess had retrieved a blue metal box and was removing some equipment from it.


I put two and two together. I knew what had happened.


So I walked up to the stewardesses, both clamoring over the handbook, and tapped one on the shoulder.

"So, I had an iPod before I went to the bathroom, and now I don't. I think I know what's in the toilet."

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SanDisk, a manufacturer of memory cards and USB keys, released a new music player Monday that can hold twice as many songs as a similarly priced iPod Nano.

The Sansa e280 has eight gigabytes of memory and can store about 2,000 songs, twice as many as the best-selling version of Apple Computer's iPod Nano.




Both music players cost about $250 US and both use flash memory, but the Sansa e280 also has a memory expansion slot, meaning its capacity can be increased to 10 gigabytes.


Apple's other iPod models use small hard drives for storage and can hold up to 60 gigabytes of music, photos and videos.


SanDisk's player also boasts an FM radio, voice recording and a battery life a few hours longer than the iPod Nano.


SanDisk, based in Milpitas, Calif., also cut the cost of its other e-series music players, which can hold two, four and six gigabytes. All of the models can store music, photos and video clips.


SanDisk is the world's largest manufacturer of flash memory, such as SD cards for digital cameras and PDAs, and USB flash memory keys. It is a distant second in the portable music player market, behind Apple.


Market analysts estimate that Apple has about three-quarters of the market in the U.S., compared to SanDisk with 10 per cent.


Other manufacturers, including Creative Technologies, iRiver, Samsung and Toshiba, are also attempting to chip away at Apple's share of the portable media player market.


Microsoft has announced plans for a wireless media player, called Zune, to be launched later in the year, along with an online music downloading service to challenge Apple's iTunes.


Source: CBC


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Your iPod glistens on your waistband, a totem of modern engineering brilliance, perhaps the most ubiquitous cultural icon of the 21st century so far. This shiny box of wires and lights has become a byword for a whole western youth demographic, the 'iPod generation'.


But what does it say about a culture when its defining product, a product outwardly symbolising style and modernity, is accessible to that culture only through the exploitation of foreign labour?


Foreign labour exploitation? Yawn. Who wants a hippy tugging on the seam of your faux-distressed Diesel jeans, mumbling inanities about the guy in China who got paid £1.36 a day to solder your iPod together? No one. These are facts that we're not used to confronting when making a purchase decision in the glossy white foyer of Nike Town, or the glass and marble cathedral that is the Regent Street Apple Store. Frankly it's easier to ignore it. In fact, Apple assumes you won't be thinking about the workers in Foxconn's Longhua plant -- Apple's notorious iPod City. After all, you don't see the worker's faces in the iPod advertisements.

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