Apple today released a full touch screen iPod. The new iPod touch incorporates the iPhone’s 3.5-inch, 480 by 320 pixel screen with multi-touch technology. It has the iPhone’s Wi-Fi radio, which helps it to browse the web using Safari, or stream videos using the included YouTube app. You can even buy music over the new iTunes Wi-Fi store.

The new iPod touch will be available in two flash memory configurations with the 8GB model at $300. The 16GB will sell for $400. Both models should be available by the end of September.

And there’s more announcement today from Apple:

Redesigned iPod Nano
Launches iTunes Wi-Fi Store
Introduces new iPod Classic

Facebook announced through a blog post that a new feature will open user profiles to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Philip Fung, a Facebook engineer, said that “the public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.”

The move is seen to boost trafic and advertising revenues.

Expanding Cellufun’s popular Mob Hill Casino brand, the company is introducing its new Video Poker today, adding to its growing collection of Las Vegas-style games.
 
Cellufun will also offer Black Jack and Slots, both free to consumers for mobile download. Much like their Las Vegas counterparts, Cellufun high rollers are encouraged to come back often and share their scores, earning Cellupoints, the site’s version of non-monetary comps, whether they win or lose.  A Space Wars player might take a break from his galactic conquest and play some hands of Black Jack or a budding Einstein might get diverted from Patterny Test, the company’s recent tongue-in-cheek IQ game, to unwind with the slots.
 
“Casino games are a great fit for the mobile platform,” said Arthur Goikhman, CEO of Cellufun. “They are a little taste of Vegas while you have a few minutes to kill.  Sharing the bank across all of our casino games and including connected features such as progressive slots really enhances the experience of playing the games our users already know and love.”

Cellufun us working with ad networks to provide sponsorships for the games, which are expected to get over 300,000 downloads per month.

Shutterfly, Inc., an Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service, announced that it has been selected by Sony Electronics as an online photo service provider for ImageStation members with the phase out of that service.

With this agreement, current Sony ImageStation members will be able to easily transfer photos from their ImageStation accounts to a Shutterfly account with just a few simple clicks.

“We have confidence that the exceptional customer service Sony has provided to its users in the past will continue during this transition with Shutterfly,” said Steve Haber, senior vice president of the Digital Imaging and Audio Division of Sony Electronics.

The Associated Press reports that Sony is possible headed to a head-on collision with Apple as it plans to create its own movie download service.

“Music and video downloading has been available through networks, and we are looking into the area as a possible business,” said Sony spokesman Shigenori Yoshida.

The Japanese company recently launched a new Walkman video player that comes with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player 11. It is capable of managing digital libraries in the U.S. and Europe. The LCD-mounted players, which will also be compatible with MPEG-4 encoded video and AVC, are already available in Japan.

Peformancing announced the release of a new pMetrics plugin for WordPress. The plugin is dubbed as a “major step forward in WordPress plugin technology.”

Here’s a rundown of what the new plugin offers:

Auto-updates (this option can be toggled on and off)
One-click installs for added functionality
One-click removals (deletes files off the server)
Blog stats in your WordPress dashboard
Latest searches display
pMetrics rank display
Auto-installation of pMetrics javascript code

Editor’s note: Performancing and 901am.com are both owned by Splashpress Media.

Apple announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming
television season on its online iTunes Store. The move follows NBC’s decision not to renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.

“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”

Apple’s agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.

Splashpress Media, the parent company of 901am.com, today announced its acquisition of Blog Search Engine from Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal.

Blog Search Engine will undergo site overhauling and is expected to compliment EatonWeb, another Splashpress Media property.

Times Online reports that YouTube has agreed to pay royalties to UK artists for songs used in videos uploaded on the site. An agreement was ironed between YouTube and royalty-collecting society MCPS-PRS Alliance. The agreement calls for the video-sharing site to pay an undisclosed flat fee to license more than ten million pieces of music. The agreement means that YouTube video clips will no longer infringe on copyright in UK.

Jaiku, a microblogging platform for lifestreaming, announced that it has added Jabber-based instant messaging capabilities to interact with the service and provide a new way for people to communicate and share content.

Jaiku also lets users choose and receive pre-determined web feeds from their friends online activities via IM, for example, flickr photos from some contacts, updates from specific blogs, Last.fm recently played tracks from others, etc.

Jaiku allows anyone to easily post and discover new content in Jaiku’s online community. It goes several steps further than other presence applications by allowing readers to add comments to individual posts and also allowing anyone to create, join and participate in topic related channels.

Third party developers have also extended Jaiku’s functionality for all major mobile and desktop platforms. Mobile users can access Jaiku via m.jaiku.com.