When Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod on Oct. 23, 2001, he said: "With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again."

Indeed, the iPod and Apple's iTunes music store have transformed the music business, sparking a new way for users to legally download music - and spurring a stunning rise in Apple stock.

Apple (up $0.43 to $79.42, Charts) shares, which traded around $9 five years ago, have risen nearly nine-fold since then.

iPod sales are still growing - shipments rose to 8.73 million in the latest quarter, up 35 percent from a year earlier- even though there's some serious competition out there now for the world's most popular digital music player.

QUESTION: Is Microsoft going to develop a handheld like MP3 player to combat iPod, Apple's dominance of the last year?

BILL GATES: Yeah, Apple has done a fantastic job with the iPod. How many of you have iPods? OK, some.

Well, we are talking with partners about how we working with those partners can make even better music players. We've got some in the market today. I'd say in total they may have about 20 percent market share, which is lower than we like and so we're seeing where we could come together to make a device that's less expensive and connects in better ways, does photos and videos in better ways.

And so I don't think what's out in the market today is the final answer, but again it just shows the magic of software; Apple did a very good job on iTunes, did the user interface design right, and so that means we'll have to match all that good work and do something even better.

So between us and our partners, you can expect to see some pretty hot products coming out over the next couple of years.

More than 300 episodes from about a dozen prime time, cable, late-night and classic TV shows are now available for $1.99 apiece, viewable on computers or downloadable on the latest, video-capable iPod.

The programming spans from the 1950s to the present, including shows from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Dragnet," USA Network's "Monk," the Sci-Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica," and NBC's hit series "Law & Order." Sketches from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" are also for sale.

Apple unleashed a dramatically different way of distributing television programs when it debuted videos for sale on its iTunes Music Store on Oct. 20 with Walt Disney Co.'s ABC as its first network partner. Customers have since downloaded more than three million videos.

I think this is by far the most exciting announcement since I started! Today, we announced that TiVo intends to support iPod and Sony PSP as new portables in our service update first quarter of next year. This means that you will be able to use the TiVoToGo feature to transfer shows from your TiVo box to a PC connected to your home network. Then you can choose to have the transferred shows prepared for synch to your iPod automatically once the transfer is complete.

I don't currently have the new video iPod—they came out with it one week after I bought my first iPod—the Nano. Which. I. Love. But I might just have to run out and buy the new one so it can cross-pollinate with my TiVo box!

And actually, I think podcasting or whatever it morphs into over the next two or three years is here to stay and will remain popular. What was interesting about podcasting was that, while everyone was waiting for digital video for so many years, kind of like waiting for Godot, podcasting arrived. And it tapped this latent demand for being able to hear what you wanted when you wanted it. It unleased all these indie voices and encouraged the traditional media companies to let their content go mobile.

Like the record labels, television stations are now lamenting the iPod, and are worried about lost revenues, reports the Wall Street Journal. Shouldn't they be worrying about lost audiences, thanks to bad programing, instead of blaming the technology. I agree with Mark Cuban when he says, "Bob Iger has saved Network TV ... By completely changing the economic model." This is the new economic model that takes into account that most consumption patterns are changing, and media like everything has to fit our supremely busy lives.

Mr Jobs said the 30 GB iPod should be able to store 75 hours' worth of video and the 60 GB version twice that. Despite both versions having more storage on board they are thinner than the existing 20 GB iPod.

To give people something to watch on their video-playing iPod Apple is planning to make available more than 2,000 music videos on the iTunes store that will cost £1.89 ($1.99 in the US) each.

Apple has also set up a deal with US television company ABC to let Americans purchase episodes of shows for $1.99. The shows will be available the day after broadcast. There was no information about when, or if, this service would come to Europe.

Hi-tech, trendy colours, rock music, punchy slogans... remind anyone of anything? When technology watcher John Ousby realised the modern day parallels, he knew he had to do something. Ousby told the BBC that thousands of people looked at his Flickr post.

"I did a bit of digging around," he says, "and found a good website on vintage electronics. I then matched photos of the transistor with photos of the iPod Mini."

He then posted the above picture on the photo-sharing website Flickr. "Normally my photos there are viewed less than 100 times. But I was away for couple of days and came back to see there had been more than 15,000," he says.

The similarity between the two has "created quite a stir", he says, particularly in the Mac community. He is, however, at pains to point out that he believes the similarity between the 50s radio and the iPod mini is purely coincidental.

The molecule cluster is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, and marks another step forward in nanotechnology, the science of atoms and molecules that is set to transform medicines, technology and even food in years to come.

Lead researcher Dr. Lee Cronin told the Sunday Herald: "Data storage hits the wall at a certain point companies are spending billions cramming more memory into smaller space, but it can't go on forever with current technology.

"What we have come up with is a molecule with the potential to pack in 10,000 more 'storage units' into a given area than is currently possible."

Using a voice recorder attachment, you can record your thoughts on your iPod, dump it to your computer, publish it to your web site in such a way that people can download your musings to their iTunes Library, sync that with their iPod, and listen to you babble about something on their way to work. It's called podcasting and hopefully it'll get much easier than that.

"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," he said in an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position," Gates said.

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"If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I'd bet on the mobile phone for sure," Gates told the newspaper.

Yahoo gave no indication how long it would keep its initial pricing of its Music Unlimited service, which is 6.99 dollars a month or 4.99 dollars for those who buy a one-year subscription.

Additionally, Yahoo will be offering consumers permanent downloads at 79 to 99 cents a song, cutting into the turf of Apple's iTunes service, but also others including RealNetworks and Napster.

a new "show video full screen" button that lets you easily watch full-screen movies that have been organized in your iTunes Library, as well as options to view movies in a separate smaller window, or within the main iTunes pane.

They were totally hush hush about this update, so it's got to mean all the pieces of the puzzle aren't quite together yet. Apple quietly rolled out iTunes version 4.8, which includes playback support for QuickTime video content. So what does it all mean? Video iPod? iTunes Movie Store? Just plain tease? What do you think?