The iPod family gained a new member on Wednesday during Appleis "The Beat Goes On" media event. The newest iPod, called iPod touch, looks like the iPhone and sports many of the same features including Wi-Fi wireless networking.

The iPod touch is 8mm thick, includes a multi-touch interface, a 3.5-inch wide-screen display, and 802.11b/g wireless networking built in. It also includes Calendar and Contacts applications, World Clock, Calculator, and the Safari Web browser. iPod touch also includes Google Search and Yahoo! oneSearch.

iPod touch

Along with its It also supports YouTube video playback, and just like its phone-enabled cousin automatically rotates the screen orientation when watching movies, and activates Cover Flow when browsing through albums.

iPod touch, thinner than iPhone.

Thanks to its Wi-Fi support, iPod touch can take advantage of Appleis new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store to download music when away from your computer. When in range of a Starbucks coffee shop, a new icon will automatically appear that lets users purchase the song that is currently playing in the store along with the ten most recently played songs.

iPod touch at Appleis media event.

It has been localized in about 20 different languages, and offers about 22 hours of audio playback and five hours of video playback.

The iPod touch will be available in an 8GB model for US$299, and a 16GB for $399. It requires a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X 10.4.10 or higher, Windows XP or Vista, and iTunes 7.4.

[This article has additional information about the iPod touch.]