The beginning of this month proves to be quite a busy one for the digital players' champion. First of all, the iPod has been introduced to the new version of iTunes, which supports podcasting, and soon enough the first colored-screen iPods will be launched.

And since it's not the first time it has worked with Apple and its iPods, Hewlett-Packard has decided to launch on Friday the Shuffle model.

The two well known versions of the iPod Shuffle will be available from HP as well, the 512 MB-120 songs model being available at $99 USD, while the 1 GB model will be found at $129,99.

HP has left the player's design intact, because the model's advantages are exactly its minuscule dimensions and extremely simple look. Quite obviously, the player includes the auto-fill function, which permits a fast loading from the iTunes Library collection and saving songs just by pressing a single button.

The offer of iPod players manufactured by HP also includes the iPod Mini models, in their 4 and 6 GB versions, and the classical iPods as well, with their 20 and respectively 60 GB of storage space.

Also, the new iPod players are compatible with the HP Printable Tattoos, an innovative manner in which the users can customize their iPods with various pictures, drawings or photos. On HP's website can be found a collection of such images, and you can pick from there whatever's to your liking.

The users can also load their own pictures or images, and then print them at home as "tattoos". Ultra-slim, they are very easy to be applied or removed from the player's case. Moreover, being very durable and waterproof, the "tattoos" offer protection against scratches and also add a personal touch to the device.

The iPods manufactured by Apple have gone through another transformation last week, the models being simplified by unifying the Photo iPod and iPod-ul version by removing the Photo name and adding color screens for the entire collection of digital players.