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The four men shot to death in a garage in Chicago’s West Lawn neighborhood had their hands, feet and mouths bound with duct tape, police say.

They were found face down on the garage floor, their hands behind their backs, a source said. All of them appeared to have been shot in the head.

“Multiple weapons” were found at the scene in the 6100 block of South Kildare Avenue, police said, but the motive for the slayings was not known. Police said the shootings, which occurred at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, were “an isolated incident.”

The victims were identified by the medical examiner’s office as Alonso Villarreal, 32, and Roberto Rivera, 30, both from the Kildare address, Noel Casares, 25, of the 2000 block of North Kedvale Avenue, and Luis Santillian, 30, of the 3000 block of West 40th Place.

Celina Gonzalez, 20, who lives in the neighborhood, said she was driving down the alley Thursday evening when she saw 10 to 15 men inside the garage. The door was open and they seemed to be having a good time, drinking beer.

Gonzalez heard the men laughing. When she drove by, the men began calling to her.

“They said, ‘Hey, mami.’ They were just talking stupid, trying to get my attention,” she said.

Jesse Gonzalez, no relation to Celina, said the home’s residents are a “regular family.”

Another neighbor said:  “This isn’t a gang neighborhood.”

Three children in the home were taken into protective custody by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, sources said.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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Like Siamese twins, the iPod and iTunes go hand-in-hand. This week’s iPod update, then brought a whole new version of iTunes, v10, with a new logo and a few new features.

The new icon abandons the old CD imagery and replaces it with a bulbous double-clef note in a blue circle. The features include music clean-up – select five or so songs from the same album and it automatically finds art and titles – and there is a new discovery feature with social aspects called Ping.

Ping allows you to share with your friends what you’re listening to and even share information on concerts and events. It includes a custom “Top 10? list and artists and listeners each have “profiles” that consist of interesting news and selections from that user’s library. It is true social music discovery.

Profiles can be public or private and you can limit access to a certain “circle of friends.” Ping is available now to all iTunes users and allows for multiple forms of sharing including image and link posting.

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Apple unveiled the new iPod touch today at their special event, along with several other music- and media-related devices. Of course, we’ve been hearing murmurs and leaks about it for some time now, and the new device pretty much tallies with our expectations.

It’s running an A4 processor, and is available with up to 64GB of space. It seems to have all the same internals, including gyro, accelerometer, and microphone, though of course it lacks the 3G radio and GPS (it’ll still do limited location). Historically the iPod touch has had a different PCB layout and that sort of thing; we’ll find out when we see the first teardown. FaceTime will work between the iPod touch and iPhone, by the way.

Here are the price points:

• 8GB:$229
• 32GB:$299
• 64GB:$399

The styling is a bit of a cross between the old iPod touch and the new iPhone 4. It’s very thin and chromey, but without the flat sides. It’s a tenth of an inch thinner, and has an ever-so-slightly smaller footprint.

Steve mentioned that they’re outselling both Nintendo and Sony in gaming. Believable, but I’d like to see the actual numbers. Most of the games sold on the iPhone and such are less than $5; it is of course a highly complicated thing to compare devices as unlike one another as iOS devices and game consoles, handheld or not.

The new 4.1 update should ship with these, including the new Game Center and other goodies.The new iPod touches will be shipping next week, but you can pre-order them now.

Update: the specs on Apple’s page note that the new iPod touch only takes still pictures at 960×720. That’s some nonsense. If the sensor can capture 1280×720 video at 30FPS, surely it’s capable of better stills. On the other hand, If the sensor is only capable of 960×720 images and they’re just stretching it to 1280×720, I’m going to have an image quality hissy fit.

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