Archive for January, 2007

Netflix Does Battle With Blockbuster Total Access With Watch Now

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch reported today that Netflix will offer subscribers the option of instantly watching movies on their PCs. And it’s free. So, what’s the difference in service? With Blockbuster Total Access, customers can return movies to their nearest (well, at any) Blockbuster store for a free movie. With Netflix Watch Now, people can watch movies and television series on their PCs. This new feature will be made available to its subscribers in a phased roll-out over the next six months…and each subscriber is expected to have this available to them by June.

Blockbuster now has 2.2 million members, adding 700,000 over the last two and a half months. A nice increase, but still nowhere near Netflix’ 5 million subscribers.

According to TechCrunch, the TV shows and movies will stream to a downloadable application, and viewing time will be limited based on what Netflix subscription plan the customer has.

Subscribers to the $18/month plan, which is the most popular, will be able to watch up to 18 hours per month.

This will be significant competiton for the absolute avalanche of IPTV companies that have been announced lately. Expect YouTube, Joost, and iTunes, Zudeo, CinemaNow, MovieLink and others, to all be competing for the same eyeballs with very different products.

HackingNetflix.com produced this video demo of the new Watch Now download feature.

According to the annoucement on the Netflix website, the hours available for instant watching will vary based on subscribers’ monthly plans. For example, subscribers on the entry-level $5.99 plan will have six hours of online movie watching per month and subscribers on Netflix’s most popular plan, $17.99 for unlimited DVD rental and three discs out at a time, will have 18 hours of online movie watching per month.

Popularity: 1% [?]

BIG FREEZE 2007 — San Antonio Shuts Down

Everyone stay indoors!!! Wait…go to the store, stock up on water and canned goods, and then stay inside!!! Seriously? Before you people in the Northern U.S. start laughing, let me just agree how ridiculous that sounds. Pretty much all day today it has been about 31-35 degrees out. Tonight we’re going to see freezing rain and possibly snow, and it is for these conditions that our news stations overreact. They incorporate tickers on the bottom of the screen, interruptions during sportscasts — this just in…the ice trucks are out spreading anti-icing agents…so, just so you know…back to you, Bob — and crazy names for the news stories like “Arctic Blast 2007″ and “Ice Storm 2007″ and “Pets, Plants, and Pipes: So Cold Santa Would Cry…2007″. Ok, I do appreciate the weather advisories and the road conditions reports, but I think many San Antonians will agree that whenever we get rain for more than a few hours, or temps below 35 degrees…or above 100 degrees, or if there’s a traffic jam (that’s actually a good thing since our city’s highways are pretty clear compared to the rest of the cities in Texas), the news tends to over analyze what’s going on. It kinda sounds like your nagging mom…or people that say “they say…” all the time. Just let us know how cold it is, whether or not there are classes or work tomorrow, and what highways are closed. Then, go about the news as usual…or break out the special report on why people bought ice cream on such a cold day. Because they wanted ice cream. It tastes good. That is all. I really need TiVo.

Popularity: 1% [?]

WordPress Updates to Version 2.0.7

Only about 10 days after the release of WordPress 2.0.6, the annoucement of a version 2.0.7 release was just made. The update specifically targets the “PHP security problem and the Feedburner issue that was in 2.0.6. It is recommended that everyone running WordPress 2.0.6 or lower upgrade to this new version.”

Here are the changes that have been made since 2.0.6:

• Security fix for wp_unregister_GLOBALS() to work around the zend_hash_del_key_or_index bug in PHP 4 versions less than 4.4.3 and PHP 5 versions less than 5.1.4 with register_globals set to “On.”
• Feeds now properly serve 304 Not Modified headers instead of mismatched 200/304 headers (a.k.a. the FeedBurner bug).
• Backport of another 304 Not Modified fix from WordPress 2.1
• Deleting WordPress Pages no longer gives an “Are You Sure?” prompt.
• After deleting a WordPress Page, you are now properly redirected to the Edit Pages screen.
• Sending an image at original size in Internet Explorer no longer adds an incorrect “height” attribute.

And just as a reminder, the next major version of WordPress (2.1) is due out by the end of the month, but the 2.0 branch of WordPress will continue to be maintained for several years.

Popularity: 2% [?]

What To Do When The Stock Market Is Closed

Well, I am a CNBC junkie. I think I’ve seen David Faber’s “The eBay Effect — Inside a Worldwide Obsession” about 30 times since it was aired in June 2005. Not sure what CNBC has planned for tomorrow other than some commentary about private equity and probably some talk about AT&T ending Cingular today. I’ve discovered a couple of blogs that should keep you busy. WallStreetFighter.com features funny trading stories, crazy pictures, and rants…all about money. Its very random, but I find it pretty entertaining.

The second blog is called BigBigNews.net. Tyler Haywood, aka. Haywood Jablome, uses an interesting format to blog…videos. Most of his videos are pretty hilarious; I’ve been keeping up since day one, which was January 2nd of this year. Anyway, while I posted about Where to Invest for 2007 as highlighted in SmartMoney Magazine, Haywood featured his own video post about the Top 5 Stock Picks for 2007 by interviewing people on “the street”.

Check these out today when you have a chance. I’ll still be asleep recovering from playing the 24 drinking game. Anyway, if you have your own recommendations, I’d love to hear about them.

…and Happy Birthday, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Spoof of The Office

Some co-workers and I write and produce a film for our company awards banquet every year. I hope NBC doesn’t mind, but for 2006, we chose The Office as our theme. We are all huge fans of the show and we all work in…an office, so…it was a natural choice. I hope you guys like my acting debut, but needless to say my buddy “Brian” comes through like a champ. “Brent” and “Hoffmann” are the others involved in the behind the scenes production of the film. By the way, I’m not really a Price Is Right fanatic. Just because I watched it regularly as a kid during the summer doesn’t mean I’m a fanatic…does it? Anyway, it is about 9 minutes long and worth every second of your time. Enjoy!

Spoof of The Office - Watch Funny Videos

Popularity: 2% [?]

Best Laugh? You decide.

I’ve posted some relatively graphic videos in the past week, and I thought I’d tone it down some. These will make you laugh just as hard…I’m pretty sure. So you decide who has the best laugh…

Little old man (gets good at about 1:47)?

Or this cute baby?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Apple Ain’t The Only One Changing Its Name. Say Goodbye To Cingular.

So, Apple went with Cingular as its exclusive carrier for the iPhone. This annoucement was made Jan 9th along with the mention of changing its name to Apple, Inc. No doubt that today’s announcement from AT&T that it will phase out the Cingular brand came as a surprise to Apple as well. I’m sure part of the reason Apple chose Cingular was due to the brand recognition…the YOUNG and HIP (hip?) brand recognition…that Cingular developed over the years. The brand was hailed by some as a savior to AT&T Wireless customers particularly in the realm of customer service.

AT&T already owned 60% of Cingular Wireless while the remaining 40% was owned by Bellsouth. And since the the merger between AT&T and Bellsouth was finalized on December 29th, AT&T assumed the remaining ownership. Choosing to announce the namechange until after the Apple iPhone announcement definitely helped. According to a PRNewswire article (via Marketwatch.com), the branding campaign will take place starting Monday, January 15th.

Each transition campaign element will conclude with the Cingular and AT&T logos coming together while an announcer states that “Cingular is now the new AT&T.” The broadcast spots will conclude with an animation in which the “Jack” character appears to “skywrite” the AT&T globe.

The campaign will kick off with several creative executions called “Raising It Higher,” which morphs Cingular’s familiar “raising the bar” tag line and imagery into the AT&T globe. The first version of this creative execution is called “Grain,” which shows a combine harvesting wheat and appears to be drawing the Cingular five bars, but as the picture zooms out, the AT&T globe comes into focus. Both broadcast TV and print executions are scheduled to start the week of Jan. 15.

So, while AT&T isn’t regarded as “young & hip” now…well, not like Cingular is…,the release of the iPhone will certainly help the branding effort in obtaining that type of respectability.

Popularity: 1% [?]

BlogRoll

• Milk Was A Bad Choice
• CrackBerry.com
• Stock Trading 101
• For The Love Of Sports
• Project Spurs
• Busted Coverage
• WallStreetFighter

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