Netflix Drops Price of Popular Plans
Facing increasing pressure from its competitor, Netflix said Sunday that it will lower the price of several of its rental plans by $1 in order to match the current pricing scheme used by Blockbuster. Its three movie out plan will now be $16.99, and its one movie out plan $8.99, with price cuts becoming effective on Tuesday. The move will likely cost Netflix millions in lost revenue.
The online rental industry is expected to grow by 43 percent this year, and the two companies have been jockeying to attract customers to their plans. Blockbuster has the added benefit of a retail store chain, which it has increasing turned to in order to differentiate itself from Netflix.
Amp'd Mobile Shutting Down Tuesday
Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Amp'd Mobile told customers Sunday night that it could potentially shut off service at 12:01am Tuesday. No reasoning was given, although the company did say that it was in the process of discussing a potential buyout with "several parties." All ports and credits will be honored, although no customer service will be available after the potential shut off date.
Amp'd has set up a FAQ page to answer commonly asked questions about the suspension of service. Interestingly enough, the carrier's website showed little, if any evidence of an impending shutdown. Amp'd filed for bankruptcy back in June, however it said that it planned to continue operating at that time.
LG Debuts New Hybrid Disc Drives
LG is reportedly releasing its second-generation hybrid optical disc drives for PCs. The devices are able to read discs in all currently available formats, including CDs, DVDs, HD DVD, and Blu-ray. Two drives will be made available, one that is able to write to CD, DVD, and BD, while reading HD DVDs, and the other can write to CD and DVD while reading both high-definition disc formats.
The drives will cost $499 and $399, respectively. In any case, the new burners will likely help Blu-ray the most, since earlier drives retailed for as much as $1,000. In comparison, HD DVD drives were about a quarter of that price.
Stringer: Apple's Jobs is "Greedy"
Sony's CEO Howard Stringer had a few choice words for Apple CEO Steve Jobs last Thursday, calling Jobs "greedy" because he wants a world where only he makes money, the New York Post reports. Stringer was part of a panel that included Barry Diller of IAC, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Sergey Brin of Google.
Stringer made the comment in response to Jobs' own comments on record industry executives being greedy over the price of music downloads. Moderator Anderson Cooper tried to change the subject, but Diller interjected, repeating the Sony CEO's comments. When Cooper went back to Stringer to elaborate, he reportedly played down his earlier comments.
Potter Publisher Sues File Sharing Sites
Harry Potter publisher Scholastic has gone to court in an attempt to plug the increasing amount of online leaks ahead of Friday's release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. On the online side, the publisher has filed suit against several peer-to-peer sharing sites and DeepDiscount.com, which had apparently already mailed out its copies of the book, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Approximately 1,200 books are said to have made it to customers' hands early, Scholastic said. In addition to the books being mailed out early, pirated versions of the book were said to be available for download through BitTorrent sites. J.K. Rowling, author of the book, begged those that have received the book early to keep it secret. "In a very short time, you will know EVERYTHING!" a note on her Web site read.
Google Officially Expands Print Ads Offering
After expanding the service to a handful of AdWords advertisers in May, Google on Wednesday officially made its Print Ads offering available to hundreds of thousands of companies, adding more newspapers to the list of where ads can appear.
Google began testing print advertisements last November with 50 newspapers. That number has grown to 225 and a combined circulation of 30 million. Any advertiser that has a Google AdWords account can now select which publications they'd like to appear in, with costs starting at $100 per week. While many have been skeptical as to how well online text links would translate into print, Google says the response has been positive for both advertiser and publisher.
Rivals Fight for SunRocket Customers
Following news that Internet telephone provider SunRocket was shutting down its business effective immediately, the company's former competitors have swooped in to pick up customers left out in the cold. Vonage is offering two months of free service, while 8x8 and Unified Communications were picked as "preferred" providers for SunRocket users.
Those who switch to 8x8's Packet8 service won't have to pay the typical $100 activation fee, while Unified is offering a $12.95 special rate for its Teleband service. As part of being a "preferred" service provider, both companies will pay a fee to SunRocket creditors for every customer that switches. Smaller VoIP companies such as VoicePulse are also trying to gain a few customers from SunRocket's 200,000-strong user base.
Toshiba Recalls More Sony Batteries
Toshiba is recalling 5,100 laptop batteries sold around the world after three instances of the batteries catching fire, two in Japan and one in Australia. Affected batteries were manufactured by Sony in December 2005 for Toshiba's Dynabook, Dynabook Satellite, Satellite and Tecra lines.
The computer maker said the batteries in question were not part of last year's massive recall of Sony batteries, which affected over 10 million units shipped by Dell, Lenovo, Apple and Sony itself. The problems are caused by metal particles falling into a battery during production, causing it to short circuit. Toshiba previously recalled 340,000 batteries, and the latest recall follows one from Gateway last month.
PS3 Passes 1 Million Sales Mark in Japan
Sony's PlayStation 3 has passed the 1 million unit sales mark in Japan, game publisher Enterbrain reports. It took about eight months for the company to reach that mark, a half-year longer than it took competitor Nintendo to reach the same milestone. As of July 15, Sony sold 1.01 million PS3s, compared to 2.9 million Wii consoles being sold. Microsoft has sold 420,705 Xbox 360s in Japan.
Microsoft has always struggled to do well in the region, so its low sales numbers are not altogether surprising. However, Sony has always performed well in Asia, easily outselling its rivals. The PS3 has been on sale in the country since November 2006, with the Wii debuting the following month. The Xbox 360 has been available in Japan since December 2005.
EU Backs Nokia's Mobile TV Standard
Nokia scored a win Wednesday over U.S. rival Qualcomm, as the European Union officially selected DVB-H as the single standard for mobile television delivered to cell phones and other portable devices. The choice over Qualcomm's MediaFLO was largely expected by industry watchers.
The EU says that establishing a single standard will help the fledgling technology get off the ground, just in time for the 2008 Olympics and European football championships. DVB-H, or Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds, is also used in the United States, although both Verizon and AT&T have backed MediaFLO instead. The U.S. is unlikely to force a single standard, which could lead to a technology split between the continents like occurred with GSM and CDMA.
EU Likely to Protect File Swapper Identities
While the RIAA has been making headway in the United States by suing anonymous alleged file sharers with just an IP address and obtaining their names and addresses from the Internet service providers, things could prove more difficult in Europe if a recent court recommendation holds up.
An advisor for the European Court of Justice has stated that Spain's Telefonica is not required to reveal the identity of file swappers so Spanish music association Promusicae could take legal action against them. Telefonica argued that it should only have to disclose personal information for a criminal prosecution, not a civil action. The advisor's opinion will be taken into consideration by the judges, which typically follow such recommendations.
Sony: The iPod is Like a CD
Sony on Wednesday bolstered its support for Apple's iPod by introducing a new boombox and clock radio that enable customers to plug their iPods directly into the devices. Once a fierce rival of Apple, Sony is now taking the position that the iPod is like a CD and has decided to embrace it.
"Consumers are treating the iPod as a format, like the compact disc, which is why Sony is now delivering audio products to support it," said Sony director Andrew Sivori. The $100 ICF-C1iP clock radio works like other iPod-based clocks, offering a docking connector at the top. Also $100, the ZS-S2iP boombox includes a radio and CD player, and a retractable dock tray for the iPod. Both produces will be available in August in black and white colors.
RIM Adds Wi-Fi to New BlackBerry
Those business users who can't make the leap to Apple's iPhone may be happy to hear that Research in Montion has unveiled a new BlackBerry model that offers quad-band GSM support and Wi-Fi connectivity in the company's thinnest form factor yet. However, like the iPhone, it lacks 3G support.
The BlackBerry 8820 will be sold through AT&T next month and includes GPS capabilities for navigation, along with RIM's latest media player software. It also will support making calls over a Wi-Fi network, saving customers their wireless minutes. Currently, T-Mobile is the only provider to offer such a service, called UMA. Pricing for the 8820 and required plans has not yet been announced.
Google Cookies Expire Sooner, If You Stop Visiting
Google has thrown another bone to critics of its privacy practices, announcing it would no longer set cookies to expire in the year 2038. Now, Google will set cookies to expire two years after a user last visits the site, with the expiration date auto-renewing to two years after each visit.
The search giant says the decision to make the cookies renew is so that users would not have to re-enter their basic preferences. Google does not require visitors to log in to store search preferences, using cookies to retain the data. The move follows a recent announcement that Google would anonymize its server search logs -- including IP addresses and cookie IDs -- after 18 months.
Microsoft to Invest in 'Web 3.0'
Seeing as it was late to the game with Web 2.0, Microsoft is making a preemptive effort to be ready the next time around. The company has pledged $500,000 in research grants toward what it calls "Intelligent Web 3.0," in which the Web becomes more aware of where and how it's being accessed in order to custom tailor information.
In total, Microsoft pledged nearly $6.5 million in research grants to colleges and universities. $1 million will cover utilizing cell phones in the healthcare industry, $700,000 for genome studies, $500,000 each for multi-core and sustainable computing, and another $500,000 for human-robot interaction. In addition, $1 million will be put toward academic computational research, and another $1 million provided to five new faculty members to be put toward their research.
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