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Dollar-a-day DVD rentals - fron a vending machine

Candy, soda, cigarettes. Now DVDs.

At a Stop & Shop supermarket in Glastonbury, Conn., one of 550 test sites across the country, customers can get DVDs of the most popular movies - from Clint Eastwood's hit Million Dollar Baby to National Treasure with Nicolas Cage - from a pair of cylinder-shaped vending machines at the front of the store.

The machines belong to Redbox, a company launched by McDonald's Corp. that executives hope could change the video rental industry almost as much as the Golden Arches changed Americans' eating habits.

For storefront video rental companies like giant Blockbuster Inc., Redbox is the latest competitive headache spawned by the decline of bulky videotape cassettes and the rise of lightweight DVDs. The success of the unheralded startup Netflix Inc. showed that consumers would rent movies on the Internet and have them delivered by mail. Now Redbox, based in Oak Brook, Ill., will challenge video rental stores by making the process as simple and as cheap as using a Coke machine.

"It's really being seen as another way to make McDonald's convenient and relevant to customers," said Greg Waring, Redbox senior director of marketing.

Redbox charges $1 a day, plus local sales tax. In Connecticut, it comes to $1.06. There's no need to fill out a registration form before renting. All the user needs is a valid credit card. A renter swipes the card and picks the movie using a touch-screen video monitor. The DVD emerges from a slot, packed in a plastic case.

Redbox charges no late fees. Instead, the customer is charged another dollar every day the movie is out. After 25 days and $25, the renter can keep the disk. To return the movie, people don't need to go back to the original location. Redbox disks can be returned at any Redbox in the United States. All of the machines are connected to Redbox headquarters through a broadband digital network, so the company always knows which movies are most popular and which machines need servicing.

McDonald's launched Redbox in Denver last summer. Of the 550 Redboxes now operating, none are in Florida. But there are 181 in Houston and 145 in Minneapolis. Most are located at McDonald's restaurants, but the company is testing them in alternative locations, including drugstores and supermarkets.

Getting fired is rarely a happy event, but that doesn't mean you can't have a sense of humor about it.

That's what Simply Hired, a 5-month-old employment-related Internet startup, counted on when it started an affiliated Web site devoted to the stories of workers who have received a pink slip for a silly, outrageous or embarrassing reason.

The Mountain View, Calif., company is offering a prize to the biggest "loser" - a Caribbean cruise that will include passengers famously fired by Donald Trump on his popular television show, The Apprentice.

The early submissions at Simplyfired includes a posting from Mark Jen, who was fired from Google Inc. this year for discussing the highly secretive company on his Web log.

Virtually all the other postings have been made under pseudonyms. The musings include stories about being fired for doing perverse things with prosthetics, refusing to cook the company books and neglecting to sign a holiday card for the boss.

Yahoo Inc. has launched a program that automatically places relevant advertising on blogs and other Web pages, treading on turf controlled by rival Google Inc.

Yahoo, the world's biggest Internet portal, is playing catch-up when it comes to "contextual" ads - text ads that appear near relevant online content. The company plans to invite 2,000 Web site owners to test its new service, Yahoo Publisher Network, then expand the program by the end of the year.

The new product opens another front in the search-engine wars. Google and Yahoo already are locked in heated competition in keyword advertising, which generated $3.9-billion last year, according to research company EMarketer. Contextual ads generated only $110-million but are growing fast.

Yahoo executives said they would encourage their more than 100,000 keyword advertisers to try contextual advertising.

Like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves also is launching a challenge to Google. The smaller search engine was rescued from the dot-com bust by its decision in 2002 to run ads brokered by Google. Newly emboldened after being acquired last month by Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, AskJeeves said it had developed its own method of placing keyword ads delivered along with search-engine results.

The Ask Jeeves service, like Google's, lets advertisers bid for placement with search engine results. They only pay when Web surfers click on the links. Ask Jeeves plans to run ads both from its own service and from Google.

Days after Microsoft Corp. launched a new antipiracy program, hackers found a way to get around it.

The software company's new program, called Windows Genuine Advantage, requires computer users to go through a process validating that they're running a legitimate copy of the Windows operating system before downloading any software updates except for security patches.

But the check can be bypassed by entering a simple JavaScript command in the Web browser's address bar and hitting the Enter key. When that's done, the validation does not run and the user is taken directly to the download.

Microsoft said it was investigating and that the glitch was not a security vulnerability.

The hack appears to work only when a computer user is trying to download software through the Windows Update service. Some software, such as Microsoft's AntiSpyware beta, isn't available there but can be found elsewhere on microsoft.com.

Online technology and media site Cnet.com has launched the Security Center (security.cnet.com), a free resource for information about viruses, malware, safe downloads and other features. The Virus Threat Watch gives a daily rating on threat levels ranging from low to extreme, and users can share information on viruses and fixes at the Virus Hot Zones section.

[Last modified August 5, 2005, 10:47:03]