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Can't wait for Netflix movies? Download 'em

By TIMES WIRES
Published January 22, 2007

Netflix Inc. is showing movies and TV episodes over the Internet, although only a fraction of its more than 6-million subscribers will get immediate access to "Watch Now," a free service. Netflix expects to phase in the instant-viewing system to about 250,000 more subscribers each week through June. Subscribers will get to watch from six to 48 hours of material per month on a streaming service intended to prevent piracy. Viewing time will be tied to how much customers pay for their DVD rentals. Under Netflix's most popular $17.99 monthly package, subscribers will receive 18 hours of Internet viewing time.

Amazon invites you to search in Askville

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. is trying to beef up its user-driven research site, just weeks after Google Inc. abandoned its 4-year-old effort. Amazon's Askville.com site, like others in the online answer-service niche, allows visitors to post questions to be answered by other users. Askville has been in testing for a few months and opened to the public in December. Like leader Yahoo Answers, Askville is free, and participants can earn points based on the quality of answers they provide. Participants will also earn a virtual currency called "Quest Coins," which Amazon says will be redeemed for unspecified prizes.

Rock your world with TiVo

Digital TV recording pioneer TiVo Inc. will add new music services, including RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody, to make more than 3-million tunes and videos available to subscribers with broadband Internet connections. The service will begin this year.

Ever wanted to stuff that "Can you hear me now?" guy into the trunk of your car and take him on a tour of those maddening spots where your cell phone won't work? One telecommunications company has plans for a mechanical equivalent. New York's taxi commission recently authorized Swedish mobile phone equipment maker LM Ericsson to place mobile sensors in the trunks of at least 50 cabs in an attempt to better map dead zones in wireless networks. The devices, about the size of a cigar box, will automatically feed information about signal strength and clarity to engineers. Because taxis in New York are on the road all day and all night, and ostensibly reach every corner of the city, Ericsson executives said they can cheaply cover vast amounts of territory with limited effort. Ericsson has set up similar programs in several other cities since the 1990s using a variety of vehicles. "We have used trains, trucks, buses, delivery vehicles, limousines, pretty much anything that is moving and has electricity in it," said Niklas Kylvag, Ericsson's manager of fleet services. "I have myself done testing in the Swiss Alps with this on my back at a ski resort."

Help a senator out: Make the Internet 'tubes'

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, endured ridicule last year for his assertion that the Internet is "a series of tubes." But one Web startup hopes to bring that metaphor to life with a new service that makes it easy for people to share videos, songs, pictures and other big files. After downloading the Tubes application from Adesso Systems Inc. (tubes.adessonow.com), Windows computer users can create dozens of such tubes and fill each one with up to 2 gigabytes of content - room for about a few hundred songs, for example. Tube creators then invite others to join a Tube (the recipients must download Adesso's application to their PCs) and can grant those partners varying privilege levels. Those include locking them into a read-only mode or letting them add or remove files of their own. An e-mail, a Web link, a presentation, a video or any other file can be put into a Tube simply by dragging it from the desktop and dropping it into the Tubes application on the side of the screen. Once in a Tube, files automatically get placed on recipients' PC hard drives.

And you thought John Madden wasn't sexy

Kolton Mahoney, a 14-year-old in Layton, Utah, got a surprise Christmas morning when he tried to play the copy of Madden NFL 07 he'd received from his uncle. Instead of good, clean gridiron action, Kolton got an eyeful of pornography. "This is definitely not Madden," Kolton said he thought to himself - and thank goodness for that, because explicit images of John Madden could scar a boy for life. The package was factory-sealed before Kolton opened it, and the disc reportedly bore an embossed "Madden" label, so the source of the smut remains a mystery. EA Sports apologized to the family, and Circuit City, which sold the game to Kolton's uncle, planned to send the kid a replacement along with several other games.

[Last modified January 21, 2007, 21:43:43]