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The Buzz

The cutting edge of technology.

By Times Staff
Published March 5, 2007

Netflix tops 1,000,000,000. That's a lot of late fees avoided. 

Netflix Inc. delivered its 1-billionth DVD last month, marking another milestone in the Internet rental service's evolution from a peculiar dot-com to a marquee attraction in millions of homes. It took Netflix nearly 7 1/2 years to mail out 1-billion DVDs - about seven months less than it took McDonald's Corp. to sell 1-billion hamburgers after opening its first restaurant in April 1955.

To commemorate the occasion, Netflix is awarding a lifetime subscription to the unidentified Helotes, Texas, customer who received the 1-billionth DVD - Babel - shipped from one of the company's 42 distribution centers nationwide. Crash, the best picture winner at last year's Academy Awards, ranks as the most frequently requested DVD from Netflix's library of more than 70,000 titles. The service's second-most-rented DVD is Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a less acclaimed flick best known for sparking an off-screen affair between stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Instead of fading into dot-com oblivion, Netflix is fast becoming as much of a household fixture as the living room couch. Last year alone, Netflix signed up 2.1-million new customers, who pay anywhere from $4.99 to $47.99 per month for DVD rentals that are requested online and delivered through the mail.

Buy some hot friends at this Web site

FakeYourSpace.com, a business founded by Brant Walker, offers users of MySpace.com and similar sites a way to enhance their page with photographs and comments from hired "friends" - mainly attractive models - for 99 cents a month each. The idea, Walker says, is "to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets" by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Walker and his employees. FakeYourSpace says it does not post messages that are threatening, pornographic or illegal. But Walker has stumbled into one pitfall: The fake friends' photos come from iStockphoto.com, which doesn't allow Web sites to post photos that might lead the average person to think that the model endorses the product. Walker is searching for new photos to use.

Domain grace period ties up Web names

Entrepreneurs have been taking advantage of a five-day grace period to sample millions of domain names, keeping the relative few that might generate advertising revenue and dropping the rest before paying. It's akin to buying new clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a big party. The grace period was originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. But with computer automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have turned the return policy into a loophole for generating big bucks. Experts think spammers and scam artists are starting to use the grace period as a source of free, disposable Web addresses.

There's more to do at this movie theater

Say hello to a hybrid movie theater with all the digital fire and fury of a video game: fog, black light, flashing green lasers, high-definition digital projectors, vibrating seats, game pads and dozens of 17-inch screens attached to individual chairs. Called Cinegames, this small theater is in a huge suburban multiplex in Madrid, Spain. Enrique Martinez developed the idea as part of an executive MBA program at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. "We see the future with multiplexes with five screens, one for the traditional Hollywood spectaculars and the others for screens for video halls and 3-D. That's the next step." Cinegames is a testing ground for the Yelmo Cineplex, a movie theater company in Spain, which spent more than $390,000 to modify one of its small theaters into a high-tech video gaming hall.

[Last modified March 5, 2007, 06:26:31]