Examine Netflix rental patterns neighborhood by neighborhood |
The New York Times has an interactive Web app that lets you see the popularity of various Netflix titles by neighborhood in a several different cities. It’s a pretty interesting voyeuristic look at who is watching what. But it leaves you with more questions than answers.
For instance Why is The Curious Case Of Benjamin Butler so popular in Chicago? Or for that matter why are any of these people watching Doubt? Don’t they have paint to watch dry?




Looks like we might be able to enjoy 3D Blu-ray movies by next summer. According to NVIDIA’s PR manager for the UK and Northern Europe, Ben Berraondo, the Blu-ray Association has finally agreed on the details of 3D Blu-ray.
You need movie facts and you need them now. Otherwise you won’t win the argument. There’s an app for that. The Internet Movie Database now has it’s own iPhone app. It’s the same stuff that’s on the site, but in a neatly-designed and easy to use reference for just about every film or show. You’ll also get local showtimes, trailers, and TV listings.
Blockbuster has a new program that will load DRM’d movie rentals onto an SD card from a kiosk. Let’s say that you’re at the airport, or some mall. You want to rent a movie. Apparently you just format a spare SD card (because it doesn’t look like they give you a card), put it in the machine, select a movie, pay about $4. Then you have the movie on your card with DRM.
While we wait and see whether the Xbox 360 is
It’s not rocket science. First it was Microsoft’s Xbox 360, then the PlayStation 3. Now Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” is coming to Nintendo’s Wii. At least that’s what the word is, according to StreamingMedia, who has an undisclosed source that has confirmed that Nintendo is currently testing Netflix streaming on the Wii. And that it will be available “very soon.”
Marvel’s Create Your Own Comic service is obviously for kids, but since when has that stopped you. You’re the guy who plays with Legos and collects Star Wars figures right?
mSpot isn’t new. It has been streaming full-length movies to cellphones for a few years. Now however, the company has a potential customer base of 40 million. Mobile phone users on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile (including the G1, Pre, iPhone and other smartphones) can go to m.mspot.com to stream movies.
Blockbuster is preparing a mobile movie download service specifically for Motorola handsets. Blockbuster didn’t provide many details, and we have no pricing info or a launch date. We don’t even know which Motorola phones the movies would play on, or how the movies will be distributed.
Forget the fact that this thing looks like some hopped up PSP wearing bright orange sunglasses. The extremely eye-catching WiFi Tv is basically a handheld internet television that is designed to access on-demand TV services that are available on the internet.
Forget DVDs, forget Blu-Ray. Disney and Panasonic see the future and that future is movies on flash cards. That’s right, those same tiny memory cards that you buy for your digital camera/MP3 player will soon be available with films pre-loaded on.
I remember summers back when I was in school. It was great for a few weeks and then I was bored out of my mind. I ended up watching lots of movies and playing video games until my parents cut me off for spending too much.
If you recently jumped on the Blu-ray bandwagon, chances are you’ve got a bunch of DVDs that are pretty much useless now. Warner Bros. wants to help. The company is now offering a trade-in program called Red2Blu that allows people to trade in 25 Warner Bros. HD DVDs and have them replaced with Blu-ray versions.
That’s what seems to be happening with a small group of subscribers who are claiming their discs are arriving with small cracks on the outside edges. They say it’s happening repeatedly. No one is sure what is causing it since the Discs have an extra coating to prevent scratches on Blu-ray.
This sort of thing would have seemed like magic to us many years ago. Imagine pointing your handset at an object, taking a photo of it and sending it to a database to get further information. It’s like a real life Google. It’s called Point & Find by Nokia. The beta version is now available in the UK and the US, and it will be expanded to other services and countries in the future.