It's Official: Netflix (NFLX) Destroys BlockBuster (BBI)
For a few minutes, it seemed BlockBuster's Total Access plan might actually post a problem for Netflix: After all, the in-store pick-up and drop-off just seemed so convenient. Well, the results are in, and the answer is "no."
As Peter Kafka reported yesterday, BlockBuster's Total Access subscription business got crushed in Q3, with subs declining by 500,000. Netflix's subscriber base, meanwhile, resumed growth, climbing 286,000. Analysts are now justifiably fretting about the growth of subscription business overall (it shrank for the first time), and Netflix's next challenge is to figure out how to thrive in a digital-delivery world.
But in this latest example of how hard it is to transform a physical-world business model to compete with a focused online competitor, the word "BlockBuster" need never again come up on a Netflix conference call. That fight is over. (The final insult? Netflix's market cap is 2X Blockbuster's)
Can you say WQUXGA? Toshiba can. According to a translated promo page, it built the 22" "super Kousei small LCD monitor" with a resolution of 3840x2400. That's 200 dots per inch! Toshiba admits, though, that the contrast ratio is 300:1, pretty bad even if you don't believe in contrast-ratio reporting. In Japan, MSRP for this sucker is 2,079,000 Yen (about $18,000). The XP-compatible PCI card required to run it will set you back another 312,900 Yen ($2,700). Oddly enough, in our search for an image, we found 
This morning I was pointed to an article on the Washington Post about travel. If you want to find it, you can go to the Washington Post site and look around. I am sure you will find it eventually. Maybe, maybe not. Click here, click there, search, and perhaps you will find the article called "Web Travel Resources, Part I". Wouldn't it be easier if I just 
Online store creator Zlio is in the beginning stages of launching their Version 3 of their application. When we interviewed founder 
Ad Infuse, a company that delivers personalized mobile handset advertisements, announced today that it has closed 14 new mobile advertising and marketing deals and 22 new publishing deals so far in 2007. Ad Infuse hopes to finalize several more contracts by the end of the year. The company added that inventory across its content channels will exceed 160 million impressions per month as of October, 2007. 
KT-Tech, a small start-up company, has revealed its mobile phone videoconferencing application, KTvid. KTvid allows person-to-person videoconferencing in real-time over today's mainstream cellular networks. The application doesn't require the high-bandwidth of a 3G cellular network for quality two-way video and audio connectivity so its potential can be realized today. I don't know how good the picture and sound is but you can be assured that KT-Tech thinks they are high-quality. 
It's official: you can now buy a 320GB drive from WD for your laptop, and for just $200. The WD Scorpio SATA drive spins at 5400rpm and has a 8MB cache. The press release says it's "extraordinarily quiet while running at cool operating temperatures." I hope that doesn't mean it's extremely loud while running at super high temperatures. The important thing is, this timing coincides with the arrival of Mac's Time Machine and the Windows Home Server, two easy ways to offload your laptop's entire contents, swap out the internal drive, then restore your old image without a lot of tinkering. I know some of you like tinkering, but this is the future. [
Need a template for your business plan, a tutorial on Python programming, or a copy of the Gettysburg address? Document sharing web site DocStoc has more than 12,000 files posted for free browsing and downloads. Registered members can keep personal "folders" on the site with links to useful docs and get notified by email when another user uploads a file type they request. Those looking for straight-up legal forms have 
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