A website frees paid content in the Internet
You've combed through many pages of search result to find the newspaper article you want, and finally reach it. But, wait a minute. They want a subscription fee. Don't pay! Get a free pass at Congoo.com for access to up to 15 premium articles a month from more than 200 sources.
Congo, a New Jersey company that advertises itself with the claim Unlock the Premium Web, has every month some partner sites. The number of free articles per month varies by published. How does it work? Simply download what the call the Congo NetPass, and activate it.
Burn a film to DVD and play it on any television set, and do it legally
CinemaNow.com, a well known online movie-downloading site, is saying that the future of DVD buying has arrived with its new Burn to DVD technology. They allow to download, legally, the complete DVD, including the menu and bonus features; then watch it on your PC or burn it to DVD, to play it in almost any DVD player connected to any television set.
Several large Hollywood studios will start letting people create DVD's of movies in their homes using that feature of CinemaNow. The studios participating include Sony, Disney, MGM, Universal, and Lions Gate, which is a major shareholder in CinemaNow.
"People like to watch movies in their living rooms, and this solves their problem" said the CEO of the company.
However, due to the need to compress the files, in order to reduce the downloading time, the picture quality is not as high as those films on commercial DVDs. Prices are about $9 to $15, the same as the films sold in version that could be downloaded only to computers. MovieLink.com plans to have the same burn to DVD feature next year.
Macy's will be the star in a new reality TV show
The American store chain Macy's will be the subject of a new reality TV show, to be aired on the Women's Entertainment network, WE, in September. This show, called "Unwrapping Macy's" will give a behind the scenes look at store operations, and will focus on the daily lives of employees and the drama of meeting deadlines. The premier of the show will coincide with Macy's expansion into new markets in the U.S.
Online news have a surprisingly long life
On the Internet when does new news become old news? According to a new research led by the University of Notre Dame, titled "The Dynamics of Information Access on the Web", the answer is surprisingly long: 36 hours on average. That is the amount of time it takes for half of total readership of an article to have read it.
Editors of online news sites, including IBLNEWS, said the results confirmed what they experience day to day. The top new story usually gets a lot of traffic, but many of the remaining stories don't loose their news value for a time.
Microsoft will launch a user-submitted video service to challenge YouTube
MSN plans to launch "imminently" a user-submitted video service. No surprise. It is the Microsoft attempt to assault on video-sharing websites, leaded by the hugely successful YouTube.com. Trying to increase the reach of its MSN portal, Microsoft will target users ranging from amateur documentary makers to aspiring pop starts.
YouTube, which allow users to post their own video content, is part of the so-called "Web 2.0" sites that aim to give users an online space to create and share content. More than 80 million videos are viewed on the site every day, ranging from teenage confessionals to video diaries recorded by Israelis, Lebanon people or troops in Iraq. 40 percent of YouTube video plays come off of MySpace.com pages.
Microsoft is under pressure to show Wall Street they can maintain current traffic flows. It has set aside $2 billion to fund its online new initiatives. Wall Street analysts have singled out video as the next big thing in online services.
Logitech and Grouper.com launch an offering to post video with one click
More than 200 sites host user-uploaded video. Among them the race to grab market is very intense. Competitors strive to develop new features to distinguish themselves from market leader YouTube. One of the latest offering comes from Grouper.com, which has partnered with Logitech.
Next week Logitech will include a link within its webcam software that will enable consumers to record video directly to Grouper's servers. This feature will eliminate the time-consuming step of saving and uploading video. Now consumers must launch software on their PCs or laptops; record and save the file to their desktops; find the file; and then wait for it to be uploaded.
Grouper.com will promote it as the easiest way to post video on the web. Their offering will works as follows: when a Logitech Webcam user clicks on a link to Grouper's site that's embedded in the camera's software, he will be routed to a page where he can record a video. Once he approves the video, that clip will be posted on the site.
