Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Netflix has passed another milestone in the by-mail DVD rental business, they have passed the 100,000 movie mark. In addition Netflix now also has over 8,000 movies and TV shows available to watch instantly along with approximately 7.5 million customers.

Netflix has also surpassed rival Blockbuster who currently has just 80,000 movies available for their online service and at this point are only rumored to begin offering movies for immediate viewing. Maybe a merger with Circuit City could help Blockbuster pick up some needed strength.

Via [HackingNetflix]

The web mail scene has been dominated by either Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Windows Hotmail for quite some time now. Although there have been many other web-based email systems who have tried to enter the fray, none has been successful as of yet. So it would seem that GMX Global Mail Exchange may be up to a tough task of getting into the web mail niche.

GMX Global Mail Exchange aims to provide an alternative web mail solution for home users as well as small and medium sized enterprises. It’s your typical web based email that supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols and mobile devices. GMX also allows you to create up to 10 additional emails that all forward and can be checked from your main account, which is a nice way to keep your main email address a little more private. If you notice too much junk or spam from one of your alternates simply delete it and start with a new one.

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Steve Jobs just finished Apple’s keynote presentation at the WWDC. The second major announcement (first one is here) was the previously announced preview of Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard, the sixth major version of Mac OS X. Leopard is scheduled to ship in spring 2007.

The newest features are Time Machine, a program that will automatically back up and restore everything on your Mac, and Spaces, an new way to instantly switch between groups of applications required for various tasks. Leopard also includes advancements for Mail and iChat, including Stationery, Notes and To Dos in Mail; and Photo Booth-style effects, the ability to “place” yourself in any photo or video as the backdrop for your chat, and live presentations of iPhoto slideshows, Keynote presentations and videos in iChat.

“Breakthrough features like Time Machine and Spaces are good examples of how Mac OS X leads the industry in operating system innovation,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “While Microsoft tries to copy the version of OS X we shipped a few years ago, we’re leaping ahead again with Leopard.”

Time Machine automatically backs up everything on the Mac to an external hard drive or Mac OS X Server. In the event a file is lost, users can search back through time using an intuitive time-based visual display to find and then instantly restore the file. With one click, Time Machine can restore anything from a single file or photo to everything on a Mac.

Spaces is an new way to group applications required for a given task into a “space,” then instantly switch between different spaces to bring up the specific applications required for that given task. Users can get a bird’s eye view of all their Spaces and choose where they want to go next with just one keystroke or click of a mouse (as seen here).

Additional features in Leopard include:

• full native 64-bit support that allows applications to take complete advantage of 64-bit processing while maintaining full performance and compatibility for existing 32-bit Mac OS X applications and drivers


• enhancements to Boot Camp, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs


• Front Row now available with all new Macs to play back digital content, including video Podcasts using the Apple remote


• Photo Booth, Apple’s application that lets users take quick snapshots with an iSight video camera, add visual effects with the touch of a button, and share them via email


• iCal 3 with group calendaring capabilities, event drop box, and standards-based CalDAV support


• improved Spotlight searching that’s even faster, provides richer previews, and lets users search across network mounted folders on other machines


• a new Movies Dashboard widget for movie times and Web Clip for clipping any part of a web page as a live widget


• new parental controls including curfews, time limits and remote administration


• Core Animation, a new graphics technology that makes it easy to create stunning visual effects and animations


• major enhancements in Universal Access, including improvements in VoiceOver, Apple’s built-in screen reader


• security enhancements including anti-phishing protection in Mail and Safari, and an automatic firewall that limits network resources available to an application


• new development tools, including Xcode 3 with full 64-bit support, DashCode, an easy way to create new Dashboard widgets without writing a line of code, and Xray, for optimizing application performance.

AOL is still stuck with their failing subscription business model but maybe not for long. After trying to keep the company afloat by redoing AOL.com and turning it into a Yahoo media portal, everyone’s first ISP is still in shambles. CEO Jonathan Miller will present a new plan to the board in two weeks where I believe he should propose giving AOL away for free. Miller has offered various strategies before to revamp operations, including online shopping, premium subscriptions with unique content, high-speed broadband and the free AOL.com site.

Here’s my math for this final try: AOL is loosing thousands of customers and their attached revenue each day (I actually just cancelled my account after 8 years and 3 more inactive years of paying way to much for nothing). If the company were to keep the services and portal free people wouldn’t leave. The software portal that used to garner so much attention when it upgraded software and look is still essential for those who do not have broadband and for those who don’t understand you can go to AOL.com and check your mail. Now the zinger, if they sell ads on these sites with the number of current subscribers the company can make a decent amount of money. If they let the customers slip away they will not bring in enough revenue to keep the business. Additionally, if AOL waits much longer they will loose the customer and loose the chance for ad revenue.

So go ahead and call Jon, tell him Adam said to make it free. It will work, I promise, because if it doesn’t AOL is doomed anyway.