Wednesday, June 16, 2004

On the air with Steve Crowley's American Scene Today we will cover Movies (VOD), eBay's new RSS feeds and assorted topics and sites to see. I'll introduce a teaser about what's coming soon in the energy business also. Tune it to American Scene Radio for more. Movielink.com - Rent Any Movie For Just $0.99. Movielink is a new service that allows you to download movies to watch on your computer. After you download a movie you'll have 30 days to begin watching it. Once you begin viewing the movie, you can watch it as many times as you like in a 24 hour time span. If you travel it'll make a great use for your laptop. It won't work with Mozilla Firefox so you'll have to use IE 5.0 or later. Let's argue with The Motley Fool: My news aggregator picked this up from the Motley Fool's RSS feed: "Netflix Retains Edge. Don't believe the hype. VOD threats have nothing on Netflix." Motley says that Video-on-demand (VOD) technology hasn't caught up with Netflix, and that there isn't a real present threat, but I think they are underestimating the competition. We must agree that VOD isn't there yet but it's coming. And with options like Movielink, the playing field is going to get crowded. It may not be VOD that raises the biggest challenge. Just in the last couple of weeks, Blockbuster has initiated their Unlimited Movie Pass, a rental campaign with no late fees, no due dates, no long term commitments on a monthly recurring charge on your credit card. Now if you look at it, Netflix has the problem to overcome. Do customers want to wait for the post office to deliver for a few dollars less per month? Or will they get better value and convenience by joining the Blockbuster offer? It took a while for Blockbuster to wake up, but I think they are going to win the battle in the short run. Netflix is better positioned for VOD in my opinion, and they might need to go there sooner rather than later. Let's just say that Business Week was on target in their article on Convergience, It's bound to happen as broadband continues to gain speed and market penetration. Then VOD will be the standard. eBay's RSS feeds Senior manager of developer relations at eBay, Jeffrey McManus, announced the RSS rollout on his weblog and said eBay's feeds would be used to push special offers, promotions and system status messages via RSS. "[They are] highly recommended if you use a Weblog reader and are the least bit serious about using eBay," McManus said. The RSS feeds, which appear to be targeting the hardcore eBay buyer and shopper, are available here: General Announcements and System Announcements. Using RSS, an interesting third party site, FreeBiddingTools.com, allows you to search for specific item updates. I've tried it and found it very useful for finding good deals. It's a good idea and seems to work very well. You can generate your own custom RSS feed for your favorite eBay search. Once you click the "Generate" button below, your RSS feed will be generated for you. After it's created, simply copy the RSS location and paste the URL into your favorite RSS Aggregator. 12:03:36 AM