Movies

Another Day, Another Set-Top

A new set-top maker has entered the fray to the tune of $17.5 million in capital investments. The company, Building-B, says it will have a product in retail this fall that will combine broadcast TV with VOD and Web video. Sounds great. But haven’t we heard that somewhere before? There’s a reason no one else … Read more

Dragon’s Lair Arrives On HD DVD

Ah, Dragon’s Lair… The arcade game I had a love-hate relationship with as a child. The animation was amazing and unique, but the game ran me $1 for each 30 seconds of play. At some point I must have been mature enough to realize I sucked, either that or my mom stopped giving me money, … Read more

Done Deal: Blockbuster Acquires Movielink

After months of rumors and false alarms, Blockbuster has announced the acquisition of Movielink: With thousands of movies and television shows available in its digital library for downloading, Movielink offers customers the ability to legally download entertainment content for rental (VOD) and for purchase (EST). The acquisition of Movielink, which has VOD and EST license … Read more

Comic-Con on Xbox Live

So I’m about a week late on this one… But over the weekend I was exploring the new video search site VeZoom and stumbled on a Kevin Smith QA session from the San Diego Comic-Con. Which got me thinking – I should go back one of these years. I had a blast the last time … Read more

The Simpsons Advertising Overload

The Simpsons Movie opens today. Which probably isn’t news to anyone, given their massive advertising campaign – I don’t recall a movie ever pushed across such different media like this. On my flight out to CA, not only was my television advertising The Simpsons (above) but every cocktail napkin was also imprinted with the message … Read more

Digital Media Bytes: Business Week Edition

The latest issue of Business Week (7/30) could be the best ever and was obviously tailored for geeks like me with a ton of relevant stories worth checking out. Annual IDEA Awards The Best Product Design of 2007. Samsung is Having a Sony Monent The Korean titan is showing signs of complacency — and results … Read more

Swaptree Beta

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Ages ago I signed up to be a beta tester for a service called Swaptree. I finally received my invite last month, and at long last signed on last night. (The beta is public as of July 4th, so you can try it out yourself.) The premise of Swaptree is simple. You list books, movies, games and music that you’re willing to trade and then browse for items you’d like to get in exchange.

I set up my Swaptree account by typing in the ISBN numbers of 9 books I have and got a list of 176 items that I could potentially receive in a trade. These included 143 books, 18 CDs, 8 video games and 7 DVDs. Not bad. I initiated one trade and now I’m sitting back to see what happens.

The service is drop-dead simple and I can see how it might get addictive. However, it does have a few quirks.

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