Amazon Takes on Netflix Offering Movie Subscriptions

Amazon Takes on Netflix Offering Movie Subscriptions

Those interested in immediate gratification have made Netflix a popular choice for movie viewing.  Amazon has now taken on the challenge of competing with Netflix.  Amazon’s “Prime” subscription program costs $79/year which includes their 2-day shipping on purchases.  Prime also includes more than 5,000 video-streaming movies and television shows.  Most of what they offer includes older television seasons and movies.

Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” program costs $7.99 a month and video-streams over 20,000 titles.  This brings their price to over $95/year.  Many of their movies are newer, but their TV shows consistent of previous seasons.

Amazon is entering this market in hope of increasing their digital business.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “The streaming-video offering could lead customers to buy or rent the 90,000 movies and shows that Amazon already offers on an a la carte basis.”

In an effort to compete, Netflix has entered into a two-year deal with CBS to provide television shows.  WSJ reported, “Netflix will pay CBS hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of the nonexclusive, two-year licensing pact, which gives CBS the option to extend it for up to two years and add more content in return for higher compensation.”

How will this affect the cable and satellite industry’s relationship with TV networks?  That is something that TV executives must consider as more than $30 billion a year comes to networks from subscriptions.

Netflix is no stranger to competition.  Netflix’s competition with Itunes, led to their removing limits for streaming of video. PCworld reported, “Previously the amount of streaming content subscribers could access was dependent on their subscription level. For example, the $16.99 membership allowed for 17 hours of streaming movie content. With the new unlimited plan, all subscription levels, with the exception of the lowest $4.99 plan, will be able to stream as many Netflix movies and TV shows as they’d like to their PCs.”

Itunes has been tough to beat in movie downloads.  As Forbes pointed out, “ITunes already dominates the world of movie downloads. In 2010 the service accounted for 64.5% of all movie downloads and rentals.”

10 Sci-Fi Predicted Inventions That Actually Made it to Market

 

image via techvert.com

It’s hard to look at my flip phone without thinking of the communications device on Star Trek.  There are many examples of inventions that used to be thought of as just science fiction that have now become a reality.  The flip phone is just one of them.  Here are some of my favorite inventions that came from science fiction:

  1. As mentioned, flip phones were very similar to the transporter on Star Trek.
  2. TV video phones have been seen in a lot of different movies and shows. Back to the Future featured these as well as a lot of other inventions that made it to market.  Click here to see the others.  Remember Marty’s cool shoe laces?  Yep. . . they have arrived.
  3. Earbud headphones were predicted in Fahrenheit 451.  Mashable has this example as well as many other very unusual things that have made it to market.  See that list of astounding prediction by clicking here.
  4. The Jetsons had a number of product predictions come to fruition.  One of those things is the tanning bed.  Check out a techvert.com article by clicking here to see a list of some more Jetsons inspired inventions.
  5. Remember the Jetsons’ robotic vacuum?  We now have the Roomba.
  6. Virtual reality was seen in many movies including Tron and the Matrix.  Cracked.com includes virtual reality on their list of seemingly awesome inventions that came to light in not so awesome ways. 
  7. Television surveillance was just a future possibility in Orwell’s 1984 classic.  Anyone who watches CSI knows that there are cameras keeping an eye on us from just about everywhere these days.
  8. Online Newspapers were shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  With RSS feeds, we can create our own online newspapers tailored to our unique interests.
  9. Credit Cards were envisioned in Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel, Looking Backward.
  10. H. G. Wells wrote about automatic doors in his 1899 novel, The Sleeper.

Marlo Thomas Asks What Would You Do Differently – My Answer is Nothing

I was just watching a video by Marlo Thomas where she was asking people what they would do differently knowing what they know now.  In my book, How to Reinvent Your Career, I included a chapter about this very subject.  The following is an excerpt from that chapter where I discuss why I don’t think that many things we choose are really mistakes because they have led us to where we need to be now.

Think about the choices you made when you were young. Would you choose the same things now? Maybe not. Maybe you weren’t ready to take on the things you can now do. I doubt I would have been as good a professor if I hadn’t had the 25-plus years of experience in the working world to help me add to my lectures and discussions. 

Perhaps that degree you got in Sociology or Education or some other field no longer interests you. Perhaps you need to go back and get more education in a new area of interest. People change and interests change. It’s OK to say that what you were interested in when you were 20 is not the same thing that interests you now.

One of the reasons we change is through the life lessons we learn. We may take a job that leads to another job that we had no intention of doing in the first place, but makes us much happier than we thought it would. You have to factor life experiences into the equation of what brought you to the place you are right now.

Celebrity Net Worth Site Knocked Offline by Daniel Tosh of Comedy Central

image via voxonline.com

I recently posted a blog about celebrities and their net worth.  To see that blog, click here.  Today, I’ve been getting an unusual amount of hits on that link.  It made me do some research. This is what I found out.

According to entertainment.gather.com, Daniel Tosh of Comedy Central and Tosh.O  mentioned the site to send it offline.  “Fans of the host congratulated him on the success of his mission via tweets on Twitter. On his series, Daniel Tosh talked about some of today’s most popular celebrities and what they are worth.”

As of this writing, the site’s server is still not working.  It’s interesting to see how much of an impact Tosh’s comments have made on their traffic.