fandango

Siri will get a little smarter with the next version of iOS.

The iOS 6.1 update will give the voice-command feature the ability to order movie tickets through Fandango, according to 9to5Mac.

Users can ask to get movie tickets for a specific film and location, and Siri will bring up a theater and showtime. Users can then click to purchase the tickets, which brings up the Fandango apps to finish out the transaction. If the device doesn't have Fandango, Siri will direct users to a link to download the app.

The feature is exclusive to the U.S., … Read more

Internet-savvy moviegoers are already gorging themselves on "The Hunger Games," the first cinematic installment of a young-adult fiction trilogy making its debut at 12:01 a.m. Friday at theaters across the country.

And that means fat financial gains for e-tailers like Fandango.

Online ticket sales are sky-high, according to Fandango, a dominant e-tailer of movie tickets -- to the tune of over 2,500 show times sold out across the United States. Fandango is already forecasting its strongest March ever for its virtual box office.

The flick is proving to be the third most popular title in … Read more

Yahoo has been trying to revamp itself in several different ways over the course of the last year, especially as the company shifts its image from a one-time search giant to a digital media company.

One way that Yahoo is going about that is through a new partnership with Fandango.

This scenario has the potential to be a win-win here. On the one hand, Fandango has yet another medium for ticket sales as it will be the sole and dedicated option for buying movie tickets on Yahoo Movies sites.

For reference, Fandango sells tickets to nearly 20,000 screens nationwide, … Read more

If you use Apple's Movies widget for the Dashboard you may have found that recently it stopped providing results and instead gives a "no movie data available" warning when you enter your location information.

Yesterday I covered some details of the Movie widget problem, and found that it is rooted in Apple's use of the server "wu.apple.com" to provide the movie data, which apparently is not working properly and gives a "Service Unavailable" error when accessed. This results in no data being sent to the widget.

The wu.apple.com … Read more

Apple's Dashboard feature in OS X provides access to JavaScript-based widgets that enable you to quickly translate text, access calculators, and look up information. One of the widgets that Apple provides will check the latest movies and showtimes from Fandango.com, but recently people have noticed the Movies widget is no longer working properly.

Instead of providing the latest showtimes, when Dashboard is activated the widget flips over and requests that you enter your location information again. When you do this, the widget will flip back again and claim that no movie data is available for the location provided.… Read more

commentary Plenty of Web sites this holiday season are offering tips about how to shop online without getting burned by dishonest merchants or con men.

Here's my advice: if in doubt shop at Amazon.

Amazon isn't perfect. I don't know any perfect stores online or off. But after 15 years of providing consumers with a safe shopping experience on the Web, the e-tailing pioneer deserves some applause. Don't believe me? Just read the testimonial given by Vitaly Borker, the man who operates what is now likely the most notorious retail store on the Internet.

On Friday, … Read more

The U.S. Senate is moving to put an end to one of the biggest scandals ever to shake online retail.

Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced a bill on Wednesday designed to prevent post-transaction marketers from duping consumers into enrolling into monthly memberships.

Rockefeller's committee has said marketers Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue were responsible for mysterious credit card charges that millions of Americans, including elderly citizens and wounded Iraqi veterans, have complained about for years. Rockefeller's bill, called "Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act," is the result of a yearlong investigation … Read more

With Wilson nursing a flu, Natali Del Conte comes in to save the day and somehow manages to work up the nerve to challenge me to a habanero chili pepper eating competition. Clearly she doesn't know I was president of Edison High School's Fire Eater's Club and eat Scoville units for breakfast. Then again, her last name is Del Conte, which automatically gives her an advantage. May the best Justin Yu win.

Due to the depressing rain New York suffered over the weekend, the three of us spent the last two days indoors--and how each of us passed our time reveals a bit about our personalities. Natali checked out the 3D showing of "Alice in Wonderland" to see if the movie lives up to the hype; Jeff gives himself a pat on the back for finishing three video games in two days; and I discovered the marketing magic that is The Dragulator, a promotional campaign for RuPaul's show "Drag Race" that lets you see how you'd look as a drag queen, and I'm not gonna lie--I make this look gooooood.

It's been a long time coming, but Fandango launched a new "mobile ticket program" today that enables moviegoers to download a scannable bar code to use in lieu of a physical movie ticket.

The service will definitely save time and paper, but it also opens up a whole new world to hackers, who could easily forge a ticket using a fabricated bar code. The program is currently being tested in more than 100 theaters, including a few in NYC, so we'll try it out and bring you a special report soon.

Representatives from some of the post-transaction marketing firms now under government scrutiny for allegedly duping consumers into signing up for membership programs are trying to whip up support on Capitol Hill.

According to my sources in Washington, D.C., some of the marketers have sent representatives to meet with individual lawmakers about taking up their side as the U.S. Senate commerce committee continues to investigate the practices of three firms: Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue.

These companies, all based in Connecticut, are accused by Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.V.), the committee's chairman, of misleading as many as 30 million … Read more