>> Your iPhone may soon act like a Kindle, Obama officially names the new head of the FCC and Molly Wood shows us a Blu-ray player that may change your mind about Blu-ray players. It's Wednesday, March 4, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> Amazon is expected to launch a free app today that will allow you to read Kindle books on the iPhone or the iPod Touch. The program will give readers access to the same books, magazines and newspapers already available for the Kindle. It will also use Whisper Sync to keep reading purchases syncs across compatible devices and keep track of your place in the book. Way cool and a lot cheaper than the $359 device that doesn't do anything else. In more Amazon related news the makers of the Roku Box have officially announced that it will support Amazon's video On Demand service. Viewers will be able to watch, rent and purchase movies from a selection of over 40,000 titles. Movie titles will be available the same day as the DVD release and commercial free TV titles will be available the day after they air. Current users who already get Netflix paid Watch Instantly service will receive updates over the course of this week. Yesterday Sony unveiled the S560 Blu-ray Player that has integrated Wi-Fi. Molly Wood got to check it out. Take a look.
>> Hi, I'm Molly Wood from CNET.com here at Sony's 2009 Line Show. I'm taking a First Look at the BDP-S560 Blu-ray Disc Player behind me. Now, obviously this is a Blu-ray DVD player. It also plays back standard DVDs and CDs, but the big story about this device is that it's equipped with Wi-Fi -- Wireless Internet Access. Now, what Sony says is that this allows you to wirelessly access the Internet-only BD Live content that comes along with the Blu-ray disc. So, for example if you bought a concert DVD that came with some optional songs over BD Live, instead of having to plug this device in via Ethernet you could download those songs wirelessly. Now, it will also look for, for example photos on your computers so that you could wireless playback a slide show. It makes it a little bit more of a full featured device which is kind of what people are looking for when they're talking about spending say $350 on a DVD player. This device should be available in the summer for as I said about $350 and I have to say that Wi-Fi is a bit of a draw.
>> The Boy Genius Report has managed to get their hands on the next release of the Facebook app for BlackBerry version 1.5. They report that it doesn't have anything dramatically changed except a highly polished interface. It will also have better integration with Facebook messaging, calendar and contacts. Previously, the app would force the user to launch their mobile browser and then log in again. No one wants to do that, so this is one less step. Between now and March 31, Sprint subscribers who refer new users to the service will receive a crisp $100 bill from the company in the form of a Visa gift card. Previously when someone referred a new user they receive $25, but the economy has forced Sprint and other mobile carriers to take drastic measures to get new users. President Obama has officially named Julius Genachowski to be new chair of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC regulates everything from mobile phones to broadband access to television. Genachowski has an extensive public service and technology background including a stint as senior executive at IAC, which is an Internet content company. As regular viewers of Loaded will know the FCC has become increasingly important as technology continues to evolve and creep more and more into our lives, so Genachowski is now officially a marquee player. A little over a week ago I asked you if you wanted Google's mobile operating system Android available on the laptop. Guess what? You do! For example, Brian [assumed spelling] said, "Since netbooks have little computing power this will be good as it does not require much power because it is designed to work on phones." Josh [assumed spelling] agrees, he said, "I think Android would be great as a netbook OS as long as it was optimized for the netbook and the interface was extremely easy to guide through and good looking." The only people who disagreed were John Paul [assumed spelling ]from Malta who says he ends up doing a lot more on his netbook than he had originally thought and Chad [assumed spelling] who writes in, "Android's got some great possibilities, but for me it just gives Google the rights to too much data to with what they please. My web history combined with GPS location data is a little scary, let alone my web history, GPS data, email data, and calendar data. Google just does not need to know where I go, or what I'm doing when I'm there. Giving Google access to my entire PC is just too much." Thank you to those of you who wrote me about this. I love hearing from you loaded@cnet.com. Later on this week I'll let you know the consensus on whether or not James Bond would use an e-Reader. Those are all your headlines for today, but I will see you right here tomorrow, thanks for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been Loaded.
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