>> Blockbuster comes to TiVo, Samsung announces an e-book reader and how to find drunken photos of yourself on Facebook. It's Wednesday, March 25, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> Maybe Blockbuster does have its digital act together after all. The company announced that it will be making movies available on TiVo series 2 and series 3 DVRs. Earlier this year Blockbusters said that they would start offering streamed movies on non-PC devices, but we thought it would be networked Blu-ray players like the Samsung line. This is a good start, but remember TiVo already offers movies from Amazon's Video On Demand service and Cinema Now. It also has YouTube and Jaman videos, but Blockbuster is a nice addition. The service will start in the second half of 2009.
Google added some augmentation to its search engine. It can't quite read your mind, but it's close. For starters Google can associate concepts and related terms to your search query. The example they gave is that if you search for something like principles in physics it will suggest related topics such as special relativity or Big Bang. They've also increased the size of snippets. This is the amount of text that goes under a website's title to describe what you'll see if you click on that page. These features launched on Tuesday.
Facebook has heard all the whining about the redesign and will be making some changes. On Tuesday night the company said it would be adding live updating which is the ability to turn on auto-updating of statuses and feeds, so you don't have to refresh the page. They are also adding photo tags into your stream and they'll give you more choices for application content in your stream. So, there you go, you big babies, are you happy now?
The iPhone is coming to China. China Unicom, the country's second largest carrier has perhaps prematurely announced that they will sell the G3 iPhone. Apple has yet to confirm this, but we know that they had been in negotiations with China Mobile, the world's largest carrier with the 415 million users. Apparently Apple was holding out because China mobile wanted to control the app store and the use in incompatible G3 standard. China Unicom though significantly smaller stepped up to the plate and will reportedly be offering the phone to its 130 users around May.
We have a few space stories today. To start, NASA will be providing Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope with more than 100 terabytes of data. This includes high resolution images and data from Mars and the moon. This is Microsoft's software that lets you float around outer space and it competes with Google Sky. The new data will be integrated later this year, but the WorldWide Telescope is already live. You can find it at worldwidetelescope.org. NASA also wants to capitalize on March Madness by launching a bracket tournament of its own. Mission Madness pairs off Space Missions to be voted on by space lovers who want to vote on their favorite, such as Apollo 11 or Hubble. Each round gets 2 days per voting before the winner advances. The winner will be announced on April 7. To play along go to mission-madness.nasa.gov.
Samsung is getting in on the e-reader game -- hello to the Samsung Papyrus. It's a touch screen reader about the same size of the Kindle and the Sony Reader. It has 512-megs of memory, comes in a rainbow of colors such as white, black and some foamy green. It also has a memo-pad, scheduler, calendar, clock, calculator and contact list. No EV-DO or wireless downloading, though -- tsk, tsk. It will launch in Korea this summer and then sometime thereafter in the US and the UK and it will cost $299.
Bad news for Last FM users who live outside of the US, UK and Germany, if you live in a country other than these, you will have to pay 3 Euros per month for the radio service. Full disclosure of Last FM is a CBS product just like Loaded. Last FM has always had a paid option if you don't want commercials in your music service, but now that fee will be mandatory because ad revenue in those countries has been low. The question is, will users pay for it? If you live somewhere other than the US, UK and Germany, tell me what you think, will you pay for Last FM? Write me at loaded@cnet.com.
Boxee unveiled a new developer API on Tuesday night and a new way of pulling video off of streaming sites that could potentially bring Hulu back to the video portal. At last night's event the company announced that they would soon be able to serve Pandora, Radio Time and PBS. The big news of the night thought was that Boxee will be able to detect streaming web video and then play it back full screen, which does mean that Hulu content will be back. For now it remains to be seen whether Hulu will let this continue, but enjoy it while it lasts.
A company called Zeebo plans to launch a 3G wireless game console in Brazil. The console cost $200 and it's targeted for the emerging markets. It comes with four games, pre-loaded and consumers can download a fifth game using the free 3G wireless connection. Publishers like Capcom and Electronic Arts are making their content available for the system with games like Street Fighter Alpha. The system is expected to lower to $150 when it starts shipping internationally next year.
If you're worried about questionable photos of yourself floating around Facebook without your knowledge, you might be able to find them. Face.com is launching a facial recognition app called photo finder. It scans photos you've already uploaded and supposedly detects the faces in each photo and then searches Facebook for those faces. Although I highly doubt this is foolproof, drunk photos, funny faces and the half asleep look will probably not resemble your super cute profile pic -- or maybe they will. You can test it out yourself at face.com/photofinder.
Those are all your headlines for today, but I will see you tomorrow with more. Thank you for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been Loaded.
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