Netgear buy SkipJam

iTWire - Netgear to boost home networking with SkipJam buy:

Support for my perpetual media licence, watch on demand theory....

"extended range home network infrastructure solutions such as Netgear's RangeMax Next draft 802.11n wireless and 200 Mbps HD Powerline, streaming multiple HD quality videos simultaneously across the network is now a reality. SkipJam has the unique software technology to become the platform for us to build out our multimedia product portfolio and continue expanding worldwide in the growing category of digital home entertainment and control.'SkipJam's technology will form the basis of future Netgear multimedia products, including media centre, media players, and audio players."

Download Movies Direct

iTWire - Movie downloads to cut DVD retailers out:

It seems that the internet is about to do for movies what is has already down for music. In a historic first, Hollywood studios will allow consumers to download selected movies and burn them to DVD for purchase.

It was only a matter of time before movies took advantage of the web too.

I'm really pleased that Apple didn't get the deal - we have quite enough domination from giants like Apple, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft already.

I'm fairly confident that this will be shortlived. In 5 years I predict we'll be streaming movies rather than downloading them. We'll buy a non-expiring licence to watch some media on demand as many times as we like.

Imagine all those movies you wished you'd seen and never got around to, and now you can't be bothered to buy or rent on DVD. How many times have you missed an episode in the middle of a season of Lost or 24? Won't it be great to just decide to watch when you want to.

On the flip-side, there's HD. There's more data, it requires more bandwidth to stream. Which technology is going to lead, and which will follow?

The Hyperwords Firefox Extension

The Hyperwords Firefox Extension:
Awesome. Seriously. Awesome.

Originally searching for a blogging tool, I stumbled upon this on the Firefox extension pages. It has so much more.

Highlight a bit of text on a web page and then:
Plot a postcode/zip code/placename on a map
Search LinkedIn for a person
Search Google, or a number of other engines for the text
Search resources, IMDb
Blog it, automatically posts the highlighted text in the post and the url in the link field
Tag to del.icio.us or similar

Suggest that the user should be able to add further services on demand though, just like Firefox's nice search bar.