Blockbuster is rolling out a gem of a new service:  Digital downloads of movies… available only in-store.  Sweet.

Between Netflix’s delivery-to-your-door model and the shrinking window between a movie’s theatrical release and its availability for cheap purchase in DVD format… Blockbuster has been taking hit after hit the last few years.  And that’s before all the digital download services cropped up at Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, & XBox Live.  Those services let you zap your favorite new movie directly to your PC with the click of a button.

So naturally Blockbuster wants to keep up, right?  So they’re launching they’re own digital download service.  Great, right?  WRONG !

The only people who will be able to use the digital download service from Blockbuster will be the people standing in their physical stores.  Because Blockbuster’s digital download service is an in-store kiosk.

Yup.  They are that stupid.

They think that you’re going to put your flash drive in your pocket, and drive down to their store, plug it in the machine, pay for a movie, wait for the download, then drive home and watch it.

From the article:

“The latest idea from Blockbuster can best be described as “Netflix meets YouTube, without the convenience.” That’s basically the pitch Blockbuster Chairman and CEO James Keyes made at his first annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday when he unveiled an in-store kiosk he hopes consumers will use to download movies.”

I would think this was hilarious if it wasn’t so insultingly backward in its conception.  Consumers will pay for convenience. That is proven.  I would rather pay twice as much through Netflix or Amazon (and get my movies to my home, from my home, on demand) than get in my car and drive to your physical store to tap my toes while your stupid kiosk downloads my movie.  And for the record, it’s pretty cheap to download a digital copy of even a new movie.  Most movie downloads on iTunes, for example, are $9.99 or so.

Blockbuster’s new service is basically the equivalent of Coke creating a new kind of vending machine… that allows you to put in your dollar… but instead of receiving in return a 20oz. bottle of Coke,  you get a coupon that says “take this coupon to the nearest grocery or convenience store to redeem for a refreshing bottle of Coke.”

It’s like the library announcing that checked out books can no longer be taken out of the building.

I can only conclude that the executives at Blockbuster are a cave-dwelling lot.  Can you think of a Fortune 500 company with less of a handle on where their industry is heading?  Because I can’t.  It’s seriously one of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in years.

Listen, I get that they’re trying to drive traffic to and through their physical stores to try and sell more product (and pay their rent).  But seriously… you’re supposed to take what your competitors are doing and improve on it (or at least leave it the same)… not make it worse.  A roving balloon-animal magician would be a bigger draw and would probably cost less too.

I tried to come up with my own headline… something sensational and strange… but then I realized that CNN’s headline for this story was really as good as it gets.

And you might think that with a headline like “Monkeys Control Robots With Their Minds,” that I’m about to write some goofy or sarcastic article that is barely related to technology.

But you’d be wrong. There’s actually real science at work here, and it has some pretty awesome implications for the future of medicine.

Some scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have implanted electrodes inside the brains of some monkeys. And those electrodes have allowed the monkeys to control a robotic arm with their thoughts. Yes… their thoughts. (Man, is there anything monkeys can’t do?)

From the article:

The arm is controlled by a network of tiny electrodes called a brain-machine interface, implanted into the motor cortex of the monkeys’ brains — the region that controls movement.

It picks up the signals of brain cells as they generate commands to move and converts those into directional signals for the robotic arm, which the monkeys eventually used as a surrogate for their own.

The scientists are talking about some incredible applications for this, chiefly the ability for disabled people to control robotic or prosthetic limbs… with their minds.

Think about that for a second. Let it sink in. In the not-too-distant future, a paralyzed person might be able to still have complete mobility and autonomy using this technology.

Of course, the non-scientists among us are thinking about evil schemes and world domination, where some psycho controls an army of robot soldiers in a bid to take over the Earth. I mean… Terminator anyone? What’s that? You weren’t thinking that? Hmmm, maybe it’s just me. I do watch a few too many sci-fi movies.

But seriously, this is kind of a big deal, though they have yet to test their electrodes in humans. There will, of course, be several more years of testing before anything can be known for sure or be made available to the public. And even longer before able-bodied people like me can buy it at Wal-Mart… but I’m going to start saving my money now, because I’d sure love to have a robotic arm laying around that I can order to change my TV channels or bring me a glass of water by simply thinking it.

(photo credit to Andrew Schwarz & CNN)

Surely you’ve heard the radio ad for LifeLock sometime over the past few years. It’s the one where the guy sounds all serious and says, “I’m Todd Davis, the CEO of LifeLock, and what I’m about to say is true. My Social Security Number is…” and then he goes on to give you his real SSN.

I’ve always thought it was a pretty slick marketing gimmick… and simply assumed that it was likely a fake number anyway. Even if you’re pretty confident in your company’s services, identity theft isn’t something you want to go messing around with. I generally assume that identity thieves are sort of a lot like computer hackers–they probably have some pretty good ideas and technical know-how. And you wouldn’t go daring hackers to infiltrate your website, would you?

Well apparently the number quoted in the radio spot is Davis’ real Social Security Number. And apparently it’s inspired at least 87 identity thieves to attempt stealing Todd’s ID. And at least one guy succeeded, convincing a payday loan company to send him $500 after using Davis’ SSN.

Oh, there’s also this part, from the article:

“Attorney David Paris said he found records of other people applying for or receiving driver’s licenses at least 20 times using Davis’ Social Security number…”

Hmmm. Okay, let’s take a poll. Raise your hand if you are really, really surprised to learn that giving out one’s Social to millions of people could lead to your identity being stolen.

You don’t see armored car services challenging the public to test their security prowess by robbing them. You don’t see the CEO of DuPont–which makes Kevlar–daring Americans to test his product’s effectiveness by randomly shooting him on the street. You don’t see Honda commercials that say “We’ve got the highest crash-safety rating in our class, and we invite you to test that by ramming your Accord into the next tree you see.”

Sometimes there’s a really thin line between killer marketing ideas and abject stupidity. And it’s up to me to point out when that line has been crossed.

There is now a class-action lawsuit against LifeLock… of course. Seems that some customers feel they were mislead as to the company’s ability to actually provide identity protection. Hmmm, where would they get that idea?

I almost feel bad for the guy. But then I remember that he gave out his Social Security Number to millions of people and I don’t feel quite as sorry for him.

Microsoft will pay you to use their Live Search.  Well… sort of.

Today Microsoft unveiled a new incentive to use their Live Search for your online shopping search needs:  cash back.

The big M will pay you cash back from purchases you make after searching for the products on their search engine.  So… you want a pair of shoes, you search for shoes at Live Search, click through to a product you find in the listings, and make a purchase… then you’ll get cash back.

From the article:

Products found during a search eligible for a rebate are denoted with a gold coin icon with a U.S. dollar sign in the center. The rebate is based on a percentage of the purchase price and is determined by the advertiser.

So it’s the advertiser paying the cash back, not Microsoft.  And looks like the amount you get back will vary from product to product and advertiser to advertiser.

But it’s still an interesting idea.  What Microsoft has done, really, is turn themselves into one huge affiliate network.  They don’t lose any money out of pocket for the rebates, and the system will theoretically bring them more search traffic.  Win win for Gates and Co.

Some other things to be aware of:

Shoppers must set up a Microsoft cashback account, where the rebate money is held. When the amount reaches $5, Microsoft will either mail a check or transfer the money to a PayPal account or bank account.

So, you have to sign up for an account… no biggie, I guess.  Other than that… you just shop online as usual, only using Microsoft as your shopping search portal.  It’s all going to hinge on whether or not people can find what they’re looking for with Live Search.

There may be other engines out there that handle shopping queries better–I really don’t know.  Of course, if none of the products I want to buy are being offered as part of the CashBack program by advertisers, then it won’t do me any good.

Hmmm, I wonder what happens if I search for operating systems like Vista… will Microsoft be a partner advertiser in their own cash back scheme?

Interesting concept here–definitely a move to try and grab some of Google’s traffic.  We’ll keep an eye on it and let you know how it performs.

In the world of Technology and the Internet, mergers and acquisitions are fairly commonplace. You won’t hear about most of them, because the lion’s share are concerning companies and services you probably haven’t heard of.

Every once in a while, though, there’s a “Google Buys YouTube” or a “Microsoft Makes Bid for Yahoo” story that sort of grabs everyone’s attention.

Today there were three major acquisitions in the world of tech.

• First, CBS is buying C|Net for $1.8 Billion.
• Second, Comcast has purchased Plaxo for a rumored $150-$170 Million.
• Lastly, Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) has bought Dictionary.com (actually, they purchased Dictionary.com’s parent company, Lexico, which means they also bought Reference.com and Thesaurus.com) for a rumored price of around $100 Million.

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard of Dictionary.com, as most moderate Internet users have. So that’s kind of an interesting purchase.

The Comcast deal is surprising, considering that no one in my office could even tell me what Plaxo is or what they do. Plaxo is a “social contact list” service that promises to help you “stay in touch with the people you care about most.” It’s kind of a mash-up of your address books and all your favorite websites.

The CBS/C|Net deal is the most astounding to me, purely from a dollar amount standpoint. $1.8 Billion is a heck of a lot of money for a site that offers tech news and reviews. Granted, C|Net has a stellar reputation, and is one of the most cited sources for Tech news on the web.

That being said… how many of you reading this recognized the name C|Net? It’s kind of amazing that a website you’ve never heard of is worth as much as a small country, isn’t it? Now I know that the bulk of our readers, while Internet-savvy, are not as plugged in to the latest services and hot companies online–hey, you’re busy running your small business. We get that. That’s why we’re here to keep you abreast of what’s going on.

But even if their business name doesn’t ring a bell, some of their subsidiary companies probably will:

CNet is an early pioneer in the Internet, and now includes a large stable of businesses in the entertainment, news and music areas such as ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, mp3.com.

The world wide web is a crazy place, where dollars are thrown around like candy. I’m sure next week we’ll read that Ask, CBS, and Comcast have all merged and that they’ve been bought by Google for $4.6 Quadrillion.

I’m currently trying to pinpoint exactly which website I want to buy today. Hey, why should the big guys have all the fun? I don’t have $1.8 Billion, but I have enough to buy someone’s dormant blog. Maybe I’ll do that. Or maybe we could pool our money, you and I, and buy a MySpace account or something. How much you got? I just want to get in on the action… because today is definitely THE day to buy a web property.

Sprout is an online-based company offering free Flash widget/object creation services. Basically, they let moderately-savvy internet users create Flash widgets without the nagging problem of having to know Flash. Pretty neat. (Note: you will need to sign up for an account, but it doesn’t cost anything).

To test the service, we created a Flash widget about our Keystone University technology classes, which you can see below (it’s also been placed on our sidebar to the right):

There are some really slick features you can add to your widget, and our sample only scratches the surface of what’s possible–though I do love the countdown feature.

Obviously, you can’t do everything with Sprout that you could do with Flash, but that’s sort of the point. Making Flash element creation accessible to the masses is a pretty good niche. I really found it easy to use and actually quite fun. Don’t be surprised to start seeing these Sprout widgets pop up more and more on our blog and our official site in the very near future.

(photos by AP)

A robot built by Honda has conducted the Detroit Symphony.

I know.  Hard to believe, right?  Who knew that Detroit even had a symphony?

It’s also hard to believe that a robot conducted that symphony.  Does this mean that conducting isn’t all that hard after all… or that the robot is just super-duper advanced?

The Honda-bot, named ASIMO, is a multi-talented guy.  At 4′ 3″–hey, just like Tom Cruise–he can walk, run, and respond to simple voice commands–hey, just like Tom Cruise!

But seriously, this is the first time ASIMO or any other robot has ever conducted a symphony, so I guess it’s a pretty big deal.  However, the story is a bit deceiving.  Seems that ASIMO isn’t quite as advanced as you might think.  He was only  mimicking what he had seen a human conductor do.  From the article:

As it conducted, it perfectly mimicked the actions of a conductor, nodding its head at various sections and gesturing with one or both hands. ASIMO took a final bow to enthusiastic shouts from the audience.

ASIMO has its limits. ASIMO’s engineers programmed the robot to mimic Charles Burke, the Detroit Symphony’s education director, as he conducted the piece in front of a pianist about six months ago. But it can’t respond to the musicians.

So it’s not as though ASIMO is thinking for himself.  Rather, he’s just regurgitating behaviors that have been modeled for him.  (Tempted to go for a third time on the “Hey, just like Tom Cruise” joke… but I’m worried that would be one time too many).

ASIMO stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility.  Boy, that just rolls off the tongue.  Maybe we should add that as a possible name in our Name Our Robot poll.  Or not.

Look, if robots are conducting symphonies, and that’s national news, I think we can all breathe one big sigh of relief about the whole “robots taking over the Earth” concerns.  Of course, if ASIMO is so good at mimicking, I guess all that needs to happen is for some idiot to show him The Terminator or The Matrix and we’d all be in serious trouble.

PollDaddy is a create-your-own website poll service, and we thought we’d take it for a test drive for you.

The core service is free. You can create polls, publish them on your website, and have unlimited responses to them.

If you want to pay $20/month, you can upgrade to a premium package that allows for even more scalability and customization… as well as access to statistics about your poll and the people who took it. (We’re testing out the free version, because we’re cheap and we spent all our money on golf balls).

To give this thing a trial, we decided to ask our audience to help us name our robot.

We recently added a robot to our payroll. He takes care of a lot of the more mundane tasks such as taking out the garbage, cleaning the office, & fixing paper jams in the printer. Oh, he also answers tech questions from our readers in a new online Q&A column over at iSurfSumner.com (Dear Abby for Technology). Right now we’re calling him Arnie the AnswerBot, because we’re not very creative and didn’t want to waste precious time on the robot-naming task.

But we wonder if there isn’t a better name out there for him. Here… before you make up your mind… he looks like this:

Okay, so what does that guy look like to you? A Mike? A Simon? Maybe a Winchester?

Killing two birds with one stone, here is our PollDaddy poll where you can vote to help us name our new robot. Feel free to suggest a name yourself if you don’t like our choices, and vote as often as you like. Take the poll now:

As you can see, the poll is quite slick. It was easy to build and only took about 3 minutes. If you have anything worth letting your readers vote on… head on over to PollDaddy and sign up. Oh, and check back here on our blog to see what kind of name the little robot guy ends up with.

Papa Johns announced recently that they have made over $1 Billion from online pizza sales since they introduced the ability to order a pizza via the Internet.

I can just see John from those Papa Johns commercials, doing his best Dr. Evil impression:  “One… Billion… Dollars.”

That is a heck of a lot of pizza, too.  If you figure $12 bucks a pie, that works out to about 83 Million pizzas.

Now, it’s probably not going to be easy for you to start a pizza website and make that kind of cash.  For starters, you’d need a network of brick-and-mortar pizza shops across the US to be able to fill the online orders… and Papa Johns had that built in before they started.

But man, who knew that you could make that kind of money from a pizza website?

They’re on a torrid pace, too, and will make their next $1 Billion in half the time it took to make their first.  From the article:

“It took us seven years to reach our first billion in online sales, and at our current pace and growth rate it will take us less than three years to hit our next billion,” said Jim Ensign, vice president of marketing communications at Papa John’s.

It would be interesting to see how much of this online revenue is new, as opposed to coming from customers who were already buying pizza in the traditional method. I imagine there’s more new business there than you might think, simply because they’ve made the ordering process so convenient.

Almost all the major pizza chains have online ordering capabilities now, and most even let you order via text message… making pizza an impulse-buy item more and more everyday.  Pretty soon I expect to be able to order a pie by merely thinking about a warm, delicious pizza.  Until then… online or text ordering is the fastest method available.

New reports today suggest that, having walked away from their proposed purchase of Yahoo, Microsoft has turned its affections toward Facebook.

But wait–there are also reports that they’re trying to buy AOL.

Or not. Some reports are suggesting they’re still after Yahoo.

Man, does Bill Gates have some money burning a hole in his pocket or what?

Am I the only one starting to see Microsoft as the high school senior who just got $1000 in graduation money and can’t decide on what unnecessary & useless thing he wants to buy first? I mean, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook are three very different companies… with three very different customer bases.

But they’re also very large companies.

Maybe Microsoft just wants to make a big splash. Maybe they’re more like the school bully who reigned for years until a new bully (Google) moved to town and starting stealing his press. So the first bully starts beating people up with vigor, left and right, just to make sure no one forgets that he was there first.

I’m not sure why anyone would be interested in buying AOL–I don’t even know what they do anymore.

I half expect to see headlines this afternoon like “Microsoft Submits Bid to Purchase NFL” or “Microsoft in Talks to Buy China.”  Personally, I’d rather see Microsoft take the billions of dollars they’re dying to throw away on some huge merger and instead spend it on, oh, maybe making Vista run faster.

But that’s just me.