Blockbuster upgrades its downloadable movies

Blockbuster to Netflix: "I'll see your Roku box, and raise you $99."

Today, Blockbuster rolled out a set-top box that lets people watch movies downloaded from the company's website the way they'd watch any other Blockbuster rental -- on a television screen. The MediaPoint box, made by 2Wire of San Jose, sells for $99, but it comes with credits good for 25 free downloadable movie rentals. Those downloads are worth $3.99 each, so the price effectively is zero. Schweet! Oh and yes, the box supports high-definition video, although it's hard to find HD titles in the Blockbuster OnDemand service (formerly known as Movielink, back when it was owned by a group of Hollywood studios).

It's a compelling offer on paper, and it helps Blockbuster overcome the biggest hurdle to mainstream acceptance of its download service -- to wit, how hard it has been for most customers to watch a downloaded film on their TV set.* Consumers, however, can choose from a growing number of devices capable of bringing content from the Web to the TV. And although the competitors may not beat Blockbuster's price, some offer a stronger set of features. At least for now....

The perfect gift for the guy who goes disposal surfing

A press release came into the office that began "The thought of putting a hand in the garbage disposal makes most people react with fear and disgust."

OK, you got our attention.

The product a company called Consafeco is selling is the Alligetter, a $20 grabbing device that uses serrated teeth to pick up items dropped down the disposal.

It has an embedded LED light to help locate rings, coins, sippy cup lids or whatever.

Inventor Micah Bertin said in the release, "Our closest competitor is the human hand, which is not really designed to rummage around the blades and filth."

So much for dinner at Micah's house.

With the Alligetter, the release said of disposal surfing, "that chore is easier now -- and actually kind of fun."

It doesn't take much to amuse the folks at Consafeco.

-- David Colker

Photo: The Alligetter. Credit: Consafeco

Americans now watch more TV than ever

You know that scene from Wall-E where all the humans are sitting around the pool watching their TV screens? And you probably thought, "Well, too bad if people living in 1,000 years just sit around and watch TV all day, but humans today aren't like that." Or are we?

Last week, we heard that people don't even have to get up from their couches to order a pizza anymore -- they can just order it from their TiVo. And a new Nielsen study released today finds Americans are watching more TV than ever before. The average U.S. household watched TV for 8 hours and 18 minutes a day from September 2007 to September 2008, which is a record high since the days Nielsen Co. started measuring television in the 1950s.

In the third quarter of 2008, Americans watched more than 142 hours of TV a month, which is up five hours from the same period last year. And Americans spent 50% more time ...

Facebook wins $873-million judgment against spammer

Facebook has struck back against spammers, winning an $873-million judgment against a Canadian man whom the popular social networking site accused of sending millions of unsolicited messages about drugs and sex.

Facebook accused Adam Guerbuez of tricking its members into revealing their passwords to send out messages. Guerbuez did not appear in court to defend himself, Facebook said, although the company says it has video of Guerbuez being served.

San Jose federal court judge Jeremy Fogel signed the default judgment Friday. Facebook filed the lawsuit against Guerbuez of Montreal and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital, in August. Guerbuez could not be reached for comment.

In a statement, the Palo Alto company called the judgment the largest under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM).

The company also said it would be unlikely to collect ...

Around the Web 11.24.08: Web vigilantes, Twitter-Facebook talks, blog overload

-- HDTVs are expected to hit bargain-basement prices this year. LAT

-- Are you suffering from blog overload? Time

-- The human flesh search engine -- a mass of Internet vigilantes -- takes root in China. LAT

-- Vote on your favorite choice for Yahoo CEO. Silicon Alley Insider

-- GPS gumshoes: Global position system data is emerging as a crime-fighting tool. LAT

-- The National Football League in 3-D: As part of an experiment, some L.A. theaters will show the San Diego Chargers versus the Oakland Raiders in the format. WSJ

-- Not that Windows Live Search isn't a charming name, but Microsoft is considering other monikers for its search engine. How does "Kumo" roll off the tongue? TechCrunch

-- Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab is tackling the U.S. market by fighting new threats in new ways. USA Today

-- Sony's Crackle video site, gets the Groundlings comedy troupe and other new material. TechCrunch

-- Twitter reportedly turned down a $500-million buyout offer from Facebook. BoomTown

-- No money for IT: More companies are planning to cut back on tech spending in the first quarter than since the depths of the dot-com bust. WSJ

-- Random House is releasing thousands of titles as e-books. AP via Yahoo

-- Chris Gaither

Photo: An Internet cafe in Shanghai. Credit: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg News

Strange record of Florida teen's Web suicide persists online

An image of Biggs' profile photo, and part of a note he wrote on a body building Web forum.

In the unsettling and bizarre case of Abraham Biggs' suicide, streamed live over the Web and witnessed by members of a body building discussion forum, a chilling chronicle of the Florida teenager's drug overdose remains intact online.

Biggs' death was first confirmed by NewTeeVee. Early Wednesday morning, Biggs began a discussion thread called, "Ask a guy who is gonna OD (again) tonight anything," which included nothing but a link to his live video stream on the Justin.tv site.  He used the alias "CandyJunkie."

When a forum user asked why Biggs was doing this, he responded,"I wanna die dur." The last word means "Duh," or "Isn't it obvious?"

The discussion thread, in the 'Misc' section of bodybuilding.com, eventually grew to over 60 pages before it was removed by the site, but a cached version of the thread is still available via Google. Though forum members were not initially sure what to make of Biggs' claim, or of the mostly unmoving image of him splayed on his bed, the level of urgency soon began to rise, with several members posting contact information for local authorities and for Biggs himself. They encouraged other posters to call for help.

The cached discussion thread captures the strange and confused way a crowd can react to such an event, with some contributors riding a fine line between baiting Biggs and simply teasing him for what they viewed as a play for attention.  When one poster contacted a moderator of the site about the situation, she replied by saying, "He's an attention whore, you should see all the posts he starts, then deletes."

Indeed, it does appear that Biggs, who lived in Miami, had a history of ...

Naked photos on phones get teens in hot water

Who would be foolish enough to send a naked self-portrait to someone's cellphone, creating the possibility of it being passed along to other phones endlessly? As it turns out: teenagers. KTLA reports in the above video that local teenage girls (mostly girls, it seems) send naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends, but once they get in a fight, the boyfriends send the photos to their friends, the football team and maybe even the chess club. What cads.

But teens tempted to snap cellphone photos of their lovers in the buff should think twice. Turns out that taking a picture of a minor's genitalia qualifies as child porn, and if the photographer is over 18, he or she can be prosecuted. If a minor took the picture, KTLA reports, he or she may end up in another school or ... in therapy (the horror). Investigators urge parents to "frequently" monitor their kids' phones and to scan through the photos often.

Don't worry -- you can still watch the KTLA video without doing anything illegal -- the news team keeps it chaste, with lots of photos of teenagers' legs and a mysterious detective whose face is not shown, a la Dr. Claw on Inspector Gadget. With all the secrecy, we may not know who exactly is taking these photos, but we do know that if the question, "Who does that?!" comes up, the answer is probably, "Teens."

-- Alana Semuels

Around the Web 11.21.08: Obama phone snoops, PlayStation addict and fun with Photoshop

-- Verizon apologizes for its employees peeping into Barack Obama's cellphone records. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Yahoo to sell off French shopping comparison site Kelkoo. TechCrunch

-- iPhone 2.2 software update has geeks agog. Engadget

-- "Dark Knight" is the most successful and most pirated movie. Techdirt

-- Sony must pay Agere Systems $18.5 million for infringing on an audio recording patent, a court rules. Ars Technica

-- There's a new breed of minimalist game developer, one that's not afraid to cry. Esquire

-- Italian boy diagnosed with PlayStation addiction. Ah, youth! Ananova

-- And just because it's Friday, here's a link to some fun with Photoshop. PhotoshopRoadmap

-- Alex Pham

Photo: President-elect Barack Obama. Credit: Steven Senne / Associated Press

With the BlackBerry Storm, RIM targets average Joes

It's now Research in Motion's turn to take a crack at the Device Which Shall Not Be Named. The maker of the BlackBerry today is unveiling the Storm, which RIM hopes will launch the e-mail device into the consumer smart phone market faster than Harry Potter on a broomstick -- and, in the process, prevent Apple's iPhone (whoops, I uttered it) from taking any more market share. The Storm is offered exclusively through Verizon Wireless.

The new BlackBerry has what RIM bills as "the world's first clickable touch screen," which means it compresses when touched and offers tactile feedback to mimic how a real keyboard feels. It also has an accelerometer, which the iPhone has, and a video camera, which the iPhone doesn't, and it lacks Wi-Fi, which the iPhone has. If you want to know more, don't worry: Verizon and RIM are spending oodles of money on ads telling you all about the Storm this holiday season.

Still, for all the hoopla about the Storm, reviews have been mixed, and many analysts are skeptical that the Storm will do what the Dare, G1 or Instinct could not: beat the iPhone at its own game. The iPhone appears pretty unstoppable right now, recently surpassing Motorola's RAZR as the top-selling handset in the U.S. Even Whoopi Goldberg has one.

For RIM, that might not be the end of the world. It can now at least breathe a sigh of relief that its loyal customers who had been wistfully gazing over at the green, green grass that is the iPhone may now stick with a BlackBerry. Maybe RIM will even attract some new customers, like those tweens who text all the time and want a tactile keyboard, or current Verizon subscribers, or people who favor devices named after weather patterns.

-- Alana Semuels

Photo: BlackBerry Storm. Credit: Verizon Wireless

The blue screen of disappointment

With the economy collapsing and the ranks of the unemployed growing, the last thing this country needs is a shortage of cheap entertainment. Perhaps that's why the Senate, unable to agree on plans for another economic stimulus package or a bailout for U.S. automakers, managed to approve a bill that would help consumers keep their televisions on after local stations turn off their analog channels on Feb. 17, 2009.

When those transmissions end, consumers who rely on over-the-air TV and don't have a digital tuner or converter box will be left with nothing but a blank screen. A trial run of the cutoff in Wilmington, N.C., in September went about as well as possible, yet numerous viewers were still caught unprepared. With 10 million or more consumers across the country relying on rabbit ears, chances are that thousands won't be ready for the shift even if the vast majority of Americans know it's coming.

That's why the Senate gave speedy passage to S 3663, by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). The bill, like a more prescriptive measure awaiting action in the House (HR 7013, by Santa Barbara Democrat Lois Capps), calls for the Federal Communications Commission to let stations temporarily continue broadcasting on their analog channels. The broadcasts would be limited to emergency messages and instructions for how to get help making the switch to digital, including a phone number to call and an URL to visit.

The measure makes sense, but it wouldn't address what's likely to be the biggest problem for the transition to digital. As the Wilmington experience demonstrated, a non-trivial percentage of TV viewers simply can't take all the steps needed to prepare an analog TV for digital broadcasts. (The easiest solution is to hook your TV up to cable or satellite service, but if you don't already have pay TV, that's an expensive way to go.) These folks might be able to buy a converter box, but they need help from family members, friends or volunteers to hook it up, program the remote and scan for digital signals. It's not rocket science, but it's not as easy as plugging a toaster into the wall and turning it on, either. That's why local governments and community groups need to start lining up volunteers now to help the elderly, the disabled and -- yes -- the clueless buy and hook up their digital converter boxes before their free TV gets lost in the digital transition.

Los Angeles Times photo

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.