360 DEGREES Weblog

Should we really be surprised with this bit of news? Forbes magazine has increased Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth by another $6 billion. That makes Zuckerberg the third richest guy in technology. He does trail behind Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Oracle’s Larry Ellision. If we are really comparing it also means that he is richer than Steve Jobs of Apple and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This new valuation was on the basis of investment made by GSV Capital. They bought 225,000 shares of Facebook at a price of $29.28 per share. Since that news broke out, GSV stock has gone up by 40%. As of today Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth was set at $18 billion. Of course, this whole fortune is on paper only and the real value of Facebook will be known only after it goes public. Still, great going Zuckerberg!

It looks like our offline world is slowly merging with our online world, it’s either that or QR codes are making a comeback. The Royal Dutch Mint has released two new coins in honor of its 100th anniversary: a silver 5 EUR coin and a gold 10 EUR coin. While the front/head of the coins aren’t anything special (they look pretty cool though) it’s the back that has us interested. The back of the coins feature a QR code that leads people to the Royal Dutch Mint’s website.

While visiting the website does nothing at the moment, the Mint did promise a “surprise” once the money has been made officially available and circulated around the country later this month. No word on what the surprise could be. A lucky draw perhaps? What do you guys think? I foresee a lot more items being decorated with QR codes in the near future.

It’s rather apparent that the old video rental store model just isn’t working in today’s world. With companies like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster going under (the latter isn’t completely dead just yet, but it is getting there), I wonder how many years we’ll still see this type of business. The three biggest alternatives are discs by mail (Netflix), streaming video (also Netflix, Hulu, etc) and rental kiosks (RedBox, Blockbuster). One company is hoping to get in on the latter, with a twist.

How would you feel about going to a kiosk and renting a movie, loading it up on a USB flash drive and taking it home? Tha’ts what Flix on Stix is aiming for. They want to slap a movie on your USB flash drive (or sell you one) and program it to automatically disable playback after a set amount of time. Their rates certainly aren’t bad with $1 for 3 days, $2 for 6, $3 for 9 days and $4 for 12 days being talked about.

News Corporation and Apple are all set to launch a brand new digital newspaper exclusive to the iPad. “The Daily” will reportedly launch later this month, costing 99 cents (62p) a week.

Apple’s Steve Jobs and News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch are hoping the iPaper will become a game changer for digital publishing, following falling physical newspaper sales and the relative failure of The Times paywall. Interestingly, there are no website based versions of The Daily planned: this will truly be a tablet-only news source.

The US-focussed paper will have “a tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence”, with Jesse Angelo, managing editor of The New York Post most likely to take the position of editor.

“He envisions a world in which every family has a iPad in the home and it becomes the device from which they get their news and information. If only 5% of those 40 million subscribe to the Daily, that’s already two million customers,” a source said to The Guardian.

Sites like Hulu are great, but they don’t satiate those who have an appetite for live sports and other programming which depend on a timely delivery.  And that probably explains why many have stuck with their overpriced cable bills.

But that might soon change thanks to a site called FilmOn.  Head there now and you can stream a wide array of TV channels, live.  There are no catches and you can even access them from your phone’s (or iPad’s) browser sans application.  Download the app for your computer and you can access the video, along with all the channels in high, full screen quality.

The selection of channels is relatively limited (CNN, Bloomberg, NBC, XXX Porn, etc), but the quality is good and there is even an option to purchase movies, though they appear to be of the older, less popular ilk.

The site is backed by billionaire Alki David, who believes he is working legally within US copyright law, and given his piggy bank can probably put up a significant fight to try and get his way.

We’re not sure how the site will generate revenue, aside from charging for movies, but perhaps they’ll get large enough and start working with advertisers and partner with each respective channel.

FilmOn

Wal-mart is showing how it might make use of VUDU after purchasing the 1080p movie streaming house earlier this year, now that the two have teamed up with Disney to throw in a free digital copy of Toy Story 3 with each one purchased at the store on DVD or Blu-ray. When the movie goes on sale today, customers will receive a download code they can use on their nearest VUDU player (now including Boxee on the Box, PC or Mac) to stream some Buzz and Woody at any time without a disc involved. Wal-mart and VUDU are quick to describe this mix of of physical and digital access as the future of content, and we’re thinking this type of promotion is about to become much more widespread since Amazon’s already offered a similar deal with Disc+, and Best Buy purchased CinemaNow specifically for this type of offer. The only question now is if customers will start asking “which streaming service does this connect to?” before they run out to buy a new Blu-ray instead of simply looking for the lowest price or other promotional tie-in.

Remember all those times we’ve been told about the inevitable merging of the web with TV, where finding shows would be as easy as finding porn pizza places online and we’d be able to simply click during an ad to purchase the product? Well, the Logitech Revue with Google TV ($300) gets us awfully close. Google TV works with your current paid TV subscription as well as the vast majority of video online, channeling Google’s search mojo to make it all easy to find and seamless to switch between. The Revue sits between your cable/satellite box and your TV, hijacking the HDMI connection to bring you goodness like Netflix, Pandora, Twitter, and a new feature called Fling that lets you take what you’re checking out on your phone and instantly put it on your TV. You can control the setup with the included controller that packs a keyboard, remote control, and touchpad, or simply use your phone, but one thing’s for sure: your standard TV remote is going bye-bye.

Thanks Uncrate

When the first footage of “Machete” started to leak out, it seemed like a buffet of celebrity nudity: constant exposed flesh from Lindsay Lohan! Jessica Alba in the shower! Other, future famous women dancing around with nothing on at all!But then, as we started to learn more, we realized that what seemed like a beautiful oasis of famous flesh was actually just a mirage. Lindsay Lohan’s nudity? Body double. Jessica Alba? CGI.A story in today’s Daily Mail discusses the CGI scene, which allowed the modest Alba to be nude(ish) without actually taking off her clothes

The day started with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the CEO of Best Buy Brian Dun shared that the iPad was cannibalizing Best Buy

For its next Apple TV, Apple may ditch the set-top box form factor and instead cram a media player into a tiny device running the iPhone OS, according to Engadget.

The blog cites an anonymous tipster who claims the next Apple TV has been described as