Oxygen Dog House: An O2 Buzz for You and Your Pooch [Gadgets]

We’ve heard about the potential health benefits of inhaling pure oxygen since the 90’s—but in Japan this fad is still going strong. In fact, they’re getting their dogs involved with products like this new O2 Doghouse. Marketed as a “dog hospital” of sorts, the O2 Doghouse will deliver 100% pure oxygen to your sick pooch while he rests inside. And the best part is that you can hit the generator as well—so both you and your dog can relax side by side. Now that is what I call bonding. [Trends in Japan via DVICE]

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We know a bunch of you would never use a Bluetooth headset even if your hands were broken and it was the only way you could make a call. Problem is, a bunch of says are enacting handset-only call laws, meaning that you’re going to have to get one whether you want to or not. Here’s a Soyo FreeStyler 500 Bluetooth headset for $0.99 with $10 Google Checkout discount. Purchase it and shove it into your glove compartment. [Buy.com via Gearlog]

Via [gizmodo]

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Netflix was unavailable yesterday for 11 hours due to a glitch in its scheduled weekly maintenance system, and it will cause users to wait an extra day or two for their rentals. The outage started yesterday at 7AM Pacific Time,…

Netflix was unavailable yesterday for 11 hours due to a glitch in its scheduled weekly maintenance system, and it will cause users to wait an extra day or two for their rentals.

The outage started yesterday at 7AM Pacific Time, when engineers noted that the weekly maintenance shutdown scheduled for the middle of the night had instead gone off in the early morning. By the time the site was up again at 6PM, Netflix had gained a few disgruntled customers. The outage caused its 52 distribution centers to go down as well (presumably, they didn’t have access to the customer logs), so DVDs scheduled to go out Monday won’t go out until this day. As a result, the ranting began.

Many of the Netflix users, clearly experiencing movie-queuing withdrawal, used the outage as an chance to speak about the overall lack of open information on the site.

For example, many feel that Netflix isn’t upfront with them about broken DVD’s and waiting times for movies that are heavily in demand (I second this problem: I’ve been waiting for Season One of The Wire for 10 weeks now). When representatives weren’t answering questions immediately yesterday, it caused local newscasts to lead their segments with vague statements like ‘Netflix is experiencing problems due to their technology. We don’t know anything else.’

Basically, people want to know that something is being done to correct the issue of a service they pay for, and would like to know about maintenance sessions in advance (though that would not have mattered yesterday).

So far, there has been no detailed explanation about why the outage happened and why it took so long to come back up. Regularly scheduled maintenance of top websites like MySpace, Facebook, and Netflix usually don’t take more than a few hours.

This is something that the company has dealt with in the past. During an outage last year,
Netflix employees admitted going through a difficult time. That outage lasted almost 18 hours.

The workday flame-out also illustrated the jittery rollercoaster feeling and unpredictability of Wall Street at the moment. Instead of predictably going down because of the outage, Netflix stock went up 9%, up to an all-time high of $39.65, before going down a bit at the end of the day.

Some conspiracy-minded forum users posed the idea that the outage change went beyond the regular technical mishap. A few believe that by taking out the service for half the day, Netflix deliberately slowed down those super Netflix users who watch movies as soon as they get them, thus saving themselves some money on shipping.

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THX Chief States Blu-Ray Win Is “Too Late”
Blu-ray’s triumph over HD-DVD might be short lived, according to THX chief scientist Laurie Fincham. Speaking to Home Cinema Choice Magazine, Fincham speculates that the format of the future will be… No format. People will use Flash memory for movies,…

Blu-ray’s triumph over HD-DVD might be short lived, according to THX chief scientist Laurie Fincham. Talking to Home Cinema Choice Magazine, Fincham speculates that the format of the future will be… No format. People will use Flash memory for movies, either purchased pre-loaded or via download.

I think it’s too late for Blu-ray. I think consumers will only become interested in replacing DVD when HD movies becomes available on flash memory.

We agree, even though we’d add that it might not be plain old Flash used to carry titles around but instead Flash based media players, like the iPod Touch. One of Fincham’s predictions, though, sounds a little wrong-headed.

In the future I want to be able to […] walk into a store and have someone copy me a motion picture to a USB device. Stores will like that idea, because it’s all about having zero inventory.

That won’t happen. First, who will walk to the store when they have the ability to download? Second, the system is open to abuse. Motion picture companies will never let stores just copy files onto a customer’s thumb drive. How would they count sales? The death of the spinning disk, though, is nearly certainly nigh.

Update: Graham McKenna of THX mailed me to point out that Neither THX nor Laurie Fincham said that Blu-ray is dead:

I just wanted to clarify that neither THX nor Mr. Fincham ever made reference to the “death of Blu-ray.” In fact, THX is supporting Blu-ray with new technologies and other initiatives. He was simply discussing the future of movies on downloads versus optical discs and other emerging media.

The original title of this post read “THX Chief States Blu-Ray Is Already Dead”.

THX Chief Scientist: …it’s too late for Blu-ray [DVD Town via El Reg]

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The ezSpace UFO Surge Protector Gets Price Drop to $29 [Ezspace]

That ezSpace UFO Surge Protector we reviewed and loved last month got a $10 price drop down to $29, making it even more of a good purchase. [Review]

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