Streaming online videos and mail-order delivery of DVD rentals from Netflix and similar services recently pushed Blockbuster into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. No matter how Blockbuster tried to compete with Netflix, nothing was working.

The video rental company first opened its doors in 1985 and, while they dominated the market for decades, the advent of the Internet and streaming video threatened to destroy it. They tried marketing in various ways to compete with mail delivery DVD and streaming video services by allowing customers a choice to receive DVDs by mail or in-store and temporarily suspending late fees. In the end, nothing seemed to work. Blockbuster customers were leaving in droves and signing up for Netflix services. Blockbuster rental locations all over the country were shutting down. It looked like the end for Blockbuster, until dish network showed up.

In April, 2011, Dish Network absorbed Blockbuster in order to offer a superior service to its users and those who aren’t fully satisfied with Netflix. With Blockbuster @Home, the popular satellite TV company offers Internet streaming and DVD delivery services of over 100,000 titles.

Dish’s Blockbuster purchase means more for subscribers than the services offered by streaming video services like Netflix. While Netflix offers streaming movies, TV shows, documentaries, and more (in addition to home DVD delivery), DishNet subscribers can get a similar service as well as their TV service in a discount package bundle, offering a great value to their customers. This could mean steep competition for Netflix and an unexpected revitalization of Blockbuster's name and reputation.

About two weeks ago, my friend Nick Oba invited me to check out his new startup, a social networking site called Zurker. It works like any regular social network where users can post status updates and wall posts, notes, share web links and photos, connect with other users who share the same interests, etc.

What makes Zurker different and unique from existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace is that it is a member-owned application. It is not funded by VCs (Venture Capital) but funded by members who invest and buy vShares (virtual shares), making them co-owners of the application. Another way to earn vShares is by referring friends and other people to join Zurker.

The vShares that members invest on aren’t real stock but are considered as an agreement between the co-founding developers and users regarding the size of their equity in the venture that will be established. Once a 1,000,000 vShares have been allocated, Zurker will be revamped as a public corporation and only then will the vShares turn into real shares.

I’ve been trying out Zurker the past few days and the first thing that sticks out is the user interface. It is simple and different from what most of us are used to with other social networks. I don’t mind the simplicity but the interface right now is a bit clattered and awkward to use, especially the menu navigation where it can be quite confusing to navigate from one area to another or find a specific page (Settings). I believe that Zurker should improve the user interface if they want to attract more users. Btw, I’m not sure if it’s just me but the color scheme reminds me of MyBlogLog.

Screenshots:
Profile

Home

Zurker is still in its initial stages so we can’t expect it to have everything. I’m not sure if users would like to have Apps and Games on Zurker but here are some features that I’d like to see added in the future – First, Zurker’s own web button, probably call it the Zurk button which works something like the retweet and like buttons where users can “zurk” web content and share it on Zurker; Second, a mobile app version for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

As of now, Zurker is still in beta testing so it is not yet open to the public. If you want access, you’ll need an invite. Don’t worry I have a Zurker invite just for you.

Anyone else who’s on Zurker? What do you like/dislike about this new social network? What features/options would you like to be improved or added on Zurker? Please share your thoughts.

I’ve done reviews of different types of search engines in the past like jQuery plugin search engine, job search engine and icon search engine just to mention a few. So what if you’re looking for mp3s? Well there’s also what you call a mp3 search engine and one such website that allows you to search for mp3 songs is called Mp3-2000.com.

Mp3-2000 has almost all the latest and most popular songs so when I was trying out the website for this review, I tried to do a search for something that’s not globally popular and chose an artist from the Philippines – Gary Valenciano. The search results for Gary Valenciano only displayed four songs, but at least the website had some of his songs.

Listen to Music Online for FREE

Aside from being a mp3 search engine, Mp3-2000 also allows you to listen to music online via an embedded music player. All you need to do is search for the title of the song, album name or name of the artist of the mp3 that you want to listen to. When you’ve found the song that you’ve been looking for, you can go and listen to it or share the song link with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, email or instant message. The page also provides a list of related songs and even the lyrics to the song.

Buy Cheap Mp3s

Having an option to listen to music online for free is great but for those who might want to have a copy of the song, there’s an option to purchase the mp3 songs that you found on Mp3-2000. Songs and albums listed on the website can be purchased for cheap (€0.10 per track or €0.80 for a complete album) via mp3sales.ru. These are really cheap rates if you compare it to iTunes, Amazon, eMusic and other online mp3 stores.

A quick background check on the website via McAfee’s SiteAdvisor showed this – “We tested this site and didn’t find any significant problems“. However, since mp3sales.ru is based in Russia make sure that you check if purchasing mp3s from their website doesn’t violate any copyright laws in your location.

If you want to listen to music online for free or buy cheap mp3s, go check out Mp3-2000.

If you need to set up a hosted blog service, your best options are WordPress.com and Blogger.com. However if you want to setup a full scale website that requires stuff like forums, guestbooks, photo albums, e-shops, polls, etc. you’ll need a full blown content management system. One particular site that can provide all those features is uCoz, a hosted content management system and website builder.

uCoz is ideal for those who want to create a free web page but don’t have the knowledge/skills or budget to setup a self-hosted website. With uCoz, users have access to a wide variety of modules and full control over the web design programs with the use of HTML templates. For those who aren’t knowledgeable with HTML, there’s a built-in visual HTML editor.

Registration/Installation

Registration is FREE and there’s no installation required as all features, modules and templates are ready to use and implement with only a few clicks. All you need to do is complete the registration process and once you’re done, you can start working and building your website. The user interace is user friendly but it does take

Modules

• Forum (Bulletin Board)
• E-shop
• Site News
• Blog (Web Journal)
• Publisher (Article Catalog)
• File Catalog
• Site Catalog
• Tag Board (Mini Chat)
• Ad Board
• Photo Albums
• Online games
• Web Polls
• Guestbook
• FAQ Service
• E-mail Forms
• Page Editor
• Statistics (Hit Counter)

Screenshots:

uCoz provides FREE unlimited disk space to all its users but if you just newly registered, the initial hosting space is only 400MB. Like Gmail, the disk space and bandwidth gradually increases (every second) so the more and longer you use your account, the more disk space and bandwidth you’ll get. Aside from the modules listed above, uCoz also provides a free domain name (subdomain) and 250 themes or templates as part of the free website design tools. A free subdomain will do, but having your own domain name is better and highly recommended.

Although uCoz is free there are a few issues or cons in the free account – forced ads, no access to PHP, ASP, Perl and other scripts, it is not SEO friendly, it is not open source and accounts are hosted on a shared hosting environment. If you want more features and more disk space, you can avail of their affordable plans which provides users additional features, more disk space and other premium extras.

If you’re looking for a free hosted content management system and website builder, check out uCoz.

One such search engine is a website called General Files. This website is powered by a unique search engine that allows users to search for specific files – documents, photos, compressed files, videos, etc. and also supports file sharing services and direct links. General Files doesn’t host the individual files on their servers instead, they crawl the Internet for these files, compile them into their database and list it on their website. So basically, they’re doing the hard work by doing the searching for you. All you need to do now is look for it at the General Files website.

The General Files website has a clean, simple and user-friendly interface. Aside from searching and downloading files (download videos for free or download free games), adding other users as friends, users can set up alerts and receive email notification for a specific search keyword. Another benefit of being a registered user is the option to use General Downloader (the native downloading client of General Files and other General World websites) which allows users to bypass many limitations set by file sharing websites.

Screenshots:
Homepage

Search Results

Alerts

For most users, Google Search will always be the first option for finding stuff but in case you still can’t find the files that you’re looking for, you can try out General Files. Since file sharing is supported, it is inevitable to see movies, songs and other copyrighted stuff on General Files. We don’t advocate piracy here on JaypeeOnline so download at your own risk. Be careful with the files you download and don’t forget to scan them with an updated antivirus program to make sure that the file you’re downloading doesn’t contain a virus, trojan or some sort of malware.