Variety is running a story suggesting that Blockbuster may be in financial trouble. Here are a few bits from the story:

# The end of late fees is coming back to haunt Blockbuster in a big way, and that's making the Hollywood studios very nervous. Eliminating late fees has thrown Blockbuster into such a cash crunch that studios have taken extraordinary steps to make sure they get paid for their big fall DVD releases.
# ...one studio successfully demanded Blockbuster pay cash up front on Thursday and began shipping product Friday.
# [Dropping late fees] That strategy is expected to cost the chain about $400million in revenue this year.
# Meanwhile, the retailer has been taking urgent meetings with studios and other product suppliers in the past couple of weeks, appealing for extended payment terms beyond the typical 60 days and making deals to ensure it will be able to offer the biggest titles of the fall to its customers.

I was in a Blockbuster franchise a couple of weeks ago, and they made it clear that they had discontinued the "No Late Fees" campaign. Made it clear with as much visibility as the "No Late Fees" campaign was announced, as well as having the cashier make sure to get verbal confirmation that we understood.

This has been a very expensive idea for Blockbuster, but I'm not sure if they can be blamed. They took off, and dominated the rental market, with a couple of really good ideas -- the pay-per-rental model, etc. Unfortunately, they honned their skills as a storefront operation that they were already too committed when the next shop with a couple of really good ideas (NetFlix) showed up.

More than Amazon versus Barnes & Noble, this is the big B2C "Bricks versus Clicks" battle. Except everyone knows that NetFlix won; even if Blockbuster Online improves and wins all the marketshare, NetFlix as a model won. The major-chain video store model is more dead than the major-chain book seller...

...unless they start putting mini-Starbucks in the stores...

or, more realistically, if they could change their stores into on-demand movie theatres. DVD is killing the multiplex theatres. But imagine if you could go to a video store, and rent a small theater with a big screen. Not everyone has a home theatre, and certainly not as nicely appointed as this could be...

Hacking NetFlix : Variety: Studios Stew over Blockbuster Woes

Blockbuster Inc. on Friday said it will not pay a dividend for the third quarter, the first time it has failed to do so since the largest U.S. video rental chain operator went public in 1999.

The decision, made by the company's board, is the latest sign of financial difficulty at Blockbuster and sent shares down 5 percent, to a new all-time low.

Blockbuster won't pay dividend | Reuters.com

Sadly, the 419 scammers have also decided to see if they can get a piece of the pie - here's an example of a Katrina-related 419 scam which has been mass-spammed during the last day or so.

Sick, awful, and yet... clever.

Viruslist.com - Analyst's Diary

SMS, Short Message Service, or text messaging, will work over intermittant and often even overloaded connections, to get messages in and out of congested areas to/from mobile phones. It's worked transcontinentally to save lives. Learn it.

Kilo Seven: Communicating with mobile phones in disaster areas despite system overload

The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

Zeigarnik effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most accounts of the dispute between Apple and the labels have focused on the industry's efforts to raise prices, which are undeniably a big part of their plan. No surprise there. The research we've been doing for the book shows that within the bulk of the online music business--the top 100,000 downloads--only 3.5 tracks on the average CD sell. So the record labels are getting less than $3 in revenue (wholesale) from albums when the music is sold by the track. That's less than half the wholesale price of a CD (although with none of the physical costs of making and distributing a CD). The shift from an album model to a track model is indeed an alarming thing for the labels, and it's easy to see why they'd want to raise retail prices online as a result.

But there's more to the story that that. The labels may be evil, but they're not (all) stupid. They--to say nothing of many of their artists--also see the virtues of dropping the price for lots of their music, too. For decades they've been playing with CD pricing models that range from cut-price classics to top-dollar boxed sets, and when freed of the overheads of traditional retail, they're likely to experiment more, not less. Although some of the more vocal commentators have encouraged Apple to hold the line at $0.99, there's a strong argument that introducing variable pricing might ultimately lead to a more consumer-friendly outcome.

The Long Tail: Could the labels actually be right?

Dick Tracy runs a series on Piracy. Feel is MPAA inspired. Starts 8-14 and the story is still developing.

Comics Page: Dick Tracy

Robert Iger, CEO-elect of The Walt Disney Co., recently suggested the day could come when a DVD is released while the movie is still in theaters. The millions of dollars that studios spend marketing first-run movies would serve double duty promoting the more profitable DVDs, making for a faster and more efficient return on investment.

Studios Mull Changes to Movie 'Windows' - Yahoo! News

Can you create a star rating using only CSS. I’m talking the kind that when you hover over the 4th star, there are four stars that show up on the hover state. Well, I’m glad you asked because that is just the question I intend to answer.

I've had to do stuff like this before. Nice solution.

Creating a Star Rater using CSS » Blog » Komodo Media

The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were fired at a military helicopter, an ambulance official overseeing the operation said. No immediate injuries were reported.

Shots were fired.

The Battle of the Superdome is almost lost.

Local News | The Pensacola News Journal