Webware

I know Kindles and e-books are all the rage, but if I'm being honest with myself, I'll take an audiobook over virtual ink. In fact, I've come to rely on audiobooks (and podcasts, of course) to ease the drudgery of my daily commute. I can download or rip audiobooks to my iPod, hit play, and take in a crime novel or autobiography that I would otherwise not have time or attention span to read. But as any audiobook fanatic will tell you, the habit can get very expensive. A typical audiobook from iTunes or Audible will set you back between $15 and $25. Depending on how fast you churn through books, you could find yourself spending upwards of $100 a month on audiobooks you'll only hear once.

Booksfree.com is a service that solves the audiobook money pit the same way Netflix bailed out DVD addicts. Users pay a flat fee for a monthly subscription, and receive a rotation of audiobook CDs sent to them by mail. Booksfree isn't the first audiobook service to try the Netflix model, but it's one of the most affordable I've seen, with subscriptions as low as $13.49/mo.

After using the service for a month, I believe the service is great deal for audiobook fans who don't have the cash for iTunes, or the time and patience to use their local library. The site isn't flashy, but the book selection was fine for my interests, the delivery was swift, and the subscription plans are reasonable.

To see a walk through of my experience with Booksfree, check out the slide show.

Update: The minimum price for a Booksfree audiobook subscription is currently $13.49, not $10.99 as this article originally stated.

Booksfree audiobook service--photos

As fast-growing Facebook closes in on MySpace in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors later this year, it's burning through millions of dollars a month (some claim it's as high as $20 million), with no magic levers to reverse the trend in the short term.

In November 2007, when Facebook took a $240 million stake from Microsoft, the investment was at a $15 billion valuation. Now it's down to $4 billion and probably less. As Caroline McCarthy reported a few days ago, rumor has it that "one potential investor submitted a term sheet for a valuation in the neighborhood of $2 billion."

As Facebook works its way toward a probable IPO, the big question is: how can it show it can make money? Well, one way--and I'm not the first to suggest it--would be to charge a nominal monthly fee. With that in mind, I ask a simple question: how much would you be willing to pay to use Facebook per month?

A lot of people I ask say they'd pay $1 a month--or, preferably, a yearly fee of $10 if paid in one shot. But some say they have Facebook fatigue and would rather quit than pay a dime.

Comments?

(Credit: ZillionTV)

A new company called ZillionTV says it will soon introduce a new service that will enable cable and satellite subscribers to cut the cord and get subscription-free movies and TV shows right on their TVs from the Internet.

The company, which officially launched on Wednesday, has struck deals with some major Hollywood movie studios and TV networks, including Disney, 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.

The plan is to offer streaming movies and TV shows directly to TVs using a broadband connection. The company has created a small piece of hardware it calls a Z-bar, which provides the connection between the TV and the Internet via an Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi. The Z-bar also acts as a receiver for the company's unique remote control, which works a lot like a laser pointer and uses sensing technology to navigate through the content menu on the TV screen.

The back side of the Z-bar shows the connections to the TV and the Internet.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET )

The ZillionTV service, which is currently being beta tested, will only be offered through an Internet service provider. It will be commercially available starting in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Unlike some other Internet-to-TV services, such as Netflix's movie rental service, ZillionTV does not require a subscription. It also doesn't require users to buy an expensive box, such as Microsoft's Xbox 360, Apple's AppleTV, or even Roku's $99 digital video player. Instead, for a nominal activation fee of less than $50, users will get the Z-bar and remote. And then they will be able to view up to 15,000 titles of TV shows and movies through the service without having to sign up for a monthly subscription.

Amid the shaky launch of the iPhone 3G, Apple's new MobileMe service--a juiced-up revamp of its .Mac offering--also took a blow. Apple has consequently opted to entitle eligible members to 30 days free as a we're-sorry gift.

.Mac accounts had been scheduled to "migrate" to MobileMe last Wednesday evening, but instead produced an outage in which neither service was available. New subscribers, meanwhile, had experienced issues signing up.

"The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was a lot rockier than we had hoped," a details page from Apple explained. The offer isn't for everyone: only .Mac members whose accounts were active on July 9, and MobileMe members who registered before 7:00 p.m. PDT on Tuesday (i.e., amid the activation chaos) are given the 30 free days.

It's automatically added to eligible accounts, Apple's site explained.

A site that's slipped through the cracks of our coverage is Time Inc.'s upcoming service Maghound. It's best described as a cross between a beer-of-the-month club and Netflix.

For a relatively low monthly fee, you'll be able to pick out certain magazines you want to receive, and they'll show up on your doorstep for you to read and dispose of. If you like something, you can simply keep receiving it, while replacing less-liked titles with new ones at a much lower price than it would cost to go out and buy them at the newsstand. Each plan can also be scaled up to higher tiers, meaning that you can continue to expand on your read publications while experimenting with new titles.

According to Folio Maghound is opening up for business in September, also known as back-to-school time for high-school and college students. The site's reportedly been in development for four years, all the while the company's been tweaking the distribution and billing system.

It sounds like it's been worth the wait, if only for privacy. The service will act as a proxy for your billing information, meaning that even if you're subscribed to 30 magazines, only one company is going to have your information--Maghound. This could theoretically keep it from being sold to other companies, something nearly all publications have done to bring in an extra stream of revenue.

The company also has an inside track to your tastes and the tastes of others. It has the potential to build in a recommendation engine like what Netflix has to tell you magazines you would like or not like, based on what you've thought of your past orders.

Of course, the results won't be nearly as deep as Netflix, which currently has a library of more than 100,000 titles and a veritable arms race between teams of statisticians and software engineers to build better algorithms. Maghound is starting out with just less than 300 magazines (published by companies ranging from Time Inc. itself to rival Conde Nast) from which to choose. There will be "premium" titles, which cost a buck or two per month, something not found on Netflix.

I'm eager to give the service a look when it launches. I think there's a real potential to grab folks who want to save some money but not commit to certain titles. There's also a nice possibility for publications that tend to have better seasonal content, such as cooking and video game magazines, to get a few more subscribers at critical times.

Toys are an important part of being a child. When we get older they become shinier and more expensive, but for many, they're fun to play with for a short time and we lose interest.

To help curb the potential costs and storage required, there's BabyPlays, a service that approaches toy enjoyment in a similar fashion to Netflix. BabyPlays is a subscription service that lets you pick what toys you want delivered to your house each month. Each of the plans lets you receive a different amount of toys. There are no late fees, and when you want a new ones shipped out you simply pack up the old ones and send them in.

In case you were wondering, the toys are sterilized between rentals. Also, if your little one is in love with the toy and you feel like buying it permanently you can do so for 20 percent of its cost.

See also: Swaggle, which lets parents swap and loan out used toys to one another.

If you've used Netflix before, BabyPlays.com's system is no different.

(Credit: BabyPlays.com)

It's been a tumultuous few days for Yahoo--you know, with that takeover bid from Microsoft--but the company continues to shake things up internally, too.

On Monday, the company announced that it will discontinue its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service and will transfer its customers to RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.

In mid-2008, Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will be guided through an in-browser process to convert their music libraries to Rhapsody's service. For a limited time (length unknown), they'll be able to keep paying Yahoo's subscription fees, which cap out at $8.99 per month, before being required to start paying Rhapsody's $12.99 monthly fee.

Additionally, Yahoo announced in conjunction that it has acquired FoxyTunes, a browser plug-in that is compatible with multiple desktop and Web-based music players.

RealNetworks, which acquired Rhapsody when it purchased parent Listen.com for $36 million in 2003, has been partnering with both hardware manufacturers like TiVo and media companies like Viacom's MTV Networks. It's the company's best strategy for staying afloat in a digital music landscape that's not only dominated by Apple's iTunes but also seems to be gravitating toward "free," not subscription-based models.

But the announcement with Yahoo is shrouded in uncertainty, for obvious reasons. Just about anything could happen to Yahoo if Microsoft's proposed $44.6 billion acquisition goes through.

RealNetworks, ironically, has a hostile history with Microsoft, too, dating back to an antitrust scuffle several years ago that led to a partnership in which RealNetworks ultimately claimed it was shortchanged.

Rhapsody, the subscription music service owned by RealNetworks, has teamed up with music blog network and social networking site Mog.com to provide, well, music.

Through this partnership, songs mentioned on Mog's blogs are accompanied by a yellow "play" button that allows users to access the full-length streaming file through Rhapsody, which offers a total of about 4.5 million independent and major-label songs in its catalog. "We couldn't be more excited to have Rhapsody enabling music listening on MOG," Mog founder and CEO David Hyman said in a joint press release. "With today's release, MOG has put more key pieces in place towards its goal of building the ultimate online music community."

Rhapsody's full-length song playback is also now integrated into Mog's "Mog-o-Matic" downloadable music discovery software, creating playlists of recommended music based on what you play on your computer or portable music player. It's social, too--you can listen to not only your playlist, but also those created by members of your friends' list on Mog. In addition, Mog users can create custom playlists of Rhapsody songs, much like Imeem's streaming lineups.

New versions of Mog-o-Matic have been released in conjunction for both the Mac and Windows operating systems; the company touts them as faster, more efficient, and more stable. At the same time, Mog has souped up its music search feature, redesigned its artist and album pages, and tweaked its page layout.

But don't hold your breath--this Rhapsody-Mog deal isn't free. Mog members can access the Rhapsody streaming songs for a 14-day free trial, after which point they have to sign up for Rhapsody's subscription service ($12.99 per month) or a 25-songs-per-month deal.

Rhapsody's subscription-based music service has, thus far, proven unable to compete with Apple's ubiquitous iTunes. As a result, the RealNetworks-owned service has attempted to compete by forging partnerships across the digital-media landscape: an impending music store deal with MTV Networks and an appearance on TiVo set-top boxes, for example.

Unfortunately for Rhapsody, it still hasn't been able to create much of a dent in the iTunes arsenal. Nevertheless, the deals keep rolling in.

Click me to check out the new Napster interface.

Other than its first reported quarter of positive cash flow, Napster has enjoyed a relatively unremarkable year--at least on the surface. It is now apparent, however, that plenty of tinkering has been going on in the background.

The company on Tuesday announced a fairly significant redesign to its music service and software. The new Napster, version 4, is lighter and a bit simpler--and it definitely appears to take some cues from RealNetworks' Rhapsody.

Of particular note are the launch of a Web-based version of the service, which will enable Mac and Linux users to join in the fun, and the addition of the Automix feature, a new music discovery tool.

I could go on to list all the details in long and boring fashion, but a picture (actually, 22 pictures) is worth a thousand words--wouldn't you agree? Check out our slide show for an up-close and personal look at Napster 4.0.