Download Squad

US electronics retailer Best Buy is preparing to enter the digital video distribution business in a big way. The company is partnering with CinemaNow, an online video download service that lets users rent and purchase movies and TV shows.

Best Buy will load up CinemaNow software on internet-connected consumer electronics sold at the company's retail stores. That includes computers, portable media players, Blu-Ray players, set-top boxes, mobile phones, and internet-connected television sets.

Customers that purchase one of these items will be able to rent or buy videos from a catalog with about 22,000 titles. Movie purchases typically run between $10 and $20, while TV shows are $1.99 per episode. Movie rentals typically go for $2.99 to $3.99.

The move should give Best Buy and CinemaNow a much stronger foothold in the digital media space. CinemaNow already offers a pretty compelling user experience, allowing you to download a video and watch it on up to three devices. But the fact that virtually every consumer electronics device that Best Buy sells that can run the software soon will, means that CinemaNow is about to become a much bigger name in digital media, and that could help the companies take on Apple's iTunes and Amazon's video on demand services.

Best Buy is expected to roll out the new service early next year.

Finding a web designer is a terrifying proposition for many people. How do you find someone qualified? It's not like there's a directory out there that lets you quickly browse and compare examples of work from various web designers to narrow down your set of choices quickly, and can help you get in touch with the one you choose.

Well, actually, now there is. And if that sounds like a good idea, consider that last week 37signals released a new site called Haystack. 37signals is a well-known web development company that is responsible for the incredibly popular online project management software Basecamp, as well as a few other web properties you might know: Campfire, Basecamp, and Highrise, to name a few.

The thing is, 37signals wasn't always an online service provider; at one time they were a web design firm creating client sites, so they know the difficulty web designers go through to attract clients. 37signals also takes pains to understand the difficulties users face, and have applied that approach to building a directory to help clients easily find web designers (and web designers easily find clients).

Early reports seem to be positive, with designers reporting they are signing new clients in short order. So if you're looking to advertise your design abilities, or if you're looking for a designer, give Haystack a look.

Have you ever wondered just how big a red blood cell is in comparison to a grain of salt or the influenza virus? Now you can, visually, using the Cell Size and Scale page on the University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center's site.

To be honest, I wasted a bunch of time using this page to look at the various sizes of things, though I can't in good conscience call it a Time Waster. It's too edumacational for that.

I'd love to see this same approach extended to things at a macro size, so that you could zoom from a carbon atom all the way out to the universe. But for now, I'll take this.

We've covered Invisible Hand, the discreet shopping comparison add on for Firefox, which displays prices on items you are searching on the web. Just in time for Black Friday, the hand has trotted out a new add on which along with other improvements, incorporates Google search results.

Now, you can get your price results in real time so you know you're getting the best deal. My test drive of the hand went smooth, the results loaded up within a second or two and updates were very discreet. This is a real time saver for getting price results.

The add on will be officially released to the Mozilla site within a few weeks, but the first 200 Download Squad readers can download the beta version. Just click on the link below and key in invisibleDLS for the access code.

http://preview.getinvisiblehand.com/