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Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Skip the hotel, rent a room from a home owner with iStopOver


Whether you're hoping to save a few bucks on your next excursion or you prefer to blend in with locals, istopover will help you find homeowners with rooms to rent short term so you can skip the hotel. As you'd expect, many of the properties are rented out by people who travel often themselves.

$159CDN doesn't seem too shabby for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath duplex overlooking San Francisco's East Bay, especially considering that also includes access to the owner's wifi, Wii, and plasma TV. Heck, you can even rent his 2006 Volvo while you're in town, too.

Looking for a real bargain and aren't particular about where you're traveling to? Check out the listings for Toronto. Less than two Hamiltons will get you a room with some folks that will probably play Rock Band with you during your stay.

[via Feed My App]

Filed under: Internet, Video, Apple

Apple launches iTunes movie rentals

iTunes video rentals
As had been widely expected, Apple today announced the availability of video rentals from the iTunes Store. Up until now you could only buy movies and TV shows, with no lower-priced rental option. Competitors like MovieLink, CinemaNow, and Amazon Unbox have been offering rentals for some time now, but none has become the household name that Apple's iTunes is.

Steve Jobs announced the move during his Macworld keynote today. Rentals are available starting today and about 1,000 films should be available from the iTunes store by the end of February. Apple will charge $2.99 for regular titles, $3.99 for new releases, and a dollar more for HD content.

Movies will be viewable for up to 24 hours, and you can start watching 30 seconds after your download begins (assuming you have a fast internet connection). Probably the coolest feature is that you'll be able to transfer rentals to an iPod or iPhone for viewing on the go. While other services offer portable viewing options for purchased movies, this is the only way to rent a movie and take it with you on an iPod.

In related news, Apple and Fox have announced a partnership to include digital copies of movies that you can manage with iTunes on all DVDs the studio releases.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Apple

iTunes movie rentals coming soon

iTunes movie store
The Financial Times is reporting that Apple has struck a deal with Fox to bring video rentals to the iTunes store. While we've been hearing rumors for a while that Apple would start offering a rental option (right now you can either pay to "buy" TV shows or movies or take your business elsewhere), we find the Fox deal a bit puzzling.

Why? Because Apple has a strong relationship with Disney, which is the only studio currently offering new release DVD titles for sale via iTunes. So if Apple wanted to get into the video rental business, we would have expected Disney titles to be available at launch.

Of course, the Financial Times reports Apple and News Corp both declined to comment on the deal. While the paper's sources are saying that Fox movies will be available soon, perhaps we'll see video rentals from other studios as well?

Apple is hardly the first online video distributor to offer movie rentals. Amazon, CinemaNow, MovieLink, and other services have been offering downloads that self-destruct after a limited time for ages. But Apple is still probably the biggest name in online video sales, so if the company could shake up the young market if it makes the leap into lower-priced rentals.

We can probably expect an official announcement, or at least a few more details, in a few weeks.

[via tuaw]

Filed under: Internet, Video, Apple

More clues that Apple will launch iTunes video rentals

iTunesWe've been hearing rumors for at least a year that Apple was going to start offering video rentals through the iTunes store. But over the past few months we've seen growing evidence that there's something to this rumor.

In September one user noticed that there was a way to report an error with video rentals (even though there was no way to actually rent a movie yet). And now Evan DiBiase has noticed a few intriguing lines of code in iTunes 7.5.

Specifically, there are strings for things like "rental-content," "rental-bag," and "getvodaccountselectionlist."

Does this mean iTunes 7.5 will support video rentals as soon as Apple is ready to flip a switch? Maybe. It's also possible someone at Apple just has a sense of humor and likes throwing things like this into the binaries just to get the blogosphere talking.

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