Loaded: 'Buy It Now' Video

Loaded: 'Buy It Now' Video Transcript

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>> Cox Communications goes wireless; EBay wants you to buy it now; and Blackberry and Palm have new phones coming your way; It's Wednesday, August 20, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get loaded. ^M00:00:12

>> Cox Communications is trying its luck in the mobile world. The company was vague on details, but says that their plan is to offer a wireless service that will combine all of their offerings into one device. The device will use its own cross platform interface, and Cox contents and applications will go mobile. The company just recently forked over 304,000,000 dollars earlier this year for special licenses geared towards their upcoming broadband service. Wireless is a hard business to plan these days, just look at Sprint. I'm not sure why they would choose to go it alone in this market instead of partner up with the carrier, but we'll have to wait and see what they have up their sleeve. ^M00:00:49 [ Sound Effect ]

>> EBay wants you to think of them as more of a store than an auction site. The company's making moves in that direction, by reducing the fees that it charges sellers for fixed priced items. Under the new pricing, which goes into effect on September 16, sellers who offer items at fixed buy it now prices, will only pay 35 cents for that listing, which is a 70 percent reduction in upfront fees. The company is also expected to launch a new search engine that will help buyers navigate the site better. EBay is trying hard to compete with Craig's List and Amazon so the smart thing to do seems like to deemphasize the auction experience where you have to wait and see if you won your item, and make it more of an instant gratification shopping experience. ^M00:01:27 [ Sound Effect ]

>> Archos released a new series of internet tablets that are also personal media players. We saw these at CVS and while they're great they were not the sexiest of gadgets. The new media players look much improved. The Archos 5 is the leader of the bunch and it has a 4.8 inch touch screen, plays pretty much any video format you can think of, has WiFi built in speakers and up to 250 gigs of memory. The Archos 5 G has less memory but can connect to and HSDPA cellular network and the Archos 7 is just like the 5 but it has a 7 inch screen. Each one has a different launch date between September and December and the prices will range from 400 dollars to 550 dollars. They can also all function as a DVR if you buy the 99 dollar docking station, this means that when you undock it you can take your recorded TV programs on the go. Which I actually find to be the most compelling feature. ^M00:02:15 [ Sound Effect ]

>> Palm confirmed rumors about the new Trio. It will in fact be called the Palm Pro and leaked pictures appear to have been valid. Here are some legitimate photos that Palm sent out themselves. The company did not confirm any of the specs other than the fact that it will have a one touch WiFi button, GPS, a high res [phonetic] flush fitting touch screen, and run Windows Mobile. We don't know price or release date yet. ^M00:02:36 [ Sound Effect ]

>> There's also another Blackberry on its way if leaked photos of a new flip phone are correct. The Blackberry 8220 and 8210 are rumored to be the flip phones that Blackberry's been working on. None of this is confirmed and we don't have enough details about them to mention, but will be interesting to see a Blackberry flip phone since they've never competed in this market before. ^M00:02:54 [ Sound Effect ]

>> Here is some confirmed Blackberry news. The Wall Street Journal has launched a mobile application for Blackberry users to read their financial news on the go. The application is called the WSJ Mobile Reader and it's a free application that lets users view headlines, summaries, and full articles. This is more than the news organization has done for the iPhone which does not have a Wall Street Journal application. We can make a small inference about this, Wall Street Journal readers are still by in large Blackberry users. ^M00:03:20 [ Sound Effect ]

>> The new Palm and Blackberry may look cool but fewer of us are going to buy them. A new research report shows that Americans a buying fewer mobile phones this year than they were at this time last year. 28,000,000 cell phones were sold in the U.S. in Q 2 of this year which represents a 13 percent decline from Q 2 last year. This was the third quarter in a row with a year over year decline and the lowest figures since NPD began tracking cell phone sales in 2005. The phones that we did buy however, were more expensive than ever, so the mobile handset market did not really lose that much money, but think about it, the market is already well penetrated. More people buy Smart Phones which they tend to keep longer because they're built to last longer, and the economy is still not exactly in tip top shape so this shouldn't be too shocking. ^M00:04:02 [ Sound Effect ]

>> It's now time for our regular battery freak out. These stories pop up every few months and this time it involves the iPod Nano. Two iPod Nanos in Japan are said to have over heated and sparked fire causing minor burns on their owners. The offending Nanos were sold between September of 2005 and September of 2006 which means it wasn't the most current generation of Nanos on the market. Apple has promised that it would replace these Nanos and any that burn up like this in the future. We should certainly hope so. ^M00:04:28 [ Sound Effect ]

>> Microsoft Office Labs has released an Outlook plug in that helps you manage your in box. It's called Email Prioritizer and it has a pause button so that your exchange server just stops dumping messages in your in box when you simply can not deal with them. When you unpause, the messages that have been stored will appear in a priority system. They'll be ranked between zero and 3 stars according to rules that you set up yourself. I like this priority system and the idea of a pause button because even though you could accomplish the same task by just turning Outlook off, we never do that. You can find this feature at Officelabs.com. It requires the latest version of Outlook 2007 and you must be running a PC. ^M00:05:05 [ Sound Effect ]

>> Katie Couric is using Dig to collect user questions for her convention coverage. Our very own evening news anchor posted a video of herself in Dig swag [phonetic] requesting that users follow her on Dig, submit questions for convention coverage, and Dig up or down the questions that they like or don't like. You can see her on her YouTube page at Youtube.com/Katie Couric, or you can join her Dig network on Dig.com/users/Katie Couric. I don't mind saying that I'm really proud of the way our network is using technology to reach out to the country for this important election coverage. I hope you'll join in the fun. ^M00:05:37 [ Sound Effect ]

>> Those are all your headlines for today, but I will be back tomorrow with more. Thank you for watching. I'm Natalie Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been loaded. [ Music ] ^E00:05:48