Movies On WalMart: Company Offers Video Streaming On Walmart.com

The world's largest retailer on Tuesday started streaming many movies the same day they come out on DVD, in a second bid for a share of popular movie rental and streaming website Netflix Inc.'s business and just two weeks after Netflix announced new price increases.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. bought video-streaming service Vudu.com 18 months ago and now offers 20,000 titles that can be viewed on almost any device with Internet access, from computers to televisions to Sony's PlayStation3 and other Blu-Ray disc players.

Movies are available at Walmart.com to rent for $1 to $5.99 or to purchase for $4.99 and up. Wal-Mart is not offering subscriptions, making its service more similar to Apple Inc.'s iTunes, which charges $3.99 to rent newly released movies and $14.99 to buy a movie.

In addition to Netflix, another competitor streaming movies and TV shows by subscription is Hulu.com, which now offers a premium service for $7.99 a month with more back-season shows and more movies. Without a subscription, Hulu viewers can watch shows and movies free in exchange for watching advertising.

The movie offering fits with the Wal-Mart website's strategy of offering a "seamless continuous shopping service," said Steve Nave, senior vice president and general manager of Walmart.com.

Wal-Mart's announcement comes on the heels of Netflix saying it will raise rates and charge separately for streaming and rental DVDs. Its second price hike in eight months, Netflix's planned increases could amount to 60 percent for existing customers, starting Sept. 1. New subscribers have to pay the new prices immediately.

Netflix plans to charge $16 a month for services that used to cost $10 a month when bundled together, for example. It's still changing $8 a month for streaming, which it launched late last year. But instead of charging $2 more for a plan that includes one DVD at a time by mail, the company will charge $8 and up for DVD plans.

Customers have taken to social media sites Facebook and Twitter to vent their anger over Netflix's increases, but executives said they anticipated the reaction. The company's willingness to risk alienating subscribers signals it needs more revenue to cover rising costs.

Apple Looks To Build New Store In Grand Central Terminal

Apple is awaiting approval this week to build one of its largest stores ever in Grand Central Terminal's iconic main concourse.

According to the Wall Street Journal, New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is expected to give the project the go-ahead Wednesday, primarily because of the financial incentive. The lease will cost Apple $800,000 annually for the first ten years, and $1.1 million every year thereafter, note PC World and the Journal. If the MTA approves the plan, Apple will begin construction immediately, and is expected to complete the project in approximately four months.

The current tenant, Charlie Palmer's Metrazur restaurant, pays $263,997 annually. Further, Apple has agreed to pay Metrazur $5 million, if they vacate their east balcony location immediately.

In total, the Apple store would span over 23,000 square-feet; making it the largest of Apple's already-impressive fleet. Currently, Apple's largest store is in London's Convent Garden: It occupies 25,000 square feet, 16,372 square feet of which is open to the public, according to ifoAppleStore.com.

While the store itself is sure to be the retail wonder expected of Apple, some commuters may be concerned about the possible increase in foot traffic through Grand Central.

Facebook Tweaks Face-Recognition After Privacy Complaints

Time Travel Impossible

Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light -- demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology research team led by Du Shengwang said they had proved that a single photon, or unit of light, "obeys the traffic law of the universe."

"Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light," the university said on its website.

"Professor Du's study demonstrates that a single photon, the fundamental quanta of light, also obeys the traffic law of the universe just like classical EM (electromagnetic) waves."

The possibility of time travel was raised 10 years ago when scientists discovered superluminal -- or faster-than-light -- propagation of optical pulses in some specific medium, the team said.

It was later found to be a visual effect, but researchers thought it might still be possible for a single photon to exceed light speed.

Du, however, believed Einstein was right and determined to end the debate by measuring the ultimate speed of a single photon, which had not been done before.

"The study, which showed that single photons also obey the speed limit c, confirms Einstein's causality; that is, an effect cannot occur before its cause," the university said.

"By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon," said Du, assistant professor of physics.

"Our findings will also likely have potential applications by giving scientists a better picture on the transmission of quantum information."

The team's study was published in the U.S. peer-reviewed scientific journal Physical Review Letters

Google 'Places' Drops Outside Customer Reviews

Google Inc has removed excerpts of customer reviews from sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor from Google Places, its competing online service aimed at helping consumers search for local businesses.

The move, announced in Google's official blog on Thursday, follows the disclosure of a U.S. antitrust investigation last month.

The federal probe concerns whether Google, which dominates U.S. and global markets for search engine advertising, abuses its market power by favouring its own services over those of rivals in online searches and through other practices.

The blog post made no mention of the investigation.

"Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we've heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages," Avni Shah, Google's director of product management, said in the blog post.

Google said it added a function for Google users to write their own reviews at the top of its Place web pages.

It said the search pages' rating and review counts would only include reviews written by Google users, although the company would continue to list links to other review sites.

Coming this Fall: iphone 5

Evidence has been mounting recently that the iPhone 5 (also known as the iPhone 4S) will be released at some point in September.

First there was new Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam's slip-up on a recent earnings call, during which he mistakenly told analysts that his company expected an iPhone refresh "sometime in the fall."

And now there is a new rumor from tech blog Boy Genius Report that "AT&T has begun communicating launch plans internally for Apple's next-generation iPhone 5 handset" and that AT&T is ramping up hiring due to the "influx of foot traffic expected in September."

But wait--there's more! Those are just the two latest reports of a September release date for Apple's next generation iPhone, which has been rumored since April. Apple was expected to take the wraps off of a new iPhone in June--it has done so every year for the past several years--but this year, June came and went without a new Apple smartphone. The lack of a refresh has added fuel to rumors that the next iPhone is due in the fall.

On April 12 John Paczkowski of All Things Digital wrote that Apple would announce the updated smartphone at its annual media conference the first week in September. The Wall Street Journal reported on July 7 that people close to Apple expected a new iPhone launch "by the end of September."

For a more complete rundown of what the iPhone 5 might look like, when it could be released, and why you shouldn't buy a new iPhone until Septembe