Tag Archives: rent

Pleygo: Netflix for LEGO

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Why buy when you can rent, especially if you don’t have much to spare?

This is true for houses, DVDs, even luxury bags – and now it’s true for LEGO. Sets range in price from a couple of bucks to hundreds of dollars, so if you’re the type who builds a lot but then gets bored with the set after a while, then you might want to consider Pleygo.

PleygoPleygo is a LEGO rental service so you can build to your heart’s content. Think of it as a Netflix-like service for LEGO sets, in case you’re having difficulty understanding the concept.

There are three rental subscription tiers: Fan, Super Fan, and Mega Fan. They go for $15, $25, and $39 a month, respectively. You can get small to medium sets under Fan (up to 250 pieces), large sets (up to 500 pieces) under Super Fan, and up to huge sets (up to 5400 pieces) in the Mega Fan tier. Once you’re all paid up, Pleygo will send your first set to play with.

When you’re done with it, just sent it back to them and they’ll send you another one to have some fun with. They offer free shipping and they don’t charge for lost pieces. And if you’re worried about dirty LEGO blocks, then you’ll be pleased to know that they clean and sanitize the sets in between uses.

You can sign up for Pleygo here, and check out all of their available sets here.

[via Geekologie via Oh Gizmo!]

Cozy could make renting much more comfortable for both landlords and tenants

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Cozy opens its doors, aims to make renting easier for both landlords and tenants

Renting is a pain. Sure, it saves you from financial doom when the housing market collapses, and it certainly is a lot more affordable when you're feeling a bit resource-constrained, but it can cause some massive headaches. Depending on your market, scoring a place may require applying to dozens of potential landlords, spreading your precious, personal information with wild abandon to folks you've never met. It's no pleasure cruise for those landlords, too, who have to chase down references and decide which of a pool of total strangers is most suitable to move in. And, when a rent check gets lost in the mail, nobody's happy.

These are just some of the issues that Cozy is looking to solve. The service, which formally launches today and is backed by Google Ventures among many others, is looking to reboot the way that renters and landlords interact. More info after the break.

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Source: Cozy

Pay for a Blast from the Past: Rent a ‘Back to the Future’ DeLorean

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Ever wished you could go back to the past or travel through time into the future? I have, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. A lot of people would give the pageant-perfect answer and say no, explaining that they wouldn’t be who they were today had they changed their past experiences.

I agree with that sentiment most of the time, but there’s also the case of committing mistakes consciously, just because you were in the heat of the moment or just weren’t thinking at all, period. Of course, time travel is impossible in this world, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t pay to experience a literal blast from the past.

Rent a DeLorean

There’s currently a rental service that’s lending off a street-legal DeLorean time machine that looks like it came off the set of Back to the Future. It’s not one of the actuals car they used in the movie, though it’s a pretty good replica of the iconic car-slash-time machine.

The rental service is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the warm season and in Las Vegas, Nevada during the cold season. However, they can travel to “practically any location in the continental United States and Canada,” should you have a need for a time-traveling DeLorean.

Hourly rates are discussed on a case-to-case basis, so you might want to get in touch with Time Machine Rental if you’re interested.

Oh, and where you’re going, you’re probably going to need roads.

[via This is Why I'm Broke via Laughing Squid]

Rent Your Own Personal Security Drone

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Japanese security firm Secom is preparing to launch a new service that will let home and small business owners rent a quadcopter drone that the company claims will launch automatically in the event of a burglary, taking pictures of the burglars and even capturing live video of them as the crime is in progress. Sounds pretty awesome if you want the latest in home security.
secom surveillance drone 1
When a breach is detected by motion detectors or other security methods, the quadcopter activates and is dispatched to the precise location of the break-in to get a firsthand, eye-in-the-sky look at things.

secom surveillance drone1

If it really works like they say it will, this could catch more criminals and keep your home extra safe. The company is also touting the drones as a cost-effective way to monitor large areas like warehouses and industrial parks without having to mount video cameras everywhere. You can check out a video demo of the (incredibly noisy) drone prototype in action here (skip to 1:54, unless you speak Japanese.)

Secom hopes to launch this new rent-a-drone business in Japanese markets in early 2014 for about ¥5000 (~$58 USD).

[via Japan Daily Press via Geekosystem]

Google Play Music and Movies purchasing reaches Google TV, patches a media strategy hole

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Google Play Music and Movies reach Google TV in full, patch a hole in Google's media strategy

It's been one of the more conspicuous omissions in the media hub space: despite Google Play being the cornerstone of Google's content strategy, you couldn't truly use the company's music or movie services through Google TV without depending on content you'd already paid for elsewhere. As of a new upgrade, the ecosystem has come full circle. Viewers with Google TV boxes can at last buy or rent directly from Google Play Movies and Google Play Music, and the content will be indexed in the TV & Movies section alongside third-party video services and traditional TV. The upgrade also helps Google's TV front end play catch-up with its mobile counterpart by adding automatic app updates and subscriptions. While device owners may have to wait a few weeks as the upgrade rolls out, the addition signals a big step forward for a platform that has normally leaned heavily on others for help.

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Google Play Music and Movies purchasing reaches Google TV, patches a media strategy hole originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon begins renting paper textbooks

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Amazon begins renting paper textbooks

Amazon has been renting out Kindle editions of textbooks for sometime now, but not all the educational tomes you need may be available in electronic form. And, believe it or not, some people just plain prefer paper to E-ink -- especially since its much easier to take notes in the margins. Now many of the more expensive texts on the site also feature a rent option. Most are in the $30 to $60 range and are rented by the semester, which Amazon counts as 130 days. Should you need it for a bit longer, you can extend your rental period by 15 days, but only once. On the plus side, Amazon will pay for the shipping on the return of the books. For more info, check out the FAQ at the source.

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Amazon begins renting paper textbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OnStar and RelayRides Team to Let Drivers Rent Their Cars to Complete Strangers

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Would you loan your car to complete stranger? I wouldn’t loan my car to my own cousin, much less a random person off the street. However, if you’re the trusting sort driving a General Motors OnStar equipped vehicle, OnStar and RealyRides have teamed up to make it easy for you to rent your vehicle. RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car sharing market.

relayrides1

Drivers list their vehicle along with an hourly rate. The idea is that when the car owner doesn’t need the vehicle, they can rent it out to other people by the hour and make extra money. The interesting part of this tie up between OnStar and RelayRides is that the driver doesn’t have to meet the person renting the car to hand off keys, as OnStar can remotely lock and unlock the car.

Presumably, the renter would also be able to get OnStar to start the vehicle and turn it off remotely as well. The thing that bothers me about this is that I think it would be hard to get a renter to pay for any damage caused your vehicle or to prevent them from taking things out of your vehicle.


Facebook allowed to triple size of its HQ, pays $10 million for the privilege

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Facebook allowed to triple size of its HQ, pays $10 million for the priviledge

Swollen with cash following its IPO, Facebook is looking to expand its headquarters in Menlo Park. Its plan to triple its workforce there from 2,200 to 6,600 people was approved by local officials last night, removing the previous cap that allowed a maximum of 3,600 messy, resource-consuming humans. In lieu of the added burden on the city, Facebook will have to contribute $850,000 per year for ten years, plus a one-time payment of $1,000,000. The start of a surge towards greater products and profits, or the beginning of a complacent corporate decline? We'll let the stock market decide.

Facebook allowed to triple size of its HQ, pays $10 million for the privilege originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 May 2012 05:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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‘Hundreds’ of Cablevision iO TV on-demand rentals now last 48 hours, procrastinators rejoice

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ImageLast we heard from Cablevision, it was bringing its Optimum App live TV streaming to Windows and Macs. Shifting directions to its more "traditional" cable offerings, the company now has good news for folks who've been generally bummed out about the 24-hour viewing window allotted with movie rentals on its iO TV service. Just in time for your weekend movie marathon, the company has announced that "hundreds" of its on-demand movie rentals will now last for 48 hours with unlimited viewing -- huzzah! As usual, content pricing starts at three bucks, and you'll be pleased to know that all that extra time comes at no additional cost to your subscription. Better yet, the amount of titles part of the deal to grow over time, and you'll find all the details in the press release after the break. Perhaps most notable is all the time you'll have to grab more microwaveable popcorn.

Continue reading 'Hundreds' of Cablevision iO TV on-demand rentals now last 48 hours, procrastinators rejoice

'Hundreds' of Cablevision iO TV on-demand rentals now last 48 hours, procrastinators rejoice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 02:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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