Category: Uncategorized

Until the afternoon before seeing the movie, I had never heard of Inside Man. Despite Spike Lee directing, and Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Willem Dafoe acting, the marketing for this movie just passed me by…even the editorial marketing (reviews, etc.). Fortunately, two months after its release, it’s still showing at one theater in San Francisco.

Moments are noticeably slow at times, but it feels rare to see a good thriller these days, so I liked this movie. I walked out judging this movie against The Usual Suspects. Inside Man falls short, but then most every movie ever made does, so that I was even comparing the two is a good sign for Inside Man. Denzel Washington’s character saunters through the film…and it works. The cross-cutting of out-of-sequence interrogation scenes didn’t work for me at first, but as the main part of the film progressed, they made more sense. Jodie Foster’s character could be more interesting. But the deliberately shadowy nature of her role goes a bit too far into the fog. (I will say the product placement for a 30″ Apple Cinema Display worked well when her character was introduced.)

Funny juxtaposition regarding Christopher Plummer (playing Anthony Case, a character hiding his Nazi past) which I missed, but Anthony Lane did not.

The document in question, as we learn early in the film, shows that Arthur Case had links with the Nazis. This cannot be true, for one reason: he is played by Christopher Plummer, and, excuse me, but Christopher Plummer does not make friends with Nazis. He sings at them! He plays guitar at them! In a daring, nun-assisted escape, he flees from them over the hills with an annoying child on his back! Come on. [Anthony Lane in March 27, 2006 The New Yorker]

How could I forget the von Trapp Family Singers?!

The music was great, especially the opening track. Jaunty and energetic, but foreign. Terence Blanchard does the majority of the score, but the opening track is called “Chaiyya Chaiyya Bollywood Joint,” written by A.R. Rahman, Gulzar, Panjabi MC and performed by Sukhwinder Singh, Sapna Awasthi featuring Panjabi MC (according to Amazon). On iTunes, you have to buy the whole album. Or not. As many other possible customers commented, I will hope the Chaiyya Chaiyya track is released independently…and I’ll wait until then. South Asian hip-hop… the other film where I remember similar music was Bend It Like Beckham. Maybe this is another tune in the symphony of The World Is Flat?!

Metacritic score of 76 might be a touch low, but not more than a point or so.

The official website of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines doesn’t load: http://www.terminator3.com. It’s only three years since the movie’s release, but duds sink fast, clearly. As duds go, this wasn’t the worst movie ever. But it was 100 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. The first two Terminator movies really earned all the kudos and hype. I knew going in that this conclusion to the never-envisioned trilogy was seen as a klunker, but the Metacritic score of 66 is still too high.

Only points for creativity go to whomever decided it was worth the bucks on CG to have the villian drive a crane in the biggest “car chase” scene of the movie. Very much a caricature of the original semi-trailer / motorcycle chase from T2, and not as compelling, but both of us commented that they would have been hard-pressed to find something bigger. And bigger is better, right?

(Note: domain is still owned by someone in Beverly Hills; not sure why it doesn’t resolve.)

(Click the thumbnail for full-size.) I don’t know what this picture says about my blog’s structure, but I’m interested in different visualization efforts all the same. Here, clock‘s HTML source as a graph, courtesy of Sala. No last name given, but let’s assume the aharef in the domain is a last name until we learn otherwise. Make your own via the form on this page.

Here’s the original post from the author, which I found via Information Design. I’ve already seen this meme picked up by another feed I read, and I expect it will spiral widely.

What will help it spread? First, it’s visual. Second, there is a unique flickr tag: websitesasgraphs. Here’s my contribution to the tag.

Because I’ll lose track otherwise, here’s the Legend.

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Various publications covered the introduction of .mobi as a Top Level Domain (TLD). Basically, everyone who has a website in .com, .net, .org or one of the other TLDs is being encouraged to think about .mobi for their mobile content. (Details in the CNET News.com article about “dot-mobi”.)

Let me come right out and say it: .mobi won’t change anything about mobile use of the web. Not a thing.

I helped deliver a mobile version of CNET News.com (http://m.news.com/) in April 2004. Back in 1999, I led development of a true WAP 1.0 version of Snap.com (the old one, not the new/current search engine), so I’ve been using the mobile internet intermittently for more than seven years. So, I have some experience with the area.

Let me say again: the problem is not the domain.

The limits are bandwidth, display, and the limited use cases.

Bandwidth: In the United States (at least) mobile data rates are not yet consistently speedy. I’m on Cingular with my Treo, and it’s tolerable to use sites formatted for mobile (read: small data loads, and focused pages). Not fun, but tolerable. I’m sure EVDO is a step up, but we’re still in the dial-up days when it comes to mobile browsing. But when dial-up was a reality for the majority of the people online, few users really knew that they were missing. Now, most everyone knows what the web (and e-mail) should deliver, based on their computer experience, with DSL/cable/Wi-Fi/LAN connectivity. The alternative is almost excruciating.

Display: The smaller display isn’t a crisis. It’s just not as much fun. My Treo 650’s display is quite sharp, but the device still fits in my pocket, so it’s not that large.

Limited use cases: The use case for mobile browsing is slices of time. It always has been. Maybe it won’t always be, but I’m not convinced otherwise. When you’re killing time, waiting, commuting, or otherwise between activities and (not coincidentally) between larger display, higher bandwidth devices, then mobile browsing helps avoid boredom and/or help busy people steal moments. But it’s not planned time, with the possible exception of commuting.

Browsing the web on a mobile device is worthwhile for certain pieces of data (phone numbers, directions, answering trivia questions), but you don’t actively choose to experience the internet this way if you have an alternative.

One more strike (yes, that’s four) against the .mobi domain: the mTLD group is promising to maintain standards (see the Guide). I can’t find details, but the general ethos seemed to be that certain usability guidelines would be enforced.

We have also developed rules and recommended best practices for developers to keep the mobile surfing experience consistent. [Vance Hedderel, a spokesman for dot-mobi and mTLD, speaking to CNET News.com]

Sounds like a walled garden to me, and hard to scale for growth. Who’s going to approve each website?

I, too, want connectivity everywhere, and high-speed connectivity at that. But .mobi is a solution for a different problem: the lack of “control” some media companies, carriers, and handset providers want to rein in for their benefit. I don’t think you can put that genie back in the bottle.

Is it just a coincidence that the .xxx domain proposal recently went down in flames? (See a list of recent domain name stories at CNET News.com.) And the adult industry cheered? Hasn’t the adult industry led various other technological innovations?

Mobile browsing will continue to grow, in spite of — not because of — the .mobi domain.

Martin Green jumps in with a blog, Forward Looking Statements. I think Webshots, and the other community properties at CNET Networks, will benefit from the conversation. Subscribed.

I’ve seen bits of Raising Arizona before, but last night I watched the whole movie. Funny, though a bit manic by the end.

Telling that the Metacritic score is a 55 (mixed or average reviews), while the user score is 86. Can you say…cult hit? I suppose you can expect at least that much success from a Coen Brothers film.

I haven’t bumped up against the TimesSelect wall since I wrote about its introduction in September 2005. However, after reading The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, I can understand some of the attraction of the columnists…at least Friedman himself. This exploration of globalization, sub-titled “A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,” tells a forceful tale of the world we’re living in and how it’s changing.

Given its best-seller status when The World Is Flat was published in 2005, there’s little I can add to the exposition or hype at this point. But I understand why my friend Pete told me this book was a (not the) factor in his transferring to Bangalore earlier this year. Not for me at this point, but the time for burying one’s head in the sand about the future is long past.

On a specific note…we’re still at the point where globalization is accompanied by the spread of English (mostly). The future of American employees, even highly-educated ones, certainly gets murkier if the global language shifts once again (to, say, Chinese). I’m an optimist, so I don’t imagine that kind of change with fear. But I do know I’m monolingual (for all practical purposes) and I wonder if that will be tolerable when my children enter the workforce.

Thanks to my sister for the book, a birthday gift.

After seeing the movie last year, I re-read Douglas Adams’ The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last weekend during a plane flight. My copy is a 1979 paperback, when it was Hitch Hiker’s (two words) instead of Hitchhiker. It’s a slim 159 pages…loomed larger in memory, honestly, although brevity is a benefit.

After the re-read, I am more impressed with the movie’s fidelity to the book.

42!

I installed a RAM upgrade this morning on the MacBook, moving from two 256K modules to two 512K modules.

While Apple is getting kudos for the ease of HD removal (video from Macworld), the RAM upgrade requires notably more force than I imagined. The instructions are simple, and the only tool required is a small Philips screwdriver. Getting the installed modules out was straightforward, but putting the modules in was difficult because you don’t have much leverage, and your fingers take a beating. My first attempt failed. I put the computer back together and tried to start it up. No dice. I didn’t panic immediately because I’ve had a somewhat similar experience in the past with a different Mac. I opened the battery bay up again, and pushed until my fingers were dented, and kept pushing. I never heard the promised “click” to tell me that the modules were fully seated, but they were farther in, so I gave it a try. Success.

Seems Dave Winer had the same problem, but he must have given up on the more-than-educated pressure technique. The quote from a tech at an Apple Store was: “You really have to force it in there.”

Definitely. Apply educated pressure. Then try pressure beyond what you think is safe. If the L-shaped bracket which covers the modules doesn’t lie flat before you put the three screws back on, then you probably haven’t gone far enough.

As I noted yesterday, I’m thrilled with the computer overall, but might as well point out the annoyance, too.

I started a new gig today, and a very pleasant part of the day was spent setting up a spanking new MacBook.

(Yes, more on the new gig soon… not meaning to be cryptic, just trying to gather my thoughts semi-intelligently. And it’s late. And I want to watch the Champion’s League final from earlier today before I inadvertently hear the score.)

Anyway, the day after the product was released, I’m using a white version as my work machine. Seamless describes the experience, and I’m looking forward to applying my years of home Mac usage towards my day job, too. Outlook’s calendaring was the hook which made a Mac not worth the effort in the past, but Exchange isn’t the company standard for me anymore. Not missing it.

More to come in the future on bits and pieces of this computing experience. The web was all over this product, as you might expect. Here’s the CNET coverage:

• An early, pre-rating CNET review
• Photos of the introductory experience
• Photos of an arrest outside the San Francisco Apple store
• The story behind the arrest photos, from Scott Ard