Spooky Halloween Post!

This doesn’t have anything to do with new technology, social media, and movies, but it’s related enough I thought it’d be fun to post. Here’s this viral video about this filmmaker from Belfast who believes that he found a time-traveling man in drag talking on a cell phone in a 1920’s behind the scenes documentary about Charlie Chaplin. Completely insane, but the video’s fun to watch, if a bit dramatic.

And now that I think about it, viral internet videos and memes are all about this topic and class, so looks like this is more legit than initially thought.

Happy Halloween!

Article: Top Ten Movie Apps for smartphones

This article from mashable lists the top 10 movie apps. While most of them are pretty standard apps that rate movies, recommend movies, and getting show times like Flixster, IMDB, Turner Classic Movies, and LOVEFiLM UK. But other apps offer some unique tools for a small price.

For those with a large DVD/Bluray collection that is hard to keep track of, the Movies/MoviesHD app keeps an inventory and makes searching for DVD’s a breeze.

Anyone who owns a bluray player, Wii, or XBox 360 knows how great it is to watch Netflix instant view movies on their TV’s, but also knows the annoying layout problems of the movie queue. The website itself is perfectly designed, but the instant view feature for bluray players and game systems make searching impossible, and looong scrolling the only way to navigate through one’s queue. The iPhlix app changes this and makes it easier to manage one’s DVD queue.

There are also apps for games like scene it, but the top prize for originality goes to the RunPee application, which offers users the best times in movies to run to the bathroom. As long as movie theaters are around, this will be a useful app to use after a massive soda intake.

These apps continue to makes watching movies just a little more fun and easy.

 

New Tech Update

This recent article at mashable discusses the new engine Inveni.

 

http://tech.mn/files/2010/08/inveni.png

 

Inveni sounds standard enough initially. It is a tool that recommends movies and television shows to members based on what they’ve watched and liked in the past. Netflix and Flixter and IMDb and many other sites do the same thing, but that makes Inveni so valuable is that it creates its recommendations based on all of those websites and more all at once, if one chooses to connect them all together. Inveni is taking an already established idea, and attempting to make it even better and more intensive, with a product that can generate more detailed recommendations. And believe me, there are a lot of movies out there, ones neglected by most people for their age or nation or obscurity. I’m hoping this “discovery engine” will continue the new exposure that many great neglected films are receiving. With Netflix’s instant view (and regular mail services) offering regular people a treasure trove of unknown finds, Inveni will hopefully begin to bridge the gap between the mainstream and the arthouse, the old with the new, and continue to expose people to great films that they should be watching. Any tool exposing people to rich cinema is one that I fully support, and I’m eager to hear of any updates of the Inveni engine. The article even says that Inveni will eventually recommend things other than movies and TV, maybe at some point becoming an all-encompassing website catered to your interests only. Could this be a big deal?

Also, here’s a video from Inveni about Inveni, and it wins me over.

Next post: IMDB Overview

Windows Phone 7 Fandango and IMDB apps

Here’s an interesting video on the new Windows Phone 7 concerning new movie related apps. In the past, phones could access the internet, but the formatting would often be off, resulting in pages that were awkward to navigate through and couldn’t access certain information. But now with the genesis of iphones and other advanced phones with internet capabilities, websites need to offer reformatted versions for easy user interactivity.

Fandango now offers its movie trailer and ticket purchase services on a newly formatted website for cell phones. This new app is especially convenient for movie ticket purchasing, a person now able to purchase from anywhere while out and about to ensure that ticket. Seeing that hit movie opening night has never been easier.

IMDB’s new app is also a convenient one, though not in the same respects as Fandango. IMDB is the website for movie information and for regular users it can be a helpful tool. What was that actors name? Which film was that? What year did that come out? What else did he direct? Now that information can be found anywhere at anytime with the new phone app. The criticism in the video states that the app is a little cluttered and difficult to navigate. That should be expected as the website itself is a bit dense, so hopefully later updates of the app will fix some of the design problems.

Next post: An in-depth look at IMDB

Good Link/Good Start

This article from mashable, though a year old, lists off the 10 best movie-related social networking websites. Interestingly, while new social websites pop up all of the time while others go out of vogue, these websites have remained the best for connecting with fellow movie lovers.

http://cdn2.connectedinternet.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Get-Glue1.png

To add some structure to this blog, I am going to study each website and do a separate write-up for each one. I will start with the internet movie database, which really is THE informational and social movie website on the web, and has been for over 10 years.

I also plan to see David Fincher’s “The Social Network”. This wouldn’t be much of a blog if I didn’t post about the film, as it really does have everything to do with my topic.

Next post: IMDB