This post from tnl.net, entitled Where the hits are streaming in 2011 was a real eye-opener, and one that I first heard on TWiT 336.
For each movie of the top 100 movies at the box office, I pulled data on for streaming info on Netflix, Amazon on Demand, iTunes, and Vudu. I also pulled up availability of DVDs to use as a yardstick in terms of overall movie availability.
I’m trying something new this year. I’ve traditionally ranked my end of year list top to bottom, and it’s been incredibly difficult, not to mention a false, unfair measure. This year, I’m grouping them by star-rating.
I’ve been using Flixster for the past 1.5 years, but this year, I’ve made a conscious effort—for every movie I’ve seen this year that’s in Flixster’s database—to add a star rating, and write a review; be it a sentence or a rare, wordy exposition. Note that this will also contain random, older movies I’ve seen at home, etc throughout the year.
One thing I’m noticing now is how extremely difficult it has been for me to award something 5 stars. It’s silly in retrospect, but shows I don’t completely believe in my ratings, or am afraid to say, “hey, I think this is worth 5 stars and found basically nothing I didn’t love about it”. Considering the extremely subjective nature of it all, I don’t know why, so I’ll have to normalise some of that now.
On the flipside to that, you’ll also notice how rather positive I am with my ratings in general, because, heck, I love my movies, dammit! At least in the context of everything else on here, it can be taken as relative.
Oh, and just to clarify, these are movies I’ve seen at the cinemas in the year of 2011, in Australia and Austin, during SXSW. While looking back, I was surprised that some of these weren’t 2010 releases, but then remembered Australia’s backward nature in receiving them.
I’ve written a relatively large amount about movies in 2011 across Twitter, posts on this blog, Flixster, and the /r/movies subreddit, so this is simply going to be a list.
Here they are, grouped by star-rating out of 5, and alphabetically within the groupings.
I live in an unbelievably large technology bubble. I’m rather happy living in it, and haven’t stepped out of it for a while. A couple of days ago, I momentarily did, through the lens of my mother; it was hilarious.
To cut a long story short, we were looking for a new TV, went to Harvey Norman [oh, the irony] and bought the thing. We were told there was a warehouse a few kilometres away where we needed to pick it up and given an address.
As we got in the car, my mother started rifling through the glove compartment and back seats, and worridly said, “I can’t find the street directory. How are we going to get there?”. If I was in a TV show, I might have said something like, “two words, Google Maps”. Good lord, that sounds corny.
Ahem, anyway, I entered the address into Google Maps [“oh, you’re calling someone to ask for directions?”], and that lovely British accent started telling us where to go. I handed the phone to her and said, “just hold this, it’ll tell you where to go”. Suffice it to say, she was astounded.
We get back home, and the first thing she says to my father is, “do you know his phone just tells him where to go? He’ll never be lost with that thing”.
It really is as simple as that. Google Maps is my favourite travel accessory. I was in New York earlier this year, and the transit directions helped me navigate an unfamiliar public transport system with ease. Clearly I’ve taken it for granted, but seeing someone experience its magic for the first time was fun!
Then of course the TV’s set up, and she asks, “can you watch those TV shows from your computer on this now?”. Gosh, I hadn’t even thought that far ahead.
Well, this post by Min Ming on Android UI fragmentation has certainly been doing the rounds today, and while there is no doubt that UI fragmentation across Android, and even some of their Google-branded offerings exists, instead of looking at how it’s headed in a positive direction, the post chose to pick on some disparate cases. Hey, it wasn’t made up, and the point stands, but below are how the core Google apps in Ice Cream Sandwich are doing things right in terms of unification, and setting a standard developers and UI dudes and dudettes can certainly use as examples.
By the way, Google, you can do SO MUCH MORE to make things easy for developers in providing some rigid guidelines, and ultimately, for your end users, getting accustomed to a consistent experience across the OS and applications. I mean, really, how hard is it to set up some UI patterns like Android Patterns.
Click to embiggen images! This reduced size view does their gloriousness no justice.
Tabs
The More icon AKA the new Menu
After what seemed like eons, I finally got a Galaxy Nexus in my hand, and I can safely say that this is a most triumphant marriage of hardware and software!
To be honest, I actually haven’t done a lot with the phone, and apart from reaching for the Menu button in the first few minutes, I feel completely at home. Everything looks a little different, and in some cases, more than a little different, but in every case, as of now anyway, it’s for the better.
I’ll save the screenshot walkthrough for another time, but I’ve got some of the new Gmail app over on Android niceties.
I’m not a gamer by any means, but one thing that dawned on me this morning is the love affair I’ve had with 2D platformers.
What is it about them?
They’re so simple in their controls, but provide an unparalleled amount of exhiliration, frustration and reward. The precarious wait, counting in your head, analysing the moving parts, looking for the obstacles, and then, JUMP! It’s magical.
That was a fun hour! Live-tweeting the Ice Cream Sandwich live stream, thanks to good ol’ YouTube!
Overall, there is a LOT more polish, everything works incredibly speedily, and the native UI looks and feels better in a million different ways. Stop putting your stupid skins over it, manufacturers; you can’t improve on this.
The Galaxy Nexus looks quite Nexus S-like. 4.65 inch super AMOLED WTFBBQ gorgeous screen, 1280×720 native resolution, 4G / LTE capable, and 3 virtual, on-screen (anchored at the bottom) buttons replacing the physical hardware ones.
A few weekends ago—to play around with Tumblr more than anything—I started Android niceties.
I describe it on the blog as…
A collection of screenshots encompassing some of the best looking Android apps, and / or apps with interesting user interfaces, hopefully providing some inspiration or insight into Android UI conventions.
Please note: These apps aren’t all 100% unique to Android in their UI conventions, and some have iPhone equivalents, but I didn’t want to keep it PURELY, UNIQUELY Android if I felt the UI still worked, and didn’t do Android a disservice (e.g. a Back button)
The new iPhone was announced today. Let’s just look past all the idiocy proliferated by the mass media around “IT’S A 4S, NOT A 5”.
A dual-core A5 Chip, 8MP camera, full 1080p HD video recording and voice commands integrated into some apps through their Siri acquisition.
Siri is getting all the attention. It only works on the iPhone 4S.
I’ve used the voice-to-text features on my Android for over a year, and the only time I’ve found it actually useful is to dictate a text message while driving.
I thought people had accepted that Google+ isn’t a Facebook clone, and more importantly, understood what Google+ actually is, or is capable of, but no, clearly not.
I hate, HATE having conversations on Twitter. It was fine at once, but to see a stream I already envelope being flooded by back and forth conversation that is so difficult to craft and wordsmith with the character limit, pains me greatly.
– Me, two months ago
I wasted the afternoon in an asinine discussion, trying to convey social and interest graphs amidst workshops and meetings, and realised halfway through that I shouldn’t have bothered in the first place.
Facebook is for your friends, Twitter is for your interests
c0up 