The Digital Dembroski

I love the Flip brand of cameras.  They’re cheap (relatively) and very versatil.  You can put them just about anywhere (so as not to risk a more expensive rig) and the quality you get for your $200ish dollars is comendable.  The only problem?  The field of view is too narrow.  A little super glue and cheap lens kit from Best Buy can fix that though.

Props to Anthony Skelton for his write up here.  I had some vignetting with the 2x lens when doing this to my Flip Ultra HD – I think modifying the Mino HD eliminates this problem because the “lens hump” is less pronounced.  Happy Hacking!

(Anthony Skelton Photography)

No giant post today because I’m writing this on my iPhone! That’s cool enough by itself, for me anyways. The Wordpress app is, so far, very intuitive. The only thing it’s got going against it is the reduced typing speed that is inherent on any mobile device. Still – setup is pretty easy (just one small modification in your admin panel then login) and everything seems to be where it should be.

You can even save local drafts on the phone in the event of poor coverage.

As my friend Obama shows, adding photos is pretty simple, you have access to your library and the iPhone’s camera. (Though it seems images are sent to the bottom of the post automatically by the app with no real way to move them around until you get to a computer).

Anyways, for short posts and on the go news gathering via Wordpress the application seems like a complete no-brainer.

By now it might be safe to say that everyone who is anyone knows about or has used Pandora and the music genome project.  If you don’t know, and I’ve subsequently offended you, go check it out.  On a basic level, Pandora is an online radio station that generates a playlist based on your musical tastes.  So, for example, if you’ve just listened to a song with complex melodies and minor vocal harmonies, Pandora will play another song with those same characteristics.  Neat!  (For even more “Neat!” download Pandora’s Iphone app – Pandora in your car? Yes please!)

It seemed then, that applying this same idea to movies would only take a matter of time.  Enter Jinni:

“Jinni isn’t a social network, it’s an internet application designed to fit how people relate to movies and TV. And since conversation is part of that, we’ve created tools to meet people with shared tastes, compare preferences, and review and rank titles.”

Jinni classifies movies based on their traits, things like plot, mood, and tone.  In fact, according to their website, Jinni has a team of film professionals tagging films with around fifty “genes” a piece.  That’s a lot of work, and to be frank, I’ve never understood how people like Pandora and Jinni do it and do it reliably (Who knows maybe it’s the same blokes.).  Music and Movie tagging sweatshops?  Maybe.  Probably not.

As a user, Jinni’s value proposition is to help you find movies that you’re guaranteed to like.  Hopefully this includes movies that you wouldn’t have normally found or known about.  Popular media outlets only really expose us to the “top tier” of content – things that are a sure bet popularity and moneywise.  With luck we’ll find that Jinni, like Pandora before it did for music, broadens our exposure to movies with movies we end up loving.

Jinni is currently in private beta – you can sign up on their webpage to try to get an access key.  It looks like my key has come in just now, so I’ll poke around and report back tomorrow with the real meat and potatoes.  If it works as well as their demo video shows (Sadly, almost nothing ever does.) they just might be up to something.

Update: Full Review coming soon!  Also, a reader from Scotland reports that, apparently due to licensing issues, Pandora is not available outside of the United States.  Therefore, you might actually be “someone”  and not know what it is through no fault of your own.  My apologies for offending basically the entire world – I’m sure it won’t be the last time.  It’s too bad that you can’t check out Pandora – it’s a really great piece of engineering.

(Jinni and Pandora)

In return for taking a few days from blogging for the holidays (and a contentious interaction with an automobile dealer) I’d like to give you, my dear readers, this gift:

Feedflix

I am notorious for not using my Netflix movies.  Seriously.  I’ve had ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford‘ at home for 261 days at counting.  That movie moved from my apartment to my home with me.  That movie has been sitting by my DVD player for almost a year.  Sort of.  Either way it’s a wickedly long time to have a DVD sitting around.

Which is why I was seriously worried when I found out about FeedFlix, which is a service that taps into your Netflix account.  Using the Netflix API, Feedflix can tell you just how much of a value or waste your $15ish a month is.  It does so with a series of pretty graphs, like the one above, but it also pumps out this useful text:

So as you can see – I have a habit of hanging onto DVDs, and am NOT getting my money’s worth when it comes to those (well maybe a little – it depends what’s in the bargin bin).  But thanks to my fiance’s Law and Order SVU addiction via Netflix’s watch instantly (finally available on Mac and Xbox as of a few months ago) we’re doing alright per piece of content consumed.

Feedflix doesn’t consider the total usage of multiple users on one account so my fiance’s DVD usage, which is far more frequent than mine, isn’t considered. Eitherway, thanks to watch instantly, I can say I feel pretty good about our Netflix subscription.

Feedflix does way more than this; it also pulls tons of stats.  So I can tell you that, for instance, ‘Burn After Reading‘ is the “most anticipated” film currently on Netflix.  I can also tell you that ‘The Dark Knight‘ is the most rented movie over the past two weeks (rightly so).  Pretty nifty stuff – check it out and make sure you’re squeezing everything you can from Netflix – maybe I should just send back Jesse James… or maybe I should hold onto it for a whole year – just to say I did.

(Feedflix)