A Primer on Web 2.0. What The Heck Is It, Anyway?

February 9, 2007Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

What is Web 2.0?
According to the entry in Wikipedia, Web 2.0 is all about online collaboration and sharing through wikis (like Wikipedia), social networking sites (think Friendster, Nexopia, Stumbleupon or Windows Live Spaces), and certainly blogging fits nicely into the definition of Web 2.0.
In other words, what you knew about the Web when you first went online has transformed from a relatively static ‘push-button’ experience to a more collaborative, engaged and engaging experience …

Got a few minutes to procrastinate? You might like the following “digital ethnography” video that VanRamblings found courtesy of CNET News. It’s all a little bit techno-utopian, but nevertheless pretty cool.

A Zen Experience Involving The Art of Juggling

February 7, 2007Pop CultureRaymond Tomlin

For your enlightenment today, a Google Video of juggler Chris Bliss. For a larger screen version of the video, click on the Google Video button, bottom right, and then click on ‘Go to Google Video’, and enjoy. We think you will.
Yesterday alone, 6,547 people from across the globe accessed this video, out of a total of 8,964,155 people who’ve seen Bliss’ video, to date.

A Buyer’s Guide to A Portable Flash-Based MP3 Player

February 6, 2007Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

Although it’s taken a number of years to get to the point where there are now a few, half-decent mp3 players on the market to consider (despite the prominence and ubiquity of the Apple iPod), it’s now safe for consumers to walk in to their local Best Buy and purchase an mp3 player that will do pretty much everything they need it to do, from playing music and video, to voice recording, calendar work and everything in between.
The newest, and according to C|NET, best mp3 player is the 8GB SanDisk Sansa e280R Rhapsody, a flash-based mp3 player which (unlike its iPod competitor) includes an FM tuner, a voice recorder, access to music downloads through Rhapsody, a user removable battery, an expansion card slot, and great battery life.
They’re not calling the Sansa e280R an iPod killer for nothing.
Why buy SanDisk’s e280R, or Creative’s 4GB Zen V Plus — also a C|NET Editor’s Choice, just like its Sansa cousin&#32 (and, in the interest of full disclosure, currently VanRamblings’ default mp3 player) — rather than one of the many hard drive-based mp3 players on the market?
The answer to that question is many. First off, battery life. Because it’s a flash-based player and there are no moving parts inside, battery life is two to four times as great as you’d experience with a hard drive-based player.
Next up, again because it’s a flash-based player (with no moving parts), whether it’s Sansa, Zen V or iPod Nano, it is pretty much indestructible.
Creative and SanDisk are one up on the iPod given that they play Microsoft’s proprietary WMA format, allowing for almost double the number of songs to be moved onto the player (up to 4000 mp3s on the e280R — and, really, how many people have more than 4000 songs they want to load onto their mp3 player, and carry around with them to the gym, the beach, or in the car?). Four thousand songs? Sounds great to me.

Both the 8GB SanDisk Sansa e280R Rhapsody and the 4GB Creative Zen V Plus (pictured right) offer a host of features at a price below $250.
Aside from the 1.5″ colour OLED display, it’s scratch resistant, has a built-in voice recorder and 32-channel FM tuner, you can play several different video formats, view photos and album art, record directly from a CD, play audio books — and the player is not only light (at barely 35 grams, or an ounce and a half), it’s portable and won’t skip no matter how hard a workout you give it (or yourself) at the gym or on the beach.

Oscars 2006: Another Four Oscar Contenders Reviewed

February 5, 2007CinemaRaymond Tomlin

We’re back with 4 more reviews of films that are up for Oscar consideration, a couple of which are on DVD, so you can check ’em out at home.

CHILDREN OF MEN / HALF NELSON / LAST KING / LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

First up, Children of Men, a fine, stark yet flawed dystopian thriller that, while sporting some dazzling filmmaking hardly involves with its story about a world plagued by infertility and on the verge of collapse. Clive Owen’s performance is actorly in a manner that fails to engage, while Julianne Moore is in the picture for such a short while it’s a wonder that her name even made it into the credits. Lots of critics liked this film, but VanRamblings is not among those that found it “gritty, disturbing, solemn or haunting.”
Half Nelson, on the other hand, now here’s a slice of life drama that is wholly absorbing despite its low budget and generally lacklustre production values. Ryan Gosling’s performance as a drug-addicted inner-city school teacher is human scale, watchable and near mesmerizing (and very much deserving of an Oscar), while 13-year-old newcomer Shareeka Epps gives as good as she gets. Absolutely one of the best films of 2006 — and now on DVD for rental.
Now, you’d think that The Last King of Scotland would be heavy fare and a slog to get through, but you’d be wrong. Forest Whitaker’s larger than life performance as African dictator, Idi Amin — charismatic, trained by the British, and home to create chaos in Uganda during his eight-year reign — may be menacing, but he’s also horrifically engaging and possessed of a wry sense of humour. Prediction: Whitaker will win Best Actor for his performance.
Little Miss Sunshine can garner all the accolades it wants, but you’re not gonna find unadulterated praise for this rather pedestrian film in this corner. A too cute and rather mundane road movie chock full of odd “characters” rather than relatable people, there’s a cleverness, no doubt, in this Oscar nominated picture, but when it comes to films emerging from January’s Sundance Film Festival, give me a Quinceañera any day of the week. Strained, foul-mouthed and verging on the grotesque, from VanRamblings’ standpoint Little Miss Sunshine is much ado about not very much. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.