Month: June 2005

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

The best way to describe this movie is “War of the Roses meets James Bond” with lots of eye candy and interesting action.

There’s nothing much to write home about regarding the actual plot. Jane and John meet under tenuous circumstances (somebody tried to kill the Columbian President and the police are looking for “tourists” who are alone). They fall in love, get married but after five (or six years), the spark has gone. However both are oblivious to the fact that their spouse is an assassin.

The jig is soon up and they have to decide whether they’re going to kill each other or if they’re still in love.

Angelina Jolie is essentially playing Lara Croft (but without the British accent) while Brad Pitt is play Rusty Ryan (his character in Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve). While there is chemistry between the two stars, Angelina Jolie totally dominates. That woman is SMOKING! Next to her Brad Pitt seemed very ordinary.

If you’re looking for something to distract you for a couple of hours this is the movie for you.

Rating: 6/10

Remarkable

All pending members have been added, and I’ve updated all info changes on my side (though Pia has some updates to finish – she just snorted with laziness just now) but I desperately want to announce that Too-Manic is updated!

*passes around party favors*

And while I’m not given to bouts of squeeness I will take this opportunity to “SQUEEEEEEEEEEE” because Kim has given me her Ben Affleck fanlisting.

Once again, “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”!

Current Obsessions

I’ve been listening to Frances, The Mute, the current album from The Mars Volta and I can’t put it down. I listen to all four songs everyday, especially L’Via L’Viaquez. Can’t get enough of it. It’s dark, it’s sexy, a real mind trip.

I applied for the fanlisting for the song and I got approved. Got the layout done and partially coded. Gotta make some buttons for it though.

Pia and I have been discussing what other CSI games we can play now that our “Doing The Horatio” has ended because RPN has disappeared off the face of the earth.

We’re thinking of “Songs for the Scene” where we try to think up of song titles that go with a particular scene. I’ve suggested “Grissom’s Quotables”. You know how Grissom has a quote for every occassion…yeah, that could work. Any other suggestions?

Technorati Beta

Technorati has launched their beta website and are welcoming all feedback.

First impressions…I love the new layout, the curves give a fresher feeling to the site and the use of green and the larger fonts to highlight important site functions really draws my eye. Everything is much more easier to find.

Breaking the site into three content elements: header/personal navigation, search and popular discussions really works for me. Plus the graphic of the guy on his soap box gives a playful feel to the site.

I like that there is more whitespace. Less busyness means I can quickly see what’s of interest to me.

The Technorati search has some additional options. You can specify how much relevance to give your keywords. As I was saying here my basic problem with the Technorati keyword search has been that posts were not always relevant to the topic I’m searching for. But with the additional search options, my search for amazing race gave me more than 10 relevant searches. That’s pretty good.

For news, aside from seeing the latest posts about a topic, there’s another feature, “Most Authority”. This gives you a list of posts that directly link to the news item. Even more relevance!

Newsweek To Use Technorati Tags

In a few weeks, Newsweek articles will come with links to relevant weblogs, allowing Newsweek readers the chance to see what else is being talked about on the topic at hand.

The feature will use Technorati tags to provide relevant links. For the uninitiated, Technorati is the leading weblog tracker (if I’m not mistaken they’re tracking over 11 million blogs).

This is a cool and I hope more media outlets will use this. I know a lot of blogs that provide links to Technorati for links to other discussions.

My main concern is the relevancy of links. Take this search for the keywords “amazing race”. Only 5 of the 20 links in the search results actually relate to the tv show, The Amazing Race.

Far better is the use of Technorati Tags. A search for ““>tag: amazing+race” brings up a great deal of relevant discussions about the show.

But what’s to stop certain people from linking back to particular Technorati tags even if their content is totally irrelevant.

First it was e-mail, than comments and trackbacks. How long before we have tag spam?

Hat tip: Blog Herald