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Future Of Web Design 2008.

I have put up a review of my experiences from Future of Web Design this year over at Creation. Below is an excerpt from the article:

Overall, like last year, although I didn't necessarily learn a lot, I came away from the conference with a renewed passion for the Web, and couldn't wait to get back to a computer and start tinkering with ideas which welled up throughout the day.

You can read the whole review over at the Creation news section.

Posted on 29th April, 2008, 12PM under Fowd08.

80th Academy Awards Nominations.

Nominations for the most prestigious film awards - the Academy Awards - have been announced. Unlike last year where I only looked at the Best Picture nominations, here are my thoughts on most of the major categories for the this years Oscar nominations.

Best Actor

• Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood
• George Clooney - Michael Clayton
• Tommy Lee Jones - In the Valley of Elah
• Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promise

I have heard amazing accolades for Daniel Day-Lewis, so I'll be suprised if he doesn't win best actor this year, although Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" hasn't been released in the UK yet, so I haven't seen it. Of the films I've seen in this category, I thought both Viggo Mortensen and George Clooney were both outstanding.

Best Supporting Actor

• Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men
• Casey Affleck - The Assassination of Jesse James
• Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson's War
• Tom Wilkinson - Michael Clayton
• Hal Holbrook - Into the Wild

Both Casey Affleck and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War) were amazing in their roles. And although I haven't seen "No Country for Old Men" or "Into the Wild" I would have to give this Oscar to Casey Affleck for his role as Robert Ford in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford". It is a shame Ben Foster didn't receive a nomination for his supporting role in the western "3:10 to Yuma".

Best Animated Feature

• Persepolis
• Ratatouille
• Surf's Up

Out of those nominated I have only seen "Ratatouille", however, this was a brilliant film - not just a brilliant animated film. It stood up to the hype from critics and the standard of other Pixar films. Persepolis is a very stylistic foreign animation with a more serious storyline, which has also been heavily commended by critics. I highly doubt Surf's Up in a serious contender.

Best Director

• Julian Schnabel - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Jason Reitman - Juno
• Tony Gilroy - Michael Clayton
• Joel Coen and Ethan Coen - No Country for Old Men
• Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood

This is the category I'm most interested in, but I've only been able to see one of these films so far; Michael Clayton. Although the film was well shot and acted, I thought pacing and storytelling were slow and confusing. Juno has been raved about, but I don't see it pushing any directorial boundaries. The Coen-Brothers are supposedly back on top form for "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" will no doubt be an epic like his previous films "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights". It'll be a tough call between these two veteran filmmakers.

However, I am most looking forward in seeing "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". The French film about the true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; has been reviewed as "imagine a Spike Jonze-Charlie Kauffman-Michel Gondry-style film" - I envisage a rewarding masterpiece.

Best Documentary Feature

• No End in Sight
• Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
• Sicko
• Taxi to the Dark Side
• War/Dance

Again, I've only seen one of the nominated films; Sicko. It was a very poignant documentary, however, it is too American-centric and I feel a lot of people outside that culture will not be able to relate to the gravity of the situation, due to the free health-care many viewers in Europe receive.

Best Picture

• Atonement
• No Country for Old Men
• There Will be Blood
• Michael Clayton
• Juno

I am very doubtful that "Juno" will win Best Picture, it is looking to be a great indie flick, but shouldn't be in the running for Best Picture. "Michael Clayton" was good, but I don't think it is Best Picture material. Atonement was a box office success but I hope that either "No Country for Old Men" or "There Will be Blood" will take home this Oscar.

Posted on 22nd January, 2008, 1PM under Films, Movies, Oscars and Oscars2008.

Pulse RSS.

Pulse RSS is a new web service which provides you with statistics for your website. OK, there are enough statistic services out there nowadays, with Google Analytics providing a full-blown solution, and Mint giving you some pleasant data - but most of the time this is overwhelming for a client.

However, Pulse RSS is different, providing you with a very simple solution - giving you vital statistics. After you have registered, you're given a code which you place at the bottom of your site. Now you can login a check your sites statistics. Visits, incoming links and search keywords are displayed for each domain you've added.

Pulse RSS is different in one way - it is a web service. You can easily subscribe to individual RSS feeds of each of the vitals (visits, incoming links and search keywords), but this service also provides XML. Using the XML data, you can easily plug the statistics in to your own personal interface/website.

Why not give it a whirl, 'coz best of all... it's free!

Posted on 12th March, 2007, 1PM under Statistics, Web App and Web Development.

My Ocsar 2007 Best Film Nominee Thoughts.

Recently, I've been addicted to movies, as you will find out when I eventually get round to adding all the data I've accumulated over the last year or so to the website! But that's a long way off, and this years Oscars are fast approaching. So here is my take on this years movie award spectacle.

This years nominees for the Best motion picture of the year are:

• Babel
• The Departed
• Letters from Iwo Jima
• Little Miss Sunshine
• The Queen

Unlike Robert Nyman I have only been able to check out two of those films - Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed.

Unfortunately, Letters from Iwo Jima is yet to be released in the UK, but I am definitely looking forward to it. This film is the second film about the Japanese battle on the island on Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood. The other movie Flags of Our Fathers focuses on the life stories of the six men who raised the flag at The Battle of Iwo Jima which is ultimately from the perspective of the Americans. Whereas Letters from Iwo Jima follows this turning point World War 2 battle from the Japanese, which is admirably films with native Japanese actors and in their native language. I have only seen the trailer for this film, but the actual war scenes look comparable to the groundbreaking and spectacular (but not glamourised) Spielberg epic Saving Private Ryan.

My local cinema hasn't started showing Babel yet (but I have been told it will be showing it soon, although it was released back in the middle of January). I have been reading many mixed reviews about this movie, with some people complaining it was too self-indulgent, pretentious and the fact one of the stories didn't really conclude. However, I'm looking forward to this movie solely because of it's director - Alejandro González Iñárritu - directed 21 Grams which is an extremely recommended movie and Amores perros, a highly-acclaimed Mexican movie, which follows "a horrific car accident that connects three stories, each involving characters dealing with loss, regret, and life's harsh realities, all in the name of love" ...which I'm yet to watch.

Finally, I have had the opportunity to see 'The Queen' twice now, but, even after all the massive reviews and what has been said about Helen Mirren's performance, I am uninterested in the subject matter.

The Departed is definitely everyone's favourite, and it is about time Martin Scorsese won. It was a good film, well acted, interesting story-line, direction, comedy (Mark Wahlberg), action and cast. The twist/conclusion was pretty cool, but it didn't standout entirely for me. Although, I will definitely be buying it on DVD when it has become a little cheaper (and I've watched all the ones I've currently got!)

About the other nomination I've seen - Little Miss Sunshine - I thought this was an original, funny, extremely well shot, sad, yet strangely uplifting movie. The attraction about this movie are the small details and quirks which are often quite subtle and very pessimistic. Yet when this is combined with the premise of the movie - dealing with loss, disappointment, rejections and family - it relates to a lot of situations many people find themselves faced with. The climax to the movie is incredibly funny and heart-warming. I already own this on DVD and I highly recommend anyone to watch it.

I would also like to make a special mention about Pan's Labyrinth, which is notably up for 'Best foreign language film of the year' (amongst other nominations). I felt the movie was advertised as a fantasy - but certainly not for children - yet lacked equal screen time between the fantasy storyline of Pan and the harsh nature of her Nazi-occupied war-time reality. The fantasy had some great character design, which Guillermo del Toro is renowned for. But the Nazi storyline and cinematography was dark, scary and torturous and, for me, stole the movie away from it's fantasy roots.

Posted on 23rd February, 2007, 5PM under Films, Movies, Oscars and Oscars2007.

Flickr Uproar.

This morning, as I checked through my feeds, I noticed some Flickr news. In brief Flickr are doing two major things which have caused complete uproar within its community.

Firstly, they are creating two limits (to all accounts). The first limit - you can have a maximum of 3,000 contacts - doesn't really bother me, although I can see people's gripes with it (such as the private sharing of photos, although people have given solutions to this - add photos to a set and create a guest pass).

The other limit is allowing each photo on to have a maximum of 75 tags. One of the reasons stated in the 'Official contact and tag limit changes topic' is to stop 'spammy tags'. This may curb this activity, but it certainly doesn't stop it. Again, I think the limit is fairly high, and I've never come close to reaching it, but this is the problem with folksonomies. The whole idea of folksonomy tagging is the user creates them based on what they think is correct, and will be useful for them in the future, if this means adding a lot of tags, then that is the user's choice.

The main reason stated for both of these seemingly arbitrary limits is server performance. Although, I'm certainly no expert in creating scalable web-apps, I don't believe having a lot of contacts should affect the general use of the site - this is viewing the photos. Having hundreds of tags could impact performance, but I'm sure they've got the experience, money and resources to make this problem insignificant.

Although this news has stirred up a few people, the main outcry is the forcing of Flickr accounts (old-skool) to be merged with Yahoo! identities.

When Yahoo! acquired Flickr in 2005, there was concern about what would happen and how much weight Yahoo! would throw on to Flickr. After a while new accounts required a Yahoo! identity and you could merge your Flickr account with a Yahoo! identity, but it was purely optional. Now Yahoo! have given a cut-off date - 15th March 2007 - after which you must merge your account to use it.

Other people have voiced their distaste with this move. Thomas Hawk, the CEO of Zooomr has written on his blog stating that 'Flickr needs to reverse the asinine decisions made today to force people to merge their accounts with Yahoo and to place new limits on your contacts and tags.'.

The BBC has even got a news story about the change - Flickr to require Yahoo usernames - also mentioning a backlash from the Flickr community.

Personally, I am apathetic to the changes. I'm never going to have that many contacts and probably won't ever use more than 75 tags a photo. However, hopefully the recently announced change for 'machine tags' won't be included in the total tags. I already have a Yahoo! identity, but never use it. I didn't bother merging when it was first announced, but now I have no choice I've done it.

Posted on 31st January, 2007, 5PM under Flickr and Yahoo.