For years there was really only one website I used to get information and reviews for movie releases – IMDB. Lately however the site has been feeling a bit dated, and comprehensive as it is, a bit lacking when you want to go beyond movie data, and instead find new movies based on your existing preferences.

There are no lack of websites to do this, in fact Netflix currently has one of the best recommendation engines, but unfortunately is only available for people in the US.

A couple of other notables come up, including Movielens, Flixter and Criticker. However by far the best service I’ve discovered is Jinni, a new movie recommendation engine in public beta.

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Tags: criticker, flixter, jinni, movie genome, movie recommendations, movielens, movies, netflix, web services
Categories: Online Services

There are a whole lot of web-based feed readers which compete fiercely,  but few desktop based applications. In fact FeedDemon and perhaps a couple others like RSS Bandit and RSS Owl represent the majority of desktop applications.

FeedDemon is the most popular program due to the whole set of services Newsgator has created for connecting feeds and devices. NewsGator Online is the web-based service which provides a central repositry for your feeds which can then be synced to various PCs, Outlook, Mobiles, iPhones and Macs.

Nick Bradbury has just released beta 1 of FeedDemon 2.8 which the object of simplifying the interface and improving social and sharing features:

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Tags: feed-reader, feeddemon, newsgator, rss
Categories: software

Alright I’m sorry guys but this isn’t technology related at all, it’s just so funny I had to share it.

Granted, someone will need to die before you can purchase this gift, however if you’re willing to wait than you too could brighten someone’s day with this pencil box full of pencils made out of human carbon. You also get the deceased’s name printed on the side of each pencil as you can see from the screenshot.

This is the brainchild of Nadine Jarvis who likes to create death inspired design work, or ‘work in post mortem’ if you prefer.

That’s not all though, you don’t just use these pencils until their gone, the box is designed so just one pencil can be removed at a time and are sharpened back into the box so it becomes an urn for the remains.

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Tags: gift, gift ideas, gift-idea, gifts, unique gift
Categories: Misc

Joe’s post today was about the importance of backing up your blog, and it’s something which I now realize can never be taken too seriously – only this week another website I write for, Make Use Of, was hacked and the editors blackmailed.

You may read Make Use Of, if you don’t then it’s one of the larger tech blogs dedicated to webware and software reviews and has over 25, 000 daily subscribers.

You hear about hacking stories and security alerts all the time around the internet but you never really expect it to happen to you, however Make Use Of certainly wasn’t taking any risk, I’ll give you the summary of what this hacker did:

A certain Al Ferank of Dubai hacked Aibek, MakeUseOf’s owner and editor’s Gmail account, it’s worth noting that Aibek was using a secure scrambled password of 15 characters, if it’s that easy to gain access to Gmail perhaps their security needs to be looked at.

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Tags: gmail, makeuseof, Security
Categories: Hacking

StarDock is a software company which I would be willing to bet just about all of you have heard of or personally use some of their products.

I haven’t actually purchased any of their product although I have tried the free version of ObjectDock and played Sins of a Solar Empire. Why I found this I have no idea, but just a few weeks ago the annual StarDock customer report came out and for some reason I decided to read it, you can download it here.

The report is short and concise and written by StarDock CEO Brad Wardell, normally this is the last kind of document I would waste my time reading, but If you do take a look I think you’ll see why. Brad Wardell provides an overview of everything StarDock had achieved over the past year and provides a frank and honest assessment of their strengths, weaknesses and future plans.

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Tags: customer report, distribution, stardock
Categories: Windows, software

As WordPress emerged the dominant self-hosted blogging platform of perhaps 2 years ago a growing ecosystem of sites and services sprung up around Wordpress.org including resources websites, premium Wordpress themes and other associated services (and yes, that was a plug for Daniel who used to also write for gHacks).

Although no official objections where ever made to the companies and individuals selling services like premium WordPress themes I believe there was always a little controversy. Some free software proponents feel the effort put into these kinds of services would do better being put back into the whole WordPress community so everyone benefits seeing as the community was the ones who made this kind of business possible.

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Tags: blogs, themes, websites, wordpress, wordpress themes
Categories: Web Development

Operating Systems and web design took a turn for the better around the beginning of this century, Apple introduced OSX 10, Microsoft brought out Windows XP and CSS began to be increasingly adopted.

It would be fair to say that Google and Apple have provided the most unique design directions over the last 10 years, Google with it’s minimalist user interfaces and Apple with it’s glossy Aqua theme. While I think Vista stands on it’s own design-wise there are definite Apple inspired decisions made.

Over the last few months however I’ve been noticing the new direction Microsoft design has been going in and I’m really liking it a lot. The first indication was the Microsoft.com redesign which I noticed went to a much more minimal design than previously and was followed by redeisgns across most of the Microsoft websites. Next the Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 came out and notably has lost the ‘gloss’ of IE7. The  Windows Live wave 3 followed and introduced a similar but more toned-down interface with no icons and was predominantly white, finally the online services began to be updated and introduced a great new theme which can be seen here. The Microsoft Software + Services strategy website also got a nice minimal theme.

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Tags: apple, design, Google, microsoft, windows live
Categories: Windows