At the Movies: The Social Network

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to see an early screening of The Social Network. I have to thank Loli for taking me, it was her advanced screening invite. I'm just going to make it a rule that anything that she invites me out to will be cool and awesome from this point forward. I have to say this is the first advanced screening that I've been do in my adult life, I saw Top Gun on NCAS Mirarmar, but that was a long time ago. We both got there a little later than we planned. I blame traffic, that shouldn't of been there in the first place. Boo traffic. When we finally did get into the lobby of the theater, we got stuck in the 2nd line. Yes, 2nd line. I wish we had known about the Yelp registration so we could of been seated with all of the other 1st liners. I would of blogged about this earlier, but they took our phones at the door and I came home to a kitchen full of ants and had to clean up, but here we go. I'm not going to be giving away too much of the movie by giving a synopsis. The Social Network is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires. This is the story of how Facebook came to be. Basically, Mark Zuckerberg creates Face Smash, a site that allows user to compare female students based on pictures from their school's online Face Books,  which will become the keystone to creating Facebook. Face Smash brings a lot of negative attention to Mark from the female student body and the Harvard administration. This notoriety is noticed by Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss and Divya Narendra who want to use Mark's talent to help create a dating website which caters to women who are interested in Harvard men. Mark uses the basis of this idea to begin work on creating Facebook with the financial backing of his friend Edwardo Saverin. As Facebook becomes more popular there are complications between Mark and Ed that leads to a lawsuit by Ed for control of the company as well and intellectual properties lawsuit by Tyler, Cameron, and Divya.

The format of this movie is from the prospective of Mark Zukerberg as he recalls the events he's being questioned about in 2 separate lawsuits. I find this to be an effective tool to justify the chopped up timeline. There were only a couple times when the quick cuts between lawsuits caused me to forget which group of lawyers he was talking to. The pace of this movie was very good. It moved very fast and did not leave you too much time to wonder what the score was for the Padre game. The writers did a good job of putting a great set of 1-liners in for all of the cast. This helped with the movie because, as the movie starts to become too serious, you get a great 1-liner to break it up. This made it more believable.

The Social Network portrays Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg') as a very intelligent man that lacks some of the social graces everyone wants him to have. Jesse Eisenberg does an excellent job or portraying  Mark as and ADHD genius and an outright dick. You're going to hate Mark a little as you watch the movie, which is good acting.  I have to say, I did feel some empathy toward the characterization because he is so intelligent but he doesn't have the patience to wait for people who are steps behind him. I think this is true with a lot of people with vision, they are challenged with the suffering of fools. I still think that Mark's Machiavellian tactics were borderline unethical, but you don't become a Billionaire CEO without making enemies along the way.

I was impressed by Andrew Garfield's Edwardo Saverin. You could see the progression from college dorm friend who has the startup money and business knowledge to help Mark with his idea to disgruntled friend as he's slowly pushed out from his seat as co-creator. Edwardo's story did not share the same screen time as Mark, but his was the true focus of the story. His character showed the most emotional content out of all of the characters. Brenda Song played Edwardo's girlfriend, Christy Lee. I was taken aback a little because I know her from the Disney Channel shows. I guess she has to make the change from Mickey Mouse Club to adult actor, and she picked a character that helped her get there.

Justin Timberlake plays the co-creator of Napster, Plaxo and Facebook, Sean Parker. Justin Timberlake's portrayal was good, but not excellent. I think I was influenced by the subject mater. Justin Timberlake does a fine job of being the flashy guy who, talks a lot of talk, is manipulative, and paranoid. There are times where I though his acting was forced, but how much more acting can you put behind, "...he's in the zone, that's what I'm talking about!", "...Take another bong hit.", and "...you need to come out to California. That's where it is." I was actually more irritated by Sean Parker's characterization that anyone else's in this film because he's just like Iago, from Othello, who's jealousy and manipulation does enough to latch onto Mark Zuckerberg and secure him part ownership of Facebook.

Armie Hammer's Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss was impressive. I honestly did not know it was the same actor. They did a great job on wardrobe and editing. The Winkelvoss's portrayal seemed like the classic "Jock" that had to be written in to intimidate the "Nerd". I wonder how much of this characterization is true to their real life personalities? Even though I realized this was going the way of the Revenge of the Nerds format, I wasn't swayed by the movie.

Overall, I recommend that you see this movie in the theaters. I think everyone should take the time to get a little history lesson on how Facebook came to be. I walked away with a better understanding of how Facebook came to be. I think I might even go out and get the book. I also wanted to delete my profile, but then, who does a better  job at social networking as Facebook. I realized that this is what the movie was about, how Mark Zuckerberg took something that was good at what it does and is cool and turn a profit out of it. He even has business cards that say, "I'm the CEO, bitch."

This movie won't disappoint, go see it. I actually want to see it again. I'll give it a 4 out of 5 (still haven't come up with a rating system...).

Additional Links:

The Social Network Official site - http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/

Wikipedia: The Social Network  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

The Accidental Billionaires - http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385529372.html

Wikipedia: Othello - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello

Review: iTunes Ping

So i downloaded iTunes 10 last night to play with the social networking component Ping. I didn't listen to the Apple Press Event yesterday so I didn't know what to think. I had this grand idea that it would integrate with all the other social networking sites that I frequent (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). I also though that it was kind of weird since there are existing online music sites that have integrated social networking and have a very mature model, like LastFM. I also thought to myself that this could be something huge with the 100 Million worldwide users of iTunes. That's a huge user base to start with! With that being said, there is a very high bar for Ping to at least get close to. In the few hours that I've had to play with Ping I have to say, I don't get it. What is the point to Ping? Upon activating Ping to my iTunes account the options are very rudimentary. Basic stuff about you and what picture you want to use as your avatar is available to you. If you have an acccount, you've been asked this a Million times over.

You are then asked a simple set of questions to gauge your musical tastes. Strike 1: I can only choose 3 genres of music I like.  I"m very eclectic with my choice in music. This does not set well with me.  Strike 2: When asked what albums to represent the music I like, I'm limited to 10 items. This DOES allow me to get past the 3 genres failure, but I'm going to need more than a couple minutes to define myself with 10 albums. To some audiophiles, this is going to take more than a couple minutes.

Getting past the account creation part, I'm still confused by the use. In my opinion there aren't enough people that are registered on the site to get any value. I THINK the point is to find like minded people who are making reviews on the music they purchase via iTunes and befriend them because they have similar musical tastes as I do. Since the release last night, none of my Real Life friends are not on. I value their input 1st before some random person I met on the interwebs.

Getting past the Friend finder, I attempt to register for a couple artists that I want to follow. I start off with their suggestion for Dave Mathews Band. Hey, Under The Table Dreaming, was like the anthem to my 1995. My knee-jerk response is, this has potential. I can see some simple posts by the band about Tours, Music, and Videos from the band and comments from their fans. Honestly, most of the posts are pictures from their current tour. OK, this is starting to look like all the other social networking sites now.  It even has it's own comment bombers that want to peddle their get-rich-quick schemes. I followed Jack Johnson as Ping suggested and I see several comments to his posts about how to get a free iPhone.

In my few hours of exposure to this feature of iTunes, I'm at a lose of how they are going to bring something new to the social networking environment. As I mentioned before there are several existing behemoths that do this job well. I'm reminded of LastFM and their format. They allow their users to discover new music, follow the artists tour schedules and even has a wiki like interface for fans to dump their knowledge about the band. LastFM also allows the users to listen for free. Apple, why didn't you just partner with them? There's an existing user base with lots of content?

That brings me to my point; this experiment into social networking via iTunes brings no value add for me. I've already spent the time on other sites like Facebook's Liked pages, MySpace Music, and LastFM to want to recreate in Ping. The current Ping user base is not very helpful and the artists that are using it are few. I think Ping might have some growing up to do before it becomes useful. I think I"ll let it sit for a month and come back to it and see what it's become.

Additional Links:

iTunes Ping: http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/

LastFM: http://www.last.fm/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/

MySpace Music: http://www.myspace.com/music

Twitter: http://twitter.com/

Dave Mathews Band: http://www.davematthewsband.com/

Jack Johnson: http://jackjohnsonmusic.com/

The Question: To Buy or Not To Buy, the iPhone 4 - Part 1: Hardware

Here's the article about my internal debate with trying to buy into the Apple's new iPhone 4.  Elijah has been pestering me for a while to start writing for his site; I guess persistence is the key, because here I am writing my first article. Readers: please be gentle with me, it's my first time.

I have a few hesitations with just going to the store and demanding the new iPhone 4, ignoring the fact that I wouldn't be able to do that with the inventory shortages.  So here we go with Part 1: Hardware.

#1: Hardware

I've read enough articles on Gizmodo, Engadget and various other Tech Blogs to know that that the guts of the new iPhone are better than the 3Gs, but I'm still not impressed by it.

-Camera -

Lets start with the 5.0 mega-pixel camera. I know that I should be excited about this, but it feels like we're adding something to the iPhone that probably should of be replaced by some better devices features. When I think of the all the additional mega-pixels that I can add to my sub-par photography skills, it seems like a waste because these pictures will be posted to  Facebook in all its glorious 530x660 maximum resolution. See, with Facebook albums, you are only looking at that small picture. At that resolution, I can't tell the difference if the picture was taken with a 5.0 Mega-pixel iPhone 4 or a 3.0 Mega-pixel 3Gs. Moving away from Facebook, what would I do with those high resolution pictures? Nothing. When I get an urge to look back at pictures of all the fun times I've had, I look at the pictures online to never print them out on a photo printer or edit it in Photoshop. Again, what would I need all those mega-pixels for?

I'm a normal every day user. It seems to me that an internal projector or an actual zoom lenses should of been added to it. Think of the implications of having a projector available to you. Imagine that you are in a meeting and you have a PowerPoint that you want to show the return on investments for your project. Awesome, you just made your company a ton of money using your iPhone. Getting back to the camera, if you have a physical zoom lenses then those pictures would make more sense to me. I hate trying to pinch-zoom for a software zoom on your picture. It seems like cheating and not a good idea in the long run.

-Antenna-

There are a lot of articles and videos documenting the iPhone 4 FAILtenna.  Documenting my frustrations with this would be like shooting fish in a barrel, therefore, I'm not going to get into details about it.  I like the idea of integrating the antenna into the chassis of the device thus adding more space to implement more tech particularly the larger battery.  I just don't get how it made it through QA without someone noticing the "Death Grip feature."  Maybe that's exactly what it is, an undocumented feature.  This could be a new game that was installed with the phone so you don't have to purchase anything though the iTunes Apps Store.  Just knowing that this is still a known issue that's probably software related, creates doubt in my mind about buying a new iPhone.  In the videos that I've seen, that's exactly how I normally grip my phone if I'm looking up something on the go. So this brings me to my next subject, chassis because the workaround for the FAILtenna is put a rubber band around your iPhone so you don't complete the circuit between the WiFi and Cell antennas.

-Chassis-

I like the look of the new iPhone 4, but I'm pretty rough on my phones so an all glass enclosure scares me.  I normally carry my phone in my back pocket because I've grown out of wanting to clip my phone to my belt like it was a Peace Maker and I'm about to get into a gunfight at the O.K. Coral.  I know that I could buy a case to protect it, but isn't that deterring from all the time the designers and engineers spent on developing such a nice looking chassis?  That would be like saying the Venus de Milo is a great piece of art, but since it's no longer structurally sound, we're going to spray it with a layer of rubber around it so that it doesn't further deteriorate.  It's just cheating.  I'll admit, I have a case for my 3GS so, I'm not stranger to cases but that's to cover a metal backing that get scratched up, not a "unbreakable" glass backing.

Bottom line, I still have hesitations about the Apple's new iPhone 4.  I probably will buy one, eventually, but these are some of the things that I think about.  Sorry about the random string of thoughts but it's my first blog.  More to come so stay tuned and keep reading adellelijah!