Day: 25 March 2011

Color photosharing with people around you

I know its hugely unpopular but I actually quite like the idea of color the proximity photosharing application. I’ve not really played with it yet because I’m out of space once again on my HTC desire. But to be fair the user reviews are very telling…

What the hell do the buttons mean cool concept. Was all over the news yet for millions in funding yet very confusing. Add some descriptions PLEASE!!! – Ray (1 star)

The interface is simple, lacking any real functionality. Theres not even an option to exit, you need to go through and manually kill the program. – Zach (1 star)

I was confused at first but totally understand it now! I actually just had a fun conversation with people in the next office building, through pictures!! I have a feeling the Android version has less feature than the iPhone versions though – I can’t seem to find where to go to share the photos! – Eric (4 stars)

Oh well… Nice concept but maybe terrible excursion by color labs (why the bloody hell are we using the american wording!) Out of all the locational based systems this one has me the most interested…

Paramount goes with no DRM bittorrent distribution

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while but…

In a little over two months time, the long-awaited horror movie The Tunnel will receive its world premiere. Rather than a traditional theatrical release, the movie – which is set in abandoned real-life tunnels under Sydney, Australia – will make its debut online for free with BitTorrent. Simultaneously it will be released on physical DVD, to be distributed by Hollywood giant Paramount Pictures.

I almost fell off my chair when I heard the news that Paramount will be releasing the Tunnel for free on bit torrent with no DRM of any kind!

No matter what the film is like, Paramount and the guys behind the tunnel have basically won. A film which would have gone straight to DVD somewhere in a junk bin somewhere could just have been elevated to the most downloaded movie of May (maybe).

Someone in Paramount must have done the maths…

The movie budget was $135000 and to be honest any film will easily eat that for a worldwide publicity. On top of that, its a small risk. The copyright owners (the team who created the film keep the copyright and are licensing it to Paramount) have created something which looks like a cross between Blair witch project and Creep so its got limited mainstream appeal. In actual fact, it would have made more sense of films like FAQ: about time travel would have blown away everything else if they had choose to do release in the same way. I also wonder if the process can be popular enough to get stuff back into the cinemas? Bit like my experience of Donnie Darko.

Paramount gets a Kudos +1 from me…