An animation student’s master thesis film, entitled Kiwi. The message is not only sweet, but the animation’s great as well, considering a single person did it all. Highly recommended!
Category Archives: Reviews
Reviews of products and services.
The Insider (1999)
The Insider (1999), is a thrilling, suspense-filled movie depicting the events that surrounded the 60 Minutes Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a former tobacco executive. He was the first to give public testimony that the addictive properties of nicotine were well known, and manipulated, inside tobacco companies.
I saw it last night, and it was my first time seeing it. All of the actors in it were really good. I understand that the movie fictionalized some of the events that took place, for dramatic effect, but the general gist of what went on is certainly portrayed.
This is a wonderful movie to watch, because it portrays one man’s struggle with his conscience. Should he do the right thing, and risk losing his job? Then, should he continue to do the right thing, and risk losing everything, including his family, and possibly incur jail time? Those were tough times for Dr. Wigand, and because he chose to do the right thing, people are much more aware of the negative health effects of nicotine. The backhanded tactics used by tobacco companies are now common knowledge, and consumers are safer because of it. Millions of people can probably thank him for motivating them to stop smoking, and this movie played no small part in that.
Update on Microsoft Expression Web Designer
It appears that Web Designer is part of a suite of apps that has yet to launch, called Microsoft Expression. It will contain three apps: Graphic Designer, Interactive Designer and Web Designer. Graphic Designer will be a marriage (in MS fashion) of Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop (we’ll see how well that comes out), Interactive Designer will be a UI design/destop app tool (it integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio), and Web Designer will of course go after Dreamwever, as detailed before, emphasizing the MS coding platforms (ASP, ASP.NET).
Graphic Designer and Interactive Designer are still in community edition (read flaky), and it looks like Interactive Designer will only work with .NET Framework 3.0 plus Visual Studio Express (at least). Web Designer is out in Beta and ready for download and use.
I have to ponder MS’ reach on this. They’re clearly building upon their strengths and going after their competitors, which is what they’ve always done, but to go after Photoshop and Dreamweaver is pretty lofty. Only time (and users) will tell whether they’ve managed to reach the target, or, in usual MS fashion, delivered something half-baked. Now we begin to see where all that R&D money went — it didn’t just go to Vista, it also went to stuff like this.
Three interesting downloads from Microsoft
Microsoft’s out to kick butt lately, and with these three downloads, it’s taking on three companies at once: Apple, Adobe and Intuit. Try them out, and judge how well Microsoftie’s doing in the fights:
- Windows Media Player 11: organized pretty much like iTunes, but with a leaner installer — iTunes weighs in at over 35 MB for the installer, and WMP11 is a featherweight at 24.5 MB.
- Microsoft Expression Web Designer (Beta): Dreamweaver, you bloated piece of software, here comes MS to kick you into shape! If you’re sick of 100% CPU overhead when synchronizing your sites with Dreamweaver, like I am, then give the Web Designer a go. You might find it tastes a bit like Equal, not sugar, but hey, anything to whip Adobe into shape, right? Oh, and the kicker: it opens .dwt files. Yup, you heard me right…
- Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 (Beta): Quickbooks, shake in your boots! This piece of software will let 1-person or small businesses do most of the things they could do in Quickbooks, and, they’ll be able to do them knowing an enterprise-level database is storing their data, not some Quickbooks proprietary format db. Yes, Office Account 2007 installs SQL Server 2005 Express. A reboot is needed as well after the install (b/c of SQL Server). Yes, it imports data from Quickbooks, and from MS Money.
Motorola's new, cheap cellphone
Motorola’s just come up with a very nice and thin cellphone that’s just that: a cellphone. It’s called the Motofone, and has no other features — no music player, no digital camera, no fancy gadgets, games, etc. It’s just a cellphone, and it looks really cool!
It’s getting billed as the “dumb phone” by folks in the media, but I think it’s a really smart choice on the part of Motorola. I for one have been asking for just such a device for over a year. They’re targeting this phone for developing countries, but I say bring it to the States, too! I’ve been waiting for it for some time, get it over here! And make it even smaller and “dumber” if possible. I’m sick of bulky devices. I just want a phone, credit-card thin if possible. That would make me very happy!
Raoul Pop 