Archive for November 2008

Yes we can!

November 5, 2008 inspiration No comments

Barack Obama already made history winning an election against all odds.
I can only wonder where he’ll end up with the power of a nation behind.

Every since the very first day I heard Barack Obama speak that I believed in him. It’s just one of those things,  he has that special something that I can’t explain. He’s a gifted charismatic speaker, with the right words at the right time. I’m so far away and even I believe in him and every single speach seems to bring a tear to my eyes.

And the funny thing is that as I heard CNN yesterday the commentators were all saying “it will look very strange to our european friends how we could change so dramatically from republicans to democrats” and as they said that I could only think “how the hell did you allow Bush to do another 4 years?”

I stayed awake until 6am because I wanted to hear both speeches live.
John McCain is a very honorable man and he gave a beautiful defeat speech. Even in defeat he was calling all to forget about the losing and to help rebuild the nation. It takes a lot to do that in a time like that and for that he has my unconditional respect.

The victory speech of Obama said it all. Instead of “thank you all” it seemed that he was already working on rebuilding the nation. I almost forgot he’s only taking office on January the 20th.

So this European is very happy and I believe that the vast majority of the world population is and should be very happy. I think that if there was something like a World leader this would be the guy I would vote for.

And as I think about it I can’t help to think that this will be a good thing. He can be the world healer and represent a real change in the way we look at politicians, America and the world itself.

He seems to have all that it takes, a little bit of JF Kennedy with a bit of Martin Luther King.

So mark my words: this guy can very well be “the guy who changed the world”.

Barack Obama… make us proud.

PS: Some amazing pictures of the next president of United States of America can be seen here.

Dear IMBD

November 1, 2008 Sites 3 comments

This is a little advice I would like to give to you.

You are, by my standards, the “best” movie site/aplication on-line.
For me you are as good for static movie info as google is for searching stuff.

And although you have a pretty rudimentary voting system it does the trick for me. And as I don’t have that much time to go to the cinema, my decision process usually takes me there to check “scores” and then deciding which movie to go. And I’ve also done this by mobile while buying movies I’ve never heard of.

Nevertheless, there are a few things you’re just missing.
I’m not an actor, I don’t aspire to be one nor I care about having my resume there (I have Linkedin for that).

So here’s what I see from my perspective…

Your (lousy) Interface

Your interface just plain sucks. There you have it. It’s so fuc*ing useless.
Whenever I go to your site I totally ignore the top, left and right content of your site.
I’ve been using it for years and the only things I really use are the search and the movie info.
So why don’t you invest a little on making this a better experience for me?
Am I the only one that sees this?

Someday and just for kicks I’ll make you a drawing on how it could be.
(Hint: I go there to see movie info)

Let’s get Social already

This one is getting so fuc*ing obvious that it almost pains me to have to say it. Why … oh why don’t you have a social network?
And I don’t mean to your main core business (?) of movie professionals but to the average John Doe like me.

You could help create a community instead of simply have unrelated registered users.
I would like to see what movies my friends rate and who hasn’t still seen “that” movie instead of calling all of them to see who want’s to go see it. I would also like to see who has the movie on dvd that I haven’t seen. And I would like to see it on the movie page.

(Hint: how long will you stay in web 1.0?)

My movie list

Why in the hell would I lose my time and add my 724+ dvd movie list one by one?
Is it that hard allow me to upload somehow my movie list?

And then, even if I did, having seen hundreds of movies … How am I or anyone supposed to find them on “MyMovies” without a search function? And what’s up with that interface?

How about some degree of integration with your mommy Amazon? If I buy it there… couldn’t I import it somehow? And since we’re on it … why can’t I import my Amazon movie listings?

I don’t really see where you’re trying to go with this.

(Hint: ever heard of Ajax? Web 2.0?)

Blog integration tools

This is another one. You really could lose those horrible flash blog integration tools and do something better. Really: they … suck … big … time!

I’m sorry to say it but for me…  you really don’t get it. And it’s not like there aren’t good examples out there.

(Hint: ever heard of javacript? php? whatever?)

One aditional feature

One thing that I really think that is overlooked are actors roles. Why? Well there simply isn’t any rating system out there. So why don’t you help us out and create an individual actor ratings movie by movie? Now there’s something that would be very cool.

A movie can be bad and still have an amazing performance.

(Hint: Are the oscars fair? IMDb awards?)

Open up and let me in baby

Well … if you don’t wanna do it then at least let us John Does do it.
Why don’t you provide us with an API? Haven’t you seen it?
Everyone else is doing it and the world instead of stopping … it evolved further.

Bottom line

You are already a big company and a reference online … but you could be so much more.

(Hint: The day you decide to create an API will be a memorable one.)