Let's be clear on this, I love Grooveshark. I have professed my love several times on this blog, and I've championed it to the extent that quite a few people have signed up and paid for the yearly membership [SORRY]. The promise of Grooveshark was to give me easy access to the music I love, anytime, anywhere. This has been broken lately.

Duplicates of songs and albums, incomplete listings and ID3 information. I noticed these blemishes long ago, but hey, no one's perfect, and the relationship had way more ups than downs; platform independence, access anywhere, and a shared collection of music. Its ease of use was unparalleled, and it wasn't that much of a stretch to cobble an album or playlist together.

Grooveshark has always skirted a legal grey area, but as of late, their legal woes have caught up with them. All four major record labels are suing them, and its outright blocked in Germany, last I heard. I haven't bothered reading up on whatever other troubles they're in.

And then songs started disappearing.

I'd open up a playlist, and track 4 would be missing. No bother, I'll go search for the song. Oh, the song doesn't exist anywhere on Grooveshark. That took it from inconvenience to annoyance.

Last week, I opened Grooveshark, eager to play Destroyer's Kaputt [amazing album, by the way!]. It was gone. All of it. 

Coincidentally, I was trying out the Rdio Android app, and thought since I've got the 7 day unlimited trial, I'll open up the website.

I searched for "kaputt", and was shocked to see just one album listing, and a complete one at that. Yes, this simple given for any of you came as a pleasant surprise to me.

I played the album in its entirety, at 320kbps, with the blessing of the record company. Amazing! Is this how an affair feels? Ok, I really shouldn't have attempted to weave this analogy through the post...

To Grooveshark (aka soundtrack madness) is my greatest creation on Grooveshark. A 1141 song franken-playlist of musicals and soundtracks. I won't be able to recreate this on Rdio. Then again, most of the OSTs that I do listen to on there on a regular basis are on Rdio.

See where my mind is at, and how I'm justifying the breakup in every paragraph? Yeh, I think I've just about left.

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What a strange, delightful feeling it is returning somewhere that's so familiar, but so different at the same time. Hell, even the name of the darn city's changed; "Bengaluru" just doesn't sound right. Yet.

Clearing customs and what not at the airport was surprisingly quick, calm and organised. Step out the door of the airport though, and the chaos and cacophony of Bangalore greets you warmly!

The drive to Malleshwaram [where I stayed this first night] didn't take too long considering the sea of cars that have engulfed Bangalore's roads. There's a chorus of a million beeping horns, and it's almost part of the driving routine here. Check your mirror, check your surroundings, constantly listen and beep away, almost saying, "hey, I'm here!". Brake lights and the physical presence of a car don't seem to cut it with the mix of pedestrians, cyclists, motorbikes, animals, cars and trucks. Lane markings exist, but aren't abided by, and people have developed a keen spatial sense based on hearing. 

Intersections without traffic lights, of which there are a great many, are another fun part of driving in Bangalore. It becomes a test of reading the other drivers and oncoming traffic, and a game of chicken. Everyone edges slowly towards the middle of the intersection from all 4 sides, and eventually, a few vehicles just speed up, either because they're in a bigger vehicle, or they're more daring. It's nerve-racking to say the least, and you have to trust the driver, but God knows how someone passes a driving test here! How there aren't accidents at every street corner is a miracle. 

"Fly overs" are all over the place, and for every new one you see, there are three more in development, in an attempt to alleviate the traffic woes. The Bangalore Metro is also slowly getting off the ground, with a small section up and running now. The success of this rail system within the city is the only hope of traffic not getting progressively worse.

Basically everyone has a mobile phone. To hundreds of millions of people here, it's their first computer. It's a computer that they can afford, and it is more than capable for what they need of it. Walk into a mall and you'll see 10-12 mobile phone shops, half of which are exclusively selling Samsung products. Walk along a commercial street and you'll see one every 150-200m. It's mind boggling. And the main selling points? Facebook and group messaging.

I'd read about mobile banking being big here, but its innovative uses, especially SMS-based, are fantastic. One particular scenario that astounded me:

A person pays someone X Rs by only inputting their mobile phone number. Said person receives a code via SMS, walks up to an ATM, enters the code, and they get their money. No need for a card or anything!

The influx of wealth through IT has seen a westernisation of Bangalore that is mind boggling. My once quiet suburb of JP Nagar is overflowing with shops and gigantic malls, but poverty is still rife, and so harshly juxtaposed with the wealth. You'll be walking along a dirt-clogged road with stray dogs, a goat and a cow or two, with people living in temporary "houses" the size of a large kennel that look like they're ready to blow over at any second.

Walk a few metres further, and you'll step inside a wonderland that is comparable to any mall in Sydney or Melbourne, filled with people that are spending big. Staff waiting on you hand and foot, and you have access to anything you'd want. I went to a bar called Skye Bar and my mind was blown. It was thriving on a Thursday night and looked like the damn Ivy! The exception being that I could tell a bartender to pour three shots of rum into an Old Fashioned I specified the making of to the nth degree.

Cars, shops, bars and malls pouring out onto the streets, with absolutely no consideration for parking! This kind of madness isn't sustainable or scalable, but so many people here are living day to day. They don't care what happens to this city in 5 years of 50; all they want is to be able to afford their next meal and feed their family.

Some things haven't changed a bit though. The food is still as amazingly cheap and delicious as I remember it, and I gorged on it like there was no tomorrow. For 10 days in a row. Meat dishes are the exception on any menu, if they exist at all, and being spoilt for choice was a most welcome change. I was tempted to order a mushroom risotto from the one Italian restaurant I went to, but decided against it.  

All in all, a short, sweet, eye-opening, fattening trip!

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Sigh. I was rather enjoying my Monday until I read this infuriating piece by Alexia Tsotsis over on TechCrunch - I’d Rather Watch Instagram Than A Movie.

The basis of the comparison? Attention. The basis of the preference? Simplicity and relatability.

The appeal of Instagram is, for lack of a better word, simple; the world is moving too damn fast and we don’t want the cognitive load of figuring out what we’re looking at — we just want to see simple pretty things. This simplicity is what makes services like Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest a joy versus other entertainment offerings.

The truth is that on any given day, I’d rather check in on Instagram then watch a movie.

Call me a snob, but I feel sorry for the simple mind that can equate one form of attention to another so easily, and put it down to "killing time". It is total underappreciation for film as an artform.

Why pay $10 to commit to watching something in a theatre when you can watch it at home for much less with the added bonus of being able to check your email? 

Checking your email during a movie is not a bonus. A good movie, and believe me, there are plenty of them out every year, is escapism at its best. A good movie has you lost in its world, characters, stories and emotions. A good movie leaves a lasting impression on you, and is something that can be discussed endlessly, watched over and over, with the possibility of deriving further, or alternate meanings.

Why the hell would you want to check your email during this? Sounds like addiction or ADHD. No no, wait, it's some sort of entertainment inhaler.

And, why even bother spending two hours of your time sitting and absorbing a complex narrative that isn’t connected to you, when you can pop open your iPhone and get a quick hit of rarefied entertainment from people you actually know — who you can actually relate to as opposed to just project on.

A quick hit of rarefied entertainment from someone I know has nowhere near the value of the connection and impact a movie can have.

Knowing someone does not equate to relating to them, and one form of attention does not equate to another. I want my attention to be commanded for more than 15 seconds at a time. I want my mind to be challenged. I don't want my entertainment to just be "simple".

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This post from tnl.net, entitled Where the hits are streaming in 2011 was a real eye-opener, and one that I first heard on TWiT 336.

For each movie of the top 100 movies at the box office, I pulled data on for stream­ing info on Net­flix, Ama­zon on Demand, iTunes, and Vudu. I also pulled up avail­abil­ity of DVDs to use as a yard­stick in terms of over­all movie avail­abil­ity.

Only 4 of the top 50, and 5 of the top 100 movies of last year are on Netflix. That statistic blew my mind. I'm not sure why I had the perception of Netflix that I did, but with a huge disparity in a ~$8 subscription model versus the on-demand, per-movie pricing that Amazon, iTunes and Vudu offer, it becomes a "well, duh" moment.

It might well be because of the reports and blog posts that constantly float out hailing Netflix as the reason movie piracy is diminishing, when in fact it's these Hollywood blockbuster movies that are the ones being heavily pirated.

Amazon, iTunes and Vudu are pretty much on par with each other, with DVDs still getting the most love, obviously. It's so cute to see the studios still trying to hold on to their soon to be archaic formats.

What is interesting, as the author mentions in the comments, is that the DVD numbers are actually from Netflix, making the disparity even more jarring. It also potentially adds some credence to their ill-fated decision and back flip on breaking out their DVD and streaming services as two separate businesses.

I don't know what's happened to Spotify as of late, but it seems like they made subscription-based music mainstream, and I'm *guessing* if a similar analysis was done on the top 100 albums of last year, there wouldn't be a huge disparity between their model, and the likes of iTunes, Amazon, and CD sales.

Is it just a delayed timeframe for these movies making it onto Netflix? The author says he'll look into which of the 2010 top 100 is now on Netflix, which'll be interesting to see.

Who knows how long it'll take for the subscription model to catch up with movies, re: catalogue.

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I'm trying something new this year. I've traditionally ranked my end of year list top to bottom, and it's been incredibly difficult, not to mention a false, unfair measure. This year, I'm grouping them by star-rating.

I've been using Flixster for the past 1.5 years, but this year, I've made a conscious effort—for every movie I've seen this year that's in Flixster's database—to add a star rating, and write a review; be it a sentence or a rare, wordy exposition. Note that this will also contain random, older movies I've seen at home, etc throughout the year.

One thing I'm noticing now is how extremely difficult it has been for me to award something 5 stars. It's silly in retrospect, but shows I don't completely believe in my ratings, or am afraid to say, "hey, I think this is worth 5 stars and found basically nothing I didn't love about it". Considering the extremely subjective nature of it all, I don't know why, so I'll have to normalise some of that now.

On the flipside to that, you'll also notice how rather positive I am with my ratings in general, because, heck, I love my movies, dammit! At least in the context of everything else on here, it can be taken as relative.

Oh, and just to clarify, these are movies I've seen at the cinemas in the year of 2011, in Australia and Austin, during SXSW. While looking back, I was surprised that some of these weren't 2010 releases, but then remembered Australia's backward nature in receiving them.

I've written a relatively large amount about movies in 2011 across Twitter, posts on this blog, Flixster, and the /r/movies subreddit, so this is simply going to be a list.

Here they are, grouped by star-rating out of 5, and alphabetically within the groupings.

A Separation

Black Swan

Le Quattro Volte

Midnight in Paris

Senna

Take Shelter

The Tree of Life

Warrior

We Need to Talk About Kevin

127 Hours

Apart

Barney's Version

Drive

Incendies

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Never Let Me Go

Project Nim

Rabbit Hole

Submarine

Super 8

The Beaver

The Hunter

The Ides of March

The Skin I Live In

13 Assassins

Armadillo

Attack the Block

Bill Cunningham New York

blacktino

Burning Man

Contagion

Fast Five

Hanna

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

Hobo With a Shotgun

Jane Eyre

Kumaré

Lebanon

Life in a Day

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Meek's Cutoff

Melancholia

Moneyball

My Afternoons with Marguerite

Natural Selection

Secretariat

Snowtown

Somewhere

Tangled

The Adventures of Tintin

The Forgiveness of Blood

The Lincoln Lawyer

Thor

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

True Grit

Tyrannosaur

Wasted on the Young

X-Men: First Class

Beginners

Biutiful

Black Venus (Venus Noire)

Captain America: The First Avenger

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Hereafter

Horrible Bosses

Paul

Red State

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Sound of My Voice

Sleeping Beauty

Tabloid

The Adjustment Bureau

The Debt

The Eye of the Storm

The Fighter

The Green Hornet

The Guard

Unstoppable

A Year in Mooring

Cowboys and Aliens

Battle: Los Angeles

Happy, Happy

Insidious

Real Steel

Source Code

Sucker Punch

Terri

The Hangover Part II

Toomelah

Arthur

Bridesmaids

Ceremony

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Tourist

Unknown

In Time

Limitless

Green Lantern

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I live in an unbelievably large technology bubble. I'm rather happy living in it, and haven't stepped out of it for a while. A couple of days ago, I momentarily did, through the lens of my mother; it was hilarious.

To cut a long story short, we were looking for a new TV, went to Harvey Norman [oh, the irony] and bought the thing. We were told there was a warehouse a few kilometres away where we needed to pick it up and given an address.

As we got in the car, my mother started rifling through the glove compartment and back seats, and worridly said, "I can't find the street directory. How are we going to get there?". If I was in a TV show, I might have said something like, "two words, Google Maps". Good lord, that sounds corny.

Ahem, anyway, I entered the address into Google Maps ["oh, you're calling someone to ask for directions?"], and that lovely British accent started telling us where to go. I handed the phone to her and said, "just hold this, it'll tell you where to go". Suffice it to say, she was astounded.

We get back home, and the first thing she says to my father is, "do you know his phone just tells him where to go? He'll never be lost with that thing".

It really is as simple as that. Google Maps is my favourite travel accessory. I was in New York earlier this year, and the transit directions helped me navigate an unfamiliar public transport system with ease. Clearly I've taken it for granted, but seeing someone experience its magic for the first time was fun!

Then of course the TV's set up, and she asks, "can you watch those TV shows from your computer on this now?". Gosh, I hadn't even thought that far ahead.

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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. An IMAX marvel of breathtaking, beautifully constructed action sequences and ingenious use of field tech!

Tom Cruise is so meant for this role that it's ridiculous. His physique, intensity and willingness to put his own body at risk are only magnified by the IMAX screen and Brad Bird's wonderful direction. You've all seen the scene in the trailer with the craning shots atop the Burj Khalifa, but they don't prepare you for half the beauty and thrill you'll experience. 

The technology used by the IMF agents in the field is constantly worth marvelling. There's a scene early on in the film involving a holographic moving hallway that is absolute genius! I was laughing continuously for a good two minutes, in awe of what was happening, and didn't for one second question the validity of it. Similarly, the augmented reality contacts or the throwing of a USB drive on a Surface-like interface with instant reading aren't a huge stretch, but they're used so well. Printing into that suitcase though, amazing! I can't remember the last time spy technology has stood out in such a big way.

The Kremlin, the Burj Khalifa the faux exchange, the sandstorm chase, the vertical rotating car park. All clever, fun, thrilling sequences.

Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton turn in solid performances, and Simon Pegg consistently brings the humour. Even the fleeting glances of Josh Holloway indicated that he's ready for a big action adventure role. The only sour point was a very WTF Anil Kapoor, playing some sort of sex-crazed, pathetic dialogue spewing Indian playboy. How or why he agreed to play the role he did, especially the manner in which he had to portray himself, I have no idea. It wasn't worth the money or fame, dude.

I read just now that the running time is 2 hours and 13 minutes, and believe me, you don't feel it for a second. Brad Bird's foray into the live-action world of Hollywood is off to a spectacular start, and I can't wait to see where he goes next. As for Ethan Hunt and the crew, I'm pretty sure they have a mission or two left in them, with this no doubt being the high point of the franchise to date.

Oh, and please, see it in IMAX!

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Well, this post by Min Ming on Android UI fragmentation has certainly been doing the rounds today, and while there is no doubt that UI fragmentation across Android, and even some of their Google-branded offerings exists, instead of looking at how it's headed in a positive direction, the post chose to pick on some disparate cases. Hey, it wasn't made up, and the point stands, but below are how the core Google apps in Ice Cream Sandwich are doing things right in terms of unification, and setting a standard developers and UI dudes and dudettes can certainly use as examples.

By the way, Google, you can do SO MUCH MORE to make things easy for developers in providing some rigid guidelines, and ultimately, for your end users, getting accustomed to a consistent experience across the OS and applications. I mean, really, how hard is it to set up some UI patterns like Android Patterns.

Click to embiggen images! This reduced size view does their gloriousness no justice.

Tabs

The More icon AKA the new Menu

The action bar may sit at the top or bottom (called the Split Action Bar when at the bottom) dependent on the use case of the app, but the more icon remains the same; a vertical ellipsis. Granted, this works because of the presence of purely virtual buttons, essentially removing the Menu button, and the hit or miss guessing game users played by tapping it and wondering if anything else was hidden from them.

The action bar

The search bar

Actually, I realised that @meinhyperspeed's post on UI patterns and elements of Ice Cream Sandwich will help crystallise things too.

Maybe I'll do a part two to cover the rest, but I hope you get the point.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Nick Butcher from Google for providing some further clarify over on G+.

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After what seemed like eons, I finally got a Galaxy Nexus in my hand, and I can safely say that this is a most triumphant marriage of hardware and software!

To be honest, I actually haven't done a lot with the phone, and apart from reaching for the Menu button in the first few minutes, I feel completely at home. Everything looks a little different, and in some cases, more than a little different, but in every case, as of now anyway, it's for the better.

I'll save the screenshot walkthrough for another time, but I've got some of the new Gmail app over on Android niceties.

The screen / The phone

I was a little weary of the gigantic nature of this screen, but it sits surprisingly comfortably, even in my miniature hands, and is super light. The display just pops, and I've been staring at it non-stop for the last 3 hours in admiration.

Ice Cream Sandwich

I love the virtual, on-screen buttons! They appear when need be, and emit a satisfying glow when touched. Speaking of satisfying glow, the pulsating notification when the screen is locked is something I'm happy to see back on an Android phone!

The new Gmail app is a pleasure to use, particularly the simple swiping between older and newer emails.

I keep dragging the notification bar up and down, because it looks so darn good. The swipe-to-remove gesture works a treat in managing notifications, keeping the ones you want up there, and clearing the rest.

The lockscreen, with its beckoning, expanding arcs to either unlock the phone or move to the camera looks great.

Being able to hold, drag and uninstall an application directly from the app drawer is full of win.

Resizable widgets combined with the new Google Calendar widget means I can say farewell to Calendr, and get more out of the widget.

The home screens turning into a subtle grid to allow you to assess your screen real estate when placing apps or widgets is handy.

The entire Google Calendar interface has changed completely, and pinch-zooming in and out to change the view of a day is very nifty.

All the apps I used work seamlessly on Ice Cream Sandwich, so I haven't run into any compatibility issues as of yet.

Lots of lovely little UI transitions spread across Ice Cream Sandwich!

EVERYTHING IS BUTTERY SMOOTH.

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I'm not a gamer by any means, but one thing that dawned on me this morning is the love affair I've had with 2D platformers.

What is it about them?

They're so simple in their controls, but provide an unparalleled amount of exhiliration, frustration and reward. The precarious wait, counting in your head, analysing the moving parts, looking for the obstacles, and then, JUMP! It's magical.

I've been racking my brain, trying to think of the first 2D platformer I played, and I just can't, but one that I had fond memories of, and came preloaded with the first computer we owned—a mighty 286—is Joe & Mac.

I played this game to death, and thought it was pretty much the greatest thing ever.

Alex Kidd, Wonder Boy, Sonic, Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country, Lode Runner, Earthworm Jim, Abe's Odyssey. A 286, a Master System, a NES, a Gameboy, a Pentium 75, a Playstation.

Ah, nostalgia, you wonderful thing.

There were no doubt countless others I played. But then it stopped. For a good decade I don't think I touched a platformer. Then I discovered Braid recently.

Braid made me fall in love with the genre again. It might have a few more bells and whistles than your standard platformer, but it is pure genius, and a visual delight.

Braid gave me the kick I needed, and I went back to playing the original Donkey Kong, just, in a browser window this time :/

I started scouring the net for platformers, and stumbled across Super Meat Boy. *sigh*

I really tried to play Super Meat Boy. It was way too unforgiving a game though, or maybe I just lost the patience and skill. I last played it January this year, but dammit if this speed run below doesn't make you sit back and smile in admiration!

You'd think after my failed Super Meat Boy experiment, I'd settle for something simpler. Nope. Recently, I've been playing VVVVVV.

VVVVVV has a nice, sadistic statistic telling you how many times you've died while playing the game. My last count, 3 hours or so into the game, was ~800.

Talk about depressing.

Yet I persist with this darn game! It offers just enough hope, and though you may die a good 30 times in a couple of minutes, you can come back to it the next day and get past it. Well, that's how it's been up until now anyway... I really do hope I can finish VVVVVV at least, and maybe that'll give me the confidence to play Super Meat Boy again.

And what inspired the writing of this post? The newest addition to my platformer bookshelf - LIMBO. Thanks for describing it so wonderfully and getting me to buy it, Harry Mann!

Doesn't it look amazing?! Can't wait to play it.

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The Commonwealth Bank launched Kaching today.

You'll see quite a few comments in that thread—including my fail—questioning why there wasn't an Android release, or when it was coming, and CBA responded in that thread, and Andrew Lark replied to me on Twitter saying...

...coming soon. Will launch at same time or close to Apple version. We are committed to both.

I was sated. To be fair, they also mentioned that 91% of mobile visits are from iPhone and Android, of which 79% are from the iPhone. This will change over time, but is a rather compelling argument to go iPhone first.

Then I started reading ZDNet's Inside CommBank's Kaching post, and the page on Android confused me.

Emphasis added [poorly] is mine.

Lark said that while the Kaching! app is also being developed from the ground up for Android (rather than an iOS app ported across), the bank has no plans to develop an NFC-capable case for the Android contingent.

He did say, however, that the Commonwealth Bank had met with Google, who indicated a native NFC chip to be used by the bank would be ready within 12 months, at which time Lark hopes to have a partnership on the way for Google's Wallet product.

"We hope [to partner with Google Wallet]. We were up in Silicon Valley last week talking to Google," Lark said, adding that "there's a lot of hype around Google Wallet, but it really does depend heavily on the NFC element in the device. The reality is that they're testing that in the US now in a limited way, and testing in one or two European markets in a very limited way. Where Australia will sit on their test list, who knows?"

"The critical mythology in the market today is that all these Android phones in the market today have NFC chips in them. They actually have 'dumb' chips in them, and Google, based on what we've seen so far, doesn't look like they'll be in the market for at least 12 months with an NFC-enabled phone.

"It's not enough to have the chip in it; you have to have it enabled, and the 'secure element' has to be available to us as an institution so we can turn it on for you," he said.

So, no plans for an NFC-capable case. All good, they'll use the native NFC chips that are available in some Android phones, and go with some sort of sticker approach for the rest?

But, uh, what? The current NFC chips won't work? It's 12 months away from being ready? Do I need to buy a new phone and chip in a year for it to work? What exactly does this mean?

Will the Android Kaching app feature NFC in the next year at all?

Maybe I'm just misreading it all, but some clarification would be nice.

UPDATE:

Yep, NFC capabilities for the Android version of Kaching are more than likely a year away.

Also, see @chestmer8's explanation in the comments below on why this could be the case.

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That was a fun hour! Live-tweeting the Ice Cream Sandwich live stream, thanks to good ol' YouTube!

Overall, there is a LOT more polish, everything works incredibly speedily, and the native UI looks and feels better in a million different ways. Stop putting your stupid skins over it, manufacturers; you can't improve on this.

The Galaxy Nexus looks quite Nexus S-like. 4.65 inch super AMOLED WTFBBQ gorgeous screen, 1280x720 native resolution, 4G / LTE capable, and 3 virtual, on-screen (anchored at the bottom) buttons replacing the physical hardware ones.

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)

• Left and right swipe gestures across the OS acting as a discard mechanism
• Notifications looking better, accessible from the lock-screen, and individual ones removed via said gesture above
• Facial recognition unlock. Failed in the demo, and seems like novelty value to be honest. Could lead to a phone potentially being called racist!
• Browser gets a huge upgrade, and is officially Chrome now. Integration with your desktop Chrome browser, offline reading, and up to 16 tabs
• Gmail for Android was always impressive, but it's looking even better. Offline search for the previous 30 days is a nice bonus
• The calendar gets a UI bump
• Native Google app widgets are resizable, and much more functional (especially Gmail)
• Crazy granular app data usage management within Settings, basically waving Onavo goodbye
• Super-fast photo capture via the improved camera, panorama mode, time lapse video support
• In-gallery photo editor with corrections and filters
• Sharing between apps was always deeply integrated with Intents, but is looking smoother
• The 'People' app looks like its borrowed from Windows Phone 7, and is an evolution of Contacts combined with a social stream that pulls in from a variety of sources
• Visual voicemail integrated nicely into the Phone app
• Android Beam. Simple NFC-based sharing of basically anything. Tap the phones together, tap the screen (whether you're in an app or viewing a link in a browser or a photo) and boom, it's done
• Voice typing. Forgot about the insta-dictation voice-to-text input.
• Deep Google+ integration
• Oh, and SCREENSHOTS. Natively. Finally. /facepalm

I'll say it again. It's a huge step up visually and functionally from Gingerbread, and I can't wait to explore all the intricacies of the UI and the OS.

Only question I have is... WHEN CAN I GET IT IN AUSTRALIA?

UPDATE:

Here's the official Galaxy Nexus page for a rundown of the Ice Cream Sandwich features by Google.

Other edits made to the original post.

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A few weekends ago—to play around with Tumblr more than anything—I started Android niceties.

A collection of screenshots encompassing some of the best looking Android apps, and / or apps with interesting user interfaces, hopefully providing some inspiration or insight into Android UI conventions.

Please note: These apps aren't all 100% unique to Android in their UI conventions, and some have iPhone equivalents, but I didn't want to keep it PURELY, UNIQUELY Android if I felt the UI still worked, and didn't do Android a disservice (e.g. a Back button)

"Best" is of course subjective to some extent, and the other point I noted is, yes, if there's a decent iOS port that still works well within the Android UI conventions, I'm not going to exclude it, save the blatant ignorance of ports that come with Back button et al.

The layout is rather simple. Name of the app, link to the Android Market for said app, and images. I didn't want a modal overlay or anything to show the images in full-size, so it's pretty much giant screenshots laid out horizontally [annoying to scroll through for some].

Maybe I'll eventually do some pattern-specific posts, but for now, I'm keeping it simple.

It's 30 odd posts in, and I'll probably continue adding a couple a week. Open to suggestions, though I may not always take them :/

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The new iPhone was announced today. Let's just look past all the idiocy proliferated by the mass media around "IT'S A 4S, NOT A 5".

A dual-core A5 Chip, 8MP camera, full 1080p HD video recording and voice commands integrated into some apps through their Siri acquisition.

Siri is getting all the attention. It only works on the iPhone 4S.

I've used the voice-to-text features on my Android for over a year, and the only time I've found it actually useful is to dictate a text message while driving.

I have no doubt users will all give it a go, wanting it to work, and sure, it will, but once the novelty factor wears off, you'll realise how much of a pain, and how awkward it actually is. You can tell it to set a reminder or ask it for the weather? Widgets, anyone?

In public it's rude. In private it's creepy. 

However accurate it may be, you'll still want to double check it's actually understood you, and the inevitable mistake will take more effort to correct than the effort needed to simply type out the message. damnyousiri.com and damnyousiri.tumblr.com have already been taken...

Then again, Apple have made it their business to take concepts that have been around for ages and incite mass adoption, so I look forward to seeing how it plays out. Seriously, how's the Facetime takeup going though?

The more general concept around deep application and OS integration—whether it be through global search via your fingers or natural language via your voice—will be an interesting one to follow across iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.

Let's see what Samsung and Android serve up next week with the Ice Cream Sandwich and Nexus Prime announcement.

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I thought people had accepted that Google+ isn't a Facebook clone, and more importantly, understood what Google+ actually is, or is capable of, but no, clearly not.

I hate, HATE having conversations on Twitter. It was fine at once, but to see a stream I already envelope being flooded by back and forth conversation that is so difficult to craft and wordsmith with the character limit, pains me greatly. 

- Me, two months ago

I wasted the afternoon in an asinine discussion, trying to convey social and interest graphs amidst workshops and meetings, and realised halfway through that I shouldn't have bothered in the first place.

Facebook is for your friends, Twitter is for your interests

You know why I use Twitter, why I use Google+, and why I don't use Facebook? I have no desire to converse with my friends on that medium, unless it's in relation to my interests. Sure, I dabble in inane chatter every now and then, but it's a small percentage of the time, and I sure as hell don't need a social network devoted to it, especially one with a purely symmetric sharing model.

I email my friends, I talk to them on the phone, I see them. I don't need to use Facebook.

I love Twitter. It's an amazing service, and an information resource that enables consumption and sharing like no other. I use Twitter Lists heavily, and filter my information by my interests. Relevant information from people or blogs I want to receive it from. The asymmetric, mostly-public model works.

What Twitter doesn't do well, is allow for conversation or discussion easily, based on said interests, and based on that same social graph. 

I am entrenched in the tech world, and read about it every chance I get. Right now, Google+ is where the tech bloggers are camping out. They are devoting huge amounts of time into the service, and I would be an idiot to miss out on being part of the conversation.

What's more, you're leveraging THEIR social graphs in these conversations. Scoble or Brogan or MG Siegler post an article, and the discussions are absolutely amazing. You participate in it, and end up conversing with others that are equally interested, and that you have common followers with. You simply can't do this on Twitter. 

It's the same reason I love and use Reddit. Reddit is even better, with its already-created communities of interest. There's no ambiguity or self-consciousness in whether you're shouting to EVERYONE about something only a few may be interested in. Google+ goes a way in solving this, by its Circles, and a lot of my posts of late I limit to some extent based on who I think the information is relevant to.

I don't like doing this though. It's clear and simple in some cases, but others, you still feel like shouting to everyone, and maybe there's that off chance someone you wouldn't have thought to include will be interested. This juxtaposed with the responsibility you might feel on Google+, since Circles is encouraged, is an interesting conundrum. 

Google+ is flexible, and can no doubt be used in a number of other ways; even like Facebook if one wants, and its ease of sharing and privacy are having a positive impact on Facebook and changes it's making of late, if anything. Again though, a lot of people on Facebook are wondering why the hell they'd move to Google+ if it's seemingly the same thing to them without their friends. Fair enough. If it doesn't fill a need or want, don't use it. For bonus points, don't be naive and think it's the same thing, because it's not.

Back to Reddit. I go to /r/Android or /r/Movies, and I post an Android link or a movie trailer, and if it's not interesting to the community, fine, it won't be voted up. Chances are, it's already likely there, and if so, you participate in a discussion with like-minded individuals. Either way, you win. Reddit again, is a service I cherish a lot more for its users and comments than the links per se.

Reddit is impersonal though, and practically anonyomous, which as you'd expect brings its own, unique challenges.

There's still an allure in knowing someone, regardless of if you've ever met them, but based on whether you share common interests, seeing what they say every day, and building that relationship, however asymmetrically that may be. Hey, maybe one day, they'll turn out to be your friend.

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Today I realised I've completely misunderstood what iCloud and iTunes Match do. It got announced at WWDC, and I, for whatever reason, assumed it was simply Cloud storage. In having a conversation with Mr. Colman on Google+ several hours ago, and the latest news that streaming has been added, the nature of what Apple pulled off dawned on me, and it's rather impressive.

I haven't downloaded music onto my PC in over a year, because I'm a happy Grooveshark subscriber, but, I know many people still do, and most likely, it's pirated music.

The basic deal with iCloud + iTunes Match:

• $25 / year for up to 25,000 songs
• Stream and download your songs
• Access your songs on up to 10 compatible (iTunes or iOS requried) devices
• 256 Kbps versions of all matched songs, regardless of their original quality

iTunes Match doesn't care if you're a pirate or if you're one of those crazy people that have purchased music; it will happily match any song you have with its 18,000,000+ song catalogue. If a match is found [I guess based on ID3 tags or the like], it's added to your Cloud library, accessible anywhere.

Google and Amazon didn't get the blessing of the record labels, and Apple not only did that, but they managed to have a conversation with the music industry that only they could.

It's crazy, but, thinking and reading about it more, it makes sense. In 2009, apparently 95% of music downloaded was pirated, and, well, if the record labels get a cut of this $25 / year fee through royalties and what not, something is better than nothing. Also, I'm pretty sure basically everyone with an iPhone or iPad will cough up the $25 / year, so that something will be a decent chunk of change, all things considered.

Clearly this isn't the best deal for the record labels, and I'm sure they would've happily kept going with their 99c songs and whatever the album price is these days, but with all the streaming music services that are bursting onto the scene, this move had to be made.

Apple are ultimately getting a lot more people paying for accessing their own music anywhere, but who knows how the mentality of these people will change a year into iCloud? Maybe they'll be more inclined to start paying for music.

I said "anywhere" earlier, but it's on PCs or Macs through iTunes, and devices running iOS 5. 

Fact: iTunes is an utter piece of unusable, bloated crap that is almost a disgrace to what Apple is renowned for these days. No web player for the iCloud? iRonic.

I have no idea what Google Music is going to be priced at, but I'll assume it's dead on arrival. Amazon is priced higher by quite a way, and I'll blindly rule that as a non-contender too. To be fair, I've read a surprising amount of people happy with Google Music; I've just been spoilt by the magic of Grooveshark.

Streaming music services like Grooveshark, Spotify and Rdio are platform independent, accessible anywhere, and provide you with a shared collection of music; not just your own. My Soundrack Madness playlist has over 1000 songs, and I never spent more than a minute finding, playing and adding an album to my collection. I haven't uploaded a song either. That is what I call convenience. Owning your music is overrated, and so last century.

I have no doubt iCloud + iTunes Match will be a viable streaming music option for a lot of people not quite in the world of streaming music just yet. When will Apple's actual subscription music service come out though?

UPDATE:

Peter Kafka over at AllThingsD says Apple's Cloud isn't technically streaming. It seems like much of a muchness, since the song is locally cached before played, but, as Kafka says, the cache and how that's handled is what needs to be clarified.

One way to think about this system might be “streaming plus”. That is – you get the instant access to your music via the cloud, with the ability to play it back on demand as well. The wild card here is the way Apple treats the cache (How big is it? How often does it get cleared? Etc.).  I suspect the company won’t spell that out for users, because it doesn’t think most people will want to worry about it – they’ll just “download” the stuff they want to hear a lot, and not worry about anything else.

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You learn something new every day! I love that there are people out there who do this kind of thing for a living.

Chaos Cinema is a two part video essay by Matthias Stork analysing well constructed action sequences and techniques; the recent Hollywood trend of faster, overstuffed, hyperactive action filmmaking; how sound design has improved dramatically to compensate; its effects on dialogue, and the rare occasion where it is used well.

Chaos cinema apes the illiteracy of the modern movie trailer. It consists of a barrage of high-voltage scenes. Every single frame runs on adrenaline. Every shot feels like the hysterical climax of a scene which an earlier movie might have spent several minutes building toward. Chaos cinema is a never-ending crescendo of flair and spectacle. It’s a shotgun aesthetic, firing a wide swath of sensationalistic technique that tears the old classical filmmaking style to bits.  Directors who work in this mode aren’t interested in spatial clarity. It doesn’t matter where you are, and it barely matters if you know what’s happening onscreen. The new action films are fast, florid, volatile audiovisual war zones.

I feel like I do enjoy the sheer madness that Hollywood produces sometimes, case in point Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but that overwhelming sensory overload that leaves you tired by the end of the film, yeh, I guess that is rather chaotic, and mostly what I've become accustomed to. There's probably a parallel to the terrible attention span I, and others of today have, in why this has become the norm.

Part 1

Part 2

The transcript and original source of this is up on Press Play. 

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The Shawshank Redemption. A fascinating look into the psyche of men and their perceived notion of safety, freedom and self-worth, if the only life they are familiar with is that inside a prison.

I'd heard a LOT about this film, and all things considered, it doesn't live up to the unbelievable reputation it has. For all I'd heard about it though, I'd never read the plot, and my expectations of the main character—Andy Dufresne, played extremely competently by Tim Robbins—were way off the mark, and I was pleasantly surprised by the direction the film took, turning into a clever prison break, and me realising how much the TV series Prison Break borrowed from this film.

The highly resourceful Andy Dufresne remains the same man through it all, not letting prison get the better of him, and bettering the life of other inmates, but this film is about Morgan Freeman's Red and the change he goes through in his mindset, and he puts in a damn fine performance! Honourable mentions to a crazy William Sadler and scumbag warden Bob Gunton.

Uplifting and filled with hope as it may have been, with the reunion at the end sending definite chills, I'm still not 100% sure Andy didn't commit the crime he was in jail for. Knowing this was written and directed by Darabont, and the twisted ending to The Mist I absolutely adored, I really thought Freeman would find a murder weapon or something that incriminated Andy. Alas.

UPDATE:

Had a discussion about this on Reddit, increasing my understanding of why people did like it so much, and someone made the very good point that my proposed ending would have gone against everything the film stood for.

Darabont is an extremely intelligent fellow. He knew much better than to incriminate Andy. That would have worked against everything else in the film. Andy wasn't a great man, but he was honest to his word, that was what Darabont built his entire character around.

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Green Lantern. Fuck you, Hollywood. What disgustingly impressive willpower you've used to destroy my favourite superhero.

The first theatrical trailer made me nervous. One TV spot after that completely changed the tone, and there was hope. After the first set of mixed reviews and universally bad consensus, all hope was gone, and I'd been contemplating whether I wanted to put myself through this. The first fifteen to twenty minutes held my attention, and I thought maybe my incredibly low expectations may have saved me. No, no they didn't.

What a horrible mess Green Lantern turned into, and in fact, I can't recollect being as tuned out while watching a film this year. Any extended scene between Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds became hard to watch, partly because of their acting, but largely due to the terribly written script and cringeworthy dialogue delivered. As far as villains go, Peter Saargard's Hector Hammond was goofy at times, but in the scheme of things, acceptable, and the rest of the supporting cast, well, meh.

For what its worth, the CGI held up, and what little we saw of Oa looked great, bar the terrible training sequences. Action-wise, the opening sequence with Abin Sur escaping Parallax is still what stands out in my mind; again, a reflection of the clearly lacking imagination of the writers and Martin Campbell, who butchered the unbelievably cool factor of a ring that can construct anything.

Saddest of all for an origin tale, I found myself questioning why Hal Jordan even became a Green Lantern. I've read quite a few Green Lantern comics in my time, and never even doubted for a second the existence of the Green Lantern Corps, or why Hal became one, but the characterisation and motivations of Ryan Reynolds felt completely off. How Hal Jordan came to be a Green Lantern was addressed, but more importantly than that, WHY he became one was not dealt with to my liking.

How do you manage to make a character so boring when fear and willpower are at the heart of the Green Lantern character? Did the hack writers even read some of complex, dark stories that have appeared in comic form?

DC have green-lit a sequel, despite the box-office failure that is Martin Campbell's first effort, and are apparently promising an "edgier, darker" sequel. Clearly my hopes are not high, but with Sinestro putting into motion the creation of the yellow ring, and all the introductions over with, albeit in the worst possible way, I will watch with interest the development of the sequel, and in the meantime read Rebirth again.

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This just made my Saturday! A wonderful 25 minute video taking us behind the scenes and thoughts of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel in a classic episode of At the Movies titled Going to Movies with a Critic.

Both Ebert and Siskel talk about their thoughts before going into a movie, their expectations, their pre-movie rituals, where they sit in the theatre, what they're thinking during a movie itself, and how they analyse and review it afterwards. 

David and Margaret? Puh-lease.

If you're a movie buff, or even mildly curious, you *have* to watch it!

Going to Movies with a Critic

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