DISQUS

I remember reading that this was based on a script that was floating around Hollywood that was adapted to be a sequel to Ocean's 11, which may explain why it felt like some of the characters were completely unused.

"It has come a long way in terms of utility and web designers have figured out appropriate uses for it."

I think that's the root for why many people (myself included) hated Flash. I didn't hate Flash itself so much as the complete misuse of it. It really shouldn't take 15 seconds of animation to transition to one page to the next on a dentist's website. The user shouldn't have to guess whether the backflipping bear or the steaming coffee cup links to the "Contact" page. I still hate unusable Flash, but also hate unusable HTML. When I was working on band websites, I had many many conversations with clients about making their sites usable rather than full of moving garbage. "But it looks cool!" "Would you rather it look cool the one time a potential customer shows up and leaves in frustration because the menu is a bunch of unlabeled rectangles, or would you rather have a site where they can find what they are looking for?" It's a little disheartening how hard a decision that was for some clients (and that some still chose the former).

It would have been great if I'd won via my trackback. Alas.

I feel left out, so I want an invite too. ;-)

You went all the way to Japan to do THAT? ;-)

This seems like a common trend. The people who make sites forget they aren't typical users of the sites they make. Web 2.0 is great for those on the bleeding edge (such as teenagers with too much time on their hands, as evidenced by Digg and Slashdot), but does your mom get it? Probably not. Web 2.0 is still in beta (or gamma, perhaps) and probably isn't ready for a site like USA Today.

I'm going to see if I can borrow the DVDs from my friend so I can rewatch. It's been so long that I don't remember details, so this may be a good excuse to refresh my memory.

One of my college roommates discovered this series and bought the DVDs. I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Also, I read last August that Christopher Nolan was in talks to direct a movie version based on a script by the same people that wrote 12 Monkeys. I haven't heard anything new about it, but I still have my fingers crossed. That could be really awesome.

Disney has been doing that with their stuff for as long as I can remember. They used to do it with the VHS tapes as well, which is part of why they didn't want to go to DVD initially. They liked that the tapes would wear out, and the consumer would rush out to get a new one during that limited window. Tricky monkeys.

I hardly have enough time to be a blog commenter, let alone a blogger (hence the tumbleweeds rolling through my blog right now), so I can only imagine the time it takes to be a "real" blogger. Plus when I blog, it's not the sort of things that gets noticed by PR companies. They tend not to care about what I think about "24", or why it seems my entry titles contain an equals sign way more often than normal.

I would take what Thomas Hawk says with a grain of salt, since he has this silly Zooomr thing (which is such a horrible domain, IMO). He's looking to find problems with Flickr.

As for the move to a Yahoo! ID, maybe it's because I'm a hardcore Flickr user, but I don't get it. Having a standard login makes sense, since Flickr content is being shared across other Yahoo! sites (like those microsites).

Since you mentioned Y! Music.... Unrelated to the minisites (which I think sound quite cool), have you ever used Yahoo! Music Jukebox (the subscription service app)? I've been really happy with the recommendation engine on there, and have discovered a lot of great music through it.

Did you see the whole "Green Screen Challenge" thing play out with them? It was quite hilariously done.

As for the band, they're just fantastic. I saw them while in Minnesota in November, and the number of instruments they went through was amazing. Everyone in the band played more than one instrument during the show, ranging from normal pop/rock instruments like guitars and various piano/organ/keyboards instruments to more obscure things like violins, accordions, a pedal steel, banjo, and a hurdy gurdy (yes, a hurdy gurdy). I found The Crane Wife to be the most accessible album, but if you dig it, I definitely recommend a trip through their back catalog.

We're way ahead of Google on the idea of Thought Search, according to this reputable news source: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30522