Disqus - Latest Comments for film_girl

Re: FoxPop Turns Movie Watching into a Social Media Viewing Party [Invites]

film_girl — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:18:31 -0000

Well this is for home video. So you could always tell people to just put the phone away, plus all the activity is contained in the app or on the phone -- it doesn't interfere with the viewing screen.

Re: Honk: Car Shopping With a Social Twist

film_girl — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:07:20 -0000

Well those metrics are there too -- and you can look at those ratings. But if you don't know where to start and you are looking at 300 or so cars, finding a car that fits what you do an where you are in your life is a good filtering point.

I mean, I don't care how reliable a minivan is, I'm not ever going to buy one, so if I can see a listing of sedans or coupes, and then from there look at ratings for reliability, value and read what owners have to say, that makes more sense than just trying to read Consumer Reports or whatever.

Re: Amazon Offers Associates an Easy Way to Share Links on Twitter

film_girl — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:45:28 -0000

HA! No, you're right of course, if used the wrong way this totally does that -- but if you genuinely see something cool and want to tweet about it, it's not a bad way to go about doing it.

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:04:17 -0000

Actually our source was PC World (http://www.pcworld.com/article/181232/want_a_dr...). I reached out to Verizon for a response and for clarification and still haven't heard back. Because Verizon's website doesn't have Droid plans available for viewing right now, I had to go off of the BlackBerry plans (per the original story in PC World) where, regardless of what type of customer you are, corporate e-mail is part of the $45 plan.

I added an addendum to the post linking to Gearlog. While I certainly hate getting anything wrong and spreading misinformation, the situation as it was 18 hours ago was that a reliable source had a story with quotes from Verizon, Verizon did not respond to my requests for comment or clarification and the web site did not show any information on Droid plans. If the facts are different now (as it appears that they are -- though I have still not heard from Verizon), we'll update our post with new information and do our best to clarify.

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:36:40 -0000

@Matt
I'm not disagreeing with any of your assertions, I'm simply saying that with the way the company I do work for is setup, I can only do Exchange on my iPhone with Exchange 2007 (we even had an with 2003 and that was one reason that they upgraded to 2007, one of the execs wanted an iPhone).

Now, how Verizon will handle any of this, we'll have to wait and see. I absolutely believe that workarounds, whether using third-party programs or specifying certain settings or even just using the Android mail app straight-up will be around so that people can get Exchange access without forking over $15. However, the official line from Verizon is that Exchange is $15 more. If they enforce it or not, we'll see, but that's what they are claiming. And that claim (however necessary it turns out to be), is what I think a lot of people take umbrage with.

Knowing that Android (as Google implements it, not as third parties might add it on -- and I'm pretty familiar with the Android SDK, Exchange as a method of being used as the main e-mail address assigned to the phone is absolutely a new 2.0 feature) is adding Exchange support now, it isn't clear if Verizon will do anything to limit this to only corporate clients or not.

As far as the OWA via VPN thing, I know -- I agree that it is completely stupid to require the VPN to even access it -- but there are a lot of IT practices that make no sense there. I'm contracted out so it's above my pay grade to worry too much about their IT inefficiencies (of which there are many).

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:10:20 -0000

If they are going through ActiveSync then you can specify your server data and connect without having the IT department freakout. That's how Exchange works on iPhone. You need Exchange 2007 or higher for it to work (I work for a company that switched recently from Exchange Server 2003 to 2007 and my iPhone can connect to Exchange -- and this is a company that makes me use a VPN to do any other remote connection, including OWA). So if what Google is implementing is ActiveSync support (which is my guess, as that's how they are doing Push for the iPhone for Google mail accounts), then that would be different than going through OWA and probably would require the $45 plan.

But it's still fundamentally a software issue.

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:04:11 -0000

That's awesome and good to know, but if they do, it's probably because they did what HTC did and built in their own support. Google didn't add Exchange support (via ActiveSync) until 2.0.

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:02:45 -0000

Ooh, you have the droid? How do you like it? VIDEO POST!!

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:01:53 -0000

Yes, they charge a mandatory $10 for Enterprise Accounts, but you have to be on an Enterprise voice plan to pay that. This is for consumer (non-coporate accounts). Yes, there are probably workarounds but the fact that they are trying to make a software feature seem like it's the same as BES is stupid. It's price gouging and it's stupid.

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:58:26 -0000

Actually, this totally depends. Some of the HTC devices have Exchange support because HTC built it into their own Android builds. As a standard Google Android feature, it won't be available until Android 2.0.

Yes, there are third-party apps, but those apps confine mail and calendar and whatnot to the app and not with the rest of the phone (there are workarounds but it isn't the same experience). We'll have to see if Verizon actively enforces the Exchange support thing or not, but if they wanted to, they could totally turn off the feature for people who don't pay.

And sure, you could still use OWA, but if you want to have the unified inbox thing and easy access to your exchange calendars from the native calendar app, that's not going to happen.

Re: Verizon’s Droid: $15 Per Month Extra For Exchange Support

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:36:14 -0000

Yeah, exactly -- if you want to do Exchange over POP (which equates to Push anyway on a BlackBerry) and your office isn't controlling about it, you can. But you pay extra for the BES, not that one feature. It's an entirely different platform and the rate of $45 a month is standard across all carriers (and must be set by RIM to a certain extent).

This "we're going to charge more for an ActiveSync implementation of Exchange support" thing is totally different and in my mind, the very definition of nickel-and-diming.

Re: Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Has Generated $1 Million in Sales

film_girl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:24:24 -0000

Well Pizza Hut says generated, but as to how many sales would have come in anyway -- I have no idea.

I do think that they probably noticed a sizeable increase in usage over the older WAP site, which to me suggests a real tangible higher conversion rate. But yes, I'm sure that a sizable portion of those sales probably could have been achieved without the app. But the app can I think bring in new customers who otherwise wouldn't order or wouldn't order from Pizza Hut (20% off also helps)

Re: The Top Internet Memes of 2009

film_girl — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:41:20 -0000

You're totally right. How I spazzed on that one, I don't know. But you're totally, totally right.

Re: Bing for Mobile Adds Optimized Interface and Real-Time Data

film_girl — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:30:09 -0000

Well I think only the NFL feature is US only (and that would be on the NFL, not really Microsoft's call), all the other stuff should be international.

Re: Bing for Mobile Adds Optimized Interface and Real-Time Data

film_girl — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:29:20 -0000

Hee! True that!

Re: Bing for Mobile Adds Optimized Interface and Real-Time Data

film_girl — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:08:46 -0000

Heh, I know right. Bing unquestionably has the upper hand in how they are actually displaying data on mobile devices.

Re: 10 Horror Films You Can Watch For Free Online This Halloween

film_girl — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:12:15 -0000

Some of those links (all the public domain ones) should work everywhere, but we did mention the US-only nature in the third paragraph. Sorry I couldn't find more non-US sites.

Re: New Avatar Trailer Hits the Web [VIDEO]

film_girl — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:35:24 -0000

Jordan's right! Thanks Jordan (updated the post!) and keep up the good work!

Re: Little Buddy Child Tracker Makes Spying on Your Kids Easy

film_girl — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:53:15 -0000

I totally agree. I think devices like this have lots of potentially good uses, but I also think that it is a case-by-case basis sort of thing. I think that for people who have disabilities or for young children, this sort of thing could be great.

Re: Little Buddy Child Tracker Makes Spying on Your Kids Easy

film_girl — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:50:05 -0000

I sure don't. I can't really comment on whether this would be something that would be attractive to parents to use or not, but unless this is used with very young children (say elementary school aged), I question its effectiveness.

Re: HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI

film_girl — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:40:18 -0000

Steve,
I actually agree with many of your points -- and I had a little mini-crisis half-way through the first draft of this post over the nomenclature of all of this stuff. Ultimately, I played a little loose with what my accounting professors would have defined as ROI, but I hope that the information was still informative in measuring the value of social media (as you said).

Thanks for your comments!

Re: Disney’s Going Digital: Buy Once, Watch Anywhere

film_girl — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:42:23 -0000

Hi Patrick,

I totally agree with your concerns about the net connection aspect (and to be fair, we don't know yet if this is going to be a streaming service or a cached download service or an authorized download service or what -- it very well could mean you could download a digital copy that you could do pretty much anything with (much like what Film Fresh is doing with Divx), presuming the device is authorized on your account, so it really just depends).

I think that all of the issues you raised are issues that the industry knows it needs to solve if anything is going to take off. Disney mentioned not seeing Keychest as profitable for five-years, which indicates they see this or something like it an investment.

Actually, in regards to portability, that's the one area it looks like this system might already have an idea in place. Like now, when you buy a DVD or Blu-ray, you often get a free digital copy that you can put on your iPod or iPhone or watch on your computer -- the Keychest type of system would take that one step further. You'd get a code on your disc or have it sent to the servers, automatically telling all the other device types you have on that system that "hey, Patrick has Finding Nemo on Blu-ray, so he can watch the mobile version or he can watch the computer version."

Again, how that will actually be served will be the big question and how easy they can make it. I agree with you completely, this has to be as easy as DVD/Blu-ray and as convenient as torrenting. If they can do that (which is what Apple and others finally did with music), they might just have something.

Re: Disney’s Going Digital: Buy Once, Watch Anywhere

film_girl — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:34:48 -0000

That's what they're going to have to figure out, and I think this has been the big barrier for mass adoption of digital media for video. For songs, it's lousy if you lose your files, but the amount of money you invest is often more arbitrary (and iTunes will let you reclaim all of your files once if you accidentally have a data disaster -- that happened to me back in April and I got to download 2600+ files all at once...fun times), but for video content, you can invest and then risk losing much, much more.

Working out how systems will work offline (or if they will) will be the key -- along with making it easier to get legally than going to bit-torrent.

Re: Disney’s Going Digital: Buy Once, Watch Anywhere

film_girl — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:31:47 -0000

EXACTLY. I didn't want to get too inside-baseball with the TV Everywhere system, but that's exactly what this looks to be competing against.

Hulu is the interesting aside, because while Disney was pretty cold to the idea at first (having their own digital streaming system), I think they figured out that joining a system that was already being embraced by consumers would make more sense, at least on the ad-based end. Like TV Everywhere, Keychest has no qualms about being for pay. It's just looking like more of an outlet for individual products -- like you said -- rather than offering up archives or back-catalogs from existing properties.

I think that something like TV Everywhere could work for something like ABC or ESPN (if Disney ever were to sign-on, which I doubt) -- but I think that for content like movies, this sort of method probably makes more sense.

The media companies haven't handled everything as well as they could (if they had avoided the whole HD-DVD/Blu-ray debacle then Blu-ray would have been the standard years ago and they might have saved themselves a few years from the digital onslaught, by having a better quality product at the mainstream), but they have been far more agile than say the music industry and it will be extremely interesting to see how this ends up playing out.

Re: Apple Releases New iMacs, 7-hour MacBook and Multi-Touch Magic Mouse

film_girl — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:35:15 -0000

Yeah...I think the new server option is awesome but I figured, focus on the highlights. The mini did get a nice standard boost today though.