Flickr announced that you can now upload videos up to 90 seconds long if you’re a pro member. I thought I’d give some brief impressions comparing the Flickr video service to YouTube. Here’s a video i uploaded to Youtube a while ago…
I like that on myspace you can see a list of the sites that link to your video. Another nice feature is the number of views your video has.
And I just uploaded the video to Flickr. It gives you a progress bar while the video uploads so you know how long you’ll be waiting. After the upload and processing you can then embed the video…
I really like that there isn’t a Flickr ad on the corner of my video like YouTube has. I also love the way the status bar fades in and out depending on the cursor presence. You also can easily watch the video full screen.
At the end of the Flickr video it provides a link to my profile, option to comment and even a share this icon. Finally, next to the link to my Flickr profile is a text link to Flickr.
I foresee switching all my videos over… now…which one’s default code validates better with my doc type?YouTube has 6 markup errors and Flickr has 4.
Effective April 23, 2008 Peerflix is discontinuing the Marketplace and DVD buy/sell/trade portions of Peerflix.com. While the Peerflix.com web site will be available beyond April 23, 2008, you will no longer be able to buy, sell, send or receive DVDs on Peerflix as of that date. While we have made considerable investments in our marketplace platform over the past four years, unfortunately the escalating costs of operating the marketplace do not make that business viable at this juncture. As we move out of the DVD marketplace business, we are focusing our energy and resources on building the Peerflix Media Network which is now the web’s fastest growing vertical movie network.
The Peersafe Protection Program will also be terminating effective April 23, 2008 meaning that you will no longer be able to make any Peersafe claims starting April 23, 2008. So, if you have DVDs that you have been holding on to but were planning to send at some point, now’s the time! If your Trade Cash account balance is greater than $10 and you would like to cash out your remaining Trade Cash balance, you must do so before April 30, 2008. To request a cash out of your Trade Cash, please log in to Peerflix.com and click “My Account” in the upper right corner, then click the “My Cash” tab and then click on the “Request Cashout” button and follow the indicated steps. As of April 30, 2008 you will no longer be able to request any Trade Cash payments from Peerflix and your Trade Cash will immediately expire and be forfeited. All cash out requests remain subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Peerflix Service Policies and will be charged a $10 processing fee.
Peerflix was neat because you could trade your DVDs in by sending them to someone that wanted one and then you would have a credit to request one. At first postage was paid by the person mailing the disc but eventually the fee for postage was added to the exchange fee and it was included on the “envelope” that you printed out to mail the DVD. Eventually they moved from a 1:1 ratio for exchanges to a dollar value associated with a disc. If you sent one to someone then you were given a credit based on the price of the disc. If you bought one you would use your credit by requesting a movie. They allowed people to cash out their credit if you had over $100 accumulated. I have a $34 balance which i can now cash out for $24. So long Peerflix.
At first Cena and i used this system to trade in movies we had but didn’t want any more for things we did want to see. (If we couldn’t get any value out of selling them on Amazon of course.) Then when they shifted away from Peerbucks (or was it Peerbux?) and to a true dollar value we saw that we could make a little money by shipping things off but not requesting any. We set notification rules for our yahoo email accounts that whenever we had a notification that someone wanted a movie on Peerflix then yahoo would send us a text message. Plenty of sleepy mid-night scrambles to try and claim a movie to send off before other Peerflix users claimed it. It is time to pull the movies i have listed on Peerflix and move them to Amazon (one which was formerly worth only $3 was now worth $13) or pass them off on friends.
We went to Seth’s this evening and watched 30 Days of Night. It’s a vampire movie set in Barrow, Alaska during the winter. I’m not a big fan of the horror genre in general but the premise for the movie (and book) is neat. The vampire weakness for ultraviolet radiation is moot during the perpetual darkness above the Arctic Circle. I partially think Seth invited us over because he didn’t want to watch it by himself on a dark Alaskan winter night in his remote cabin. But then again, he knows how much we like to watch movies — especially in his big high definition screen and on a Blueray disc. We brought one flashlight for the walk back to the car. I think he should install remote control lights like these hid boat lights. Right now, when you walk down the hill to his place the lights light up the last quarter of the path. But walking up the hill the sensor turns on after you have already walked that quarter of the path.
Back to the movie… as i said, nice premise. The special effects were pretty decent but a few things bothered me. The Alaska Pipeline is featured in the movie but the pipeline is 200 miles from Barrow. The “last flight” out of Barrow for thirty days? Alaska Airlines flies there daily. Oh — and 30 days? Barrow actually has 67 without direct sunlight. But they do experience a combined dawn/dusk during that time. Finally, the population in the movie supposedly drops from over 700 to under 200 for their 30 winter days. Barrow’s population exceeds Petersburg’s with over 4,000 people.
My recent fascination with parkour led to Cena putting the movie District B13 on her Netflix cue. It is a French film produced by Luc Besson - the director of The 5th Element. I was not expecting the movie to actually be very good and was just hoping to see some great stunt work. We were pleasantly surprised. It is a violent movie but the cinematography is crisp and the action spectacular.
I don’t know why so many movies end with the set self destructing. While i was in Ketchikan i bought the Mummy trilogy on DVD and we have watched the first two. Both ended with the self destruction of the locations at the end - Hamunaptra and the Scorpion King’s temple. I sarcastically start monotonously saying “self-destruct sequence activated” when this happens in movies. It is kind of annoying. It happens in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the Holy Grail is removed from the temple. In Lara Croft: Tomb Raider the Siberian Lost City is self-destructs when they mess with the time control device from that movie. The alien that Arnold Schwarzenegger battles in Predator has a handy wrist mounted self-destruct module. Sigourney Weaver’s character Warrant Officer Ripley in the movie Alien makes their space ship self destruct in an attempt to kill the alien on board. Certainly the starship Enterprise has gone through a few self destruction scenarios also.
I guess i didn’t give it much thought before the release of the new Transformers movie. Apparently Michael Bay wanted to have the physics of the Transformers seem plausible. Hence, Megatron transformed into a spaceship instead of a pistol. He even changed Optimus Prime from a semi rig with a flat front to a “hog nose” semi. So when the original transformers were lining up for tryouts for the new movie Soundwave didn’t have a chance. Soundwave was my favorite Deceptacon. He transformed from a tiny cassette player into a giant robot. So that really wasn’t going to work. Even though his cassettes each was a transformer also. The problem? Nobody uses cassette tapes any more. Soundwave couldn’t be an mp3 player and still have some small mp3s transform - or thinking about the scale thing maybe compact flash cards or SD cards or something. Stephen Fung linked to a great video that shows poor Soundwave dealing with the new movie.
We just watched the Transformers movie in a Harkins Theatre in the Fashion Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona. Whew. I’m a first generation Transformer fan. I used to set up a tape recorder in front of the TV on Saturday mornings to record the episode and then recreate it with my toys later that day. I have the original feature length cartoon Transformers movie on DVD. That’s kind of what makes this the second movie. I won’t ruin it for my Petersburg friends but i’ll say it definitely must be seen.
It has been a while since i have been able to sit down and watch movies. We watched Jason Statham’s Transporter movies on two consecutive nights. Because Jason’s first film was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and his character’s name in that movie was Bacon any movie with him in it or directed by Guy Ritchie will automatically get 5 out of 5 slices of bacon.
Transporter and Transporter 2 both have some cheesy action sequences that could have used more live action and less cgi/effects but they both have riveting action , good plots and decent cinematography. Jason’s character “Frank” is excessively calm throughout both movies and his martial arts background makes his fight scenes look like something Jackie Chan or Jet Li put together. The screencap below is from Transporter 2 of Kate Nauta’s character Lola - one of the antagonists of the film. This might inspire me to collect a blog post about the best bad girls of action movies.
It has been a while since i have been able to sit down and watch movies. We watched Jason Statham’s Transporter movies on two consecutive nights. Because Jason’s first film was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and his character’s name in that movie was Bacon any movie with him in it or directed by Guy Ritchie will automatically get 5 out of 5 slices of bacon.
Tiffany on 
Karna on 
