Movie Recommendations

Movie Lens http://movielens.umn.edu/ is a site where you rate movies you have seen. Then the site generates recommendations for you. It does this by comparing your ratings to those of other people and matches you up with folks of like mind. Then it finds movies they loved that you haven’t seen and lists the ones you should like. You can also use it to keep track of movies you’d like to see or those you have seen.

So the whole idea is that you get movie reviews from real people who have something in common with you (as opposed to critics who don't like what you like). I have to say, now that I've reviewed a lot of films on this site, that it is very accurate about predicting how much I'll like a movie.

The Internet Movie Database

Who is that actor and what have I seen him in before? The Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com is the official place to get answers to all your movie questions. Now you can sleep at night.

This Week at the Video Store

So you don’t want to spend about ten bucks for a movie ticket? Time to check out what’s new at the video store with http://www.onvideo.org/reviews.htm. This site lists brief reviews of the top films of this month, last month and so on until you find one you want. Movies are rated on a scale of one to five.

TV listings

Yahoo, TV Guide, HDTV magazine
When we cancelled our newspaper subscription years ago, I worried about how I would find out what is on TV. But simply disposing of the pounds of paper that arrived each Sunday was daunting; on top of that, the listings were incomplete. Now, however, no one with internet access need ever worry about that again. These sites: http://tv.yahoo.com/ and www.tvguide.com/listings/ provide you with searchable, up-to-date listings.

OK, but what about HD TV listings? In addition to the TV guide site above, www.titantv.com/ is a great source for this, but you might not be able to access it from behind a firewall (using your computer at work). I love having my HDTV listings emailed to me each day by HDTV Magazine http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/subscribe.php (of course, this is free).

Craig’s List

While newspapers have always maintained a lock on local classified ads, a quiet revolution has been taking place. http://Craigslist.org has become the free, online (but still local), alternative. That’s right you can sell your boat, car or goat on Craig’s list without paying a cent either when you list it, or after the sale is complete. You can find a job there, too. When you list your item for sale, Craig’s list does not publish your email address. Rather, it forwards emails to you from interested buyers. Then, if you want, you can correspond directly with them. You can also post pictures of items for sale. All of this is paid for by the job ads (which are not free to list but are free to answer).

Since it is local, there are actually 450 sites in the US and 50 countries with 20 million people using this service each month making it the site with the 7th highest traffic in the world. The only downside is that you need to live near one of the 450 cities, but that would be most people in the US. And if you don’t, odds are Craig’s list will come to you soon; they added over 130 cites in November of 2006.

Rotten Tomatoes

I love movies. There are movie sites that do everything but pop the popcorn.

Rotten Tomatoes http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ is here to help you tell the good from the bad (and the ugly). Movies are reviewed by dozens of critics and the percentage giving it a thumbs-up is computed. If a movie rates 60% or higher, they grade it “fresh.” Less than that and it gets a “splat.” The really nice feature I like is their newsletter http://www.rottentomatoes.com/features/newsletter/. Every Friday, I get an email with reviews of the latest films in theatres and on DVD. The only problem is DVDs come out on Tuesdays so the new ones are gone by then.

Free Web Hosting

So you want your own website but don’t want to pay for it? No problem! Go to http://pages.google.com/ and set up your personal site. Unlike the similar service from Microsoft, this does not require a credit card (because it is free and will apparently remain free), is quicker and easier to use and allows you to do cool things like upload HTML. That means you can, if you want, create pages (in applications like FrontPage) that are more interactive with the users and link to other pages. Or you can simply create the site using Google’s on-line tools. I have a page with a free account here: www.contemporaryworship.net. This is a Google Pages site that I do not pay for. I do pay GoDaddy.com $7 a year for the use of the name (contemporaryworship.net) but I don’t have to. It’s just that most people probably wouldn’t remember http://bkunkle.googlepages.com/index.htm as easily. You can store up to 100 MB of stuff on these pages. Pictures of your dog, your vacation, recipes—anything you feel compelled to share with the world can go here. And, if 100 MB (which is a lot) is not enough, well there may be ways around that too. I don’t see why you couldn’t get two Google Pages and link them together for twice the space.