Is Youtube movie rental in Australia likely to beat out Netflix?

I've rented two $4 movies from youtube in recent times - I'm an avid XBMC user, so its very natural and integrated.

There's also a lot of free, full length movies - either put up by the publishers or others available, which is just pleasant enough to work.

While I could in theory lock myself into the Apple iTunes stack, I don't like having to pay through the nose in a walled garden, so have never given it a second thought.

What do you get when you drink too much coffee?

You get to see awesome movies in the middle of the night.

The Devil Came on Horseback

I just watched The Devil Came on Horseback last night.

It's about Sudan (Dafur), and one American experience (Brian Steidle) over there. He was a UN observer, former marine. Instead of being armed with a rifle, he was armed with a camera. The photos he took have to be among the most horrible things I've seen, and I can't express how it makes me feel.

If you watch the documentary, and then you read things like this:

In May 2006, the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur organized by United Nations "concluded that the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide ... [though] international offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."^[1]

... you really get angry about things.

I'd like to think I'm aware that your average person doesn't really care about some remote place in Africa, but having seen what Brian Steidle saw and the complete lack of action taken; it's something that really gets to you.

Automatic Movie Ratings web service!

FilmTrust is a semantic web research project by Jen Golbeck. It's nifty and finally fills that void in my life where I want to share it all with the blogosphere.

To that end, I've written some very simple and poorly implemented base classes for PHP blogs. All you need is to install PEAR::XML_Serializer and extract some files, then you are off on the road to developing.

For a live demo, see my movies.

Download FilmTrust Webservices Kit.

As ever, the code is under the GPL.

For Non Geek Blogger

Do you want to get movie ratings and reviews on your site or blog? It's really simple!

1. Sign up to FilmTrust and rate some movies.


2. Add some code to your website or blog template.
   

   
   
   <script
   src="http://www.ahsonline.com.au/dod/filmtrust/example.php?
   user=[YourUsernameHere]
   &javascript=true">
   </script>
   
   

   
   

Note: The above Javascript will insert your movies as well as a small Google Adsense advertisement. Ensure that your blog host allows advertising (ie, livejournal does not). I request that you keep the advertising present. You don't have to if you don't want to. But while the code is free providing bandwidth and eating isn't.

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PHP, Movies, Semantic Web, FOAF, FilmTrust, Blogging, Social Networks, Web Services.