Watch this and tell me if you think it’s rubbish –
If you’re unsure of what this is about, Robocop (yes, that’s right, ROBOCOP) has been remade and is coming out later this year. No, I’m not kidding.
I know. It’s terrible. Everyone knows. But much like Total Recall before, and Indy 5 and Die Hard 6 no doubt after, it’s coming whether we like (let alone want) it or not
The trailer isn’t actually that bad, but the marketing video above, launched to coincide with the real CES that has just finished up in Las Vegas, is a clear homage to the same style of video that Ridley Scott released last year for Prometheus. In that one, Guy Pearce’s character, Peter Weyland, gives a talk at ‘TED 2023‘ about how he ‘WILL CHANGE THE WORLD’.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s [still] worth watching –
It was smart, it was innovative, and it certainly stood head and shoulders above the usual trailers and teasers you see year in, year out (for what it’s worth, Prometheus was OK, but the plot holes were enormous).
This thing from Robocop is a poor imitation at best. At worst, it puts people off seeing a film that they probably didn’t want in the first place.
At the time of writing, the view-count is still sub-100k.
I wonder if the box office takings will be the same.
That aside, it was surprisingly amusing. Mark Wahlberg has great comedy timing and Mila Kunis is great in just about anything. Yes it’s puerile, but who cares? Sometimes you need a bit of switch-your-brain off humour…
Bonus points: we saw it at the Everyman Cinema, Maida Vale, which was WITHOUT DOUBT the best cinema experience I’ve had this year. Amazing venue, fantastic decor and absolutely lovely staff.
When I open the application, I want the app to gauge my time and serve me content accordingly. It could ask me ‘How much time do you have?’ but that’s boring. My thinking is you could get quite cheeky with the measurement –
First question: location. Based upon your answer to this, the app takes an educated guess as to the length of video you want to consume at this time.
Like so –
“Hi, where are you? In bed, on the train or on the toilet?”
In bed, you get everything; on the train, you get everything up to say…Â 30mins? – and on the toilet, well, you get content up to ten minutes. Obviously there’d be other (probably more user-defined) options available, but you get my point
I’ve mentioned this before (to the Beeb itself at one point) and I don’t know why this hasn’t been done or why content isn’t browse-able by length at all* in fact. I’ve got a 15 minute journey ahead of me so therefore I’d like to see all content that is 15mins or under in length. Simple.
.
What is the behaviour of your mobile user?
*if it has, I haven’t seen it and well, I fully expect to get told about it within minutes of hitting publish….
Just a quick two parter this week – Ewan gave me my first actual assignment last week and I’m still putting the finishing touches to it, (i.e.: Still need to write it up proper-like).
So – as a bit of cheat – I thought I’d do a follow up post on last week’s Power User Insights.
To be more precise: Address some questions that were asked in the comments (as well as elsewhere online and off) and clarify a few points too…
But first, a quick user story:
At the weekend I killed the browser on my N95. I don’t know how or what I did exactly that made it die in such a spectacular fashion but die it did.
To the point where no matter how many times (or many ways for that matter) I tried to access the Mobile from my N95, it was having NONE of it. I clicked on the app, the screen flashed as if it was about to do something and after a second or two – it went back to the menu screen.
Panic.
Set.
In.
First thing I did was turn it off and turn it back on again… Nope, didn’t work.
Then I tried using one of my phone’s shortcuts to get to the web – Nope, that didn’t work either.
I had these horrid thoughts of having to hard reset* my phone and having to re-build it back up from scratch. Not good.
However – all was not lost – some research online uncovered some prior cases of aforementioned phone browser fever. The problem was in fact my cache. Obviously, not being able to clear it from within the browser was going to be a problem so I had to turn to my trusty Y-Browser.
Once I’d browsed to my C drive and cleared the cache, (over 500 items in there! Eeep!), the browser started working again just fine. Woohoo!
So as an FYI – if this happens to you – you know what to do.
On retrospect, if you were to put a Normob (Ewan – are you gonna trademark that?) into this situation what would they’ve done?
Left it? Sent it back to Nokia? Taken it back to the store?
90% of my friends would’ve done neither and probably just given their phone to me and asked me to fix it.
No, scrap that.
100% of my friends, relatives, acquaintances, colleagues etc… ALL give their phones to me to fix. Not a problem. I like doing it. But if they don’t know someone like me (or you) then what do they do?
Hand it in to a store only for it to be returned 3wks later with a note saying ‘water damage’ attached to it?
Ok. Well. Enough ranting and explaining – moving onto part 2:
Got some great feedback from the power user piece from last week so thanks again to all of those that took the time to response – fantastic insights – some of which I think are worth sharing (and linking to).
Terence – your first comment made me go back and edit part of the original content so it now reads:
“…as well as also managing to find time to update my facebook,
…reply to some Tweets…
…and catch up on Jaiku via their m.websites”
Being the mdot evangelist that I am I just assumed that you’d all know that’s how I’d be viewing my content! 😉
Google Reader was mentioned a couple of times – I was unaware that they had a mobile variant for this, and having only just discovered recently the wonders of all things RSS – I shall have to have a play at once!
Antoine of MMM had a great idea about a dock for your device. Apple have that one covered already but yes – a ‘centre of gravity’ for my Nokia device wherever I went would be great.
Mirko – I find when walking around London that 8 of 10 people tend to be either tourists or travelers themselves. Plus I am uber-reliant on my handset and use it whenever and wherever possible. I see your point but I think it’s just down to personal preference.
Active Notes. Well reminded. I used to have this but I think I lost it when I last upgraded my firmware. Anyone who uses the ‘notes’ app on their handset should really lookout for Active Notes. It’s quite handy.
Ben Smith suggests Road Sync for all your email needs. I personally use the one Mail 4 Exchange client that comes built in on my N95 (and on my E61i for that matter) but I shall definitely take a look at this one. Glad to see you find SpinVox as useful as I do too – and a big public thank you for the amount of feedback you sent in earlier this week. It has been circulated and the right people are devouring it as we speak!
Onto Dave’s question about Agile: Dave, I bought Agile Messenger originally about 2yrs ago now, (it maybe longer), for my then N70 and I loved it. At that time it was only around £7 (about 9 euros) and I had no problem paying for the full lifetime licence. I too have fring installed but to be honest, I only ever really use it when I need to chat to any of my Skype contacts, (you know who you are).
I’m not sure if Agile is worth as much as they’re charging for it these days but it is definitely worth taking looks as I’m certain they now offer a free trial period upon initial download.
Martin – I read your post – great read. Dopplr is something I will add to my bookmarks at the earliest opportunity.
Finally – Martin’s post reminded me of this great TED Talk I saw recently by Nokia Researcher, Jan Chipchase. Enjoy.
