[Movies] Tangled (2010)

It's odd to think that when kids today consider their favorite Disney movies, they'll more than likely end up naming something from the Pixar family of films. As much as Pixar is officially a part of Disney these days, there's still a distinct differences in terms of their content and art style as compared to the rest of the Disney library.

I'm proud to share that I was raised on Disney cartoons, like most kids were. Even though a large number of them seemed to be focused on female protagonists as part of the ever-expanding line of princess-related tales, I sincerely enjoyed the movies given the good animation quality and the generally fun songs. At the same time, I've also witnessed the decline of Disney over the years (I think things started to turn around the time The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released or shortly after) and it's apparent to anyone why Pixar came in at precisely the right time to change the face of animated movies forever.

But the old Disney tripe formula for sanitized fairy tales and such will always hold a special place in my heart thus their attempts to try to imitate Pixar right before they bought them out (think Chicken Little) were quickly met with failure. And I'm sure a lot of people feel this way, and thus welcomed Disney's latest release as a piece that tried to go back to those older roots given the success experienced by the live-action comedy classic Enchanted. This movie was an interesting blend of both Disney and Pixar sensibilities - perhaps some of the influence of Pixar's John Lasster now holding the title of Chief Creative Officer for both Pixar and Walt Disney Animated Studios.

[Technicolor Musings] Why Do You Go Clubbing?

The club scene is somewhat integral to gay culture, depending on how you look at things. While not everyone feels they belong "in the scene" as it were, but at one point in time in our gay lives or another, we find ourselves in the gloom of a smoky bar, huddled together with dozens of other queers as we try to make sense of the madness while scoping out the next cute guy.



DSC02427 by Christine Wang / cwangdom via Flickr.

I'm not exactly the kind of person you'd expect to frequent clubs I suppose - it's a geek thing or what have you. But I do enjoy my times there even though my sense of enjoyment in such environments is probably different from other people. The biggest difference there is that I've never had to go to a bar (1) as an unattached individual or (2) to try and find / pick up a guy. Not that I think I could manage that, mind you.

So I thought it might be fun to spend a little time to talk about my view of clubbing and what makes it fun for me. It might make sense to other geeks or other queers in general. Or it just might give you yet another interesting look at my way of thinking, if that's your thing.

[Movies] Chasing Liberty (2004)

The movie career of singer Mandy Moore has never been particularly enamoring for me. Then again, I think this is the case with most people who try to make the jump from music to movies and it's not often that these crossovers prove successful.

In this regard, I do have to acknowledge that her handlers made sure to have her focus on roles that more or less intersected with her music fan base demographic. Thus her initial projects were teen-focused romance movies and related comedies in the hopes of drawing her music fans to her new venture. I can't really comment on whether or not this has been a true success but perhaps the fact that she continues to find employment in Hollywood speaks for itself.

On the other hand, I find myself at times frustrated with the lack of growth for talented (and admittedly charming) actor Matthew Goode, whom I first fell in love with in the stellar movie Imagine Me & You (which is a MUST see for those who are okay with LGBT content). He's had a few roles here and there but nothing quite like the limelight I feel he deserves. Or at the very least, I'd like to see him as a leading actor more. Or I wouldn't mind seeing him in more movies, period.

So obviously I watched this movie because of the involvement of the latter and just had to endure the former. What fun.

[TV] The Walking Dead: Season 1

On a purely intellectual level, you'd think that zombies shouldn't be scary. They are stereotypically depicted as having very little fine motor control, little to no real intelligence to speak of and the inability to wield power tools, firearms or other means of killing people. And yet the zombie movie remains quite the classic staple in horror and a concept that is continually revisited in order to further expand the notion.

I think I can handle zombie movies the best as compared to other horror classics like vampires, werewolves or plain old crazy people who wield weapons with deadly accuracy or crazy purposes. And yet I when I do sit down to watch a zombie horror movie I tend to get scared bonkers anyway. I guess there's something about them that makes you feel that their success seems almost inevitable. The dead naturally outnumber the living and having them come back with a singular purpose of consuming the living is pretty creepy when you get down to it. It's worse when you have other writers who have explored the notion of smarter zombies or faster ones.

Now for a TV series to try and take the zombie concept to the small screen seems like a highly difficult challenge. Television doesn't look too highly on the kinds of displays of blood and gore that have been synonymous with the genre. But at the same time, the rise of pay TV channels such as HBO has lead to the rise of TV shows with more risqué content and all that good stuff. So it's quite impressive that this show has done as well at it has in its first (albeit short) season despite those odds against it.

And yes, this is still the kind of TV show that had me trying to distance myself from the TV, much to the amusement of my partner.

[Call Centers] Two Major Career Paths - Operations or Support

The call center outsourcing has grown significantly in recent years, especially here in the Philippines. Whether you want to attribute this the advancement of globalization or a drive to reduce costs as much as possible in all industries, it's clear that the industry is here to stay.



DSC01741 by Marvin Maning / [2]rokbot[2]y via Flickr.

While a lot of people don't look too highly upon the call center industry as a feasible job opportunity, those of us who have crossed the threshold and realized there's a lot more to life in the industry than the stories that tend to circulate amongst parents concerned about their kids or whatever you see on sitcoms like Outsourced. It's quite the thriving industry now that's changed lot about how things work including the advent of more 24/7 businesses especially in the fast food arena and other improvements to nighttime safety and public transportation.

I've often remarked that the goal of every call center agent is to stop taking calls, as ironic as that sounds. But it's true in the general sense that everyone wants to move up and really make a name for themselves, career-wise. And the call center world is still a corporate environment with the added benefit of foreign sensibilities when it comes to organization structures and hierarchy flows, which means a number of career options for your average telephone monkey, as a friend of mine likes to refer to himself.

[Books] Star Wars: The Truce At Bakura

The Expanded Star Wars universe as documented mainly by the official books released under the brand have created a pretty rich and fulfilling world beyond the six major movies - and no, I don't want to think about the Holiday Special or the one with the Ewoks.

What always impressed me about the Star Wars books is how there's a pretty consistent timeline that they try to follow regardless of the author. It speaks of a strong effort to keep the continuity of the books in line even with everyone jumping all around the history of the series in order to figure out what stories they want to try telling. This naturally presented a bit of an advantage for the books that came along earlier in the publication history such as the often referenced Thrawn Trilogy written by Timothy Zahn. Those books were among the very first to be written outside of the official novelizations and established many characters such as Mara Jade, who have gone on to much larger roles in the Star Wars universe at large.

For one reason or another, I never got around to reading this particular book, which is also another often referenced title amongst Star Wars novels. After years of absentminded searching, I now actually have three copies of this book and only read it this month. What fun.

[Movies] The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

I've previously discussed how Harry Potter has had a tremendous impact on pop culture. Whether we like to admit it or not, one of the biggest lessons of this franchise is the fact that writers and owners of the rights to various young adult lines are scrambling to get movie deals secured in order to rake in the goods. Thus we've experienced movies like City of Ember, Inkheart, Percy Jackson and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2-Disc Special Collector's Edition).

It's a good and a bad thing - at least kids are reading a bit more than they used to and now there's a lot of focus on generating new content. It may not necessarily be great content, but it's content nonetheless. And to be fair, some of these new creations turn out to be great gems while others, well, sort of flounder around a bit.

But beyond the new writers, we've had a chance to revisit a few older or at least more established book lines from a movie potential perspective. Hence the release of movies based on works like The Seeker. But just because a movie is made doesn't mean it's going to go well - not all books translate easily nor is there always a strong enough fan base around it to justify sequels and additional marketing efforts.

I've always had mixed feelings about the Narnia movies, and that may be because I was never particularly a big fan of the Narnia books either. While I don't particular have anything against anthropomorphic animals, I was never particularly drawn to them either. In that regard, I suppose I'm really more a science fiction geek at heart.

[Movies] Boy Culture (2006)

LGBT-centric movies are a pretty mixed bag given the only thing that keeps them associated to one another within the genre is the fact that they deal with LGBT characters and LGBT-fueled stories. And these do not include cheap comedies that utilize the occasional stereotypically queer character as an element of comic relief.

The end result is a heck of a lot of movies, many of them falling out what I would traditionally call my target market as far as movies are concerned. But we still get a lot of romantic dramas, slapstick sexual comedies and of course a few chick flick quality romantic comedies to complete the mix. I am a science fiction and fantasy person after all.

But still I try to devote a good amount of time taking in LGBT content in general support of the industry and in order to spread the world when some really good LGBT talent comes along and tells a really good story. That deserves a good amount of time and effort for sure and I've certainly factored this into my geeky activities ever since I decided to regularly post content of this nature on Sundays.

This movie was an interesting piece that was certainly well thought out and had some pretty lofty goals for itself.

[Music] Congratulations Esperanza!

While we don't often write about music here on the Geeky Guide, it doesn't mean we don't appreciate it. In fact, we love music and the important cultural role it plays in our society. Plus we like dancing and we love Kylie Minogue.

But given how the week has gone, we wanted to take some time today to extend a little love for a great break-out artist.



esperanza spalding, pt. 3 by "Cowboy" Ben Alman

Our heartfelt congratulations to 2011 Grammy Best New Artist Esperanza Spalding! Not only is she the very first jazz musician to win this award but she also holds the distinction of beating the likes of Justin Bieber for an award! Now THAT's a stellar achievement!

Oh, and she also happens to be a musical artist skilled in multiple instruments including the upright bass, the bass guitar, the violin, the oboe and the clarinet. So please, how can you argue that she's less talented than the Bieber? Plus she has better hair.

But man this was a pretty crazy Grammy awards. Whether or not you liked the winners, you have to admit that it was a pretty interesting show. Plus I doubt any of us are going to forget the ridiculousness of Lady GaGa showing up for the event in an EGG (after supposedly incubating in there for 72 hours *eyeroll*) - because naturally she was "Born This Way" or whatever else you want to call it.

And don't get me started on that GaGa's new single - I'll leave that discussion for another entry.

But back on topic, great work, Esperanza! For those of you who are actually curious about her music, try that link on for size. Otherwise you can try searching online for samples or visiting your local record store. (Can we still call them "record" stores?)

[Movies] The Lookout (2007)

If you try to plot the film career of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think you'll find yourself feeling the same sense of surprise that I did in terms of how much he's grown over the year. We often joke about how child actors tend to bomb out and end up with lousy acting careers as adults or on the flip side get stuck in typecast niches that they never get to escape from. But he didn't suffer that fate through a combination of good offers and clearly a conscious choice to pick better roles for himself.

And he's certainly been rewarded for his efforts in serious dramatic pieces like Brick given his recent appearances in recent blockbuster films like (500) Days of Summer and Inception. And in both cases he performed remarkably well in two very different movie genres. Thus his range as an actor clearly continues to grow and will hopefully continue to open new doors for this young actor.

Ironically enough though, I only got into watching this movie because of another actors I enjoy following despite his lack of great roles, Matthew Goode. I had first encountered him in Imagine Me & You and only saw him again in Watchmen, where he wasn't all that great. So far it seems that it's really his abilities as a charming romantic lead that I tend to enjoy more than his gritty serious stuff, although this movie wasn't too bad for him.

[TV] Misfits: Season 2

As much as I get ridiculed for this fact, I have to admit that I was a Heroes fan when the show first came out. As much as it contained a lot of old concepts borrowed from classic comic books and other media, it had the potential to be a really great superhero show on network television.

But as the show progressed, I too went through the trauma of how bad things were getting. The expanded universe concept that had helped make the show so popular started to get really annoying when characters introduced in the web comics and blogs never made it to the show itself. Then the riddles and puzzles started to stop and soon the whole thing just became a more and more confused mess. I went down with this particular ship almost all the way but out of trauma I've yet to finish watching the last season for some reason.

It took British television sensibilities to revisit the whole superhuman abilities in a conventional setting concept and to totally turn things around. We didn't get heroes or villains in the classic sense of the word. Instead we just got a bunch of kinds who had way too much power at their disposal. Thus the results are predictably self-destruction, especially with the kids being juvenile delinquents.

And the show is just brilliant.

[Transformers] FlutterFly Optimus Prime

In the beginning, things were as simple as black and white. Autobots were pretty much cars and lacked the ability to fly on their own. Deceptions were evil and so not only could the "cheat" by being able to fly without any clear means of propulsion, they also got the somewhat cooler, more violent alternate moves in the form of tanks, jets and all that good stuff.




Although Autobots did have a few jetpacks on hand that provided limited flight options based on the fuel capacity of those little backpacks. I have no idea what kind of physics would justify the amount of sustained thrust they manage with a relatively small amount of fuel / reactant, but that's too much to get into. This is still a cartoon universe after.

But over the years, it's pretty evident that there was some sort of an obsession with making Autobots, particularly Optimus Prime, fly. Don't believe me? Then let's take a quick review.

[Books] South of the Border, West of the Sun

Had it not been for my Communications and Humanities classes in college, I would never have encountered Haruki Murakami. What started as simply enjoying On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning lead to me jumping directly into getting through The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle eventually turned into me becoming a lifelong fan of his work.

And he's a stellar writer whether we're talking about his short stories or his full length novels. Of course given (1) he's a Japanese author and (2) all of his books require skilled translation before being released outside of Japan, his books tend to be rather pricey regardless of length. Over the years, I've amassed a respectable collection of most of his books of which I'm still getting around to actually reading. So yeah, I finally bought a lot of the thinner titles that didn't seem quite as cost effective as his lengthier works, but what can a fan boy do, right?

And man has the trip been rewarding, regardless. I've now taken to trying to get some reading time in during my train rides home and I've limited myself to books that are easy to manage with one hand. Thus the inevitable addition of my slimmer Murakami books to my reading queue as much as this gesture seems a tad arrogant given your average MRT rider. You can only imagine the looks I get from other riders when I whip out my Murakami book with their strange covers and bizarre plot synopses at the back. Fun.

[Movies] Love & Other Drugs (2010)

I've often declared that I'm not big on romance movies or romantic comedies for that matter. It's not that I have anything against them - it's just that I prioritize science fiction pieces and more compelling dramas as a matter of habit. It's a geek thing.

But of course I catch a few of them here or there when (1) the concept sounds compelling enough, (2) my partner highly recommends it or (3) I happen to like one of the stars. And for this movie, what's not to like about a movie starring a frequently naked Jake Gyllenhaal, yes? And you know when you have it bad for a particular celebrity when you have no trouble remembering how to spell his complicated last name when writing these entries. All together now! G-Y-L-L-E-N-H-A-A-L!

While my partner and I had caught this moving during its opening weekend some time ago, it felt a lot more fitting to actually to post this day on Valentine's Day. Not only is it a romance movie at its core, it's more fun for gay couples like my partner and I to celebrate an actor we both like on this day meant to celebrate all things love related and mushy.

Okay, that last point was a bit of a stretch, so sue me. Jake can be VERY distracting.

[Technicolor Musings] Love Is Always Worth Celebrating

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, a holiday that is often met with very diverse and mixed emotions. Then again, it is a holiday dedicated to romantic love and people are quick to focus on what they lack instead of celebrating what they have. Thus the messaging gets rather mixed and instead I find that you end up hearing more people whining and moaning about not having dates for Valentine's Day instead of happy celebrations of love in all its forms.



Geek love <3 by Mike D / SFview via Flickr

Looking back at my personal blog, I noticed that I seem to say the same thing every Valentine's Day, if only briefly. So I thought it might be worth revisiting today at length here on the Geeky Guide as a little message to all those in love and those who are hellbent on finding love in a message for gay geeks and other lovers-in-waiting out there.

Let's face it - if gay geeks can find love despite being in two rather niche peer groups, why can't the rest of the world, right? Ultimately, it all begins with you and you alone.

[Movies] Fargo (1996)

It's hard to ignore movies that get noticed during the Academy Awards - in this regard one could definitely state that it's truly an honor just to be nominated. It's inevitable - in order for the average movie-goer to make an informed opinion about the nominees and who should win, you really need to go watch the movies. And thus many movie fans, including myself, find themselves experimenting with movies outside their typical preferred genres in order to see what the fuss is all about.

While I'm really not a fan of horror movies, I am able to push myself occasionally in order to experience the occasional suspense / thriller piece here and there. I guess I can blame my mother in this department since she tends to watch a lot of these kinds of stories. Thus on an off-tangent from my "mainstream" geek interests, I'm also a big fan of the Sigourney Weaver classic Copycat, which still gives me the willies until today.

This is another movie that I really grew to appreciate despite how gruesome and violent some of the scenes are. It probably helps that it's actually more of a dark comedy than just a thriller piece, at least in my opinion. Seriously, can anyone cast Steve Buscemi without it becoming some sort of a comedy?

[TV] Caprica: Season 1

The 2003 "reimagining" of the campy 80's science fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica was definitely a high point in the post Star Trek era. With Enterprise failing to complete a "full" seven season run, it was quite the surprise to see that BSG (as it's more commonly known) managed to pick up the space opera torch.

At the end of show's 4-season run, the science fiction fan world (along with SyFy) was left wondering what would happen next. Four years seemed pretty short for a show for most fans (including me!), but what can we do right? The writers did make sure to wrap up the story well enough and it didn't feel too dragged out either. But for a show as lucrative as BSG, there had to be more. If anything, I'm sure the executives over at SyFy knew that the industry would think them stupid had they not made some sort of an attempt to capitalize on the fan base.

The first venture was the oddly-crafted, The Plan, which I felt was a horrible, confused mess. It was like a really long and nearly pointless DVD extra that a lot of us wish had been never made. In fact, it portrayed that the Cylons didn't actually have a plan that was worth talking about, depending on how you look at it.

So given that experience, I have to admit I was a bit nervous about this spin-off venture set as a prequel to the reimagined series. But then like most other fans, I took the plunge in the hopes of learning more about the "history" of BSG and perhaps the story of how the Cylons and their seemingly eternal conflict began.

[Social Networks] Why I'm Still On Shelfari

I've been a Shelfari user since 2007 and surprisingly, I'm still a pretty active user. I didn't think that I'd remain on such a specialized social network since (1) I kinda figured sites like this were fated to die in the wake of Facebook and (2) Facebook. But I'm still on Shelfari and I've given up Flixster, which was another specialized social network that I had signed up for at the same time I joined Shelfari.

In 2007 Amazon invested heavily in the site and about a year later they completed acquired the site. It took a while before we really started to see proper integration or enhancements to the site since then but in recent weeks we've finally come full circle.




As announced their official blog, Shelfari started allowing users to sign into the site using their Amazon logins. But this is more than just an excuse to get rid of one more login - it's opened the doors to much tighter integration between Amazon and Shelfari and who knows what else in the future.

[Books] Unseen Academicals

I'm proud to declare that I have almost all of the Discworld novels written by Terry Pratchett as part of my collection after more than ten years of hard word and who knows how much spent on this endeavor. I think I'm only missing a few of the young adult titles like Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight, but they're sort of lesser priority purchases in terms of my Discworld collection.

For the most part, I've also read most of them (with a few exceptions here and there, but I'm working on it!) so you can imagine how eagerly I anticipate the release of new Discworld novels. With close to 40 of them in circulation, it's hard for anyone to work through the entire series completely, especially in countries like the Philippines where science fiction and fantasy books always take the backseat in favor of the current bestseller fan craze. But a fair amount of time, effort and relentless combing of high end bookstores and bargain bins alike have resulted in my fairly sizable collection of Terry Pratchett novels including a few of his non-Discworld books.

Thus every time a new one comes out, it tends to be a cause for celebration, even if only a minor one. The real challenge is waiting for the paperback edition, if only to ensure that new copies generally match the ones that I already have on my shelves, save for a few differences here and there. I can live with the difference between the UK and US versions but not so much hardbound versus paperback...at least most of the time.

And this was definitely a book worth being happy about.

[Movies] Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

There are some sequels out there that I have no idea why they were made. You know those types of movies - the one that don't necessarily have a large number of devoted fans constantly filing petitions for a sequel, or the movies that just did nominally well in the box office and especially those kinds of movies that people haven't been talking about to any significant degree within the past ten or so years.

And yet the sequels keep coming seemingly out of nowhere. I guess we can't totally blame Hollywood - these are much harsher times, economically speaking, and sequels feel like safer bets than truly original movies ideas. Plus a lot of sequels are able to get off the ground with more modest budgets than their predecessors, further sweetening pot for the overeager studio executive wanting to make his revenue targets.

To be fair, some of these sequels turn out to be really good and manage to capitalize on what made the original great. But this rarely happens beyond the last chapter of a trilogy and go especially wrong when your movie franchise is in the double digits range.

I'm not quite sure where this one places in the greater scheme of things, but it's not quite a sequel that I expected to be made nor is it that horrible a creative venture. Still, it leaves a lot of questions on the table for consideration and it's one of those situations when the ultimate decision regarding the movie's worth lies on the shoulders of the individual audience member.

[Pink Culture] Should Dance Clubs Be Non-Smoking?

I don't smoke. Never have and probably never will given my asthma. And yet I have to admit that there's a certain allure to the practice amid all the bad smoke. Maybe that's just years of media programming speaking through me with the classic image that "smoking is cool", or maybe it is a personal preference that I'll never be able to explain.


Hunters Gay Nightclub in Elk Grove, the suburbs of Chicago by Fausto Fernos / feastoffun.com via Flickr.

When I started hitting the local LGBT club scene in 2003, smoking was very much a part of it. The old BED Malate was a very small fraction of the sprawling complex of sorts that it is now and was a firetrap given the tight spaces and narrow entry and exit points. And yet it was a heck of a lot of fun despite the sweltering heat, lack of personal space and a lot of smoke everywhere. I guess something clicked during those years and the concept of a bar allowing smoking became part of the image in my head.

And so it was terribly ironic when I chanced upon a tweet the other week that had one guy describing BED as "a non-smoking bar in Malate", which isn't necessarily 100% accurate since they have a smoking area at the rooftop. But still, the notion just made me want to laugh - BED is now a non-smoking bar! For the most part, this statement is indeed true given BED's post-fire renovation. (And no, the fire was not related to cigarettes).

But as you look around and really think about this sort of thing, there may be more to this whole reasoning. Why do I feel so strongly about the right to smoke in a dance club when (1) I don't smoke, (2) smoke drives my asthma nuts and (3) all the usual health reasons? I don't think I'll come to a final answer within this post, but feel free to come along for the ride as I try to analyze all this.

[Movies] Howl's Moving Castle / Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (2004)

I'm forever thankful to my partner for formally introducing me to the magical worlds of the Studio Ghibli movies. As amazing and powerful as each movie is for me, I can't seem to find the urge to rush watching them all at once. It's like the timing just has to be somehow "perfect" before we watch another one.

Each of the Ghibli movies seem to feature key themes in most of them. We normally have female protagonists or at the very least strong female roles. We have the friendly yet rather repulsive-looking old woman as a grandmother-like character. We have a love of nature or the land and the need for harmony. And we get different types of machines and devices with a definite steampunk feel.

So on a particularly good weekend we loaded this into our DVD player and again I was completely blown away. The brilliance of this movie will challenge my ability to capture my feelings in words, as is always the case with Ghibli productions.

[TV] Being Human (UK): Season 1

In these modern times where "paranormal romance" is already a book genre, it's hard to be a true fan of all things supernatural. Before your most recognizable vampire fans would be the Anne Rice followers and werewolf movie fans were largely isolated groups that didn't quite have an iconic figure to use as a rallying cry.

Now it seems that vampires, werewolves other paranormal archetypes are pale shadows of their former selves with franchises like Twilight and Fallen muddying the waters and with new series like I Am Number Four threatening to infect the core worlds of science fiction. It's a weird time.

But right before True Blood debuted on television and before Twilight came up with its first feature film, BBC Three aired an somewhat unobtrusive pilot featuring three paranormal characters living together in Bristol. I doubt anyone could have predicted how far this little show could go given its now entering its third season with a US spin-off already airing as well.

And thankfully, they didn't have to go the "Twilight" route, for lack of a better term.

[Google] Innovations For First Week of February

February is just beginning and already Google is impressing the world (including this geek) with a lot of their recent announcements and innovations. And I'm not just talking about the changes to the Google Docs interface, but more for their side projects of sorts that don't lead to direct improvements to their core products.

I think the biggest news for me, apart from the updates about progress made by Google.org is the Google partnership project to allow Egyptians to update Twitter via a voicemail service. The Speak2Tweet project was the result of hurried efforts by a group of Google, Twitter and SayNow engineers to find a way to sort of break the internet blockade that's in effect in Egypt. The result is a sort of Twitter drop box where updates from Egypt will appear on Twitter with the #Egypt hashtag in order to help identify them. It's a novel solution to the problem and I'm really thankful that Google's come up with this.

Image via WikipediaThen just today Google announced Google Art Project, which allows users to explore museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam using an interface similar to Google Street View. You can even see brushstroke-level detail for many famous art pieces that is almost unheard of in this day and age. It's something you would normally have to pay to see including your airfare and accommodations to get to these museums and now it's all available online.

Google can't possibly benefit from these efforts except for branding purposes, but they're both still pretty impressive.


Good job, Google. Good job indeed.