What's a ProductWiki?

I'm now back in Austin and I'm not as sad as I thought I'd be about it. Maybe that's because I'll be done with this semester in a little over 3 weeks, or maybe it's because I won't be as stressed out with EE 316 taken care of, or maybe it's because I don't have any tests for the next two weeks! Don't envy me though, because it's been harsh until now. In fact, I have to try to make this post short because I have to read about 70 pages of The Aeneid before I hit the sack tonight. It was a surprisingly slow weekend for news and so the most provocative thing is the introduction of a ProductWiki into Amazon.com's pages for its products. In case you're wondering what that is (as my title unnecessarily presumes), it's a way for customers to enter extra information into a product as I've demonstrated here. The question does have a double meaning though: what's the point of this? How is this radically different from customer reviews? Maybe they're just trying to play along with the trend, or, more realistically, they're trying to give your name a reputation among other customers and make more recommendations to you. It's an interesting idea and I'm glad they're branching out, I'm just not confident that it'll really take off.

I'd like to restore the Xbox 360's previously tarnished name on my blog due to reports of freezing with news that the problem was caused by overheating and is easily remedied by lifting the console just a bit off the ground. I'm not saying you should buy one, but, should you decide to, have no fear of faulty hardware. If you're tired of typing so many words into that address bar at the top then you can either learn how to type faster (the software is cheap) or you can cheer on a Dutch firm aiming to create dotless domains. It's too pricey for normal folk to buy, but I'm sure big companies will love it. I'm going to conclude here with some downloads. If you're on a Windows machine and hate using MS Paint and/or are tired of load times for Adobe Photoshop you should check out Paint.NET, which is sort of an upgrade for Paint and it's completely free. It's really lite and easy to use so I highly recommend it. If you remember the days before Windows 95 when most games were based in DOS then you'll get a kick out of this archive of games from those days including Wolfenstein 3D and WarCraft 2.

If you didn't think that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was going to dominate this weekend then you're pretty stupid. It managed to rack up over $54 million, which brings it over the $200 million threshold. The openers this weekend drew pitiful receipts in comparison, but Walk the Line managed to maintain #2 with $19.7 million. We all want Pixar movies to knock our socks off but I think many people are struggling with Cars. They've released another trailer for it, and all I can say about it is that it looks gorgeous in Quicktime HD. If you're more interested in King Kong then Newsweek got an early look at it and wrote a good article on it highlighting how sensitive the movie is. I cringe to inform you that a Tomb Raider 3 will be made and all we can do is pray that it gets a screenwriter with half a brain. It looks like we'll have Grind House, the joint effort from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino under WeinsteinCo., in under a year as the release date has been set to September 22, 2006. Let's hope they keep to that date. Lastly, I present you with the really neat-looking German poster for Hostel:



Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Stuffed::Animal
   
2. Armstrong::Lance
   
3. Bruise::Blood
   
4. Content::Context
   
5. Musical::Instrument
   
6. Assistance::Disability
   
7. Scrambling::Eggs
   
8. Battle::Royale
   
9. Extended::Scene
   
10. Discount::Tires