links for 2009-11-02

Points from the book:
Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience. The same holds true for his presentations that are meant to inform, educate, and entertain. An Apple presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production—a great script, heroes and villains, stage props, breathtaking visuals, and one moment that makes the price of admission well worth it.
The 5 elements:
1. A headline
2. A villain
3. A simple slide
4. A demo
5. A holy smokes moment
One more thing…sell dreams

A variety of movies & cartoons that have entered the public domain. Can be viewed on site or downloaded. Interestingly this is one of the sites that makes use of the <video> tag of html5.
'This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.'

'Kuler is a web-based color tool from Adobe that has thousands of community-generated color themes from which you can search, but the best thing about Kuler is that you can easily make your own themes. Once you register with Kuler (it's very quick), you can begin to create your own color themes or palettes and store, view, and retrieve all your saved themes in your personal Mykuler space. There are two ways to create unique color themes: either by selecting a single color on the color wheel as your base color and building off of that, or by importing an image from Flickr or your hard disk and extracting harmonious combinations from the image.'

Options ranging from basic desktop clients to online ones

Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application software developed by the Yamaha Corporation that enables users to synthesize singing by typing in lyrics and melody.
More info on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid
Sample youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqdB0yspQVA

The inspiration behind HAL singing the "Daisy" song in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

An novel way of visually depicting movie narrations. Includes Star Wars (Original trilogy), LOTR, Jurassic Park & 12 Angry men

The different strategies adopted by agencies to leverage upon facebook's popularity & make money.

In case you had any doubts as to what weapons were used in a movie (or even video game), this is the site to find answers. Moreover, since it's a wiki, you can easily contribute too. It also has some Indian actors in the list.

Quite a wide variety of top 10 lists available on site. All made by users of course.

To scam & make money or not to scam & fall back… That is the question. A must read for all fans of Mafia wars & Farmville on facebook:
'In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won't pay cash, a wide variety of "offers" are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it's also bad for legitimate advertisers.'