Interactive Ads

Many websites  these days use interactive advertisements in order to better assess your interests and attempt to guess what you like in order to provide you with advertisements that you are more likely to respond to. But is this an effective way to boost profits from ads, or is this an invasion or privacy? Many people, including myself, don't like the fact that websites are tracking web traffic from my computer and selling it to advertising agencies in order to provide me with advertisements they think I might be interested in. Is it right for websites to use this information for profit? It isn't exactly private information, but personally I don't really think its any of their business what sites I'm visiting and what interests I have. Is it right for ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to allow this kind of snooping on peoples' web traffic? In fact, this opens up a few security risks as well, since someone could potentially pose as an advertising agency in order to acquire this information. Is this information dangerous, and could it be used to exploit peoples' security? Probably not, but that doesn't make me comfortable about it.

Automator Screencast

Here is a brief screencast giving an explanation of Automator and a short tutorial on one of the many workflows that can be made using the program:

Automator

Automator is an application that comes with the Mac OS that allows the creation of custom workflows and applications, which are basically a series of actions that will execute every time the application is run. For example, you can create an application that will send out e-mail messages to certain recipients, and every time you run the application it will send out the e-mails. You can have the application ask to change certain actions every time you run it as well, so for example you can set it to ask you what the e-mails should say, so you don't send out the same ones every time. There is a multitude of actions that come with Automator, allowing for workflows that include things such as adding songs to your iPod or even sending out birthday greetings to people in your address book. Automator can make doing repetitive tasks much easier by compressing them into one simple workflow, which can save a lot of time.

Here are a few resources that explain the value of Automator and give a few example of simple workflows that can be made:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2488

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-automator-applications-create-5-minutes-mac/

How to Open Word

This is how to open Word:

:)

Movie Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street

Short version: Fans of the old films and newcomers alike will probably agree that this remake of the classic horror series just doesn't live up to its predecessors.
---
The other day I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street, the remake of the old series starring the classic horror icon Freddy Krueger, a gruesome murderer who killed teens inside their dreams. I came into this film with fairly low expectations, as my experiences with remake of any kind tended to be ones of extreme disappointment and regret for wasting my money, but surprisingly this particular film did not meet all of my expectations, and turned out to be a little bit better than I had expected. That isn't to say it was good, but it certainly had its moments, with a few decent jump-out scares and some gruesome special effects. Past that, however, the film fell short of just about anything a good movie should have. The plot held nothing new for me, since I had already seen the old films and had a general gist of both Freddy's background and the common horror film motif of everyone getting gruesomely murdered, so there weren't any real twists for me. As a redeeming factor, what small twists there were were fairly well-timed, revealing themselves slowly over the course of the movie, although some may argue that they revealed themselves too slowly, making for some slightly boring, rather than suspenseful, moments throughout. The characters were fairly uninteresting and somewhat unconvincing, and even Freddy himself wasn't quite what he used to be. He had lost his previous charm and unique sense of humor, choosing rather to join the ranks of just about every other sharp object-wielding killer in any other horror film. All-in-all, as a remake this film wasn't too bad, and although it certainly didn't live up to the appeal of its predecessors, it did deliver a decent performance, nothing worse than any other horror remake could do. As a standalone film, however, A Nightmare on Elm Street really doesn't have much to offer, and it is very unlikely that I would pay money to see this movie again.

Bananas

Russia might invest hundreds of millions of dollars in bananas.

A Bit of Clarification

In my previous post I introduced myself and my blog, but I really didn't go into the purpose of the blog and what I plan to do with it. Since I'm still not quite sure what exactly to write about, I think I'll use this space to do a little exposition. I am writing this blog for my Digital Communications class, so I will try to keep it appropriate and I will update twice a week. This blog's main purpose is to entertain, and if it provides any sort of useful information it'll be purely accidental, although what you find useful is pretty much up to you.

Now, as for the content of the blog...I don't know. I watch a lot of movies, so I'm considering doing a movie review once every week or two, but other than that, we'll just have to see. I'm sure this blog will be somewhat entertaining to some people, however, so stick around, maybe you'll like what you find.