The Next Web

Microsoft: No Genius After All

Written on September 18, 2008 – 9:51 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

A few weeks ago Ernst-Jan wrote an article where he claimed that the new Microsoft Ad campaign with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates was probably an act of genius but we just didn’t ‘get it’ yet:

It’s genius, but we, dazed and confused early adopters, don’t see it yet.

Well, it looks like we, the dazed and confused early adopters, weren’t so dazed and confused after all. Microsoft has decided to cancel the whole campaign reports Valleywag. Oh yeah.

This is pretty exciting news as the whole tech world was holding its breath for the clue to these clueless movies. Now that there isn’t one I expect an avalanche of negative publicity for Microsoft whose single purpose with the campaign was to get some positive publicity for a chance. Poor Microsoft…

Here are both clips, one last time:

I hope you like that post!

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Microsoft, movies, seinfeld

8 Comments »

Subtlety in Subtitles

Written on August 12, 2008 – 3:28 pm
Tessa Sterkenburg,

Almost all the movies that I watch are in English. There must be an enormous amount of brilliant movies made in other languages, but I don’t know about them. Because of the language, these movies often don’t get reviewed by international journalists and are therefore not known by the larger public. Some producers, including some of the famous Bollywood filmmakers are even starting to produce their movies in English.

There is another solution: subtitles.

TVsubtitles.net is a site that enables you to find subtitles for most popular TV Shows and movies. Just download a subtitles file and install a DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player (called DirectVobSub), and if you have subtitles for movies or TV Shows that are not on the site yet, you’ll be able to upload them.

Subtitles are available in several languages including English, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian and Arabic. Most subtitles currently available are for English language shows, and it would be great if more English subtitles would become available for foreign language shows.

There are no subtitles for Indian movies and TV shows yet. While we wait, we count on Buffalax:

buffalax, movies, subtitles

4 Comments »

Another reason to buy an iPhone: U

Written on July 31, 2008 – 12:08 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Not ‘you’ but iTunes U. Apple is now offering downloadable videos of museums, cultural institutions and a bunch of world renowned universities such as Yale, Duke and MIT. Just login, select a few courses you are interested in and download them to your iPhone or iPod, for free.

Now your favorite destination for music and movies is also a great place to entertain your brain. iTunes U in the iTunes Store offers free audio and video content from top universities, famous museums, public media stations, and other cultural institutions. So whether you want to learn from the world’s leading thinkers, get a sneak peek at the latest MoMA exhibition, or simply brush up on your Spanish, iTunes U makes it easy.

I admit, this isn’t regular ‘Next Web’ stuff but the content is delivered to you online and you can watch it anywhere so to me this is about as extraordinary as it gets. Get started now and tells us what you want to learn…

UPDATE: “Though the program has existed on a smaller scale for a few years, it now offers more than 50,000 audio and video tracks “. Guess I missed it before and Apple has just now decided to promote iTunes U more actively. Either way, check it out.

Apple, Education, itunes, movies, u

2 Comments »