The Buzz

Today I came across this post at CNet’s news.com, a variant of a theme I’ve seen a few times recently that movie revenue is now trailing video games, and are video games are now beating movies as a form of entertainment. This one focuses on the U.K., but similar articles have been written about the worldwide market.

The report goes a step further than some, including trips to movie theaters as part of the total. I still call bull, for one major reason: video games are much, much more expensive much of the time.

A new Xbox 360 game can run $60. Meanwhile, a trip to the movies, a bag of popcorn and a soda, and a new release DVD can still clock in under $50. The problem is in each of these cases, the numbers are crunched by total revenues, and it’s a lot easier to hit a billion $60 at a time than a $15 movie ticket at a time.

More importantly, the average movie ticket isn’t anywhere close to $15. A post by Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood offers data showing that the average movie ticket price, despite an increasing premium for a 3-D movie, is only $7.46.  That’s up 30 cents a ticket over last year, but still is a lot less than a full-price ticket around here.  Of course, a site like the Fairfield Theater will balance out a few of those full-price first-run tickets, but it’s still a bit surprising.

Of course, that video games have reached the level they have is a landmark for that industry, and certainly not all video games are $60 (downloadable casual games almost always clock in at under $20 apiece, for example). The revenue numbers are impressive, but it doesn’t make them more popular; if anything, it proves the smaller fan base of video games is more rabid than the more casual movie-going public that a lot of us are. Whenever these kinds of reports come out, it helps to take some of these numbers with a grain of salt.

Until today, I had never heard of RockYou, a service that provided a number of third-party applications for Facebook and MySpace (although I had heard of some of their applications, like Pieces of Flair and Superwall).

Wired reports that a lawsuit has been filed against the company, seeking class-action status, saying that the company’s failure to encrypt the usernames and passwords, along with the way their site was built, to allow “even the least capable hacker” access to the data.

The site admitted to a data breach of their database by a hacker, using a common type of attack called an SQL injection. SQL is a popular and sturdy platform for maintaining databases and information on a server, but if not built properly, SQL use can leave data open to a hacker’s attack. It’s a powerful technology, but sadly it’s also easily exploited when mistakes arise.

The suit doesn’t say what it expects as far as damages, which is one of the more interesting aspects of the case. If a free service’s username and password is breached, what’s the value of that and what can users get as compensation? Is the company liable to pay damages when they provide a free service to begin with?

Meanwhile, on a security posting on their Web site, Rock You has promised to make changes immediately, but whether that’s enough to continue to keep people loyal is up for grabs.

Given that Facebook, for instance, divulges information about you to an application provider the moment you accept their application, this should be a wake-up call to people that the security practices of third parties is as important as the main provider. Some may recall, 130 million credit card numbers were revealed to a hacker through the same SQL injection exploit style, having nothing to do with the banks or credit card companies, but instead payment processor Heartland Payment Systems. The same happened with TJ Maxx through a security hole in their system around three years ago.

The world is a scary place. The more precautions, the better.

Twitter continues to see growth, but one thing it won’t see is passwords on this list. I caught wind of this from the ever-awesome Consumerist.

Passwords are always a shaky topic, because the general public tends to pick easy passwords, so it seems Twitter is trying to avoid people falling into that trap.

There, are however, some funny items on the list. They don’t like yellow, purple, or orange, but they don’t seem to have anything against burnt sienna or carnation pink.

Both Victor and Victoria are banned, so fans of the Broadway show will have to look elsewhere for inspiration.

You can’t have iloveyou; you can’t have a mistress.

Back to the Consumerist for a second though; in their post, they also point to a former post they did, also excellent, explaining how to create unique, strong passwords that can even be unique for each site.

The dramatic chipmunk, or dramatic prairie dog, has been viewed over 20 million times. The clip, just five seconds long, became an Internet sensation when initially uploaded.

Can you tell it’s a quiet day around here?

One more meme to keep you guys occupied on this cold, windy day…

A popular meme on the Internet has been the dramatic chipmunk, which the source video proved is actually a prairie dog shown to some kids in Japan.

So with those two clips as background, here’s a slightly warped take.

Here’s a little pop culture love for you during a traditionally quiet week…

Technology has allowed mash-ups to proliferate, mixing songs and videos together to create a new work out of existing works. This is one of the most elaborate and intricate I’ve ever seen, mixing some of the biggest songs of 2009 together, including artists like Justin Timberlake, Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga.

Part of the fun with these mash-ups is trying to figure out which chunks belong to which song. It’s well put together, and a fun throwback to 2009. Kudos to the creator for a fun, well executed mix!

Speaking of mash-ups, this is still one of my favorites, mixing the train wreck of Britney Spears’ sexaholic “Gimme More” with the campy Kelly song, “Shoes.” (WARNING: This video uses some salty language, so it’s not meant for everyone and NSFW.)

10 years ago, I was shown the first demonstration of the mobile Web as a sales associate at Circuit City, who was about to start selling the first phones that offered it. “It’ll be faster than a 56k modem by the end of 2000,” the rep promised. It didn’t quite work out that way; it took a lot more time and money for it to happen, but mobile Internet has managed to become quite widespread 10 years later.

This leads to some unintended consequences, such as jurors in a trial Twittering, Googling people related to the trial or even friending witnesses via Facebook, a Time article notes. For all the gains technology gives us, it looks like other areas of our society, such as the jury trial, will need to evolve or we risk losing the ability to offer those innocent until proven guilty a fair trial.

It’s easy to forget that technology is making so many things possible in a movie theater, but here’s an article from CNET that shows how much is going on: four different 3D glasses manufacturers are fighting to be the company that brings your experience to life in a movie theater.

They range from the polarized glasses that we commonly see in theaters now, to $50-a-pair glasses that open and close quickly to show different frames in different eyes.

Given that some people experienced headaches when catching recent 3-D movies such as Avatar, I’m sure the technology will continue to evolve.

Here’s a fun statistic, posted on TechCrunch’s mobile section from data provided by Flurry: starting Christmas day, the number of applications downloaded on iPod Touch devices spiked, and for the first time it outpaced iPhones.

It might seem illogical, given the number of iPhones on the market vs. iPod Touches, but it actually makes sense: More iPhones were bought around the time of product launch, and then sold at a slower pace after that; people are most likely to load up on applications right after getting the device, boosting the irregular leap by the iPod Touch; and the iPod Touch, being only a music device, is much easier to gift than an iPhone, given the limitation of the iPhone being only available through AT&T in the U.S. (or T-Mobile if unlocked).

I’m slightly more surprised that iPods are still selling so briskly, but then again, the movement to apps has offered a new life for the devices, given that the music player function is now almost a decade old. Of course, the current devices are a far cry from the original, brick-sized units from which you could have built a house if you’d wanted.