Why Snakes On A Plane “Failed”

So much for the Internet hype. “Snakes on a Plane,” a camp thriller that generated an unprecedented tsunami of online hysteria during the past year, crawled into the No. 1 slot at the North American weekend box office with estimated ticket sales of just $15.3 million, its distributor said on Sunday.

Source

Brandon Gray an analyst at boxofficemojo.com said, “This tells you that you need to have a compelling story or premise to get an audience for your movie.” While this is true in some ways, it is not the entire reason.

When it comes down to it, there is one MAJOR reason why Snakes On A Plane (SOAP) underperformed this weekend. The demographic! Face it, this movie was going to rely on the buzz that was generated through blogs and in general, the Internet. The only problem is the fact that the tech community would rather download this movie through bittorrent, or buy the DVD in a few months. Movies are expensive these days, and the people who want to see Snakes On A Plane have easier and cheaper methods than the making a night out of the movies approach. If this movie has this amount of buzz in any other demographic it would have been a monumental success.

Madden 2007 Contest Winner

Thank you to all who replied and entered the contest.

The winner of the Madden 07 contest is.. JAKE! The winner has been emailed and notified.

Once again, thank you to all! Please look for our next contest coming soon!

We Think This Video Is Cool You Should Too- Lego Marble Carousel

Ibloggedthis respects the art of building cool things out of Lego. We have shown video game screenshots and mosiacs; now we want to show you the working and moving Lego Marble Carousel:

Very cool.

Review: Google Music Trends

“Music Trends is a snapshot of the music that’s popular right now among Google Talk listeners. Every Talk user who has opted in to Music Trends will cast their vote automatically, each time they listen to music on their computer. We’ll gather this information and display the trends by genre, listing the favorite songs and artists in each category.” Google Music Trends

While Google Music Trends is a very nice idea, it isn’t a great representation of what is “hot” or “not” in music. The demographic of Google Talk users is not a fair representation of the Internet community. If this technology were to be used to collect information on users who actually use google.com period, then this information would be extremely useful. Sadly, as it stands now, Myspace Music’s Top Bands provides the best data in this market. Look for Google Music Trends to fade away slowly without a peep.

Sneak Peak At Madden 2007 - Video, Screenshots, Details, GIVEAWAY

UPDATE: This contest has ended, thanks for your comments. Please look for our next contest.

**This is our first impression of the game. Check back tomorrow for follow up review!**

-First some proof that we played the game:

Today iBloggedThis was fortunate enough to get our hands on a copy of Madden 2007 for the XBOX 360. Without boring you with unnecessary details, here is my review of the game: (Please note that this was just jotting down notes as it came to me)

First thing right out of the gate, my 360 told me I had to update my console. Now I haven’t played much of my 360 due to time constraints, but this is the first time I have ever seen this. I was worried at first ;)

First things first, pick your favorite team. Easy selection for me personally, the New York Jets.

Here is a breakdown of the game menu:

Play Now

Game Modes
-Mini Games
-SuperStar
-Franchise
-Hall of Fame
-Madden Gamer Level
-Practice

My Madden

-New Features and Controls
-Create A Player
-Rosters
-Strategy
-Settings
-Save
-Load -Delete

My Media

Now onto the Jets roster, got to see how Madden rated my boys. Wow, Shaun Ellis a 93 (Overrated!), Doug Jolley a 80 (WAY to high), Adrian Jones a 79 (too low), Kerry Rhodes a 78 (WAY WAY WAY Low, should have been an 85!), Overall I think Madden overrated a lot of Jets, and underrated a lot of Jets; I am a little disappointed.

The Free Agent pool is a little out-dated (that is standard though!) Ty Law is still a free agent, instead of being a part of Herm Edward’s squad.

Now onto playing: the play now feature gave me Jets vs Dolphins, perfect. They added the ability to pick what time you want to play, I chose 1:00pm.

I am a little rusty, and I didn’t take a look at the controls, so this should be an experience.
Nice a Home Team introduction. Madden will do what all real games do, and introduce the home team. The cheers, the smoke, the fireworks, nice little touch. They don’t introdce all the players, I only got Shaun Ellis, Curtis Martin, Lav Coles, and Chad Pennington. The away team received no such introduction.

Kicking is different, lets give it a try. (Thankfully I got a small tutorial real quick) - Weird, it is a pull the stick back and flick forward, think Mario Party fishing. But it is fairly easy.

Now for my pre-game adjustments: took out Chad for Kellen Clemens, Curtis for Cedrick Houston, started Mangold.

First play, they threw it for 3 yards, no biggie. My feet are now wet.

Now to play a little without you guys!

Audibles are cool, a little zoom in on the top right corner on the QB. It seems like audibles are more frequent this year, or its just Daunte. Stopped the Phins and forced a 55 yard field goal, some how the computer made it. Stupid Olindo Mare.

Well that didn’t go well, third and four and I ran a playaction. I see my fullback wide open for the easy first, but off screen is Will Allen. Needless to say it is 7 the other way. That was the games fault, which kind of sucks! (I honestly believe that the field needs to be wider.)

Vilma with an interception, I hope INT’s aren’t this easy!

Cedric Houston fumbled on the 3! Zach Thomas picked up the ball and took it the other way. The play will be reviewed since it occurred with under 2 minutes left in the half. Overturned, phew! Reviews are very similar.

You can actually bat balls at the line of scrimmage as a DT. I tried it with full intentions of doing it, and it worked, pleasantly suprised!

At the half the Jets are up 14-10.

You can even develop screen plays, nice! I almost thought that the screen would never, ever work in a Madden game.

The deep ball is interesting, the game slows down ever so slightly when there is a big play possible. Even a little sound is made when this happens. That being said, Touchdown Coles.

Just like any year, and in real football, it is tough to recover when you gamble for the interception. Touchdown Marty Booker, 21-17, Jets.

I am finding that there really isn’t a happy median between pass rush. I either get a lot, or very little pressure when throwing the ball.

Weird tackle, I just ran into Ronnie Brown with Victor Hobson, and Brown went down without any animation. That is still a minor flaw. Hopefully Madden will fix that one day :-/

Can’t believe I am saying this, but I miss Madden in the booth a little bit. The hometown announcer is some how too quiet.

I think I have gone though the entire playbook, same old same old, nothing they can do about that really.

Blocking is much more realistic, still having problems with a natural pass rush though. Only one sack this game.

Overall Impressions:

I liked the game, but it did not blow me away. It seems that Madden has peaked a little bit in terms of what they can do to improve the game. That being said I have not fully embraced all the new features, and all football junkies will enjoy the new rosters and minor tweaks. I hope that I will come to like this game a lot more over the next few games, but I am not too hopeful.

Game Play: 8
Graphics: 7
Realism: 7.5

Now For the Giveaway Watch The Video!

Steps:

• Sign up for the RSS feed.
• Leave a comment on this post, with your real email.
• Spread the word to your friends.
• Wait 24 hours.
• Win a FREE Madden 07 for XBOX. Shipping overnight is FREE. International shipping will be worked out if the winner is from outside the U.S.

A MacMini and a Windows XP DVD

Here is a quick experiment we did with a MacMini and a Windows XP DVD. The reason the MacMini’s casing is off is for a memory upgrade. Find out what Macs really think of Microsoft Windows…

Here is the video:

Update:

Before this gets blown out of proportion, it’s obviously a joke.. We all know that Macs do not hate PCs and Windows.. You’ve seen the Apple ads, they get along great!

Digg Adds Video Screenshot Preview For All Digg Video Submissions

Ever click on a Digg video submission and regret it 5 seconds later? Well those 5 seconds will no longer be in limbo with the new Video Screenshot Preview Digg has JUST added. To the right every video submission there will be a screenshot for your viewing pleasure. Want to see how it works? Take a look:

From the Digg Blog:

Starting today, all newly submitted videos from YouTube and Google will include static thumbnail previews. Support for Yahoo! videos is coming soon.

This feature is a great addition to Digg, and we here at Ibloggedthis expect for other social bookmarking sites to pick up on this nifty idea. Reddit has a major need for this, and hopefully they will be man enough to copy Digg.

Turn Anything Into Web 2.0 (Logo Creator)

Check out the new IBloggedthis Logo:

Just kidding, we like our logo the way it is! The crazy thing is that the logo above took us roughly 10 seconds to make! Msig.info has a Web 2.0 automatic logo creator that is pretty nifty. All you have to do is type in the text you want to “Web 2.0ify” (Hey! maybe we should trademark that term!) Then you select whether or not to have a reflect, and if you wish to add a nice little beta tag to the end of the text, you can. Pretty cool app that provides some quick fun. Hopefully there will be a few more fonts and features added in the coming days.

Nintendo Wii For $170?

For months the Internet community has been waiting for some sort of details in regards to the Nintendo Wii. Release date, launch titles, price, availability have all been question makrs. Well IGN may be able to give us a hint at one of those answers:

Nintendo’s new Wii console could be yours later this year for less than expected. Tokyo-based Nikko Citigroup has issued a report on Nintendo’s rising stock price, and between all the jargon is the financial institution’s forecast that the Wii will carry a Japanese price point of 19,800 yen. Current exchange rates would put an equivalent US price at $170.00. However, console prices rarely convert according to exchange rates. At most, we can probable take this report to indicate an anticipated US price of under $200.

Source

It seems pretty obvious that this is a headline catcher, but it still brings great value. As stated at IGN, this most likely means a $200 release. We here at IBloggedthis couldn’t be happier about the possibility of a $200 price tag. $200 is VERY reasonable this day and age when it comes to video consoles. If there is any way that the Wii is available for $170, then that is just the cherry on top!

Firefox Crop Circle (Image)

We always knew Firefox fans were truly dedicated, but this next step is simply above and beyond:

Constructed by local Firefox fans and the same team that created the Firefox mural from cornstarch and kool-aid and launched the Firefox weather balloon, the Firefox Crop Circle project shows that we have so much passion for Firefox that we want it to be visible from space!

Source

This is about as impressive as it gets. Just thinking about all the work and planning that was involved makes our headspin. When I first show this picture to friends the first thing out of their mouth’s is “That can’t be real!” Well it most certainly is, and we here at IBloggedthis applaud the effort.