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Moving Pictures

The Film MovementThe Film Movement is an idea with a lot of promise: once-monthly distribution of truly independent films on DVD or VHS to subscribers via U.S. Mail. “Film Movement scours the world’s top festivals to bring members 12 outstanding films each year.” One day we’ll be downloading our booty from these kinds of clubs and storing it on massive personal hard drives, but for now, the US$20 per month fee seems like a reasonable price to pay for a hard copy. The first movie ships in December.

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Typist

dollarshort.orgThis is my second Movable Type post in less than a week, but that’s because this product is amazing. Not being much of a CGI monkey, I paid the folks over at Movable Type to install it for me, which they did in less than six hours and for a mere twenty bucks. That’s terrific enough, but the software itself also happens to be remarkably robust — just take a look at these screen shots. It’s really hard to believe they give it away free. (Actually, the authors depend on a donation system.) It’s been a blast tinkering with it, and it’s definitely set me on the path of redesigning Subtraction.com. Soon.

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Movable Feast

dollarshort.orgBlogger is great, but it has its limitations. So I’ve been seriously considering switching over to Ben and Mena Trott’sMovable Type. The more I look at it, the more impressed I am by this grass-roots content management system, especially by the fact that it’s run entirely by a husband-wife team. The wife, Mena, also happens to be a terrific designer, as evidenced by her beautiful personal site, dollarshort.org. All this has me thinking: it’s about time for Subtraction.com to move up to version 6.0.

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Chill Factor

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics have joined forces to produce Chilling Effects, a Web site devoted to educating the public on their rights within the First Amendment and copyright laws. ?[It] offers background material and explanations of the law for people whose websites deal with topics such as Fan Fiction, Copyright, Domain Names and Trademarks, Anonymous Speech, and Defamation.? Have a look at the database of cease and desist letters sent by megacorporations to perceived violators of their copyrights to get an idea why the site has that name.

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Joy Ride

Roller-coastersYesterday, I took a trip with some friends toSix Flags Great Adventure, where we spent the afternoon riding roller-coasters, something I haven’t done in years. It was a complete blast, a reminder of how much fun roller-coasters were when I was a teenager, and a revelation in seeing how advanced they’ve become in the years since. The best was Nitro, followed not too far behind by Medusa. There’s some great video of the Nitro ride over at the Discovery Channel’s Web site.

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