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10 Stunning Movie Websites

Antonio Lupetti — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:34:15 +0000

Adobe Flash is definitely the preferred platform by the film industry when it comes to creating visually stunning sites aimed at promoting new film releases.

Here is a selection of the ten best websites for movies of the current and past season that deserve to be added to your bookmarks as a source of inspiration in the field.

Salt – The CIA officer, Evelyn Salt, played by Angelina Jolie, is accused of being a Russian spy and must use her experience as agent to avoid being caught. The website of this movie shouldn’t be missed especially for the graphics and the excellent quality of images and photos.

Inception is a revelation for the current season, an awesome blockbuster that has been defined by Peter Traverser (Rolling Stone Magazine) as a well done mix between James Bond and The Matrix, with a compelling storyline and spectacular special effects. The website is equally impressive, especially for the transition effects between the different sections. Something I personally liked is the background music taken from the original soundtrack.

For the hardcore fans of the genre, July marks the return of “Predators” the new chapter of the 80′s (almost) homonymous film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The site is extremely appealing, too bad though for the textures in the background of the menus at the top of the screen, that do not really seem to be of great quality.

The sixth chapter of the Saw series showcases a site with a very dark and claustrophobic mood. Worth a mention, the scenes of the movie appearing in the background while you browse through the pages and the audio effects.

Great visual effort in the website dedicated to the film Splice, a thriller starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley and focused on the aberrations of genetic engineering. The graphics are clean and essential, the videos in the background have a good quality and are well integrated with the user interface.

Defined by Stephen King as one of the finest flicks of the year, The Road , starring Viggo Mortensen, sports a website that is essential and yet visually appealing. Beautiful effects and sounds, fading into the background.

Original, impressive visual effects and interface with a 3D navigation menu the site for Iron Man 2 is a feast for your eyes, one of the most spectacular you might expect from a Flash site.

The new movie by M. Night Shyamalan, The Last Airbender, is astonishing for its amazing special effects and website is no exception.

All the unforgettable characters of the most famous action movies ever are gathered in The Expendables film based on the story of a group of mercenaries sent to South America on a mission that seeks to overthrow the local dictator. The site is particularly interesting for the effects of contextual navigation with the mouse and the different animations.

2012, the latest movie about the Apocalypse and a blockbuster of the past season, showcases a minimal website with a clean and basic layout. The spectacular background images and fading animations in the menu make the site pleasant in its simplicity.

The Gulf Oil Spill: 88 Days Later

Antonio Lupetti — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 10:15:06 +0000

MORE LINKS

Oil reaches Louisiana shores – The Boston Globe (The Big Picture)
Louisiana Oil Spill (Photos): Gulf Of Mexico Disaster Unfolds – The Huffington Post
Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Birds, Fish, Crabs Coated – National Geographic
Timeline: Oil spill in the Gulf – CNN
Gulf of Mexico response – BP
Deepwater BP Oil Spill – White House
Tracking the Gulf oil disaster – CNN

The Cost of Spam: CO2 Emissions

Antonio Lupetti — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:58:49 +0000

According to data from a recent study by Commtouch (Internet Threats Trend Report) published in April 2010 and referring to the first quarter of the year, every day we send about 221 billion email messages, of which 183 billion are classified as spam (85% of the total traffic globally).

United States lead the ranking of the “spamming” countries with 38 billion emails per day followed by India (13.7 billion), Russia (9.8), Vietnam (9.7) and Korea (7.6).

How much does all this junk mail cost the environment in terms of CO2 emissions?

Studies have estimated that each email message generates about 0.3 grams of CO2. Multiplying this value by the number of spam messages sent daily worldwide what we get is that every day around 54.900 tons of C02 are released into the environment: a number that translates into around 21 million tons of CO2 every year.

Just a curiosity, for the sake of comparison: the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in April 2010 released into the air around 150,000 tons of CO2 every day.

Internet Censorship Report

Antonio Lupetti — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 20:13:50 +0000

It is one of the tools used by governments to filter out unwanted information and to prevent the spread through the World Wide Web. It is a phenomenon of staggering proportions that affects over 25% of the global population.

According to the latest data released on OpenNet Initiative and Reporters Without Borders 12 are the countries which have adopted a form of Internet censorship at a pervasive or substantial level. China, with a population of over 1.3 billion people and 360 million active users of the Internet is by far the nation in which the censors’ activity affects the highest number of citizens, followed in their list by Iran, Vietnam and Egypt.

It is striking to note that based on these figures, approximately 1.72 billion people are affected by the Internet censorship: a significant information which corresponds to 25.3% of the planet population estimated to be 6.79 billion people.

Moreover, in many cases, the censorship is not limited to filter the information accessible via the web but it also becomes a tool used by governments to fight their opponents. As reported by Reporters Without Borders China, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Burma (Myanmar) are the countries in which censorship is applied as a form of repression. China leads these sad standings with 72 netizens imprisoned, followed by Vietnam (17) and Iran (13), Syria (4) Egypt and Burma (2).

No data is available for North Korea.

Sources:
OpenNet Initiative
Reporters Without Borders
Internet World Stats
Wolfram Alpha

The State of Social Porn

Antonio Lupetti — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:23:51 +0000

They revolutionized the on-line porn fruition. They’re among the most visited sites in the whole web. A growing phenomenon that’s called Social Porn.

With the term Social Porn or Porn 2.0 people usually indicate all those sites, created after 2005 following the Web 2.0 philosophy, distributing – usually for free – porn content generated by the users themselves.

Since their first appearance, Social Porn Websites, did not only change the way people experience pornography on the internet, but also became enormously successful in terms of popularity and requests that largely contributed to aggravating the crisis in the ”Adult Entertainment” genre already started in the early days of the Internet.

According to statistics in June 2010, based on data from Alexa and Google Trends, PornHub is currently the most visited with over 7.9 million unique visitors (daily) followed by YouPorn (6.2 million), Xvideos (5.4 million) and RedTube (5.1 million).

The USA are in pole position for the highest numbers in daily unique visitors, followed by United Kingdom, Japan, Italy and Germany.

According to Alexa Top Sites rankings, there are 4 social porn websites in the top one-hundred: PornHub (in 52nd position), XVideos (in 55th position), YouPorn (in 62nd position) and Tube8 (in 93rd position).

Closing, a curiosity: the most popular movie on YouPorn has been viewed over 37,900,000 times and the second most watched – the video of Paris Hilton that appeared some time ago – reached more than 36 million views.