Alex Reid

“You can’t make 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

That’s the tag line to the movie The Social Network, written by West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin and directed by Fight Club director David Fincher, which releases October 2010.

The movie is about the founding of Facebook, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But the movie does not have the blessing of anyone from Facebook and in fact Zuckerberg has publicly expressed distaste of the movie citing inaccuracies in the book which the movie is based on.

“I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive,” Zuckerberg said.

But don’t expect to see promos for Facebook on Facebook, not because Zuckerberg doesn’t like it, but because of Facebook’s own advertising guidelines.

“Facebook’s advertising guidelines don’t allow ads to reference the company unless Facebook has cooperated with the object of the ad,” said Steve Elzer, SVP of Media Relations for Sony (SNE) movie unit, Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. (source)

Twenty three years later, Gordon Gekko is released from prison.

I’m not a fan of sequels but when they’re presented in true time, it’s pretty neat.

A certain favourite movie of mine is Fight Club, based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk. The movie was directed by David Fincher, music performed by the Dust Brothers and starred Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. In that order, I have praise for them all.

On so many levels I like this movie, and maybe that’s an ironic statement considering (if you’ve seen the movie). If you have not seen the movie, watch it. Otherwise, check out this very cool fanvid featuring the apt song “Becoming Insane” by Infected Mushroom.

Earlier today, Steve Jobs announced the new Apple toy of the year, the tablet-like iPad.

It might look like an iPhone on steroids, but it’s actually a mini-laptop.

It’s nearly the same screen size as a MacBook (the iPad screen is 9.5″ x 7.5″ while the MacBook screen is 9″ x 13″), one third the weight, and one half the thickness. The last stat is key because what makes the iPad a mini-lapto is that the iPad has the keyboard and monitor in the same space.

Similar to the iPhone, you can type via a QWERTY touchscreen keyboard but of course the keyboard is bigger, and Apple is offering accessories that will allow you to dock the iPad with an Apple keyboard in case all that touching is too much for you.

You can surf the Internet, watch movies or TV shows (Netflix anyone?), listen to music, play with photos and play iPhone games. Because of the iPhone network already in play, iPad users will have access to over 140,000 apps (and growing). The only downside is that it doesn’t come with flash.

Anyone who already owns an iPhone, will easily know how to use this device and that’s what Steve Jobs says will work for sales. For e-book readers, this device may be tempting because not only does it do more than most tablet PCs, but Apple is going live with their own “iBookstore” offering a place for publishers to sell their e-wares, just like it does for musicians (on record labels) and for iPhone game developers. Jobs says that they already have five of the largest book publishers on board already.

Canadians can expect the iPad to arrive in short supply this March.