O'Reilly Digital Media

Let me present an idea to you. Imagine a web service/site that enhances the travel experience in the following ways:



1) By enabling you to better plan where to stay and what to do visually on a personalized map (e.g., where hotels are located relative to sites you want to see, and sites are located relative to each other).



2) By tapping into recommendations from “like minds” and “friends of friends” to provide better qualified recommendations of where to stay, how to get there, what to do and where to eat.



3) By helping you find travel partners with compatible interests prior to your trip and coordinate meet ups with fellow travelers during your trip.



4) By allowing you to capture and share travel moments via mobile camera phones and blog journal entries, and keep friends/family updated about your travels via email and the web.



All of the pieces already exist. Friend of a friend and like minds types of user profile models, including lookup and hookup functionality have been adopted in several different applications, such as LinkedIn, Tribe.net and Friendster. Sites like SuperPages allow you to plot pins in a map, and Microsoft offers a very robust MapPoint Web Service for building custom mapping applications. Both travel and local listings sources are in abundant supply. The Meetup web site is a good example of online community web sites driving physical world connections around specific but common purposes.



Somewhere between 20-40 million camera phones shipped this year and that number is going to mushroom to 1 billion people down the road a bit, making moblogging almost ready for prime time.



Mind you, the Expedia’s of the world have done a pretty good job capturing the ticketed transactions side of the sandbox, and the Fodor’s of the world offer pretty good travel content, so the devil’s advocate might be inclined to say, “good enough.”



What’s your take? Is there a need? Hard or easy to build?

Does this application resonate? Do other solutions solve the same problem for you?

I was privileged to attend the third LOTR movie on opening night (midnight on Tuesday) and I’m glad to report it was worth staying up until 3:30 am for it. The burning question is, of course, how does it compare with the Matrix trilogy?

I was a big fan of the first Matrix movie. Although I loved the first LOTR movie (The Fellowship of the Ring) too, I felt the Matrix was more original and thought-provoking. The second Matrix movie (Matrix Revolutions) showed how far and how fast a sequel can fall short of the original. Any excuse for meaning, plot, or originality was largely missing from the second installment, despite the cool CGI. The third Matrix movie (Matrix Revolutions) was largely unwatchable (and didn’t Naobi die in the second movie, or did I just die of boredom?). I remember reading an article in which the producers commented that to get the full experience of the movie, you’d have to play the game (presumably for XBox and PS2). I bought an XBox, but I have no intention of buying the Matrix video games.

So what happened to the Matrix? It completely lost its way, falling back on unfufilling cliches. Oh, and did I mention the uncanny resemblance it bore to the much better saga written nearly 50 years ago, Lord of the Rings?

Fro…er Neo…travels to the heart of enemy territory accompanied by his erstwhile companion Trinity Gamgee. Oh, and he gets blinded and they suck face a lot. I don’t remember that in the book. Anyway, enough about shitty trilogies, let’s talk about a great one.

My main complaint about the second LOTR movie (The Two Towers), as reviewed here was the omission of certain scenes (and the inexcusable corruption of Faramir’s character into someone who coveted the Ring). As I predicted, an important scene from the end of the second book, which was omitted from the second movie, appears in the third movie. As with the second installment, the beginning of the third movie is unforgettable, albeit incomprehensible if you haven’t read the books or seen the previous movies. In fact, if you haven’t read the Hobbit, much of the movies don’t make as much sense as they otherwise would. I hope Jackson brings the Hobbit to the screen as well, although it hasn’t nearly the depth of the later trilogy.

So is it bad for movies to complement the book? I think not. They’re different media, and you will be truly enriched for having experienced both. In the third book, the plot is divided between two and sometimes three different venues. Long after something occurs in one venue, the book goes forward or backward a week in time to the other story line. I thought this built a lot of dramatic tension, which was missing from the movie where all plotlines occurred simultaneously (switching between venues when necessary). Perhaps it was unavoidable, as the movie might have been impossible to follow for those who hadn’t read the book if it mirrored the book’s timeline.

All in all, the third installment of the movie is better than the second and perhaps as good if not better than the first. The actress playing Eowyn was excellent. I don’t know how she made her face quiver on cue like that. There are parts of the movie verbatim from the book that would otherwise seem like Hollywood hokum, as when Sam carries Frodo. And there are deviations from the book to simplify or speed the plot, or eliminate otherwise minor characters. Billy Boyd as Pippin was particularly good fulfilling his sworn oath to the Steward of Gondor. It was so good, it was almost difficult to watch. As in the second movie, there were simply breathtaking battle scenes. And again, as with the second movie, I’m sorry they omitted a scene (the one in which Gandalf rejects the offer to surrender at the Black Gate).

Judging by the audience reaction to certain scenes, many hadn’t read the books. To Jackson’s credit, he doesn’t end the movie immediately following the trilogy’s climax (which occurs about halfway through the third book). True to the book, he continues the story for several more scenes, illiciting outright gasps and groans from movie-goers weaned on Hollywood formula every time the scene faded down and then back up. But it gladdened this reviewer’s heart tremendously, and even at over 3 hours, the movie brings the trilogy to an end before I was ready to part ways.

All in all, my only regret is that I didn’t catch “Trilogy Tuesday” where some theatres played extended cuts of the first two movies preceding this third installment. I recommend you rent them and read the books, but don’t miss this one in theatres.

Here is the final scorecard from best to worst:

1. The Matrix
2. LOTR: The Return of the King
3. LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring
4. LOTR: The Two Towers
5. The Matrix Reloaded
6. Matrix Revolutions

Now don’t get me started on the Godfather…

Which was your favorite, LOTR or The Matrix trilogy? Which was your favorite installment?

A few months ago I posted about Wireless Business Models Prove Elusive, and I said:

I think that wireless networks are inherently community oriented. Good will and a few bucks here and there will have much more impact than rollouts of massive for-profit networks. Random people in neighborhoods of the cities will take it upon themselves to provide network access for the people in the streets below, much in the same way that the Open Source community loves hacking on code without getting paid for it. And as Napster has shown, FREE is hard to compete with.

This Wired News article “Wi-Fi Grows, but Profits Don’t” shows that not much has changed in the past few months.

The article asserts that the number of WiFi networks is on the rise throughout the world and expects this trend to continue. But business users of these so called visitor-based networks aren’t spending bucks on them. Wired says:

In-Stat/MDR’s findings concur with those of other analysts. Earlier this month, Jupiter Research published a report finding that 70 percent of online consumers are aware that Wi-Fi is available in public places, but just 15 percent have used it at all, with only 6 percent having done so in a public space. Furthermore, only 1 percent have paid for the service directly, with an additional 3 percent having paid indirectly (for instance, as part of their hotel bill).

Plus T-Mobile and Wayport (WiFi at airports) aren’t willing to talk about usage numbers, which I think is a sign that the numbers are not what they had hoped they would be. If they were, we’d be hearing updates much like the constant announcements from Apple on how many million songs have been sold through iTunes.

Even though things don’t seem to be going well for the wireless operators, there does seem to be one threat to community oriented open networks. A few weeks ago at some party I spoke to a friend who mentioned that wireless companies are now going to small businesses like coffee houses and the like and are offering Wi-Fi service packages that require them to do nothing. They earn money from the wireless services that these companies install and manage on the behalf of the business owner. This is probably the biggest threat to a mesh of open networks in urban areas — small business owners are not likely to be clued in enough about wireless or why it would be better for their business to offer free wireless in order to attract more customers. To the business owner the proposition makes sense: “I do nothing and you send me money every month? Where do I sign?”

It remains to be seen if this tactic will pan out. So, what do we make of all this?? Commercial WiFi access isn’t going so hot right now, which is fine by me. The writing on the wall points to Clay Shirky being right about his ZapMail analogies. I’m just curious how the commercial operators will change the wireless network landscape. At best they will quietly go away, and at worst they will fragment the space and interfere with the natural evolution of wireless networks.

In either case, it’s too early to tell for sure.

What are your thoughts on commercial wireless networks?