Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Let Me Show You What I Want for Christmas

Wish your mom knew what you wanted for Christmas? FilmCrave’s new movie wish list feature does just that. Users can easily add movies to their wish list and email it to their mom or anyone else, and voila! She now knows what DVDs you want for the holidays.

The email you send contains links to your personal movie list page. From there they can view your wish list and see changes as you make them. The best part is, each movie on your wish list links to Amazon, making purchasing movies a breeze.

Don’t remember your mom’s email? No way, you’re not that bad of a person! But in case you are, the innovative masterminds that created FilmCrave have made importing your address book easy. When you’re ready to email your list, simply hook up your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or MSN contacts into FilmCrave through the address importer. Go ahead. Send it to everyone on your list and make sure you get every DVD, twice.

This feature isn’t only for the holidays though. Users can send any number of movie lists and reviews to their friends and family. This enables users to instantly share the movie review they just wrote or the movie list they just created.

For those underprivileged soles who haven’t had the pleasure of using FilmCrave: FilmCrave is the only movie social network that fully integrates user interaction with movie reviews, intuitive movie lists, trailers, DVDs and the most innovative movie forum on the planet. FilmCrave is the authority in movie list creation. Because of their comprehensive formula, they’re able to offer compiled “top movie lists” that are based not only on overall member ratings but member created movie lists as well.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Bailout of the Detroit Giants

If you have read my previous post you would see that I oppose bailouts. However this bailout is slightly different to me. This bailout is not 100% because of mismanagement or shady behavior, in many aspects this is because of the credit giants screw ups. If GM could get the credit they need they may be able to sell more cars resulting in more profit. Would that solve all their problems? Not exactly, they still would have faltered because of high gas prices, model lines that are spread too thin and the fact they sold the majority share in their own credit company a few years back.

GM's overseas divisions are also a joke, they have... Opel? Is that it. I guess if you count Hummer as a foreign brand because so many of them are used by our military to invade other countries then they have two. Clearly, they have screwed up time and time again when it came to world wide support.

Now onto Ford. Ford is in a much better spot. They own their own credit company, so no problems offering credit to qualified buyers. They have very strong overseas brands, also they have a lot of collateral they can sell and have sold. Collateral like shares of Mazda, Jaguar and Landrover. They have been selling these off and have amassed enough money to survive a year at the current rate they are blowing through it. This means that if they can improve sales slightly in the next year they can get back on their feet just in time to see the economy grow again. Hooray!

So the big question is: Do we give them 25 million of the 700 million that already being spent? I think that giving money to GM is just going to prolong the enevitable. They should stop making Buick, Pontiac and Dodge and make Chevy and GMC their only two brands. Reduce thier dealers to 1500 to match Toyota (currently GM has 7000 dealers!). This will make them stronger, only if they agree to downsize should they be given money. If they are determined to hemmorage as much money as they are they will fail with or without our help.

Ford is going to likley be able to survive and lending them money may be a safer bet, it may also speed up their recovery. So I am not against helping them get back on their feet. They have proven they can manage their business and it is more the economy that is hurting them.

I have deliberately left out Chrystler. I think they are irrelevant in the scheme of things.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Wasting Money on What?

Alright, now the election is over and smoke has cleared, I ask myself "How much money did we spend and for what?"

The WSJ reports that this election for the White House (not including congress and senate) cost "about $1.6 billion; double the presidential race four years ago." 1.6 BILLION!!

Was the difference between Obama and McCain really worth that much money. If you look at McCain's previous record one would say that the two of them believed in most of the same things. The only area they differed was how to achieve these things. Now, don't get me wrong there are some fundamental differences to them but what would have happened if they spent that money somewhere else.

For instance:

140 million could feed 4 million people in Zimbabwe for a month. 1.6 Billion could probably feed them well for a year.

We could have used that to save 16,000 people's homes from being forclosed.

We could have even used that to send rabies vacinations to poor countries and saved 50,000 lives. (yes, somehow people still die from rabies -- odd huh).

My point it, the money spent on an election is a waste. I realize there is no true way to stop the spending, even finance reform won't curb the spending by private parties, but someday one candidate should say "Instead of givnig me the money to buy ads, I am going to use it for something good" and then that person will get my vote.

Oh yeah, the bailout is a joke too.

Top Horror Movies of All-Time

Here is my top 10 horror movies.

1) The Exorcist
2) Alien
3) Event Horizon
4) Halloween
5) The Descent
6) The Shining
7) 28 Weeks later
8) Nightmare on Elm St.
9) Rosemary's Baby
10) The Thing

Check out FilmCrave's List:
Top Horror Movies