Review: The Social Network

The Social Network is a dram film about the founding of the social networking website Facebook and battle with lawsuits resulting by the creation. The film was directed David Fincher, and the script was written by Aaron Sorkin.  The screenplay is an adaptation of the Accidental Billionaires. The film was produced under a budget of $50 million, and grossed over $130 million. This is a critical success; gaining high ratings from well know critiques.

The plot of the film is as follows. The film starts in a nosy, where Zuckerberg and his girlfriend are having a conversation. At the end conversation, his girlfriend dumps him. Fuel by anger Zuckerberg stomps to his dorm. Then he hacks the college network and obtains pictures of every female student. The he set up a site called Facemash, a site which student can give rating to girls based on their hotness. This was instant hit. He then catches the attention of Winklevoss twins, who have a great idea of setting up social media site only for Harvard students, Harvard Connect. He takes this idea, and with help of his best friend, Ecuador Saverin, set up the site TheFacebook. Sean Parker, founder of Napster came across the site when Zuckerberg expanded the site to other colleges. Zuckerberg met Sean Parker while he was in New York searching for advertising offers. Sean Parker gives ideas, which makes Zuckerberg move to Silicone Valley, with funds from Ecuador. The site became very successful. After few months, Ecuador loses his shares in the company, as he was not directly involved in its operations. Zuckerberg has to fight against two lawsuits during the film, one for Ecuador losing share in the company, and the other for stealing Winklevoss twin’s idea. At the end Mark loses the court battle, and has to pay $68 million to Winklevoss twins, and an undisclosed amount to Ecuador. Ecuador also gets his status as founder restored. This is the plot in the movie.

This is a great film. Even though, the film does not portray the accurate events happened during Zuckerbergs’s first year in Harvard, but it is almost like a biography of his first year in Harvard. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a sociopath in the film, but he may not be a sociopath in real life. The performances of actors portraying real life characters are as accurate as it can be. The film has dramatized the actual events to more interesting and exciting ones. The screenplay is very funny for a drama film. There are intense conversations in the film. These are the features that make this film great.

Chinese PSP phone

China, a country famous for cheap electronics, and knockoff gadgets has grasped the knockoff version of the  rumored PSP phone, that is supposed to be announced by Sony. This is named Unmei Q5, and can be found in stalls of Shenzen. This has 3.5inch touchscreen, front and rear cameras, dual SIM card slots, a NES emulator, 3.5mm audio jack, and a mini-USB port. All this is packed into a casing that is similar to a PSP Go. This costs only $60.

Introducing the New Controller from Microsoft

 News about this controller has been spreading around the media for the past two years. The Computer savvy people got to know about this big release from an information leak from Microsoft in May 2009. During 2009 E3 conference, Microsoft announced this as Project NATAL, a new gesture based controller for XBOX 360. After that there were occasional information leaks on this on the Internet. In June 2010 Microsoft unveiled its final name with its features. Kinnet, new gesture based controller for XBOX 360, is a unique controller unlike any other controller on the market. Today (November 4^th) it has finally gone up for sale. This how the information has spread.

Kinnet is a very advanced, state of the art controller for a game console. This is a controller, which a user does not have to hold to use. It has three cameras; the middle one is a RGB camera, that captures video at a resolution of 640*480, the other two cameras are depth sensors. All three cameras combined form a 3D image of the user. The console uses this to detect body movements, with the direction of movement. Then the console uses this to find out how the user wants to control the interface, and it responds to it.  The user can do this by selecting an item on the menu just by pointing their hands; or the person playing can play a boxing game just by pretending to play a real game of boxing in the user’s living room. This also has voice and facial recognition, which allows users to talk to the console, and play with up to four players simultaneously. This is a new innovation, that incorporates cutting-edge technology.