Infatigables remueurs de foules déjà croisés lors du dernier Festival des Inrocks, les Américains Hockey tournent à nouveau et étaient récemment de passage à Paris : interview et extraits live, en vidéo.

FlyScreen, the mobile phone lock-screen replacement from Israeli startup Cellogic, has added Foursquare integration to its Android app ahead of this year’s South by Southwest festival.

The new Foursquare widget lets users of the location-based social network access its main features, including the ability to quickly find places nearby, “check-in”, share their location with friends via Foursquare, Twitter and/or Facebook, as well as access their foursquare friends-list.

Google has Google Trends, Twitter has trending topics, and now so does Wikipedia. Pete Skomoroch at Data Wrangling built a trending topics page for Wikipedia. The homepage ranks the top-25 Wikipedia articles with the most pageviews over the past 30 days, as well as the fastest rising articles in the past 24 hours.

Some of the most popular Wikipedia articles in the past month include ones on the Perseids meteor shower, Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, director John Hughes, and G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra. These are quite different than the types of search trends you would find on Google trends or realtime trending topics on Twitter. Even the trending topics over the past 24 hours (District 9, Woodstock Festival, Usain Bolt, Gina Carano) are quite different than the hot searches on Google. And, no, I have no idea why Perseids was the top trending topic last month, it is usually visible in the summer.

You can search for any topic, and the you will get a chart showing pageview trends, along with the actual article placed in an iFrame below the chart. It’s as good a way as any to explore Wikipedia. The site is built on Cloudera’s version of Hadoop.

Hermanos Inglesos, ce sont bien des frères, comme le nom l'indique, mais ils n'ont rien d'espagnol. Ils s'appellent Didier et Cédric Engels et sont issus de la scène gantoise. Après s'être fait remarquer comme DJ's, notamment au Culture Club, tout s'enchaîne : ils remixent dEUS, commencent à produire leurs propres tracks, tournent un peu partout en clubs et en festivals, sympathisent avec Tiga et décrochent une signature chez PIAS. The wander of you, qui sort le 29 mars, est leur premier album.

Et même si on peut parfois lui reprocher certaines longueurs, cet opus est l'une des toutes bonnes surprises belges de ce premier trimestre de l'année. L'on peut dire qu'il s'ouvre en beauté avec Wanderland, un titre electro/house un peu chill qui n'invente rien, ne révolutionne rien, mais donne une irrésistible envie de se trémousser sur la piste, et c'est bien là l'essentiel. Et le soufflé ne retombe pas dès la seconde plage, comme c'est malheureusement trop souvent le cas des disques qui démarrent pied au plancher. Au contraire, les tueries s'enchaînent, l'intensité monte de titre en titre... Ca bastonne vraiment sévère dès la troisième plage, Snapshot, une collaboration avec le duo punk/electro Nid & Sancy. Ca ne se calme pas avec Mastermind, le single du moment, qui évoque gentiment Mr. Oizo avec ses sonorités aiguës gueulardes semblables au chant des oiseaux (ceux d'Hitchcock, qui seraient coincés dans une volière exiguë) ; chaud devant !

Forts de leur expérience de DJ's, les frères Engels savent comment s'y prendre pour faire exploser un dancefloor : tout au long de l'album, les basses sont calibrées juste comme il faut, les beats virevoltent. Et puis, ce qui ne gâche rien, il y a de vraies mélodies. Oh, elles ne sont pas toutes originales, certes. Certaines mesures de Qwistax semblent décalquées sur America is waiting de David Byrne & Brian Eno, mais on nous rétorquera sans doute qu'il s'agit d'une pure coïncidence...
Sur d'autres titres, comme Dunno, on relève des influences rock dans le choix des sons et la manière dont le morceau est construit. On pense alors au Sexor de Tiga ou à aux compositions les plus electroclash de DJ Hell. Que de des bonnes références, en somme. Efficaces.

Bien sûr, cela reste malgré tout de l'electro, un genre dans lequel cela fait longtemps qu'il n'y a plus guère de réelles innovations. Ainsi, à l'écoute de The wander of you, on pensera encore tour à tour à Compuphonic, Digitalism et Vitalic, entre autres. Il n'en demeure pas moins que c'est rudement bien fichu, très bien produit (peut-être même trop bien, tant certaines séquences auraient peut-être gagné à être moins "propres") et - c'est le plus important - toujours foutrement dansant.

Les frères Dewaele ne sont plus les deux seuls frangins terribles de Gand, qu'on se le dise.

Festivals > Le Mémorial de la Shoah retrace l’histoire de trois grands réalisateurs venus d’Hollywood pour faire des expériences cinématographiques dans des camps de concentration.

>> Lire tout l'article | sur AlloCiné - le Jeudi 11 Mars 2010

Festivals > Le 8e Festival International du Film des Droits de l'Homme de Paris se déroule du 9 au 16 mars prochain au cinéma Le Nouveau Latina (4e arrondissement). Au programme : rencontres et débats autour de documentaires.

>> Lire tout l'article | sur AlloCiné - le Jeudi 11 Mars 2010

Vu sur le web > Quelques semaines après avoir dévoilé une première bande-annonce, le "Robin des Bois" de Ridley Scott se découvre encore un peu plus à travers une nouvelle vidéo largement plus épique que la précédente. De quoi patienter en attendant la sortie du film le 19 mai prochain (certaines rumeurs l’annoncent par ailleurs en ouverture du Festival de Cannes).

>> Lire tout l'article | sur AlloCiné - le Jeudi 11 Mars 2010

The actor is making his film directorial debut with the Shakespeare tragedy about a brilliant Roman general, with himself in the lead role opposite Vanessa Redgrave and Gerard Butler

Ralph Fiennes is poised to make his directing debut with a contemporary retelling of Coriolanus, the Shakespeare tragedy about a disputatious Roman general who leads a rebellion against the empire. Production starts next week in Belgrade.

Not content with calling the shots from behind the camera, Fiennes will also star in the title role. Vanessa Redgrave plays his ambitious mother Volumnia, while Gerard Butler co-stars as Tullus Aufidius, the commander of an enemy army whom Coriolanus coaxes into an uneasy alliance. Brian Cox rounds out the cast as the Roman senator Menenius. John Logan, the screenwriter behind The Aviator and Gladiator, wrote the script.

The production was first announced at last year's Cannes film festival, where Fiennes was keen to present it as racy, exciting action thriller. "People who've read the script think it's a page-turner," he told Screen International. "I want it to be an edge-of-seat film."

Fiennes, 47, will next be seen in the Ricky Gervais comedy Cemetery Junction. Later this year he makes his final bow as Voldemort in the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

• Ralph Fiennes
• Period and historical
• William Shakespeare

SXSW, à Austin, est l'un des plus passionnants festivals de musique (et plus) du monde, et est aussi chaque année une intarissable sources de téléchargements pas piqués des vers : des petits malins ont tout compilé, et on vous donne l'adresse ici.

Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone.

While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it’s not really social. That’s why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that’s exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.

The core idea behind the new iPhone app (which launched in the store today) is that people inspire others to do things. So when you see a friend is out doing something fun, you may want to join them. Or it may entice you to go out and do something else, and hope others see it on Whrrl and join in. It’s the grouping of people with similar interests into “Societies” that is a key to Whrrl 3. For example, a basic society is that each venue in the application has its own set of “regulars.” If you visit the place enough times, you unlock the badge making you a regular, and giving you access to member-level activities, such as recommendations and specials nearby.

One of these societies, launching alongside the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas this week is the Austin Underground which “will provide members with at-your-fingertips access to the hottest parties, events, and other fun things to do at the conference,” according to Whrrl. Over 50 merchants in Austin are participating to provide exclusive offers, apparently. To unlock the membership, you have to check-in at some of the following places: Four Seasons Hotel Austin, Outback Steakhouse, Cool River Cafe, Chuggin’ Monkey, J Black’s, Red Fez and Third Base, and others.

Other key features of Whrrl 3 include Recommendations — you create these (with photos, if you choose), to let others in your social graph (or your society) know fun things to do in an area. Ideas, are recommendations served up to you from societies you’re a part of, your friends, or Whrrl’s algorithms. Fun Facts are shown each time you check-in to a venue, with information about it. And of course, there is a point system (Influence Points) that turn the whole thing into one big game. What’s interesting about Whrrl’s game is that you can get point by inspiring others to do things with the app. Points also allow you to level up in your societies for more special deals.

All of this is an extension of the “footstreams” idea that Whrrl launched last December. That’s where they also first introduced the society idea as well. The key to both of those is about real people doing real things in the real world.  That, in turn, shows what you’re interested in, and allows Whrrl to clump you into these groups with out like-minded people.

So that all sounds great, but will anyone use the app? After all, adoption has been a problem in the past and this isn’t the first time Whrrl is pivoting its product. In fact, they actually did exactly a year ago with Whrrl 2 just before SXSW.

Their main problem is convincing people to use Whrrl instead of the current location-based darlings, Foursquare and Gowalla. That’s going to be difficult because those networks are quickly building up social graphs and once those are established, users are less likely to leave. So Whrrl needs something to differentiate itself, and while their pitch to me is good, it’s an entirely different matter convincing users. And the things that would seem to help differentiate networks like Whrrl actually hurt them sometimes. For example, since location-based services are still new to so many people, it’s best to keep things as simple as possible. But Whrrl is piling on features that, while maybe cool, are likely to confuse new users.

Still, if Whrrl is able to secure some solid deals around Austin to get people using the app and checking-in, that could certainly get people using it. Of course, Foursquare and Gowalla have their own deals too. Then the problem becomes one I’ve had this past week while testing out all these location apps: fatigue. I can’t possibly check-in with each of these apps each time I move from place to place. The people I’m with have started rolling their eyes at me while I take my 10 minutes to check-in to all the different apps.

I’m not saying there can be only one. But one would sure be nice.

Find Whrrl 3 in the App Store here.

The International Music Festival Conference announced today the speakers for their panel focused on the Future of Music Festivals, at this year's International Music Festival Conference Europe taking placing April 8-9, 2010 in Amsterdam. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3709134.htm

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Continue reading Indie Roundup: 'Mercy,' 'Breathless' (Yeah, That One)

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Continue reading TFF Announces Narrative and Documentary Competition, Showcase Films and More

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Continue reading What Were Your Favorite Title Sequences of 2009?

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