I can’t believe this new IMDB feature slipped by me. If you’re reading this blog, then I assume you have at least an inkling of an idea of what IMDB is. If not, it’s the Internet Movie DataBase and contains info about movies, actors, directors, producers, etc. Pretty handy, if you want to know everything about movies and tv as I do.

IMDB has two main cornerstones: Name pages, for all the people (actors, producers, etc) and Title pages for, ehm, all the titles (movies, tv-series, videogames, etc). Last week they added a new type of page to the mix: Character pages. Every character from a movie or tv-series or video game can have their own page including biography, quotes and appearances. The IMDB staff have already created 20000 character pages of the most well-known characters, but the idea is that users can add and edit pages.

This feature starts to get interesting when considering characters that appear in multiple series/movies or have been played by different people. For instance, did you know that Ursula Buffay, the sister of Phoebe in Friends first appeared in Mad About You? Or that Jack Ryan, a main character in books of Tom Clancy, has been portayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck?

Sadly, I have noticed some problems with this new feature. Because the content is user generated, you only need one lazy user to create a new page for someone who already exists. IMDB gives a nice disclaimer:

The content of this page was created by users. It has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff.

But does this mean that there are also pages that are screened and verified? I’ve already stumbled on multiple pages for one person (King Arthur) and I wonder how IMDB will deal with this.

It’s an interesting new feature and it gives IMDB that extra dimension to create an even more complex network. If you’re looking to procrastinate, you can easily spend some time just clicking from one page to another. Don’t look at me like that; I never do that ! 😉

Just follow these simple steps:

House: Wow, House is back and it’s good! After last season’s slump, I was seriously considering throwing this series off my To-Watch list. So far though this season has been great (4×01 and 4×02). I loved the kidnapping of the guitar and the patient in the first episode. Also all the new doctors add this whole new dimension to the show. I wonder which of them are going to stay and for how long? I’m guessing Kal Penn and “Thirteen”. Does anybody else here think that “Thirteen” is somebody’s sister? I’m guessing Cameron’s.

Chuck: I’m still undecided on this series. It’s geeky, funny, but yet…I’m not really sure where it’s going. I also find it quite weird that the creators chose to name the character “Chuck” because there wasn’t any character on TV called Chuck so far, while now this season we suddenly have 3 Chucks (this Chuck, Gossip Girl rape guy and Pushing Daisies dead girl).

Journeyman: I wasn’t expecting to like this series as much as I do. It’s time travel, which most of the time means plots with gaping holes in it (too irritating for my logical mind; I hate it when they don’t think things through properly). Here though I’m not minding it that much and I think it’s to do with acting of the main guy. He somehow makes it less ridiculous then it actually is and I mean this in a good way!

Heroes: Did anyone else notice that the last episode (2×03) should have been called “Blue Screen” instead of “Kindred”? Last seasons special effects were always very subtle; this was just cringe-worthy. Shouldn’t a bigger budget mean “less crappy effects”? And the Maja/Alejandro storyline…zzzzzzzzzz. Get on with the cool stuff already.

Another batch of interesting links from the blogosphere:

What Do You Give The Person That’s Got Everything? This. Yes, that’s right; even the most boring person can now have their own action figure. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Super Accountant! [Via ChipChick]

Polly Put The Kettle On: I used to be one of those girls that wore mood rings; I loved watching the ring change color according to the mood I was in, until (of course) I found out it reacted on warmth. Now, this is the grown-up version of the mood ring. [Via ChipChick]

Sneak Peeks: Take a look at the trailers for Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and Semi-Pro with Will Ferrell. Then check out new images and posters from Astroboy (!!!) and Iron Man (if you hadn’t since this trailer yet, click here). [Via FirstShowing]

Will Won’t Travel: If any of you were following Traveler, you might have heard by now that unfortunately it’s been cancelled. One of writers though has taken the time to write a blog post to round off all the loose threads.

Felicity’s Lost Alias: Since Lost I’ve not been that impressed by anything JJ Abrams has done. However, there are quite some people that think differently: Fox has just bought the rights to Fringe, a new supernatural series described as a cross between Twilight Zone and X-Files. What?! The next show isn’t about a university girl turned spy who get’s stuck on a deserted island and isn’t allowed to cut her hair?? [Via BuzzSugar]

Some cool/interesting/weird stuff I stumbled upon this morning:

Cabbage Plastic Patch Kids: It’s already bad enough that the pictures of celebrities are airbrushed for magazine covers, but at least I can somewhere somehow see the point behind that. But to airbrush photo’s of your own children?!? They look like creepy weird plastic dolls! [Via dollymix]

The Truth Is Out There Again: According to David Duchovny an X-Files movie sequel is in the work and will start shooting in December. Do we really need more alien abduction and Big Foot stories? That is so 20th century. [Via TvSquad and my new plaid pants]

Come With Me If You Want To Live Be Confused: Another rumoured sequel is Terminator 4, which in my mind is completely unnecessary now that The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be aired. The storyline is already confusing enough as it is; do they really want to complicate the plot even more? Plus this quote from the producer about the new hero doesn’t give me much hope:

Ben-Hur was influenced by Jesus Christ, but it was his story. Much in that way, this character will be influenced by John Connor.

[Via First Showing]

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty: As long as they don’t bring the Hoff back, this could be quite interesting. Yes, they’re talking about a remake of Knight Rider.
[Via Variety]

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some T-shirts for Cristiano and me from Threadless, when they had a “all-Tshirts-10-dollars” sale. I finally have got them, after having to go to a Delivery Office and pay 3 pounds extra import tax and 8 pounds handling fee. I find the handling fee a bit ridiculous, cause if they hadn’t checked it and just sent it straight to me, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of handling it. Instead they decide there’s an extra import tax on it, giving me extra trouble to have to pick it up and adding a handling fee on top of that! Now I haven’t been that long in the UK, but does this happen often? Do they always check everything? Or is it (like in Holland) that once in a while you can be unlucky and they check what it is?

Anyhow, I finally have my T-shirts and I just love them (see pictures)! I really like the whole idea behind Threadless; everything is basically user-generated. Anyone can submit a T-shirt design and people can score the design. Based on the number of scores, the average score and the comments people leave behind the Threadless team decide which designs will be printed. Next to that you can collect points by submitting photo’s of you wearing Threadless T-shirts, with which you get extra store credit and thus, more reason to buy more T-shirts. The T-shirts themselves are funny and pretty, in a very unique type of way. I have a lot of Emily Strange T-shirts, but these are just so much cooler.

So what are you waiting for? Get some T-shirts!

I’ve always liked the idea of del.icio.us and do kind of use it, but the website itself was never really “delicious”. Yes, it did do what it had to do, but you wouldn’t really consider it a pretty interface. This all is seeming to change though. Techcrunch showed some screenshots of the new website here.

I really like the new look; it seems much more userfriendly. They’ve also added some needed searching and tagging functionalities. You can request an invite, but at the moment they’ll just put you on the waiting list.

A couple of days ago I was watching one of those morning BBC auction shows and they said that eBay began because the founder wanted a place for his fiancee to trade PEZ candy dispensers. I actually believed that (gullible me), but decided to have a closer look into it.

Apparently it’s not completly true. The guy just created it, because he saw a gap in the market. His wife did trade PEZ dispensers and did have some trouble trading them. The public-relations manager of the company overheard this and used it as a way to attract the media.