The world doesn’t need another list of the best films of the year, but after considering my own recent lists, I realized there were a handful of movies‹excellent independent work that has largely flown under the radar‹that even I initially overlooked. Here are seven bold American
low-budget movies from 2011 that may have been forgotten in theatrical release, but should make for essential home viewing (if you haven’t seen them yet) in 2012. And I’ll be among the first in line to see where these young directors go next.

This particular blog entry is going to focus on the comparisons and contrasts of Stieg Larrson’s original book, Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 adaptation and David Fincher’s 2011 adaptation. This entry will therefore be very spoiler-laden, with conversation meant for those that have either read the original book, seen the respective adaptations or all three. If you haven’t done any of those things, and wish to not have the story ruined for you, I suggest you stop reading now.

Later this week, I’ll be heading to South by Southwest Interactive, and joining about 15,000 others interested in the tech portion of the music, film and interactive conference in Austin, Texas. In preparation for my trip, I’ve been downloading mobile apps.

Here are some of the latest and greatest apps I’ve found to help me connect with others, find places to go and document and share my experience.

Having said that, I tried to include apps that anyone would find useful or entertaining and not apps that I use just because they work with my personal daily workflow. When I first got the iPhone, like many other people I started going on an app shopping spree just to see what was out there. Now, after several months, I have gotten rid of the so called “junk” and have left the apps I enjoy using most. I hope you find some gems here that you did not know about.

Book Review

AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET

Black Women, Rape, and Resistance: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

By Danielle L. McGuire

Knopf. 324 pp. $27.95

Education reform was Oprah Winfrey’s star guest for two full days this week when she hosted a two-part series on the new education documentary “Waiting for Superman,” and it was a sight to behold. “Today you’re going to learn things that you had no idea were going on in this country in our schools,” were Oprah’s ominous opening words, and so was the beginning of what turned out to be a two-hour infomercial for the Obama administration’s education reform agenda.

The all-stars of the liberal education reform movement were there: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Harlem Children’s Zone icon Geoffrey Canada, billionaire-philanthropist Bill Gates, the newly inducted education reform celebrity spokesperson John Legend, and of course Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. With that lineup, the stage was perfectly set for what would ultimately become another chapter in the current teacher-bashing trend. The administration couldn’t have scripted a better show.

Ostensibly the crew had gathered to promote “Waiting for Superman,” the new education film by “Inconvenient Truth” documentarian Davis Guggenheim. And promote the film they did; “Waiting for Superman” is about the crisis of the American education system and the nation’s current efforts to overhaul the its public schools. While the film does feature almost all of the people who made the trip to Chicago to sit on Oprah’s couches and pitch their education policies to America, Rhee, Canada, Legend and Friday’s new guest Newark Mayor Cory Booker are also the cheerleaders and darlings (or bankrollers) of Obama’s education reform agenda, which targets teacher unions’ as the main culprit of the country’s crumbling education system.

Maybe, for starters, demanding a stronger, securer social safety net. But macroeconomic responses to Guggenheim's query—such as ensuring that all parents earn a living wage so that the appalling number of kids living below the poverty line in this country is reduced—go unaddressed in Waiting for Superman, which points out the vast disparity in resources for inner-city versus suburban schools only to ignore them.

Ducking thornier, more intractable problems (and relying too heavily on animated graphics), Guggenheim instead comes up with a proposal that no one could possibly take exception to: We need better teachers. But the biggest impediment to firing incompetent instructors and replacing them with excellent ones, the film argues, is the teachers' unions; Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation for Teachers, is made to look especially villainous, shown in a clip rousing her members by proudly proclaiming the AFT as a "special-interest group." (Weingarten has attacked the film on the Huffington Post and in the September issue of the AFT's newsletter.)

Simply put: the iPad is the first real family computer. No longer is computing an isolated experience with one person staring at one screen, fingers clacking away on the keyboard while the rest of the family does something else. The iPad was shared between brothers, giggled over by children, and downright snuggled up with by parent and child. It was no more isolating an experience than someone reading the paper in the next chair over. It was easily just another everyday object. And that may be its biggest selling point yet: the iPad hides away the technology, and makes content king. And at the end of the day, that's not really such a bad thing.

Here are places in New York serving the best coffee. Included are 10 outstanding coffee bars (listed with an asterisk) that not only produce extraordinary coffee at the highest standards, but also do so with consistency, day after day. There are also coffee bars that serve particularly good drip coffee, restaurants with great coffee, coffee bars with nice baked goods and places to buy beans, all of which are noted on a map, here.

I can’t talk about coffee houses and a coffee tour and not mention Cafe Du Monde. This was probably the number one place I ever had coffee.

Besides the fact that they are known for their long-standing coffee stand, chicory coffee, and beignets, they are located in the heart of New Orleans, Louisiana. I remember that I chose to not drink coffee on this trip, but gave in when we got to New Orleans. I couldn’t resist. It was raining that day (also was the 2-year anniversary of Katrina). The seating area inside, under the roof, is also open to the outside stree

Apple's Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server is aimed squarely at small businesses that, for any number of reasons, need or prefer to host their core Internet services in-house without breaking the bank. Ars kicks the tires on the new combo to see if Apple has another hit on its hands.

Anyway, Paranormal Activity is good if you like ghosts. I like ghosts. I also like zombies and psychotic killers with chainsaws—I had a fairly traditional American education—but I’m not bored by low-resolution long shots of rooms in which nothing happens but a door opening six inches, apparently by itself. If you like ghosts, that’s practically the money shot.

Google's introduction of Wave is nothing if not ambitious. As opposed to saying "We have a new web mashup tool" or "We've taken multimedia email to a new level", they're pitching Wave as nothing less than the successor to email. My question, after seeing the demo, is "Is that an outrageous claim, or a way too modest one?".

The main purpose of this article is to discuss the options for and results of using adapters and manual focus lenses on the Panasonic G1. That ability is something that has a lot of photo.net photographers talking about the G1 and interested in using it. Though this isn’t a full review, I will start out by giving a quick (well, quick for me) overview of my thoughts on the G1 itself and it’s performance and usability.

review of web based bibliography software