Twitter testing 'You Both Follow' feature

Twitter is testing out a new feature that would help users find others who share their interests.

"You Both Follow" would let a user click on someone else's profile and see which Twitter feeds the two of them have in common.

Presumably, someone who follows lots of the same feeds you do has similar interests and may be worth a follow themselves.

News about the possible new feature snuck out last night when Twitter developer Nick Kallen tweeted on his account that it was being tested. He said that 10 percent of Twitter users have the feature enabled.

In a later post, Kallen, answering a question, said that 100 percent of users had the feature for about five minutes for testing purposes.

CNN.com didn't immediately find anyone inhouse who had the feature Thursday morning. But social-media blog Mashable posted some screen grabs.

The feature would appear as a thin rail above a user's normal "following" field.

Adding the feature would mark a bit of a turnabout in Twitter's catch-me-if-you-can relationship with social networking titan Facebook.

While Facebook was accused of mimicking Twitter when it rolled out its News Feed feature, adding "You Both Follow" could be interpreted as Twitter serving up its own version of Facebook's friend suggestions.

The change would be part of an ongoing effort by Twitter to further engage users with each other, instead of just passively reading other people's tweets. Most notably, CEO Evan Williams in March announced plans for @anywhere, a feature that integrates Twitter with other websites and lets users comment on each other's activities without having to visit Twitter.

On Thursday, Twitter rolled out version 1.1. of @anywhere for the websites that are testing it, with what it called "performance, security and stability" improvements.

There was no suggestion of a possible rollout date for "You Both Follow" -- if it eventually gets rolled out at all.

Source : CNN.com

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A Nightmare on Elm Street - Review

Freddy Krueger, the maniac with the melted face and steel hand, has haunted audiences for 26 years.

Since the first Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, there have been eight films, a television show, novels and even comic books. The new film is an attempt to re-boot the franchise and introduce Freddy to a new generation. He is still as psychotic and blood-thirsty but his trademark witticisms seem labored and even the ominous clink-clank of his claw is now a bit of a bore.

The grand narrative twist of the Elm Street franchise has been that Freddy kills you in your sleep. You first have a nightmare of him slicing and dicing your body parts and then inevitably, the nightmare becomes a reality.

The film begins with a young, drowsy boy slitting his own throat. The only way to escape Freddy is by staying awake but after a few days, his victims are so sleep-deprived that they start to inhabit a surreal, in-between world, in which they aren’t really sure about what is a dream and what is real.

At one point, one girl burns herself to stay awake. This play on such a basic human need is genuinely frightening and grotesque. So are Freddy’s first few appearances.

Director Samuel Bayer uses sound effectively and makes you jump. But the fun wears off very quickly. Slasher films aren’t driven by logic or performances but by pure sensation. Their sole purpose is to provide a roller-coaster ride through body parts and blood that makes you scream and laugh in quick succession. Unfortunately Elm Street manages neither.

Bayer, who has directed iconic videos such as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, creates some memorably creepy visuals – at one point, Freddy pushes through the walls of a girl’s bedroom and at another, the floor changes into a swamp of blood as she walks through it.

But the story is so tired that visuals simply can’t prop it up. Beyond a point, both the characters on screen and viewers are struggling with the same problem: how to stay awake.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is more fatiguing than frightening. Only for die-hard Freddy fans.

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Shutter Island - Review

Shutter Island is essentially Martin Scorsese slumming it. Here, the man referred to as America’s greatest director, blends gothic-horror and B-movie conventions, with a nod to Alfred Hitchcock and Hollywood movies of the 1940s and 50s.

Shutter Island is purposefully frantic, enjoyably creepy and occasionally dazzling. But eventually the story, adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane, becomes so convoluted and clunky that our emotional engagement with the characters wanes.

Shutter Island becomes a somewhat interesting puzzle but not much more.

The year is 1954. Cold War paranoia permeates the air. It’s the time of H-bombs and Senator McCarthy.

Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his partner Chuck, played by Mark Ruffalo, are dispatched to Shutter Island, a prison for the criminally insane. The first scene in the film has Teddy throwing up as a boat ferries him closer to the ominously looming island. We know that it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

A female prisoner, who drowned her three children, has disappeared from a cell with one barred window and a door locked from the outside. Teddy has been called in to investigate.

Like all Scorsese protagonists, he comes with his own share of baggage. His traumatic experiences through World War II haunt him in flashbacks.

Horrific scenes from Nazi concentration camps jolt him awake at night. Of course soon it becomes increasingly apparent that the doctors on the island aren’t telling Teddy the truth. The prisoners he talks to have been coached. One ward remains strictly off-limits. There is also a sinister lighthouse where the secret of Shutter Island might be buried.

For the first hour or so, Scorsese juggles these many strands expertly. He plays us like an organ drumming up our anxiety and claustrophobia.

The performances - especially DiCaprio as the slowly unraveling Teddy - are terrific. So are the visuals.

But as the red herrings pile up and random characters deliver long explanations on what may or may not be transpiring, the game becomes tedious.

Shutter Island clocks in at two hours and eighteen minutes but feels even longer. By the time, this nightmare psychological noir winds up, you’re long past caring about Teddy’s predicament, although the last scene adds a nice twist to the puzzle.

Shutter Island is far from satisfying but it’s always fun to watch a master orchestrating cinematic tricks.

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Pic of the Day - 7th June

A toddler shows off the new Huggies Little Movers Jeans Diapers during the 'What's Your Denim Style' baby fashion show in Union Square on May 20, 2010. The all-new jeans design by Huggies are the new look for summer. (Photo: AFP)

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Pic of the Day - 6th June

Matt Harvey the first Wimbledon tennis 'Championships Poet', sits in an umpire's chair as he poses for the cameras at Centre Court at Wimbledon, England, on Tuesday, May 18, 2010. The All England Club said on Tuesday that Harvey will write a poem per day to sum up the matches and atmosphere of the the grass-court Grand Slam tournament. (Photo: AP)

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