Free iPhone app streams short films, documentaries, cartoons, and more

NFB Films streams over 1,000 shorts and feature-length films to your iPhone.

Like indie films? Documentaries? Animation? Ho, boy, have I got an app for you: NFB Films lets you watch over a thousand movies on your iPhone. For free.

The "NFB" stands for National Film Board, a kind of Canadian PBS. The app taps the NFB's mammoth library of documentaries, animated films, trailers (for upcoming NFB releases), and more.

All the movies are streamed to your iPhone, but there's also an ingenious "watch later" option that downloads a selected movie for later viewing. However, these downloads expire after 24 hours, not unlike App Store movie rentals, but that hardly seems unfair.

NFB Films includes a Channels section where you can browse various categories, including Documentaries, Kids Cartoons, History & War, and Environment. There's a search option, natch, and you can add movies to a favorites (sorry, "favourites") list for easier access.

If you come across a film you want to share with friends, the app lets you send an e-mail that includes a link to the Web version.

A while back I went to see 10 Oscar-nominated short films--five animated, five live-action. They were all tremendously entertaining. Since then I've been a lot more open-minded to non-mainstream movie fare like this. So for me, NFB Films is pure iPhone gold. I reckon you'll love it, too.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Bring a little Bing into your Windows 7

The team over at Bing wanted to show off their support for the launch of Windows 7, by putting together the top images on Bing in June, July and August into a Windows 7 theme pack. The 20 very stunning photos are available for free, directly from Microsoft's Personalization Gallery.

Microsoft's Bing team managed to group these images to help show off some of the Windows 7 features, with the personalization gallery feature. Windows 7 makes it easy to download, install and run a brand new theme pack with a few clicks of the mouse.

The dynamic background theme packs interchange every ten seconds to one day (default 30 min), depending on user's preferences. With the new personalization backgrounds, users get a difference image and experience every time they sit down at their machine.

Users can create their own background theme set with their own set of pictures within a folder on their PC.
Right click Desktop > Personalize > Desktop Background > Browse and find your desired folder > select all or some of the images you want and click Save changes.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds gives Windows 7 a thumbs up

Linus Torvalds, the father of the Linux Kernel gave Windows 7 the thumbs up in Japan yesterday.

Torvalds was in town for the Japan Linux Symposium exhibition and Microsoft reportedly setup a big promotion booth across the street from the conference center. During a conference break an attendee dragged Torvalds across the street to "make fun of Microsoft".

The result? A somewhat sarcastic thumbs up from Linus Torvalds, it's a picture that will certainly go down in history though. Thanks to Steven Bink (bink.nu) for spotting this:


Image Credit: Chris Schlaeger

Mozilla Labs Raindrop - Messaging Aggregator Lets Users Cut Noise And Pull Communication Of Interest

Mozilla Labs unveiled their RainDrop messaging aggregator project allowing users to get information of interest prioritized from all the clutter from various sources like Email accounts, blogs, twitter and social-networking sites all at one place.

Mozilla Labs describes Raindrop as a open-Web technology for creating useful and compelling messaging experience.

The platform will allow users to categorize and prioritize messages so communication or information of higher importance gets visible before everything else, the open-platform will encourage front-end widgets and code from 3rd party developers for greater extensibility and customization - you can preview the prototype in action in the video posted next.

Mozilla Labs Project RainDrop >>

Mozilla Labs unveiled their RainDrop messaging aggregator project allowing users to get information of interest prioritized from all the clutter from various sources like Email accounts, blogs, twitter and social-networking sites all at one place.

Mozilla Labs describes Raindrop as a open-Web technology for creating useful and compelling messaging experience.

The platform will allow users to categorize and prioritize messages so communication or information of higher importance gets visible before everything else, the open-platform will encourage front-end widgets and code from 3rd party developers for greater extensibility and customization - you can preview the prototype in action in the video posted next.

Mozilla Labs Project RainDrop >>

Google Maps for BlackBerry gets layers

(Credit: Google)

If you haven't recently updated Google Maps for your BlackBerry, do. Earlier this week, Google bumped up its BlackBerry map app to version 3.2. As with Google Maps on Symbian Series 60 and Windows phones, Google's BlackBerry map app now supports layers.

In the layers submenu on the maps app, you'll find a list of layers you can turn on while mapping. These include Wikipedia entries, local transit lines, traffic, your personalized My Maps, and Google Latitude.

When accessing your My Maps listings, Google Maps for BlackBerry 3.2 prompts you to log in to your Google account before letting you load onto the mobile screen the saved routes you previously mapped on a desktop.

You can download Google Maps for BlackBerry 3.2 for free from m.google.com/maps.

MySpace Says Twitter Is Closer Competitor Than Facebook

MySpace’s recent reorientation to emphasize entertainment over friends makes it more similar to Twitter than Facebook, said News Corp Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. “Twitter is about asymmetrical relationships,” said Miller, while Facebook users have mostly symmetrical friend relationships. “MySpace is in between. One of the things we have to focus on right now is you have to declare a major.”

But ultimately MySpace will end up more like Twitter. “MySpace is more about interests, which is followers and followed, than just the pure friend thing,” said Miller. “But obviously I believe we have the ability to be much richer [than Twitter].”

In some respects this shift is quite obvious, but it’s interesting to hear News Corp spell it out. And Miller is right: Though Twitter is quite the phenomenon right now, MySpace does have more features. Twitter is at its core a broadcast system, whereas MySpace can get a lot deeper into music and other content.