Cocktail Party Chatter

Before you head off to your next cocktail party, take a look at Top 12 Movies in History That Were Ahead of Their Time to stock up on talking points. This highly debatable list from Alex Billington at FirstShowing.net identifies 12 movies "as being ahead of their time primarily because of their technical and visual effects achievements. Most of these became the staple for referencing great visual effects after they came out."

Yeah . . . we can't believe Billington omitted Blade Runner (1982, Dir. Ridley Scott) either.

Image-Editing for the Rest of Us

Sree Sreenivasan at Poynteronline publishes web tips designed to make the work lives of journalists more productive. In today's tip, Sreenivasan explains that he increasingly finds Adobe Photoshop (or even Photoshop Elements) to be more program than he needs.

As a result, he's been using free web-based photo editors, and he's narrowed his list to a few favorites:

• Picnik.com
• Snipshot.com
• Pixer.us
• Fauxto.com (pronounced "photo")

You can read Sreenivasan's entire article online, and two blog posts that compare the features of online photo editors are at Smiley Cat and Digital Inspiration.