When I was a kid I used to watch “The Naked Gun”, “Airplane” and the other Zucker films. My father and I good laugh for hours afterwards. We even practiced spotting the jokes in the background.

The reasons why The Naked Gun was, besides the script, Leslie Nielsen, who unfortunately passed away today at the age of 84 in Florida. I’ve always been a huge Leslie Nielsen fan. What’s not to like about the man? If you look away from some of his most recent films, he has always added something extra to the movies he has been in.

He will be missed.

I’ve previously written about Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Thor movie. Last time all I could show you was a image of Thor, Odin and Loke (as us closest to the Norse gods call him). In this almost 5 minute long trailer we see a lot more details. Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulsen, who we first met in Iron Man 2 1 (Thanks for reminding me), get a lot more screen time. He is replacing Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) as the SHIELD representative in the Thor movie.

Chris Hemsworth looks very Scandinavian (if I let my hair and beard grow you couldn’t tell us apart), Asgård doesn’t look like I imagined it, but that’s ok. I’m still not sure Anthony Hopkins is the right choice as Odin, but it’s very cool that he has accepted the role. Tim Hiddlesworth (Loke) looks very scheming and like a god that shouldn’t be trusted. Let’s not forget the last 20 seconds of the trailer featuring the Odin-forged suit of armor known as Destroyer. Thor better get a hold of his hammer pretty quick. Though I have a feeling we won’t see Destroyer until the end of the movie. It’s an obvious adversary for The Avengers.

But enough writing. Here is the leaked Thor movie trailer. (Watch it before it’s taken down again)

The last time I played Starcraft was in 1998. A lot have happened since then, so I’m can’t remember the Starcraft story down to detail. Actually I can barely recall anything. Good thing we have YouTube (though this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven YouTube for suspending me, but that’s another post).

If you have some forty minutes to spare zealousdemon has recorded the entire story from Starcraft for you. You can see the story from the first episode here.

“I love you Sarge”

I’ve written a guest post on Elektronistamag.com about my first impression using my iPad. Christiane’s upcoming and very informative site for women, who aren’t just interested in pink gadgets, but with an interest in tech, but not neccessarily in what makes tech tick(?!)

Say goodbye to pink, girly gadgets and hello to real stuff you can turn on. We handpick the best for you, give you less boring tech talk and more exciting, fun and relevant stories from the present digital life. We discuss major and minor trends and look into the crystal ball of future digital living.

Elektronistamag features articles you won’t always find on your mainstream tech site, usually with less focus on tech and more focus on useability, design and trends.

Men are also welcome on Elektronistamag.com. You can also follow Elektronistamag on twitter

I’m a big fan of WooThemes. As you probably can tell by the theme on this very page (Fresh News). I do like to change the theme from time to time and what better time to do it than just before a new year.

A standard WooTheme is $70 if you don’t need the Photoshop files (developer package). The $70 is very well spent. According to my good friend Dan at minute44.com, the themes are very well developed and will pass most tests you can throw at it.

I can only say that the support there is excellent too, but back to the christmas offer. You can now buy 5 WordPress themes for the price of 1. I just bought five new themes, it took me some time to make up my mind, but I finally decided to buy Bloggingstream, The Station, Mortar, Digital Farm and Daily Edition. That should do it for any possible blogging scenarios.

Which one of the themes do you think I should pick?

If you’ve spent all your money on christmas gifts, don’t worry. They have free themes too.

Over the summer we’ve seen a bunch of presumed blockbusters falter after their opening weekends. Brüno was no success (if you’ve seen Borat, you’ve seen Brüno), Duplicity with Julia Roberts cost $60 million to make, but made only $40 million in the US. Land of the Lost, Will Ferrell’s $100 million adventure-comedy, made $49 million in the US. Funny People and Public Enemies also disappointed at the box office.

Former chairman of Sony Pictures, Peter Gruber told New York Post:

“You look around the theatre and can see the glow, not on people’s faces from watching the movie, but on their chins – from the BlackBerrys and iPhones. They are immediately telling their friends whether it’s worth their time. And the answer to that, more often than not, seems to be no.”

The movie business is obviously afraid of a merely 140 characters and perhaps with a good reason. Before the end credits are done rolling I can tell my tweeps if I recommend the movie or not.

So what does this mean for the movie industry? Make better movies. Now it doesn’t take a week or two before the word about a bad movie spreads, it takes a few hours on Twitter.

Have you avoided a movie because someone on Twitter said it was bad? Do you think Twitter is killing Hollywood?

Update: Dan at minute44.com has some really good points.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Last Monday I started as a writer at The Inquisitr run by Duncan Riley. To me this is a huge opportunity to come one step closer to my big dream – make a living out of blogging and social media.

I’m covering the “graveyard shift” also known as the European time slot I make sure that you will never go to The Inquisitr and not see a new post. I’ll cover subjects from Entertainment and Funny to Tech.

I really hope to expand my network and take my blogging career to the next level. Please let me know, what you think of my posts and how I can improve them.

This just in: European Xing has bought American Socialmedian!

I’m so proud. It doesn’t happen very often that a European company buys an American. This will definitely help the European social network, Xing expand their business in Europe and the rest of the world.

To Jason Goldberg: Welcome to Europe. I think you’ll find Hamburg a plesant surprise. Remember to go to AOL Arena and see some German soccer (football). They have a great atmosphere there.

The official press release:

I am thrilled to announce that socialmedian is being acquired by XING of Hamburg, Germany.

This is great news for socialmedian’s members as XING is committed to growing and developing socialmedian both as a standalone service as well launching integrated socialmedian services on XING, one of the leading online business networks in the world.

The entire socialmedian team will be joining XING as part of the acquisition.  I will be relocating to Hamburg, where I will lead up a major new initiative for XING, the XING Application Platform.  In this new role, in addition to strengthening and enhancing the socialmedian service, I will also be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with the XING network.

This is an awesome development for socialmedian.

socialmedian delivers the news, filtered by your network.  XING is one of the leading global online networks and is rapidly growing around the world with nearly 7 million members, up from 4.8 million in 2007.  Together, socialmedian & XING will connect people with the people, information, and resources they need to get their jobs done, follow their interests, and pursue their passions.

More details immediately below.

• Here’s a link to the official press release
• Here’s a link to XING’s blog post by XING CEO Lars Hinrichs announcing the deal.

XING AG purchases socialmedian Inc.

• Transaction enables a  technological jump on integrating business news into Europe’s leading business network
• Socialmedian CEO Jason Goldberg joins XING in Hamburg, Germany in the newly created position of Vice President XING Applications Platform
• The company will launch integrated products in 2009

Hamburg / New York, December 19, 2008. The publicly listed XING AG (O1BC / ISIN DE000XNG888) announces today it has purchased New York-based socialmedian Inc., a leading innovator in the social news industry. The socialmedian solution enables people to get the news filtered by their social networks.  Socialmedian debuted in 2008 and has rapidly grown a highly engaged user-base.  Socialmedian is thus a natural fit with XING, a leading global online social network for professionals. Socialmedian’s founder and CEO, Jason Goldberg, will join XING in Hamburg, Germany in the newly created position of Vice President XING Applications Platform.

“XING is a uniquely active and innovative platform in business networking, offering real value for its members on a global scale. Combining XING with socialmedian’s next generation social news technology offers great potential to deliver highly engaging content and services to business professionals worldwide,” said Jason Goldberg. In the new role of VP XING Applications Platform, Goldberg will be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with the XING network.

Success in business depends on access to the right information at the right time. The rise of the Internet has increased both the speed of information and the sheer volume of data. In addition to traditional media companies, social media such as blogs, tweets, videos and other user-generated websites now provide daily news, leading to a veritable flood of information. Time-strapped professionals are left to parse through numerous news sources for relevant information and sort, organize, and share stories on their own. socialmedian does this for you, gathering information from about 19,000 sources, including social services such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Google Reader, FriendFeed, the international blogosphere, and industry and online media sources, and then filtering your news through your social networking contacts. Thus enabling people to get the news they need to know for their jobs, their interests, and their passions through the people in their networks.

Over 6.5 million business professionals, managers, and experts use XING to keep track of information and updates in their professional network. Working with socialmedian, XING plans to launch several new innovations, including offering XING members custom filtered news.  “We want to offer our members the greatest value in their networks, and this includes having the relevant news at their fingertips. Now we have the technology necessary to do so. We’re also excited to have someone like Jason working with us to develop the XING ecosystem of partnerships with leading companies around the world,” said Lars Hinrichs, CEO and founder of XING AG.

XING will continue to grow and enhance socialmedian as a standalone service. There will be no interruption for socialmedian users.

About socialmedian:
Socialmedian delivers the news, filtered by your network. socialmedian’s mission is to help people discover the news and information they need to succeed at their jobs, pursue their passions and stay informed about the world around them.  Since launching in August, socialmedian users have created more than 2500 topical news networks, ranging from iPhone to campaign 2008 to the global financial crisis, aggregating newsfeeds and user feeds from more than 19.000 sources with 800 new stories added every minute. The NY-based company was founded by former Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg and is currently backed by Washingtonpost. Newsweek Interactive and leading angel investors including Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Reed Hundt, former FCC Chairman and Allen Morgan of the Mayfield Fund. For more information, please visit www.socialmedian.com.

About XING
XING is the leading network for business contacts in Europe. Far more than a directory of business contacts, XING makes your professional network an active part of your life, enabling members to discover professional people, opportunities and privileges through its unique discovery capability and advanced contact management tools. With the successful IPO of XING as the first Web 2.0 company to go public, XING AG has had a long-term impact on the social networking trend amongst professionals. By focusing on the target group ‘business people worldwide’, the company is able to offer tailored features, thereby making networking and contact management simpler. Besides Headquarters in Hamburg, XING AG is also represented with offices in Barcelona, Istanbul and Beijing.
XING. Powering Relationships.

Again congratulations Xing!

Congratulations DBA.dk (Den Blå Avis = The Blue (News)Paper) – you are now officially filthy rich. However Ebay didn’t just buy DBA.dk. They also bought bilbasen.dk, one of the largest used car sites, a very valuable tool called Bilinfo (car info) and 300 employees with extensive knowledge of how to run a paper-based classified ads.

With Bilinfo Update used car sellers can quickly upload information about the car to Bilbasen.dk. It’s like a CRM system for used car salesmen.

Considering Ebay have used car section in most of the 22 countries they are represented in, the Bilinfo tool will help car dealers and give Ebay quite an advantage.

As previously mentioned DBA.dk orginally started out with classified ads in paper form. Every week you could buy Den Blå Avis for a couple of dollars and get thousands of classifieds.

Ebay bought that knowledge too. I’m sure the knowledge of, how to run classifieds in print. That is very valuable knowledge in countries like China and India, where printed ads are a bigger market.

According to Danish Ebay boss, DBA.dk will be faster and better before Christmas.

DBA.dk has about 1,000,000 visitors every month.