Here’s an idea.

How many times have you gone to a movie and had the experience ruined by others?  The ringing cell phones, the obnoxious laughter, the giggling teenagers, and those damn kids with their laser pointers!  My wife and I are not averse to paying $30 for a couple hours entertainment, but that’s only if we’re not seated next to an inconsiderate lout.  Despite the lure of the big screen, it’s easy to understand why people wait for DVD.

The tragedy is that seeing a movie with an audience can be a great experience.  You don’t get moments like these sitting at home on your couch:

1. Throughout the epic car chase in the mediocre Matrix Reloaded, tension in the audience was wound like a spring.  It was released all at once when an onscreen character, echoing our own feelings, thrust his hands in the air and yelled, “Yes! Yes!”
2. In Jacob’s Ladder the audience created a loud shifting sound when a needle was slowly injected into the protagonist’s forehead.  It was the sound of hundreds of people squirming in their seats. 
3. Seeing a fan favorite like Serenity on opening night was even better.  There’s nothing like hearing 300 people gasp at the same time when… well, you know which scene I’m talking about.

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Here’s an idea.

You know about Web 2.0, right?  Social networking, the semantic web, blah, blah, blah.  Well, I got to thinking about the one aspect of that stuff I actually buy into: Trust linking.

There are a hundreds — maybe even thousands! — of hyperlinks out there on the world wide web.  You can’t check every web site to see if it might contain something that’ll interest you.  Instead, more often than not, you rely on some other method.  Searching for specific information is easy — Google to the rescue — but I’ve noticed that when I’m just surfing, I only really follow links that are either popular (everybody’s linking them) or links presented by people I trust.

If I enjoy a website, I’ll probably bookmark it or, better yet, subscribe to it.  And later, if the owner of that site decides to link to another site, there’s a good chance I’ll follow along.  Why?  Because by bookmarking their site, I’ve decided that their opinion is worth reading.  I trust that the author won’t waste my time.  The content they’re linking to may not even be in one of my areas of interest, but often I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.  It’s the trust that matters.

Web 2.0 sites like Technorati are based on popular linking.  Del.icio.us thrives on trust.

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