Anyway, in regards to the review I may have to revise my opinion a bit after having spent quite some time with the thing. Don’t get me wrong – I still think its a great piece of hardware – its just there have been some performance issues I haven’t been able to get rid of that have really decreased its value in my eyse. Recently one of my readers sent me a question which illustrates this – below is that email and my response. Make of it what you will.

Hey Jacob,

Nice review!  Thank you, it was very in-depth and helpful.  I just got this myself and figuring out how to put it all together.  Finally got it to work, with all the cables and stuff you know, but my question is, you mentioned that when you played your music, you heard clicking and skipping.  I noticed that too.  How did you get to fix yours exactly?  I’m asked to play for a small group of friends this Saturday and I would hate for them to hear all the clicking when I’m playing.
Any help is appreciated!  Thank you in advance, J!

Newbie VDJ,
DJ Bones (haaaa!  the name is funny but it stuck, I’m way skinny that’s why)

---

Hey Bones,

Yeah, the skipping thing is a bitch, its actually been annoying me a lot lately. Sometimes the interface will work fine for an hour then start slowing down and stuttering for a while. I’m not sure if its the interface’s fault or some background process I have running on XP thats making my CPU chug… either way it sucks. Here are some things I’ve done to reduce the frequency of these dropouts -

• Increase the ASIO buffer size
• Turn off my wireless card
• In task manager, set the priority for my music app to “real time’
• Turn off any unnecessary background processes

Even with these fixes though I still run into trouble sometimes. Luckily I’m mostly just playing house parties for my friends though and they’re usually too drunk to care / notice. However, these issues really detract from the value of the RMX as playing in a real club situation with these problems could be disastrous.

I’m actually thinking about getting another dedicated audio interface and using the RMX as just a MIDI control surface since I like the layout so much. Its a shame such a potentially great peace of hardware is plagued with these kind of stability problems.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback, and I hope you rock the party on Saturday!

-Jacob

Is anyone else having these problems? Does anyone have fix suggestions?

UPDATE: Thanks for the suggestions guys! Updating the firmware did help a bit, though I still get some problems in Ableton Live when I’m playing too many tracks at once. I’m thinking this may be only an Ableton problem though – I’ve started using Traktor 3 and so far I’ve had zero problems with the sound no matter what I throw at it! This makes me happy.

I’ve been using the beta version of the program for the last several months after deleting  iTunes due to some weird Flash-video-crippling  bug (* has anyone else experienced this? a bug that causes any streaming video in firefox to stop after 2 seconds of playtime?). iTunes was nice, but only because the alternatives offered nothing remotely better. And my iPod Nano died after a year of using it so I was no longer locked down to Apple’s ubiquitous DRM infested media player. I was playing the field again, and after getting sick of constantly misplacing the 10 windows Winamps opens on my screen I went with Songbird – despite the fact that it was in its beta 0.8 version.

And it did suck sometimes. Veeery slow – it would practically crash every time I typed something in the search box, and I’m running  stripped-down Windows XP on a dual core with 3CB ram. Not encouraging. But I saw potential in it – the integrated web features and open source nature – and freedom from iTunes – and I stuck with it.

It was worth it. Because a few days ago they released 1.0 and I’m very happy. Its like an entirely new program, like I was using a crippled demo version until now. Whys it so nice?

- WAY faster than iTunes (and no firefox bugs) – integrated browser- integrates with streaming music sites seamlessly – tabs – instantly recognized my Sansa Clip (and will also recognize my iPod if I’m ever crazy enough to buy one of those overpriced bricks again) – open source and extensible

So basically, everything i liked about iTunes plus tons more stuff and none of the crap. Excellent. I’m listening to Cut Copy and smiling.

Thank you to the brave and generous programmers that made this great program possible.

Thats when I thought of this trick for getting the samples into Live quickly:

-Open the desired drum kit in Reason

-Create a drum pattern which uses every drum hit, one at a time, at evenly spaced intervals of 1/4 measure (or 1/2, just long enough for the tails to die off without running into the next hit).

-Export this loop to a WAV file.

-Open said WAV file as an Ableton Live clip

-Right click on the clip and use the “Slice to MIDI” tool to slice at the same intervals the hits were at.

And there you have it- a drum rack created quickly from the Reason drum kit! Enjoy.

Overview:

This is the Hercules DJ Console RMX. Its a MIDI control surface for DJ’s with a built in 4×4 USB audio interface, and so far, it rocks.

Background:

I’ve been a bedroom producer / DJ for going on 5 years. My tool of choice is Ableton Live, but for a while now I’ve realized that my DJ skills were being severely limited by the lack of a proper DJing sound-card. I’ve been using the M-Audio Firewire Solo, which has been a great piece of equipment for me, but lacks the two separate stereo outputs required for cueing DJ mixes. I’ve played a couple of parties with my setup, but inevitably screw up a few times as I was basically “playing blind” (or rather, deaf) by not being able to listen to my tracks before I played them for the crowd. That needed to change.

I started looking for 4×4 USB soundcards, and soon realized that their were a couple of sound-cards with built-in MIDI controllers specific to DJing. I’ve been using an M-Audio Axiom 49 to control things so far, which is another great piece of equipment, but its not exactly tailored to be the ideal DJ setup. Initially I was looking at the Hercules MKII, but was turned off by its cheap build quality and cramped space. I also came really close to purchasing the Behringer BCD-3000; luckily before I bought it at Guitar Center the guy let me take it out of the box to get a feel for it. In doing so I found that all of the controls felt pretty chintzy, and one of the jog wheels was even sticky in a spot and wouldn’t turn smoothly! I’m so glad I turned this down, as compared to the RMX, the Behringer is a POS.

After many more hours of online research, I found that Hercules had a new product coming out, the DJ Console RMX, which promised “pro” quality and build. It just came out last month, so there was a dearth of reviews (besides this Dutch review that I can barely understand even with Google translator). Normally I’m a very cautious consumer, and read every review possible before shelling cash. This time though there were none available, but despite this I decided to take the plunge anyway. Someone has to be the first reviewer, right?

Unpacking:

I ordered this online at GuitarCenter.com (it was sold out at my usual retailer of choice, Zzounds.com), and received it in the mail about a week later. Looking at the box, I was unimpressed. Its got some really uninspired graphic design that makes it look just like a mid-90′s 3D graphics card box, which I guess makes sense because if I recall Hercules was a major graphics card vendor in the 90′s. Once I got it out of the box though, I completely forgot about that crappy graphic design and got lost in the beauty of shiny all those shiny knobs and buttons. Right inside the box is the carrying case, which has the DJ Console tucked away inside of it, encased in Styrofoam. The case is a nice touch, but I wish it had some pockets for extra cables and such. I found that although the Console lacks a proper cover to protect the knobs during transport, I could reuse the Styrofoam packing to achieve this purpose. It would’ve been nice to have the dedicated cover though… but oh well.

The first thing you’ll notice when you take this thing out is it’s really heavy. The think looks and feels like it was carved out of a single piece of steel. This may be a disadvantage to some weak-armed people out there, but I think its great as it makes you feel like its indestructible and a real pro piece of equipment. I guess Hercules really took to heart the complaints about their MKII being cheap and plastiky feeling, as they’ve completely remedied this issue. Compared to the MKII and Behringer, this thing is rock solid. Its slightly larger than my laptop, and fits nicely on the table sitting in front of it. The weight and hard rubber feet give it a really rooted feel so it doesn’t feel like it will slide around during heavy use.

Along with the case and console, it comes packaged with a fairly long USB cable (maybe too long considering you’ll probably have your laptop very close to the console in order to read the screen), an installation CD, and an instruction manual. I really like printed instruction manuals instead of PDF, as I spend all day at work reading boring stuff on a computer screen and I don’t really want to have to do it at home. The manual seemed impressively hefty to me at first, until I realized that it contained the same info printed in six different languages. I guess this means they’re really serious about targeting the international DJ scene. I only wish that it had come with a manual for the Virtual DJ software; it has a brief tutorial but doesn’t go into any real depth.

Installation:

It was REALLY easy. I stuck in the CD which auto-loaded, and within 2 minutes had installed the drivers and Virtual DJ software. Apparently the CD drivers are the latest version, so I didn’t even need to download anything extra from the Hercules website. As soon as I’d installed it, I ran the Virtual DJ software and was immediately able to start playing with my music with no further configuration. Excellent!

I/O:

The unit has 4 audio input channels and 4 audio output channels on the back of the unit. For each channel there is a choice of RCA or 1/4 jack. I didn’t realize this until I read the manual, but you can use the 1/4 and RCA jacks simultaneously if you’d like to duplicate the output for extra monitoring or recording options. This is actually a pretty sweet feature that I didn’t even consider at first. The inputs are also switchable between line and phono input, so you don’t need a separate phono pre-amp to run your turntables. They also include grounding connectors. These inputs have “source” buttons above them to allow you to override the PC output with live output from one of the inputs, useful if you want to mix vinyl with MP3. The inputs also allow you to use time-coded control CD’s or Vinyl, an option I haven’t explored yet but may try in the future.

On the top of the unit there is a 1/4 headphone jack and 1/4 microphone jack, each with their own dedicated volume controls. These jacks are duplicated on the front, though apparently you can’t use the front and top jacks at the same time, so no dual-headphones or mics sadly. The headphone jack always outputs channels 3 and 4 for pre-listening to tracks. The microphone jack allows you to talk over the music. It sends the input directly to the outputs, and automatically drops the volume of any music playing by an amount specified in the control panel. This allows you to talk over the music to make announcements much like a radio DJ. This is a nice feature, but I’ll probably use the inputs on the back for my microphone, as they can then be routed to internal effects before being sent to the outputs. The one thing this console is really lacking is an XLR jack with phantom power for running condenser mics. I can understand them not including this as most DJ’s won’t need this feature, but it kind of limits me as I do a lot of music production as well, and condenser mics are really essential for clear vocals. I guess for that I’ll have to go back to my M-Audio.

The sound of the outputs is pretty good, to my ears. There was a tiny amount of clicking and skipping in the playback, but this can probably be fixed by tweaking some of my PC settings. I’ll probably need to increase the ASIO buffer size and turn off my wireless card. The glitches were barely noticeable though, and overall the sound was nice, although I don’t profess to be an audiophile. The output of this thing is pretty loud too – I had the main volume set to about 1/4 for a comfortably loud listening level – a level that my M-Audio would have generated at about 1/2 volume.

One thing I saw some people complaining about in the forums is that it doesn’t have a dedicated power adapter. It draws all its power from USB, which makes sense as a PC is required to use it, but apparently some people had trouble with it drawing too much power from USB and are getting an error message. I didn’t have this problem, so for me this lack of power adapter is fine. It would be awesome if you could use this console as a stand-alone audio mixer, but I can understand how they would need to leave this feature out at this price point.

For those interested, here are my system specs:

Gateway C-140X Laptop

Intel 2.2GHZ Core 2 Duo Processor

2.5 GB RAM

160GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive

Windows XP SP2

Usage:

I’m used to DJing with Ableton Live. I’ve been using the program for years, and have become really familiar with its work-flow. However, for the sake of science I decided to try out the Virtual DJ software first, as its pre-customized to work specifically with the RMX’s controls.

I must admit, the Virtual DJ interface is pretty ugly. Its got a Windows 95 kinda look going for it, but I do like the un-cluttered feel of the interface at least. It’s a crippled “LE” version, but thankfully the full version lets you change skins. At the top is a strip which displays the waveforms- one deck is red and the other blue. They overlap so you can match them up, and also have little dots underneath to indicate the transients. Beneath the waveform view is two turntables, which show the action of the jog wheel and all the EQ and effect controls. The bottom half of the screen is dominated by the track browser, with directories on the left and songs on the right. The built in navigational buttons let you go through the directories very quickly, especially when combined with the jog wheels for scrolling through long lists. It did take me a little bit to find out that the you expand directories by using the “load deck” buttons. Once within a directory full of music, you can use these buttons to load the song onto either of two decks. Overall this method of song navigation is very intuitive, but I haven’t yet figure out how to set up playlists or rate my tracks. If you don’t want to use the included browser, you can actually drag songs from iTunes or a windows folder directly to the tables, a nice feature.

The Virtual DJ software is very easy and intuitive to use, as I was able to get a pretty good mix going without even opening the manual. The basic technique is this: Select a song, load it to Deck A, hit play. You can tweak the EQ and effects with the knobs and buttons, or “scratch” using the jog wheel. The scratch effect sounds relatively realistic, but I wasn’t able to do anything too cool sounding (probably due to my lack of any real scratching skills). I wasn’t able to “play” the record by turning the jog-wheel at a constant pace either, the song would sort of pitch up and down uncontrollably and not remain at a steady tempo. I don’t know if this is a result of un-steady hands, or an effect that is put onto the track to make it more “scratchY’ sounding. Anyway, once you’ve got the one song going, you can load another song onto Deck B, and pre-listen to it by using the “Cue-Select” button.

Finally! I’m not Djing blind!!!

That single feature would make this equipment worthwhile to me, even if the rest of it sucked (it doesn’t). I was able to listen to the song over the headphones, and could control the mix headphone mix between cued song and live mix using the handy “Cue Mix” knob. Theres a “sync” button which sets the BPM to match that of the other record, and a “beat lock” button to make BPM changes only affect time and not pitch. The sync button works pretty well for matching the BPMs of two songs (as long as the two BPMs were within the range afforded by the pitch fader), but I still found it hard to get the two decks playing exactly in time with each other. You can set a cue point for the start of the track, but theres no “auto-play” feature which plays the track for you exactly on beat; you’ve got to hit play yourself at the exact right time, which I found tough as theres a very slight delay. I’m sure I’ll improve at this with practice though.

If the “Scratch” button is turned off, the jog wheels act as pitch nudge wheels, so if the two decks drift from one another, you can use the jog wheels to slightly slow down or speed up the track to get it back in time. When the track is stopped, you can use the jog wheels to quickly scroll through the track to set your cue point.

Since we’re on the topic, let talk about the Jog wheels. I was skeptical at first about how useful they’d be, as they aren’t motorized so don’t really have the same feel as real records. After using them for a while though, I think I’m really starting to like them. The feel of the wheels is extremely nice – they have a definite heft, but spin extremely smoothly, and have a nice grippy rubber top. This is in extreme contrast to the Behringer BCD-3000, which had tiny chintzy plastic wheels with almost no weight or smoothness. I found the jog wheels to do a great job for scratching, cuing, and navigating through directories. Now I just need to find a good way to integrate them with Ableton Live.

As far as the rest of the controls, they’re solid, but not as nice as the jog wheels. The volume and pitch sliders all have a nice smooth resistance to them, similar to a mixing console. The crossfader has almost no resistance to allow for fast cuts and scratching tricks, but almost feels too loose. They should’ve used a nicer crossfader for this as that’s practically the most important part of a DJ mixer. The knobs all have a nice feel and turn very smoothly with a slight resistance. I really love them in comparison to my Axiom’s knobs, which are clicky instead of smooth (I will never understand why they chose to have these kind of knobs on the Axiom, it makes any kind of effects control really choppy). There are a ton of buttons which all have a dedicated purpose within Virtual DJ, which I won’t spend the time to exhaustively list. About half of them light up with a blue LED glow, which gives some nice feedback to the user lends a futuristic look to the device. I haven’t been able to get the lights to work in Live, as apparently it requires some setup of the MIDI out port and I just haven’t had the time. It is a shame that all of the buttons couldn’t have been lit, but I think this was a limitation set by the amount of power you can draw through USB, so I can’t really blame them.

My one criticism of the buttons is that they’re a little too squishy. You have to press down relatively hard to make sure they register every single time. I don’t really see this as being a problem to most users though, as I got used to it pretty quickly. I did have one problem with the “Skip Forward” button sticking- after I unstuck it I pressed it like a 100 times and it seemed to work fine after that, but I really hope this doesn’t become a problem again or start happening with the other buttons.

I like the layout of the device, which is basically split into identical mirrored controls for each deck. The controls don’t feel cramped at all, which was a heavy criticism of the MKII. One thing I was confused by is that there are both “gain” and “volume” controls for each deck. Isn’t this redundant?

Virtual DJ LE also includes some limited effects, which I played around with for a bit while mixing songs. Looping, flanging, and beat stutter tricks are all easily accessed by the effect buttons next the EQ section. Despite its excellent control integration, I found the Virtual DJ software to be limiting (perhaps because this is the limited edition?). I’ll most likely end up getting Traktor Scratch for DJing purposes, as this seems to be a much more respected and versatile piece of software than Virtual DJ. For free software though, Virtual DJ isn’t too bad, and is a great tool for getting into the feel of mixing tracks. It definitely requires a bit more skill to create seamless mixes than Live in my opinion, but affords more features geared towards classic turntable DJing.

After playing around with Virtual DJ a while, I switched back to my old standby Ableton Live. I was at first confused that the ASIO drivers didn’t appear as an option in Live’s preferences. I then found that you have to open the DJ Console RMX settings from the task menu and set the drivers to ASIO in that. After doing this, the ASIO drivers were properly recognized by Live, and I was able to achieve 10ms latency with no glitchiness.

The RMX comes with no preset templates for Live, so I had to set the controls manually using Live’s MIDI learn feature. I was quickly able to map the sliders to control volume and crossfaders, and the knobs to control EQ. Because Ableon requires a different method of DJing than Virtual DJ, there were a lot of leftover buttons I could assign to anything I wanted. The one thing I still really need to figure out is how to get the navigation buttons to work in Live. Usually I would use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate the grid of clips, but the RMX navigation buttons don’t seem to work in that way. If anyone knows how to map MIDI messages to control clip selection in Live, PLEASE let me know. It will be awesome to be able to control Live 100% from the RMX without relying on the keyboard or mouse. For now though the RMX is still an excellent addition to my Live setup, providing me with the 4×4 interface I need and a wealth of programmable controls.

Conclusion:

So far, I’m extremely satisfied by the Hercules DJ Console RMX. The DJ audio interfaces I was looking at while shopping generally ranged from $200-$300, so for about $100 more I got the interface I needed plus an excellent control surface! For my needs this all-in-one DJ console is way better than having a separate audio interface and two control turntables, as the transportation and setup is much simpler. The feel of the unit is solid and professional, and in my opinion rivals the build quality of the revered VCI-100. Of course, it completely blows its predecessors and the Behringer console completely out of the water. I have yet to test this extensively in a ‘real world’ party situation, but I’ve got one lined up for tonight so I’ll let you know how it goes! Despite its few flaws, I highly recommend this to anyone needing a solid audio interface and DJ control surface.

Pros:

-extremely solid build

-shiny silver finish, and pretty blue lights!

-good audio connection options

-great jog-wheel feel

-tons of knobs and buttons in an intuitive DJ-specific layout

-good song-navigation controls

-Virtual DJ is good software for beginners

-easy to use right out of the box

-value for price

Cons:

-slightly loose feeling crossfader

-Virtual DJ software feels limited

-hard to control “scratch” effect

-kinda squishy buttons, may get stuck

Update: Check out my Hercules RMX post-review retrospective

“If there’s a camera up in here
Then I’d best not catch this flick
On YouTube (YouTube)
‘Cause if you run your mouth and brag
About this secret rendezvous
I will hunt you down
‘Cause baby I’m up in my bidness
Like a Wendy interview
But this is private
Between you and I”

Okay… I can dig the Youtube reference, a blatant appeal to the net generation. But singing about getting interviewed at a fast food joint? Thats just sad. Perhaps Mariah’s recent brush with obscurity has opened her eyes to the plights of the working class… or perhaps these are just the dumbest lyrics ever. I’m also slightly creeped out by the thought of Mariah Carey hunting me down like some deranged stalker. Maybe there really is a sex-tape of her out there and this is her public warning to keep it on the low… or else.

Heres another gem from Panic! At the Disco:

” Oh, well imagine; as I’m pacing the pews in a church corridor,
And I can’t help but to hear, no I can’t help but to hear an exchanging of words:
“What a beautiful wedding, what a beautiful wedding!” says the bridesmaid to a waiter.
‘Yes, but what a shame, what a shame, the poor groom’s bride is a whore.”

I chime in with a “Haven’t you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?!”
No, it’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.
I’d chime in “Haven’t you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?!”
No, it’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.

Well in fact well I’ll look at it this way, I mean technically our marriage is saved! Well this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne!
Oh! Well in fact well I’ll look at it this way, I mean technically our marriage is saved! Well this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne, pour the champagne!”

So at least this one doesn’t reference square burgers. But its so stupid and lazy it infuriates me- what is the point of this story? Whats the message? These “lyrics” consist of maybe 4 pretentiously-cynical sounding sentences repeated over and over. None of the words rhyme or work together lyrically in any way, let alone combine to form a compelling narrative. Why should I imagine this stupid wedding? And in what way is the marriage saved? Perhaps this song is simply an exercise to prove that if you have a catchy enough melody and look really emo you can have a hit song, regardless of the drivel you’re actually singing about.

Here’s one more from Usher:

“Lookin’ in your eyes while you on the other side
And I think miss shorty I’ve got a thing for you
Doin’ it on purpose Windin and workin’ it
I can tell by the way you lookin’ at me girl

(chorus)
I wanna make love in this club ‘ey (in this club ‘ey in this club ‘ey)
I wanna make love in this club ‘ey (in this club ‘ey in this club ‘ey)”

I’ll keep this one short- stop singing about “The Club”, “Shorty”, and various pseudonyms for girls shaking their asses!!! Didn’t “In the Club” come out like 10 years ago? Please, someone, add something new to hip-hop, this shit is really killing it.

2) Drag clip’s start arrow to very start of first downbeat

3) Right click on that arrow -> Warp From Here (straight)

You’re Welcome,

DJ Oscillator

“Modern day Americans are often trapped in lousy, disappointing, soul crushing careers. If they are not divorced already, their marriages are on the rocks. They live far outside of their means, rack up thousands of dollars of debt, and then they work overtime to pay for the toys they never have time to play with. They dedicate their lives to pleasing ungrateful children who won’t amount to much more than they did. Hours of their downtime is spent in front of the television, switching from reality show to reality show, because it is easier to watch other people live life than it is to live their own. In a rare moment of creativity, they might write a secret out on a postcard and send it to a website because they don’t have a single person in real life that they trust enough to share their fears with. They feel all of this on top of the usual human maladies of sickness, death and grief.

To be perfectly honest, I would think it was weirder if most people didn’t entertain thoughts of suicide.

The majority of people aren’t sad because there is something wrong with their brain. They are sad because their lives suck. But rather than admit that to themselves, they run to the Doctor and beg for a diagnosis that alleviates their personal responsibility in this regard. After all, if a man in a white coat tells you’re broken, you never have to worry about fixing yourself. The sad reality is that they’ll spend the rest of their lives switching medications and wondering why nothing they take works and cures their disease. Never once do they consider that the disease is their life and true healing will come once attempts are made to repair it.

If you are sad right now, I want you to consider that perhaps there is nothing wrong with you. Perhaps you are seeing things the way they ought to be seen. Maybe there is just something wrong with the world right now? Instead of popping some pills in the hopes that they will put us on a perpetual even keel, maybe instead we should figure out what is wrong with our society…and fix it.”

Full article at Violent Acres

Scrambled Salsa (serves 1, time: 10min)

INGREDIENTS: 2 eggs, butter, bread crumbs, salsa, cheddar cheese, milk, various common spices

-heat a nonstick pan to medium heat, grease pan w/ butter

-beat 2 eggs with a bit of milk to an even consistancy

-add some breadcrumbs, a dash of chile pepper, to the eggs

-pour mixture onto skillet, cook on mediumLow-medium until eggs are 75% sollidified. scramble.

-add salt, pepper, paprika to taste

-add bigg dollop of salsa (preferribly chunky and spicy salsa). add small handfull of cheese (must be cheddar, no fake american!). scramble.

-cook on medium until solidified and not too wattery. DONT OVERCOOK- should be fairly moist, fluffy, and delicious

copyright 2007 Jacob Reed

enjoy

Right now I’m taking CMSC498N: Small Worlds, Social Networks, and Web Algorithms at UMD. In the class we basically study the structure and growth of various social networks, and what kind of information we can extract from them. Anyway, my professor Jennifer Golbeck is a PHD on the subject (shes hot too, a rarity in the CS department), and created this social networking website:

Filmtrust

The basic idea is that in traditional movie rating sites such as IMDB the rating of a movie is given as an average of every person that rates it. You might think this is a perfectly logical way of going about things, which it is, but what if the site could give you a rating personalized based on your specific tastes? Thats what this website does, based on trust relationships between you and your friends. This is basically how it works:

You rate a bunch of movies, and have a bunch of friends on the network that rate movies too.

To each friend you assign a “trust” value from 1 to 10 based on how much you trust their taste in movies.

When you look for the rating of a movie you haven’t seen, the site will give you a weighted average of the rating of the movie based on your friend’s ratings and how much you trust their opinion. So if 3 of your friends gave “Old School” 4 stars but you only trust them on a 2 level, and you have one friend who you trust a lot who gave it 0 stars, the rating will be very low. In addition, if you trust a friend, and they trust another person you don’t know, that persons rating will also be calculated into the average.

So as you can see, its a pretty accurate way of finding movies you are likely to like. The networks not very big yet, but if it caught on I think it could be a pretty awesome thing. Best of all, its for a research project and non-profit, so no annoying popups or ads of any kind! Anyway, you should join, so I have more friends on it. My username is mrmartini888, so add me. Heres the site again, in case you missed it:

Filmtrust

(oh, and uh try these at your own peril)

this is the trick we did (uh, thats not us tho) ^

awesome ^

and theres zillions more out there but i dont have the time. post them in the comments if you want to