iPhone app review: MovieLingo
I’m not a huge movie buff, but I have a pretty good memory and do well enough at movie trivia games. I am also often able to repeat lines verbatim from movies I saw years ago, and usually enjoy doing so. So I was pretty intrigued when I saw Avalinx’s new app, MovieLingo. It’s a simple app, but I think it’s a good example of how to use mobile computing and always-on Internet connectivity to improve the social experience.
You can click the top-right button to get a movie summary, in case you get a movie you never heard of before. This is good for me for all those Golden Age of Cinema films about which I know nothing. You can click the Back button to return to the main screen to shake for a new set of parameters and quote, or you can click the Forward button to randomly select a new movie from within the current era and genre. You can replay clips, and scroll back through clips you’ve already played. The default option is to retain your last 25 quotes in the app’s history.
The thing that interests me about MovieLingo is that very little of the data is stored in the app itself. Part of building this app was assembling a collection of assets that could be fetched on demand, including the sound files themselves, movie summaries, poster art, and links to the various third-party services. When a movie is selected, the MovieLingo application goes out to the internet to fetch what it needs. This means that new quotes can be added on the fly, presumably without requiring any sort of update to the core app itself.
Is this a killer app for the iPhone? Absolutely not. Will this be an app you pull out at parties? Probably. You can even use it when you’re standing in the Blockbuster, totally overwhelmed by the selection of films and unable to reach a decision with your significant other whether to rent Zombie Strippers or When Nietzsche Wept. Shake your iPhone and rent whatever clip comes up!