By Graham K. Rogers

A few days ago I wrote about a rich app for the Sundance Film Festival 2013. This is one of a number of such apps - I also looked a few months ago at an app for the Hong Kong Film festival - that allow users who attend such events to plan; but also allow those who are unable to go the luxury of seeing what is on offer. Now comes an app for the Oscars. But not for all of us.

When I reviewed the app for the Sundance Film Festival 2013 late last week, I was impressed with the rich content that allowed me to see how the events were planned in Utah. Viewing film lists gave a fair idea of what was to be shown by reading the synopses, and allowed me to imagine some of the movies I might look forward to in the months to come.

When I saw a report from Michael Grothaus on TUAW about an app for the Oscars, I clicked the link before I had finished reading his words and on the browser page that opened for Oscars, pressed the button, View in iTunes.

Unfortunately (as Wanda Sloan used to write in the Bangkok Post, Database) we are much too foreign to access this app. . . .

It is a waste of time changing stores as I cannot have an account at any other store and many others here are similarly affected.

With the amount of international exposure that just the nominations receive each year, with massive international coverage for the ceremony itself, one might have thought that the organisers would have wanted the official Oscars app to have been downloaded by movie afficionados everywhere.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.