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Real-time web provides real-time feedback on The Guardian's iPhone application
Real-time web gives real-time feedback on Guardian iPhone appTwitter is transforming the way that digital products are launched.
D45's from Apple's iTunes? I'd give it a 'D'
The music industry has been going 'back to the future' for format inspiration again, with the launch this week in the US of the D45 via iTunes. These digital downloads feature an 'A' and a 'B' side, and the thumbnail image embedded in each digital file looks a bit like an old 7" single sleeve or a jukebox promo version of an old hit. The range includes a 'D45' from Michael Jackson (of course), and 'Use Somebody' by Kings Of...
Activate 09 at The Guardian: Notes and take-away quotes - Part 4
This time last week I was gearing up to attend The Guardian's first Activate summit at Kings Place. I've blogged about Gerry Jackson's heart-breaking mission to get independent news into Zimbabwe, Nick Bostrom's presentation about 'the end of the world', a politics panel featuring Tom Watson and Adam Afriyie, and the thread of data release and story-telling that ran through the day. I wanted to conclude with a final set of observations about what had caught my eye, made...
The mobile web's penalty shoot-out - Nokia N95 vs iPhone
Last Wednesday Arsenal's Champions League tie against Roma went to penalties - but the real shoot-out for me was in the Crown & Sceptre pub on Foley Street, between @solle's iPhone and my Nokia N95. It was 'London IA in the Pub' night, but Matthew and I were a little distracted by the game. Once it went to extra-time we nearly ducked out to a nearby pub that had Sky, but instead we ended up watching the penalty shoot-out in...
More like 'pop your clogs' than 'get on your boots' for the U2 iPod
My wife has had one of Apple's limited edition U2 iPods since 2004, which she got not because of a desperate love of the band, but because it was the first time one was available in black. Sadly last week it died, and she was faced with the dreaded 'unhappy iPod' icon. The thing is, I can't help feeling that it might not have been a total coincidence that the machine chose to give up the ghost on the very...
The iTunes deauthorisation conundrum
I wrote the yesterday about using a Linux live CD to recover data from the hard-drive of my spyware-riddled Windows laptop. One thing I couldn't do via Linux was deauthorise the machine for my iTunes account. Apple's iTunes has a limit of five machines on which you can play your DRM infected protected music. Now, of course, I'd already burnt to CD any purchases from the Apple store I'd made using that laptop, and re-imported them to remove the DRM,...
Will last.fm ever ask for the last time?
I love last.fm. You love last.fm. Everybody loves last.fm. It is a cool poster child for the Web 2.0 generation, and the fact that they built their business model on avoiding paying streaming royalties in the UK as much as possible is neither here nor there to most people. But... ...installing the application on your Windows XP PC can be really sucky. The problem is that the Last.fm application seems to pay no attention to the account settings on the...
Trying out Silverlight - FAIL
I try and be platform neutral and agnostic as much as possible. This blog runs on a Debian Linux server from Bytemark, I work on a MacBook, my main PC is a Dell running Windows XP, and I get to play with the Linux-based Eee PC that my wife takes everywhere. My star sign is Libra and I like a balance in my OS experience. So I was fairly open-minded about trying out Microsoft's Silverlight. There has been some (inevitable...
'Spyware!' or 'How I ditched Windows and learned to love the Mac'
I'm one of those people who have been happily running Windows on PCs since the early nineties, and have never had any problems with virus infections, adware, spyware, or other malicious programs. In fact, I'd quite got myself into the self-righteous position of thinking that anybody who did have problems clearly didn't know what they were doing with computers. So, it was somewhat dispiriting last month to discover that my laptop was riddled with a horrible infection. I know exactly...
Never mind the MacBook Air hype - it's happy 25th birthday to the Apple Lisa
Over the last few days I've steadfastly avoided writing about the blogging and twittering hype around Macworld. This is not especially because I'm an Apple naysayer, but I'm certainly not a fanatic. I think Apple make some very good products with some gorgeous packaging, but I also think they enjoy an incredible 'brand halo' which allows them to get away relatively uncriticised for quite major flaws like battery life and replacement issues, and over-charging UK customers on iTunes. [1] One...
Apple iPhone hits Greece ahead of the O2 deal in the UK
Everyone might be waiting for tomorrow with baited breath as Apple finally announce that the iPhone will be available in the UK, but Greece has got there first. Yep, apparently mum is already no longer the word in Heraklion (just a couple of hours down the road from where I live) and in Volos Sugarenia has blogged a Greek advert for the iPhone from their local store - at an eye-watering €749. Meanwhile, jimeh has a picture uploaded to Flickr...
iTunes Miniatures playlist
Back in 1980, Morgan Fisher curated an album called "Miniatures". It consisted of fifty-one tiny tracks by various artists including people like Kevin Coyne, Michael Nyman, Ivor Cutler and Robert Fripp. Everything on the album was under a minute long I've recently hit upon the modern digital DIY equivalent - making a microtunes "Miniatures" playlist on iTunes - although I did have to extend the time limit slightly. I sorted my music library by track duration, shortest first, and the...
'Cancel' just doesn't seem to mean 'Cancel' for iTunes 7.2 on Windows
I've mentioned before that I haven't exactly been seeing eye-to-eye with iTunes 7.2 on my PC. It keeps getting upset and sparking Windows error dialogue messages if I run it without my iPod attached first, and won't quit without warning me every single time that iSproggler is using the iTunes scripting interface, am I sure I want to quit? More seriously though, I don't like the way that Apple do not follow the standard Windows OS conventions with some of...
Musical social networking (slight return)
Finally at the weekend my personal weekly chart on Last.fm was updated - for the first time since December 2005, when I was last a regular scrobbler. That rather eclectic mix, featuring such obscurities as TOT and iLiKETRAiNS was replaced by a chart which looks rather more like my staple musical fare. Having got enough cable to finally hook up my main PC to the internet via the phone socket for the first time in 18 months, I've also downloaded...
Slacker equivalent already on the market in Europe - meet Sony and Vodafone's Radio DJ
There has been a bit of a buzz around the announcement of a service called Slacker in the USA, which will be a device which plays personalised radio stations to the user on the go. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat even touted it as a potential "iPod killer". As I read through the promised feature-set, I started to get a little nagging voice in my head, saying "Hang on, isn't....this....what...I..do?" Because for the last few months I've been working on...
The depressing DRM debates on the BBC's backstage.bbc.co.uk mailing list
Since the announcement that the BBC's iPlayer would contain elements of Microsoft's DRM, and that any forthcoming versions for the Apple or Linux OS would also need to incoporate some type of DRM, a debate has been raging on the backstage.bbc.co.uk mailing list. Opinion is broadly split into two camps. There are those who understand that in order to facilitate any kind of on demand service, the BBC needs to protect the interests of the rights-owners involved in making...
Buy the so-called "Complete" Depeche Mode iTunes box set? No thanks, Apple
Just before Christmas one of my favourite bands, Depeche Mode, released a digital box-set via iTunes - "The Complete Depeche Mode". Even in an industry not known for always putting the customer first, the audacity of the release is breath-taking. Costing £139.99, the set features 644 downloads, of which 59 are exclusive to the box-set. And of course, the tracks that are 'exclusive' to the set are also exclusively available using Apple's proprietary DRM format. The exclusive content, which consists...
Thoughts on being locked out of my iPod's content by Apple's DRM
With his open letter to the music industry, Steve Jobs has done an excellent job of shifting the attention away from Apple's iPod/iTunes DRM based lock-in, and onto the music industry that supplies the content driving the sales of Apple's hardware. I think my favourite quote amongst the responses I stumbled upon on the web was: "The greatest trick Apple pulled was to build a market where lock-in is mandated, but convince the world that this was something they did...
Beatles digital downloads facing a ticking copyright time-bomb
The recent announcement that Apple (computers) and Apple (Beatles music) have settled their trademark differences has prompted a great deal of speculation that the Beatles catalogue will finally become legally available on digital music download stores. There has also been speculation that when (rather than if) this happens, thanks to the new chart rules, the Beatles could clog up the UK singles charts as people rush to download tracks from one of Britain's most successful musical exports. James Masterton has...
BBC News in a copywriting fix over copyright
Following on from first Bill Gates and now Steve Jobs wading in with their views about the DRM status of online music purchases, the BBC News site has a "Have Your Say" discussion about the issue - "Is this the end of copy protection for online music?" One of the BBC's sub-editors has gone a bit rogue on the homepage though. At the moment the International edition of the BBC News site is promoting the thread with a tagline asking...
Coverage of the Apple and Cisco iPhone trademark battle
iPhone and the blindness of the Apple fans
Getting Sony's SonicStage for Christmas
Sony loses DRM court case in France over the Sony Connect store
Docking the iPod after a long gap
The software used to access the BBC homepage: Beta software, edge products and conclusions - part 6
The software used to access the BBC homepage: Browser share - part 5
The software used to access the BBC homepage: Browser share - part 4
The software used to access the BBC homepage: Windows, Mac, Linux and legacy OS share - part 3
The software used to access the BBC homepage: Operating systems - part 2
The software used to access the BBC homepage
Listening to iPods can make you deaf
A gallery, a monument, a museum and a spot of shopping - Day-tripping in London
"I hate Macs" says salesperson
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If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
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