I listen to quite a few podcasts about web, tech, gadgets, mobile, social media, cloud computing, nerdiness, geekiness, random audio meanderings.
They're great, usually, and I learn something new every time. Check out This Week in Tech, This Week in Google, Stuff you Should Know, Net @ Night, GDGT.... I could go on,
But there is a teensy weensy problem - all are USA based. Therefore they focus on what affects the American consumer, new US-based start-ups, and so on.
Even the Guardian's Tech Weekly seems to lean across the pond.
It's frustrating for those of us in old Blighty who want to know how the tech news affects us.
For example, we still don't know how much it will cost us in the UK to buy an iPad, nevermind how much we'll pay for 3G on it.
We should at least be able to speculate.
Leo Laporte and his chums at TWiT are very entertaining but it's frustrating to hear so much analysis of Google Voice when I don't even get to try it.
And what about Android phones? Nobody (well, hardly anyone) in the UK has ever heard of them. Why? No-one is finding this out and talking about it.
I've tried to find a decent UK podcast about tech, but no joy. Does anybody know of one? And if not, should I be the one to start it?!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?
Oh, okay, look, here's one i haven't tried. Screw my last post, bring em on! The more the better.
Here's a new location-based social media tool, reported by Mashable
Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?Here's a new location-based social media tool, reported by Mashable
Fantastic!
Buzz, Facebook, Twitter - which will be the One?
One of these days I'm going to have to decide who to leave behind.
My head is about to explode with noise. The noise of a vast stream of Twitter and Facebook and Buzz and Friendfeed and Posterous pouring over me, drowning me and giving me one great big headache at the same time.
In 12 months from now, I want there to only be one. There can only be one winner, and the winner will be the one which allows me to see everything in one place, and also so that I only have to create in one place.
It might be the return of the blog. Rather than using all my precious time writing in different places, in different ways (getting drunk photos on Facebook, business networking on LinkedIn) to just be One.
No longer will I have separate lives on different platforms. In 12 months from now I will ditch all but one. I don't care which one it is, really I don't. The one which allows me to be in one place, and to organise it all in an order than I can follow. That's the one for me.
My head is about to explode with noise. The noise of a vast stream of Twitter and Facebook and Buzz and Friendfeed and Posterous pouring over me, drowning me and giving me one great big headache at the same time.
In 12 months from now, I want there to only be one. There can only be one winner, and the winner will be the one which allows me to see everything in one place, and also so that I only have to create in one place.
It might be the return of the blog. Rather than using all my precious time writing in different places, in different ways (getting drunk photos on Facebook, business networking on LinkedIn) to just be One.
No longer will I have separate lives on different platforms. In 12 months from now I will ditch all but one. I don't care which one it is, really I don't. The one which allows me to be in one place, and to organise it all in an order than I can follow. That's the one for me.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
How much will iPad cost me?
For Christssakes is no journalist from the UK who covered the launch of the iPad going to be able to take a guess how much it's going to cost to run this thing?
Apparently AT&T in America will have $29 a month plans for unlimited 3G (as well as wifi). Does this mean I will be paying O2 even more cash when it's launched in the UK.
More monthly bills on top of my iPhone? Dammmmmmmm
According to Engadget there will be no contract in the US. The deal with AT&T means people will be able to cancel at any time. Great. Cancel at any time, render it useless too.
Why can't it work with the iPhone we already have? A piece of kit many of us in the UK are paying £50 a month for the pleasure of using. Hook the new iPad up to it if we need 3G. That would be a good thing, no?
Apparently AT&T in America will have $29 a month plans for unlimited 3G (as well as wifi). Does this mean I will be paying O2 even more cash when it's launched in the UK.
More monthly bills on top of my iPhone? Dammmmmmmm
According to Engadget there will be no contract in the US. The deal with AT&T means people will be able to cancel at any time. Great. Cancel at any time, render it useless too.
Why can't it work with the iPhone we already have? A piece of kit many of us in the UK are paying £50 a month for the pleasure of using. Hook the new iPad up to it if we need 3G. That would be a good thing, no?
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Mary friggin Poppins on BBC1, oh god, get the gun and shoot me
It's Mary Poppins right now on BBC1.
Yep, Mary friggin Poppins. On primetime TV. It's the best that they can come up with?
So, i decide instead to see what else is on the box. I'll tell you - nothing. Except for darts-lovers, the TV schedule is total crap.
So instead I decide to go to YouTube...
This means for me that I realise TV is dead, the future of video is on the web. I can watch anything I like there, and to be honest I don't really mind the quality. If it's Avatar I'm watching, I'll go to Ye Olde Cinema-e for that....
So bring it on. Video on the web - films I want, when I want, streamed to my home. Not this Poppins bollocks
Yep, Mary friggin Poppins. On primetime TV. It's the best that they can come up with?
So, i decide instead to see what else is on the box. I'll tell you - nothing. Except for darts-lovers, the TV schedule is total crap.
So instead I decide to go to YouTube...
This means for me that I realise TV is dead, the future of video is on the web. I can watch anything I like there, and to be honest I don't really mind the quality. If it's Avatar I'm watching, I'll go to Ye Olde Cinema-e for that....
So bring it on. Video on the web - films I want, when I want, streamed to my home. Not this Poppins bollocks
Monday, December 28, 2009
Is Facebook broken?
People are saying that 2009 was the year of Facebook.
What people? I don't know - people. Lots of geeks and nerds and media commentators and hacks who have to fill space in magazines and podcasts.
I've loved using it, it's been one of the first pages I visit when I go online.
And yet....is it me or....has Facebook stopped working properly for a while? For several months the news feed keeps falling out of synch - status updates and whatnots which were posted weeks ago suddenly appearing at the top, as if new.
My own posts also seem to have disappeared, reappeared, gone walkabout, god knows.
If this sort of shoddy performance was happening at the start, would we have kept using it?
Then there's been all the recent hoohaa about privacy settings. Someone remind Zuckerburg that we all signed up because we could get in touch with friends privately. Now this billionaire wants to turn our profiles, posts, pics, et al into publicly searchable material.
And it would seem that many people still don't get that those games and quizzes they take part in are just a way that Facebook can sell information about you to advertisers, and not just information about you, but about your friends.
This means each time some dimwit I went to school with decides to test his/her knowledge of 1980s album covers, they'll telling big fucking goddamn corporations a little bit about me, too.
So I'm starting to get a bit fed up with it. And Facebook may be closing in on 500 million members, but that doesn't mean they can't just as easily bugger off. Anyone remember MySpace?
It would have sounded insane at the beginning of the year, but could we soon be saying that 2009 was the year Facebook broke?
What people? I don't know - people. Lots of geeks and nerds and media commentators and hacks who have to fill space in magazines and podcasts.
I've loved using it, it's been one of the first pages I visit when I go online.
And yet....is it me or....has Facebook stopped working properly for a while? For several months the news feed keeps falling out of synch - status updates and whatnots which were posted weeks ago suddenly appearing at the top, as if new.
My own posts also seem to have disappeared, reappeared, gone walkabout, god knows.
If this sort of shoddy performance was happening at the start, would we have kept using it?
Then there's been all the recent hoohaa about privacy settings. Someone remind Zuckerburg that we all signed up because we could get in touch with friends privately. Now this billionaire wants to turn our profiles, posts, pics, et al into publicly searchable material.
And it would seem that many people still don't get that those games and quizzes they take part in are just a way that Facebook can sell information about you to advertisers, and not just information about you, but about your friends.
This means each time some dimwit I went to school with decides to test his/her knowledge of 1980s album covers, they'll telling big fucking goddamn corporations a little bit about me, too.
So I'm starting to get a bit fed up with it. And Facebook may be closing in on 500 million members, but that doesn't mean they can't just as easily bugger off. Anyone remember MySpace?
It would have sounded insane at the beginning of the year, but could we soon be saying that 2009 was the year Facebook broke?
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Christmas tune, a total rip-off
A little xmas message.
There was an old woman, who lived in a tree.
She has so many children
Her uterus fell out.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Christmas at Dolly Parton's place
'Welcome folks, grab your partner by the hand. We sure hope you like chicken.'
That's what the announcer should have said. As it turns out, he shouted out something similar - the welcoming, the warning that there would dancing happening - but nothing about chicken. Which is strange, seeing as several hundred people were served one each. A whole chicken, each, along with corn on the cob, some potato, soup, some other meat, and a cheesy ball which locals, in Tennessee, USA, call a biscuit. Humph.
Several hundred diners, three shows a day, seven days a week. That's a lot of chickens. Luckily, I quite like them.
The show is called Dolly's Dixie Stampede. It's in a massive auditorium in Sevierville, Tennessee, Dolly's home town, and now also home to the famous Dollywood theme park. The town is a long 'main street' of clothes store, souvenirs (aka bits of wood) and enough places to eat you could pick a different one every day and never go back to the same place for a whole year.
The cars, usually SUVs (sports utility vehicles, which we Brits would call trucks, or Chelsea tractors) are driven no faster than about 20mph, or 30mph tops. Nobody is in a hurry. At night the road, which is several miles long, wider than a motorway and straight as a ruler, is lit up by stores which stay open most of the night. The glow is tacky, but quite beautiful too. Hardly anyone seems to be shopping, mostly people are just out cruising.
Anyway, back to Dolly's Dixie Stampede. Unlike the drivers outside, the cast inside Dolly's auditorium are going at it 100mph. Not just the performers doing tricks on horses, but the waiting staff too. Impressive how they manage to serve a few hundred chickens in a matter of minutes. No chance of being served booze to wash it down with - Sevierville is a dry town (but luckily there's an impressively seedy liquor store in the next town, Gatlinburg, brown paper bag and all) but instead your plastic cup of diet Pepsi, iced tea, or whatever, is refilled every other second.
Did I mention the hot chocolate served before the show, while we watched a blue grass band? It came in a plastic cowboy boot-shaped mug. And we even get to keep them. Now that was class.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Snowed in, Tennessee
The snow has fallen and that means we're basically snowed in. Our cabin in the Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, can thankfully get a glimmer of a GPRS signal, so not all is lost.
Later we might try and drive to the nearest form of civilization. We've hired a massive four-wheel drive American car - a Chevrolet, I think - exactly for these purposes.
Have a good day y'all.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
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