Blogger beta & fabric of folly 2.0

So I decided to take the plunge and port this blog over to Blogger beta despite having read one or two cautionary tales. Those of you not reading this via an RSS reader will note that I also took the opportunity to give the site a much needed lick of paint (new logo, wider columns, bigger Flickr photos, yadda yadda yadda...)

So, what of Blogger beta? Is it as troublesome as everyone says? Well, it all depends on who you are and what you're after. If you're a newbie blogger looking to create an attractive and functional blog without getting your fingers covered in HTML goo then it's really not a bad choice. The drag and drop interface works well for basic layout changes and the labels (categories) are a nice addition. If, however, you're a seasoned blogger who's used to tinkering under the hood then it's likely to prove a frustrating experience.

I certainly wouldn't recommend moving an established blog over unless you've got a whole day to kill. In fairness, you are warned that your template may be affected by the move, although it's only once you've done the deed that you realise quite how many bits and pieces you had setup - the sidebar content, the FeedBurner feed and the Flickr login will all need reinstating/updating. Ultimately more annoying is the omission of some pretty basic bits of functionality, like making an image a link, although presumably this is the sort of thing that will be ironed out before it leaves beta.

The biggest boon from my point of view is the dynamic publishing - no more waiting for your whole blog to republish following a minor template tweak. The new spellchecker also impressed me as a simple but brilliant innovation - instead of a popup taking you through the text word by word, it simply highlights all the queried words for you to scan and correct as necessary using on-click dropdowns.

Whilst Blogger beta is undoubtedly an improved offering for blogging newbies and may be worth the pain for some intermediates, it is unlikely to tempt the pros away from Typepad or WordPress.

2007: the year of the widget?

Widgets, gadgets, call them what you will - mini modular applications are starting to look suspiciously like the next big thing, not only on the desktop and the web but also increasingly on mobile devices. The inaugural Widgets Live! conference in San Francisco was a sell out earlier this month and attracted sponsorship from four of the biggest players in online media (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL). The W3C has released a draft standards doc. Widgets have even spawned their own 'pedia' (widgipeida) - an intriguing new barometer of online buzz (e.g. Lostpedia, Wookiepedia).

So why now? Konfabulator first launched over three years ago and its been a good eighteen months since Apple released Dashboard as part of Mac OS X Tiger. Below are half a dozen key factors that have contributed to the breakthrough of the widget.

1.) Increased broadband penetration

A large proportion of widgets rely on an always-on broadband connection to drip-feed dynamic content to them. Increased broadband penetration means more people capable of running widgets. Higher spec computers and the development of operating systems which cope better with running multiple applications simultaneously have also helped cultivate a more widget-friendly environment. Like the personalised homepage (see earlier post), the widget has come of age thanks to technology finally catching up with the ambition. What was the Active Desktop (bundled with Windows Desktop Update way back in 1997) if not a widget engine let down by immature technology?

2.) The widespread adoption of AJAX

Thanks to AJAX, web widgets now behave more like desktop applications. They are more responsive, they can be dragged and dropped and they update dynamically, without the need for endless page refreshes.

3.) The arrival of the big boys

Apple's integration of Dashboard into Tiger in April 2005 and Yahoo!'s purchase of Konfabulator a few months later (in July 05) undoubtedly represent a key turning point in the history of the desktop widget, not least because Yahoo! opted to make its newly acquired widget engine available for free. On the web, it was the arrival of Google and Microsoft to the widget party which really got things moving.

4.) The emergence of converged widget engines

A few weeks back Fox Interactive Media unveiled SpringWidgets - the first widget engine to work on both webtop and desktop - and Windows Vista is due to offer native support of Microsoft Gadgets (currently only available via Windows Live) via its sidebar. Converged widget engines will undoubtedly prove to be a shot in the arm for the fledgling widget economy.

5.) The maturing of mobile internet

The next frontier of widget development is the mobile platform which has been opened up by the flood of Java-enabled colour screen handsets and the movement towards tolerable internet access speeds on handheld devices. WidSets in one of the first products to the market in this space and a it's pretty good first stab. Once flat-rate data tariffs become the norm this area looks set to explode.

6.) Small is the new big

A more fundamental reason why widgets are starting to take off is the broader shift towards smaller, more rapidly developed applications and increasing hybridisation by means of mash-ups and APIs. One only need compare the protracted product development cycle of Microsoft Office (gap between releases: 4 years) with the iterative development of Google Docs and Spreadsheets to see where things are headed. Widgets fit perfectly into this new landscape of smaller, simpler, connected apps.

To round off, here's a list of some of the key products in the world of widgets:

Desktop widgets
Apple Dashboard (Mac)
AveDesk (PC)
Brass (PC)
DesktopX (PC)
Google Desktop Gadgets (PC)
Kapsules (PC - currently offline)
Klipfolio (PC)
Samurize (PC)
Yahoo! Widgets (née Konfabulator) (Mac & PC)

Web widgets
Bitty Browser
Google Web Gadgets
Opera Widgets
Snipperoo
WidgetBox

Converged widgets (desktop and web)
Microsoft Gadgets
SpringWidgets

Mobile widgets
bluepulse
mobidgets (currently in private alpha)
WidSets

Second Life media frenzy

The media seems to have gone Second Life crazy over the last week or so. First there was Endemol announcing a virtual version of Big Brother to start on 1st December with 15 Second Life residents competing for a virtual island. Then German newspaper publisher Axel Springer announced the launch of a virtual tabloid, SL News, offering "snippets about showbusiness and human interest tales from the avatar world" and retailing at between 10 and 15 Linden dollars. Finally, Rivers Run Red announced the launch of a virtual TV station, virtuallife.tv, with content from Channel 4 (TV and radio), the Sci-Fi channel and even the great unwashed in the form of music, video and machinima.

It's easy to forget that dear old Auntie was one of the first out of the gate back in May when Radio 1 teamed up with Rivers Run Red to host a virtual version of it's One Big Weekend festival (real-life location: Dundee) on an island it's renting in Second Life. Sony BMG recently followed suit, pairing up with The Electric Sheep Company to host a Ben Folds virtual meet and greet on its 'Media Island'. The Electric Sheep Company also brokered Reuters recent entry into Second Life and facilitated the BBC's first foray in January as part of Newsnight's Geek Week.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Wikipedia has a rapidly-growing list of businesses and organisations which have operated in Second Life, which includes another couple of media heavyweights (MTV and Disney). It appears that Second Life is rapidly becoming a key place to extend your media brand. Not that all of these brand extensions are solely for the benefit of the residents of course. At the moment, a presence in Second Life is more of a brand statement than a viable distribution channel (much like the web was 10 years ago), guaranteeing a company a fair few column inches and possibly a bit of cool-by-proxy. This will change of course, as the Second Life population grows (it passed 1 million residents last month) and the possibilities of the medium become more apparent.

The MOO MiniCards have landed

At last my MOO MiniCards have arrived from across the pond and they're just as dinky and cool as I'd hoped they'd be. For just $24.98 (about £13) MOO will print 100 of your flickr photos (all different if you want) onto mini oblong business cards with your contact details (or any other text of your choosing) on the reverse. I opted for 50 different photos - two copies of each - so I can keep a set and give the others away. It's a great example of what's possible with APIs. Right, I'm off to build a House of MiniCards!

Blogcasting

Online text-to-speech apps are helping to blur the lines between blogging and podcasting. One such app is Feed2Podcast which uses text-to-speech conversion to instantly turn any RSS feed into a podcast. No need to register, just paste a compatible feed into the dialog box on the homepage. Admittedly there's only one choice of voice which is the classic Stephen Hawking style speech synthesizer. It also doesn't always cope well with punctuation.

Talkr offers a similar service, although you must register in order to generate a podcast and it got my postings back-to-front so the most recent blog entry appears last in the audio feed. On the plus side, the female voice synthesizer is a fraction easier on the ear and it makes a better fist of trying to interpret images and other metadata associated with the post. It also pronounced Flickr correctly whereas Feed2Podcast has to spell it out.

It's interesting to note that some traditional print brands are already exploiting this strange convergence of technologies. The International Herald Tribune's recently launched AudioNews service uses ReadSpeaker software to convert its articles into MP3s which can then be added to a custom podcast.

You can listen to a podcast of this blog (created using Feed2Podcast) here or subscribe to it using iTunes on either your Mac or PC.

New (to me) music apps

Have stumbled across a clutch of new (to me) music apps over the last week or so, which all interface with iTunes in some way to extend your relationship with your music. Here's a quick round-up:

earFeeder - Neat little web app which scans your music library and creates a personalised RSS feed to alert you to artist news, release info and gig tickets. Unfortunately there's no regionalisation so all of the tempting gigs are in the States. Cool name though.

iLike - music discovery app which analyses your listening (and that of your iLike friends) via an iTunes plugin in order to recommend a mixture of established artists (with links to buy from iTunes Music Store) and new artists (with links to free downloads from iLike's parent service GarageBand.com). Hasn't persauded me to download any MP3 from unsigned bands yet but early days...

djay - Mac only app which automatically pulls in your iTunes music library and invites you to drag two tracks on to virtual decks and mix them in realtime. In addition to 5-band equalizers and tempo/pitch sliders you can set cue points and add audio effects. You can even scratch the virtual vinyl should you want to take it 'old skool'. Once you're happy with your mix you can record it or transmit it in real-time over the Bonjour network to other connected djays. Won't satisfy pro djays but pretty good value for free.

Tangerine - Mac (Tiger) only app which analyses the BPM and beat intensity of the music in your iTunes library (excluding tracks purchased from iTMS due to DRM) to create playlists of a consistent tempo. Great for parties or, as the Potion Factory blog suggests, maintaining pace when using the Nike + iPod Sport Kit.

Nike + iPod Flickr group

Pleased to see that the Nike + iPod Group I set up on Flickr is starting to take off. It's now got 39 members and a few virtual race meetings have been organised (latest race: the ambitiously titled The fastest human alive!). The group map shows members from Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, Los Angeles, London and Spain - a truly international running club!

It's interesting to note how Flickr is filling in the gaps created by the shortcomings of the official Nike+ site, which offers only very basic community features. This feels indicative of a broader trend on the web, borne of a culture of mash ups and APIs, to harness the functionality of one site or service to address the deficiencies of another. Rather than lobby Nike to improve its community features, users are simply appropriating the functionality they need from elsewhere. Will be interesting to see whether Nike clock this and how they respond. Will they be keen to bring the community activity around Nike+ back onto their own site or will they see a benefit in allowing it to be dispersed on third-party sites?

Share PowerPoint presentations online

Intriguing new Web 2.0 site for sharing presentation slideshows, SlideShare.net, went live this week. Currently in invite-only beta (natch), the site enables you to upload PowerPoint or OpenOffice slideshows of up to 20MB in size and then, in their words, "share with a link, embed in a blog, discover interesting slideshows, tag, comment and have fun". I uploaded an 11MB .ppt of some of my most popular Flickr photos. Apart from mangling my choice of font (Cooper Black), the resulting Flash rendering was pretty tidy. The interface owes a fairly big debt to YouTube, although I guess they figured there's no point in reinventing the wheel. Will be interesting to see what people use it for and how it scales up. Looks pretty promising.

Changes impacting digital media consumption

A colleague recently asked me what I thought the key changes in consumer behaviour in relation to digital media consumption have been over the last few years. I came up with the following six, which conveniently all begin with the letter C...

Connectivity - from mobile phones to laptops and Wi-Fi, the digital consumer has become increasingly connected (more devices, more of the time), which has precipitated more frequent communication/interaction via digital technologies (e.g. e-mail, web, IM, VoIP, SMS).

Choice - the explosion in choice precipitated by the advent of digital has irrevocably altered consumer expectations around choice. The challenge for media companies is to develop services which can successfully compete in an exponentially-growing media marketplace for the attention of an increasingly fickle and fragmented audience.

Control - from iPods to PVRs, consumer expectations about the level of control they can exercise over their media (the when, the where and the how) have changed radically over recent years. Consumers are also exercising greater control over the process of finding media, as the relationship increasingly shifts from push to pull (e.g. web search, PVRs, P2P, podcasting).

Concurrent consumption - the digital generation, especially its youngest members, are becoming increasingly adept at engaging with multiple media sources at the same time (e.g. watching TV whilst surfing the net and Instant Messaging).

Customisation - from mobile wallpapers and ringtones to personalised radio stations and homepages, the digital consumer is increasingly used to being able to tailor their media experiences to cater for their specific tastes and interests.

Creativity - digital technologies (particularly, but not exclusively, the web) are facilitating a mass democratisation of the tools of production which in turn is fuelling an explosion in creativity (e.g. blogs, podcasts, GarageBand, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube).

Would be interested in other peoples thoughts on this...

The song from that weird VW advert

A quick shout out for Commercial Breaks and Beats which bills itself as 'The UK Television Advert Music Database' and passes the Ronseal test by doing exactly what it says on the tin. With 2,329 ads currently in its database and the option to browse by Artist, Song Title, Company or Chronologically its a neat little resource. More importantly, it put me out of my musical misery yesterday by informing me that the song from the new Volkswagen Eos advert (the one with the oversize coffee pot and wind chimes that starts "I woke up dreaming, I was asleep...") is 'The Men in White Coats' by The Dallas Guild. According to their MySpace page (which offers four of their tracks as streams) they're still recording songs for their first album. In the meantime, you can buy an 320Kbps MP3 of 'The Men in White Coats' for a bargainous 79p from TuneTribe. Nice.

An Inconvenient Truth

Strange but true: the scariest film of the year is now on general release and it has a Universal certificate. That's because we live in a world where a catastrophic and irreversible change in the planet's ecosystem is deemed less disturbing than Janet Jackson's nipple. Still, if it means more people will get to see An Inconvenient Truth then it gets my vote. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to show this to your kids (it's their future after all) and then have to answer the commonsense questions they are likely to ask as in response, such as "so why aren't we doing anything about it, daddy?"

For the uninitiated, the film is essentially a celluloid rendering of an Al Gore Keynote presentation (stay with me people) on the consequences of global warming. That such a unlikely premise has spawned such a compelling movie is testament not only to the hitherto well-hidden charisma of Mr Gore but also to the potency of the message itself. The facts really do speak for themselves. The term "must see" is applied way too liberally to movies in my opinion, but in this instance it might just be true - your future really may depend on it...

PopArtPortrait.co.uk launched

A quick but shameless plug for my latest web venture, PopArtPortrait.co.uk, which went live yesterday. The site enables you to upload a portrait photo of your choosing which will then be transformed by our highly skilled in-house artist (ok, me) into a one-of-a-kind pop art portrait, framed (or not, if you prefer) and delivered direct to your door. I guess its aimed mainly at the gift market in a 'what do you get the person who's got everything?' kind of a way (my first order was a wedding present for a couple getting married in China). Please check it out and link to it if you think it's any cop as I don't think the marketing budget's going to stretch to those full-page national press ads after all...

Relaunched Virgin Radio site

The Virgin Radio website has relaunched with a much cleaner Web 2.0 look. Gone is the rather oppressive red, blue and yellow colour scheme in favour of a white-with-pastel-gradient-fills design which is infinitely more inviting. Gone too are the fiddly DHTML drop-down menus and the global nav options have been reduced from seven to a more manageable five. Navigation through the rest of the site is also now much tidier with a contextual left-hand nav for each of the main areas.

The homepage now features a bbc.co.uk-style main promo with an image loop and five associated text links. Alongside is a similarly proportion animated ad (for iPod + iTunes at the time of writing), beneath are three 'latest' lists (music videos, sessions and interviews and playlist additions), no doubt intended to give the impression of a dynamically updated site.

The 'on-air now' section has been given more space to breathe at the top of the page, with a decent sized image of the presenter which shrinks to make space for a banner ad when you navigate away from the homepage.

Lower down the homepage are promos for the latest competitions, Virgin Radio podcasts and the news, sport and entertainment area. There is also a submission form for the user-sourced music news area (currently down) which I posted about last month, while it was still in beta. The main News area is comprised entirely of syndicated feeds - Sky provides the News and Sport headlines whilst The Sun is entrusted with the latest Showbiz goss. It's a whole section of the website which effectively runs itself.

Interestingly, Movies has been promoted to the global navigation, with a focus on celebrity interviews and details of major new releases (although they're looks to be a problem with the data feed as they're currently all blank).

The DJ/Shows area pretty much does what it says on the tin. One nice feature is the dynamically updating schedule, which greys out programmes in the past and highlights the show currently on air.

Unexpectedly, it is the Music area of the site that proves to be something of a let down. The Complete artist A-Z is surely in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act with just one artist listed under 'A' (Aerosmith) and most entries offering only a photo, a one sentence trivia nugget, a link to the artist's official website and a discography provided by Amazon. As a station which sells itself on music, it seems like a missed opportunity to not have a richer offering in this area, perhaps encompassing contributions from users. Some particularly Virgin-friendly artists (e.g. James Blunt, Keane, Paolo Nutini) do have a 'Fan forum' or the option of voting to create one, but it feels slightly tokenistic in view of the current climate of very impressive user-generated content sites.

One redeeming feature in the Music area is the Song search - a simple but rather splendid feature, whereby you can query the now playing database by time and day to find out what that track was that you couldn't identify. The Charts area is also pleasantly diverting if you're of a Nick Hornby persuasion, where you can discover that You're Beautiful by James Blunt really did come tenth in Virgin Radio's Top 500 Songs of All Time.

One unexpected treat was the About Us area, which is linked to from the site footer and features a nice Digital Media section which introduces the team and shows the evolution of the site since it launched in "1996-ish". It also reveals that the whole site was built in-house by just six people, which is pretty bloody impressive.

Inevitably there are still one or two bugs which need ironing out (if you're reading James, the Search box on the homepage isn't working and Dominic Johnson's Football Blog appear to have gone AWOL). Nevertheless, its an attractive site and a quantum leap on from the previous site not only in terms of design and user experience but also in its greater integration with the wider web (the adoption of wikipedia-style icons for linking to external sites is a particularly nice touch). All in all, a very nice job - well done guys!

Top 20 video sharing sites rated

If you consume only mainstream media you'd be forgiven for thinking that there is only one video upload service on the net: the ubiquitous YouTube. Its stratespheric rise has left even the mighty Google in the shade in the burgeoning area of video sharing.

Of course, there are dozens of video upload sites with more springing up every week. Below is a round up of twenty of the best, with a comparison of key features. In order to make the comparison as fair as possible I uploaded the same video clip to each of the sites.

1.) Vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 30Mb per week
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: integration with Flickr

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

2.) Dailymotion
http://www.dailymotion.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 150Mb per clip
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Categorisation by location

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

3.) grouper
http://www.grouper.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 110Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Download to iPod or PSP

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

4.) vSocial
http://www.vsocial.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Creative Commons license

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

5.) YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Huge user base

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

6.) motionbox
http://www.motionbox.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: N
Ratings: N
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: filmstrip timeline

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

7.) Metacafe
http://www.metacafe.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per video
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Video podcast

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

8.) Bolt
http://www.bolt.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: N
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Record direct from webcam

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

9.) blip.tv
http://blip.tv/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: None
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Option to play in original upload format

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

10.) Revver
http://www.revver.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Quicktime
Comments: N
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Appends revenue-generating ads to the end of your video

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

11.) ClipShack
http://www.clipshack.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip, 5Gb in total
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Upload from webcam

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

12.) Google Video
http://video.google.com



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Video sizing options

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

13.) ZippyVideos
http://www.zippyvideos.com/



Register to upload: N
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 20Mb for free acounts (10Mb for anonymous uploads)
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Choice of video qualities

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

14.) DropShots
http://www.dropshots.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 2 minute clips for non-paying users
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: N
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Dropbox desktop uploader

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

15.) Sharkle
http://www.sharkle.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip, 1Gb in total
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature:

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

16.) vidiLife
http://www.vidilife.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: None
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Playlists

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

17.) SelfcastTV
http://www.selfcasttv.com/

Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: None
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: Y (iPod & PSP)
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Thumbnail video previews

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 2/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

18.) Pixparty
http://www.pixparty.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 10Mb per video
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: None

Appearance: 2/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 2/5

19.) eVideoShare
http://www.evideoshare.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: None

Appearance: 2/5
Ease of use: 2/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 2/5

20.) VideoWebTown
http://www.videowebtown.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 840Mb per clip, 30Gb in total
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: Y (iPod & PSP)
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: N
Ratings: Y
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Download to iPod or PSP

Appearance: 2/5
Ease of use: 2/5
Features: 2/5
Overall: 2/5

Other video sharing sites (not reviewed):

AOL UnCut video - http://uncutvideo.aol.com/
Castpost - http://www.castpost.com/
eyespot - http://www.eyespot.com/
flukiest - http://www.flukiest.com/
Ourmedia - http://www.ourmedia.org/
vMix - http://www.vmix.com/
vobbo - http://www.vobbo.com/

BBC Electric Proms on your iPod

The BBC has announced the first set of Electric Proms gigs to take place in Camdem at the end of October (confirmed artists includes Guillemots and The Who). In addition to the usual website, you can also download a portable version specially tailored for use with iPod Notes. As far as I know this is the first time the BBC has formatted text content specifically for the iPod, which is good news is my book as I often find myself on the move without a net connection, idly twiddling my scroll wheel. One particularly nice feature of iPod Notes, which the Electric Proms guide takes advantage of, is the ability to create a hyperlink to play tracks by any given artist already present on the iPod, thus building a new musical experience around the music you already own. Nice. You can downloaded the zipped guide here.

Virgin Radio dips its toe in Web 2.0

Interesting stuff from Virgin Radio who are beta testing a Web 2.0 approach to music news, whereby 'VIP listeners' can submit links to music news stories elsewhere on the web and then rate them or comment on them in a digg stylee...

20 of my most favourite websites

With over four months to go until the list-making nirvana that is the end of the year I thought I'd satiate my list-making appetite with a quick round up of some my most favourite websites by category. These aren't the cool new kids on the block but the sites which I come back to day after day. You should already have most of them bookmarked. If not, I heartily encourage you to do so. Better still, post them to your del.icio.us profile :-)

Auction: eBay - don't throw away your useless junk, sell it!
Audio: Odeo - thunder unfairly stolen by iTunes podcast directory
Blog: plasticbag.org - never a dull moment with Mr. Coates
Bookmarking: del.icio.us - still the best in its field
Competition: Photo Friday - behold the power of the aggregator!
Email: Yahoo! Mail Beta - drag and drop email. on the web. lovely
Film: IMDb - the premier resource for any self-respecting film buff
Finance: smile - the way banking should be (ethical)
Maps: Google Maps - watch out multimap, there's a new sheriff in map town
Music: Last.fm - a genuine innovation in music discovery
News: BBC News - quite simply in a league of its own
Personalised homepage: netvibes - still my homepage after 3 months
Photography: Flickr - quite possibly the most finely crafted website ever
Reference: Wikipedia - how did we manage without it?
Retail: Amazon - loving that long tail...
Search: Google - still the daddy, still not evil (hopefully)
T-shirts: Threadless - awesome business model, awesome site
Travel: TripAdvisor - never stay in a shit hotel again
Video: Vimeo - smoother than silky the silk worm's silk pyjamas
Web stats: StatCounter - stats can be fun!

(Yes, t-shirts did warrant it's own category...)

Broadband as utility

Back online now after a week without broadband. After a year of reliable service, my PlusNet connection has been down twice over recent months, first time while they upgraded me to an 8Mb connection, second time for no apparent reason (although ADSLguide's Broadband Speed Test suspiciously now reports a 4Mb download speed...)

Still, things could be worse - a number of colleagues were signed up with E7, whose homepage now beseeches customers not to panic before informing them that "As of the 1st July, E7even UK Limited will no longer able to provide your Internet services." One colleague decided to take the opportunity to register for Talk Talk's free broadband offer. Alas, Carphone Warehouse massively underestimated demand and he's been told he's unlikely to be online before September while they work their way through the backlog.

All of which has got me thinking about the extent to which consumers increasingly think of broadband as a utility, like electricity or gas, which will be available 24/7/365 (not unreasonable really when it's billed as 'always on'). Unfortunately the fledgling broadband infrastructure doesn't appear to be able to match consumer expectations in either resilience or customer service.

When my connection when down the first time, I had to dig out an old laptop with a dial-up modem in order to log the fault via PlusNet's online form (heaven help you if you want to phone up and speak to an actual person). It then took a week for them to fix it. Did they offer me a discount on my monthly bill? Hell no.

Like many nascent industries, broadband providers have thus far been predominantly concentrating on price. I suspect that resilience and customer service will become increasingly important factors in consumer choice over which service provider to pick. Here's hoping...

Changing TV consumption habits

Whilst fiddling around with the settings on my home projector the other day I discovered a 'lamp hours' figure, which reflects the total number of hours the projector has been switched on (ostensibly to give you an idea of when you'll need to replace the lamp). Since almost all of my home viewing (Freeview, DVD and downloads) is via the projector, this lamp hours figures give a good indication of how much time I spend watching TV and films at home.

I bought the projector new on the 31st May 2005, which means the 341 lamp hours have been spread over 410 days, giving an average of 50 minutes viewing a day (or 5 hours 50 minutes a week). According to TV viewing measurement body BARB, UK adults consume an average of 24 hours of television a week - clearly someone else is compensating for my meager viewing habits...

More interesting would be how my 341 hours of viewing break down between live TV, downloaded TV, TV series on DVD and films on DVD. Unfortunately the projector doesn't split the lamp hours by input type, although if it did, I suspect it would breakdown something like this:

Live TV: 5%
Downloaded TV: 15%
TV series on DVD: 60%
Films on DVD: 20%

What's interesting to me is how radically different this breakdown would have looked only a few years ago (i.e. more live TV, some VCR recorded TV, less DVD, no downloaded TV) and how different it is likely to look in another few years (i.e. more downloaded TV, some PVR recorded TV, less DVD, less live TV).

Whilst live TV is unlikely to disappear from my viewing habits entirely, it is increasingly comprised of live sports coverage (the 5% figure would be even lower had we not just had the World Cup) as I turn to the web for news and time-shift everything else.

DVD, which I estimate comprises a whopping 80% of my current home viewing, seems destined for the technological scrap heap in the not too distant future (along with all other physical formats) as digital delivery becomes increasingly ubiquitous.

The biggest uncertainty is around how my viewing will ultimately divide up between PVR recorded TV and downloads. In the short-term, downloads will see the biggest increase as I don't currently own a PVR (spurning Sky+ on a point of principle and unconvinced that the current Freeview models warrant the expense - although I suspect the latter will change once the price point is right). The longer term is likely to be a mixed ecology as storage costs fall to the point where recording a whole week of TV on a PVR is affordable and P2P broadband distribution will enable me to quickly find and download any programmes I didn't record.

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

The upside of being laid low with some hideous stomach bug this week (if such a thing can be said to have an upside) has been having the time to read Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, which arrived from Amazon yesterday. I was actually hoping to meet the man in person last week, as he came in to do a turn at work, but I ironically found myself in the long tail of invitees which couldn't be accommodated by the limitations of a bricks-and-mortar meeting room. Hopefully the next event will be virtual and they'll be able to fit me in ;-)

For the uninitiated, the whole Long Tail phenomenon kicked off almost two years ago with a Wired magazine article written by Anderson (who edits said publication) which posited that the potentially unlimited choice of online retailers such as Amazon and NetFlix was exposing a latent demand for niche content which bricks-and-mortar retailers were used to ignoring due to the economic imperatives of shelf-space. He suggested that there was a Long Tail of niche content which became economically viable in the online space, threatening the hegemony of the blockbuster. The idea struck a chord and quickly acquired a momentum of its own.

Many conferences and blog posts informed the writing of the book and helped preempt my concern that it would simply rehash the original article. Instead, Anderson takes the initial premise and expands it out it a number of interesting directions, not only lateral (i.e. how the Long Tail can be applied to other industries) but also temporal (i.e. the historical evolution of the Long Tail). He also makes an interesting detour into the politics of choice, concluding that consumers do want more choice but they need greater help in navigating that increased choice. The only limitation is the relative scarcity of data, although Anderson makes good use of what figures he has acquired, producing some compelling charts to back up his thesis.

Cogently argued throughout, Anderson succeeds in getting the reader (well, this reader anyway) to think about how the Long Tail might apply to them; not only in their fields of professional expertise but also in their personal consumption habits and in the world around them. How interesting that my local Blockbuster has increased its selection of back-catalogue DVDs (shelved in plastic sleeves rather than bulky boxes) and introduced a three DVDs for seven nights offer...

Perhaps Anderson's biggest achievement with The Long Tail, is in creating such an readible, yet thorough, analysis of some potentially complex economic theory, striking that difficult balance between academic and accessible. Whilst the label on the back reads 'Business and Management', I would argue this book defies easy classification and agree with Rob Glaser's assessment that "anyone who cares about media - indeed, anyone who cares about society and where it's going - must read this book".

Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2

Prompted by Jack Schofield's piece in last Thursday's TechnologyGuardian, I downloaded the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 today (all 451MB of it) to see what all the fuss is about. Sure enough, it's a radical departure from previous iterations of the software, introducing a brand new interface and offering the user no 'classic mode' to fall back on, as they did with key elements of Windows XP.

The first thing that struck me was just how 'webby' the new interface is, from the tabbed menu system (which replaces the drop-downs) to the instant previews on format changes (it seems somehow fitting that, at a time when web apps are behaving increasingly like desktop apps, the daddy of all desktops apps should steal a few tricks from the Web 2.0 upstarts). It even has a 'home' tab, for heaven's sake.

The second thing that struck me was just how damn intuitive it all seems. After reading the Guardian article (headlined 'Don't get lost on your way to the Office') I was worried I'd be all at sea for at least the first few minutes, but I needn't have worried. The tabbed menu system (which graphically lays out all the relevant options, rather than hiding them away in labyrinthine drop-downs and task panes) is extremely user-friendly and a genuine instance of 'why didn't they think of that before?'.

Likewise, the live preview functionality, which shows you the effect any formatting changes will have on the actual content of the document (e.g. when you scroll down the list of available fonts, any highlighted text in the main document changes to the selected font).

There are other quick wins, such as a permanent on-screen word count in Word and the addition of one-click formatting options to the right-click context menu, which both mean less journeys to and from the ribbon along the top.

However far and away the biggest improvement is the historically very un-Microsoft design principle of only giving you options as and when you need them. For example, creating a pie-chart in Excel can now be done in three clicks where previously it took seven, thanks to the abolition of the Chart Wizard. In PowerPoint, the often opaque descriptions of Animation effects have been replaced with gallery icons, which more effectively convey the likely end-result.

My only slight reservation is the introduction of a new default filetype (which appends an x to the current range of Office extensions - e.g. .docx, .pptx, .xlsx). Whilst arguably essential to support the application's new functionality it will inevitably force the upgrade issue and result in a frustrating period of transition for many business users, whilst giving some home users the encouragement they need to move to Open Office or Google's growing suite of productivity tools.

Still, it's encouraging to see Microsoft thinking outside of the box on such a flagship product. It almost makes me wish I'd downloaded the Vista Beta. On second thoughts...

The limitations of genre

After a few years of denial, the broadcasting industry seems to have finally woken up to the irrevocable impact that the digital, on-demand world will have on traditional broadcast models. It has acknowledged that linear broadcast channels are destined to lose market share as the audience fragments in a world of potentially infinite choice. It has also accepted that it needs to respond to changing audience expectations about when, where and how they will be able to access content. However, it is in danger of lurching down another blind alley and its name is genre.

Not so long ago, genre was a word rarely heard outside of academic circles. Now it seems to be popping up all over the place. Apple must accept a fair amount of the credit for this shift, bringing the concept of genre to the masses via the iTunes application. Of course, record shops have been sorting music by genre for decades but I suspect the majority of consumers didn't engage with the term in the way that they are now encouraged to.

Genre has shifted from being a way for experts to categorise for research and retail purposes, to a way for Joe Public to organise and access all manner of things. It is difficult to underestimate the power of naming in creating this kind of cultural phenomena (witness the incredible rise of the word podcast, which far outstrips the uptake of the actual technology).

In the broadcasting sphere, the launch of the BBC Radio Player in June 2002 made a significant contribution to the rise of the concept of genre, affording it parity with the radio stations as a means of navigating on demand radio content. For the first time, BBC radio content was defined equally by its genre as its original broadcast channel, so lovers of Jazz music could find the BBC's rich and diverse Jazz output all in one place - a real boon to lovers of a particular genre of music (or speech).

Four years on from the launch of the BBC Radio Player and genre is becoming increasingly ubiquitous as a means of navigating content that would once have been defined solely by its broadcast channel. For example, the recently launched channel4radio.com proffers genre as its primary means of navigation.

So what's the problem, I hear you ask? The problem is that some parts of the broadcast industry are seeing genre as the solution to the challenges of the digital world - a convenient, one-stop replacement for the channel brands that they are told are likely to struggle in a multi-channel, on-demand environment - rather than as just one navigational aid amongst a bewildering array of tools, many of which haven't even been conceived of yet.

Yes, genre is likely to play an important role in future navigation but it is looking like an increasingly blunt tool in comparison with some of the more sophisticated navigational technologies emerging from the latest generation of web apps (e.g. Last.fm). How many music lovers conceive of their musical tastes primarily in terms of genre? I know that I don't. Artists and tracks (and the recommendations they facilitate) are a more meaningful currency in my discovery of new music.

My plea to the broadcasting industry is that they try to embrace the diversity of future navigational models and avoid the temptation to try and impose a top-down taxonomy of navigation, as monolithic as the now deposed hegemony of channel brands.

Oono MiniDAB

Look again at the above photo. The device on the right isn't an iPod, it's an Oono MiniDAB, which went on sale in the UK today. Yes, its an MP3 player, available in a choice of white or black, which apes the iPod both in styling and form factor, but the MiniDAB has a little something extra to offer and the clue's in the name; DAB - the digital radio technology which promises listeners more choice, better reception, easy tuning and accompanying text and data services and is flying off the shelves as a result (over 3 million DAB sets have now been sold in the UK).

First things first, this isn't an iPod killer. But then again, what is? The iPod does what is does with such finesse that its difficult to see it being improved on by anyone other than Apple. That said, there's a lot the iPod doesn't try to do and one of those things is radio. Yes, there's the add-on FM radio remote, but it offers a clumsy analogue interface which feels incongruous with the rest of the iPod experience. Surely a digital music device deserves a digital radio?

Enter the MiniDAB, the first product from Oono, which aims to bring "quality audio products to areas of the market where none existed before". Of course the MiniDAB isn't the first combined DAB/MP3 device - PURE got there some time ago with the PocketDAB 2000 - but it is the most pocketable.

The Oono is not only shorter and slimmer than the iPod it also weighs 41 grams less. The trade-off is depth (an extra 8mm) and inferior build quality, although I understand both of these will be addressed in future iterations of the MiniDAB. It also trumps the iPod in terms of battery life, promising 22 hours of MP3 playback versus the iPod's 14 hours (although DAB playback drops the Oono's battery life to a less impressive 8 hours).

Other selling points of the Oono include an FM radio, a built-in speaker and the ability to record direct from the radio into MP3 format. All in all, it's a nice piece of kit which, despite appearances, offers something distinct in the crowded digital audio player marketplace. My only reservation is the asking price - I can't help feeling that £179.99 for a device with just 128MB of built-in memory might prove a little steep...

Apple iPod (30GB)
Dimensions: 104 x 61 x 11 mm
Weight: 136g
Claimed battery life: 14 hours
Memory: 30GB
Price: £219

Oono MiniDAB
Dimensions: 99.2 x 56.2 x 19 mm
Weight: 95g
Claimed battery life: 22 hours
Memory: 128MB (Expandable to 2GB via SD expansion slot)
Price: £179.99

The BBFC: cutting down on cuts

Whilst trawling the BBFC website for the previous post on film advisory notes I came across their stats area which details the number of films they have cut every year since 1914. I've charted the percentage figures (click on the above image for a larger version) which makes for fairly interesting reading/viewing (assuming you're a film geek, that is).

That the early-mid '50s should come out top in terms of raw numbers (1,770 films were cut between 1950-55) is perhaps unsurprising, especially when you consider that almost 1,500 films a year were being classified (almost three-times the current volume). More surprising, to my mind, is the year with the highest proportion of cut films: 1974, when over a third of all films released in the UK fell foul of the censor's knife (although bizarrely some of the year's most notorious releases escaped the chop; Badlands, The Exorcist and Chinatown were all passed uncut in 1974, albeit with X certificates).

While you wouldn't necessarily guess it from the hysterical rantings of the red-tops (actually, maybe you would), BBFC cuts have been on the decline ever since '74 (with a couple of modest spikes in the early and mid '80s) and now stand at their lowest level since 1930. Just 7 films were cut last year and 5 the year before.

To what extent this decrease is attributable to an active change in the BBFC's approach (artistic merit and context started entering the equation in the late '70s) or simply a reflection of UK society's shifting moral compass is ultimately impossible to determine, although the Student BBFC site has a rather splendid history of UK film classification which pin-points some of the landmark decisions over the years.

Mild peril: The inadvertent humour of film advisory warnings

I saw a trailer for new Dreamworks animation Over The Hedge the other day which caught my attention partly because it features songs by the mighty Ben Folds, but also because of the quite brilliant advisory warning that the film contains "some rude humour and mild comic action" which was frankly more of an inducement to go and see the film than the rest of the trail.

Once upon a time, the life of the censor was a bit dull, dishing out U, PG, 15 and 18 certificates and demanding the odd cut with only the occasional tabloid controversy to spice things up. The advent of the 12A certificate and the associated advisory notes changed all that. Describing the potentially disturbing content of a film in a few measured words has now become something of an art form.

Much of the challenge (and consequently the humour) derives from the seemingly limited range of adjectives at the censors disposal which, in the main, appears to be restricted to 'mild', 'moderate', 'strong' and 'disturbing'. It is the combination of these adjectives with the equally limited choice of nouns which results in vaguely oxymoronic terms like 'moderate sex', 'mild peril' and 'comedy violence'.

However, it is when they are forced to abandon generic terms to address a specific indecent that the most surreal guidance notes are produced (for example, The Cave of the Yellow Dog 'contains one scene of sheep skinning').

Below is a selection of some of my favourite advisory notes:

contains potentially dangerous behaviour
contains mild slapstick
contains frequent moderate sports violence
contains dangerous motorcycle riding
contains very mild comedy violence

Lost without Lost

With the latest seasons of Lost and The Sopranos both over I'm on the lookout for a new drama/comedy series to fill the occasional TV-shaped gap in my evenings. Below are my Top 10 US and UK TV series of recent years to give an indication of what floats my boat when it comes to the gogglebox (note: no sci-fi). At the moment, it's a toss up between House, Deadwood, Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm, all of which I've heard good things about. Any recommendations gratefully received...

Top 10 US TV drama/comedy series

1. The West Wing (1999 - 2006)
2. Six Feet Under (2001 - 2005)
3. The Sopranos (1999 - 2007)
4. The Simpsons (1989 - present)
5. Lost (2004 - present)
6. Friends (1994 - 2004)
7. 24 (2001 - present)
8. Desperate Housewives (2004 - present)
9. Dawson's Creek (1998 -2003)
10. Scrubs (2001 - present)

Top 10 UK TV drama/comedy series

1. Blackadder Goes Forth (1989)
2. Our Friends in the North (1996)
3. The Office (2001 - 2003)
4. This Life (1996 - 1997)
5. Cracker (1993 - 1996)
6. Inspector Morse (1987 -2000)
7. Prime Suspect (1991 - present)
8. House of Cards (1990)
9. Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989 - present)
10. A Touch of Frost (1992 - present)

Channel 4 Radio

Thoroughly intrigued by the recent launch of channel4radio.com, not least because of its eagerness to play an active role in the redefinition of the word 'radio', lacking both live programming and a presence on the FM dial (although a DAB multiplex bid is in the pipeline).

Not only is it a wholly on-demand, it's also predominantly downloads (with the exception of the 'T-Mobile Street Gigs' and the meager 30-second preview streams which start at the beginning of the programme and therefore rarely take you past the opening credits - doh!). Potential listeners must register before they can download programmes, which is no-doubt attributable to a commercial broadcaster's desire for a trackable demographic (yes, date of birth is a compulsory form field) but nevertheless does function as a barrier to entry and indicates Channel 4 aren't gunning for a huge audience at this stage.

Another indication that this launch is on the soft side is the decision to effectively exclude the downloads from the influential iTunes Podcast Directory by offering personal (and therefore unique) RSS feeds rather than programme specific podcasts. Whilst this does enable Channel 4 to keep control of the subscription process, they're forfeiting a significant shop-window in the burgeoning podcast marketplace.

So, what about the content? Well, there's not a huge amount of it yet. Navigation is by genre (Arts, Comedy, Entertainment, Music, News & Current Affairs and Racing) and the programme selection is unsurprisingly dominated by no-brainer TV spin-offs (e.g. Lost, Big Brother, Richard and Judy's Book Club), although it's exciting to see some original speech formats being developed in the commercial radio sector and it will be interesting to watch how their Co-Creation space progresses.

There's no advertising on the current site and the main revenue models appear to be programme sponsorship and pushes to featured content (e.g. the audio book being discussed on Richard and Judy's Audio Book Club) which will be made available as DRM-protected Windows Media files (the free stuff is MP3).

It's clearly early days for the site and Channel 4 seem genuinely keen to shape the offering in response to feedback from the audience. My personal plea would be to lose the audio ident which plays every time you hit the homepage and make a definite decision on branding (the site is branded 4radio, but they don't own 4radio.com).

Aggregating user profile data

Some nice new Web 2.0 action going on over at Threadless, which has overhauled it's profile pages to incorporate feeds from Flickr, Last.fm, del.icio.us and MySpace, plus a generic RSS option.

The net result is far richer profiles with minimal additional effort from the user. It's a neat illustration of the power of syndication feeds in aggregating personal data and it's just the tip of the iceberg. A profitable next step could be the development of an XML-based standard for tagging individual elements of a user's profile (e.g. their favourite books) to facilitate the easy sharing of this data and save them from having to enter it countless times on different sites.

There may even be call for a service with the sole purpose of aggregating users' feeds and providing them to other sites via a single login. Imagine if, rather than having to build a fresh user profile every time you start using a new site, you could just type in a single username and password which would automatically retrieve all relevant profile fields.

Aggregating user profile data inevitably raises some interesting privacy questions. Maybe you don't mind someone accessing your Flickr photo stream in isolation, but when it's coupled with your Last.fm history, your del.icio.us links, your MySpace page and your blog posts, someone has a whole lot of insight into your life: the photos you've taken, the music you've listened to, the friends you've added, the sites you've bookmarked and the thoughts you've blogged, which, when you put it like that, is kinda scary...

AllOfMP3.com

To my mind the most interesting thing about the BPI's latest bete noire, AllOfMP3.com, is not its alleged illegality but the way in which it has effectively demonstrated the commercial viability of DRM-free downloads and inadvertently test-driven a new business model for a largely reactionary and unreceptive record industry.

AllOfMP3.com has demonstrated what most of us already suspected; that people will happily pay for MP3s (which they could acquire for free from friends or illegal P2P networks) if the service is good and the price is low enough. The site has also challenged received wisdom about viable business models in the music download space, by charging by volume of data downloaded, rather than per track or monthly subscription.

Sadly, I suspect the major record labels will be too fixated on legal action to learn any lessons from AllOfMP3.com about future music distribution models, which, in the words of Miss Shirley Bassey, is all just a little bit of history repeating...

Next generation music discovery

The latest generation of internet-based music apps are facilitating the biggest transformation in music discovery since the introduction of the wireless radio; not only by successfully emulating the characteristics of traditional music discovery mechanisms (e.g. radio, television, magazines, record shops, mixtapes, live concerts), but also by capitalising on the internet's inherent qualities to introduce genuinely new means of music discovery (e.g. collaborative filtering).

Where the first-generation of internet-based music apps were primarily concerned with the acquisition of music (Napster v1 was geared toward searching for and then downloading a track that you already knew you wanted), the new breed of online music services are far more focused on discovery, with ownership becoming increasingly less important.

This focus on discovery can be broken down into three key areas:

• Discovering music which is new to you
• (Re)discovering the music you already own/know
• Discovering people who share your taste in music

Below is a view on the top 10 music discovery apps/sites currently in the market which cater to these different facets of discovery to varying degrees. The key assessment criteria I used were:

• User experience
• Caliber of recommendations
• Integration with users' off-line music libraries
• Listen/purchase options

1.) Last.fm
http://www.last.fm/

Still the daddy of music discovery services, Last.fm keeps track of all your personal listening (via the unobtrusive Audioscrobbler Plug-in), offers consistently astute recommendations (based on collaborative filtering) and provides a comprehensive personalised streaming radio service.

Pros: Takes account of day-to-day listening, wealth of data and options, integration of community features
Cons: Site infrastructure sometimes struggles to keep up with volume of traffic resulting in slow-loading pages and out-of-date listening charts

2.) MusicStrands
http://www.musicstrands.com/

Heavily indebted to Last.fm, MusicStrands offers a slick, feature-heavy interface and brings much of the functionality onto the desktop in the form of the MyStrands player download, which integrates with your default media player (supports iTunes and Windows Media Player) to provide real-time recommendations and tagging.

Pros: Integration with desktop media players, real-time recommendations (including music from Independents), mobile version, innovative labs development area
Cons: No streaming of full tracks - 30 second clips only, some dodgy metadata matching - 982 of the 5401 songs in my library weren't recognized

3.) Pandora
http://pandora.com/

Streaming radio service which eschews the collaborative filtering model in favour of musical expertise, providing recommendations based on musical attributes as defined by the Music Genome Project, although you do get to choose an artist as the starting point for your musical journey and can vote on individual tracks.

Pros: Unexpected but apposite recommendations, insights into musical tastes
Cons: Lack of integration with personal off-line music collection, unsophisticated rating system

4.) Indy.TV
http://indy.tv/

Small but perfectly formed, IndyTV is a 612Kb desktop app which downloads and plays you MP3s of independent artists and invites you to rate them out of 5 stars, learning your tastes over time. It then saves the MP3s in folders according to your ratings.

Pros: Simple but effective way to get exposed to new music, links to artist websites, tidy coding
Cons: US-bias, can be slow to download MP3s, variable quality, no-one you've ever heard of!

5.) Yahoo! LAUNCHcast Radio
http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast/

Personalised streaming radio service based on initial user preferences, collaborative filtering and on-going ratings, compromised by intrusive upsell, poor browser support and paucity of alternative artists

Pros: Fully-featured pop-up player, wide selection of stations
Cons: Free version is ad-heavy, limited browser support, dominated by mainstream artists

6.) Soundflavor
http://www.soundflavor.com/

Entirely web-based and structured around playlists, Soundflavour offers copious and surprisingly accurate recommendations based on your selection of tracks with 30 second clips and links to buy via iTunes or Amazon.

Pros: Broadly relevant recommendations, integration of music from Independents
Cons: No streaming of full tracks - 30 second clips only, lack of integration with off-line music library

7.) Mercora IMRadio
http://www.mercora.com/

Billing itself as "the world's largest jukebox", Mercora IMRadio offers peer-to-peer streaming (not downloads) of user radio stations (not individual tracks) underpinned by Instant Messenger. The upside is a wide selection of stations, supported with extensive artist metadata. The downside is not being able to search for specific songs or skip tracks, which feels slightly retrograde in this environment. Mercora recently introduced Radio 2.0, a browser-based version of the desktop app with they're labeling as Alpha (I guess that's one way of standing out from all those Betas!)

Pros: Utilises open-source Ogg Vorbis format, includes podcasts and extensive supporting information (biogs, pictures, user reviews) courtesy of All Music Guide
Cons: Can't search for individual tracks, can't skip tracks, not available for Mac

8.) liveplasma
http://www.liveplasma.com/

An arresting graphical representation of relationships within the musical universe let down by a limited database and limited access to the music (just links to Amazon)

Pros: Innovative, engaging interface, also covers movies
Cons: Limited database of artists, no streaming option or integration with off-line music library

9.) UpTo11.net
http://www.upto11.net/

A very basic web-based recommendation engine which consistently produces good recommendations but fails to offer any meaningful integration with the actual music beyond purchase links through to assorted online retailers.

Pros: Provides reliable artist recommendations
Cons: Lackluster design, no streaming option or integration with off-line music library, first time I tried to access the site I got an SQL server error

10.) Audiobaba
http://www.audiobaba.com/

The bizarrely monikered Audiobaba is a plug-in for iTunes or Windows Media Player which promises to grant the user "3 musical wishes", namely a Playlist Generator, Crystal Ball Recommendations and an Auto DJ. Unfortunately I can't comment on any of them as I gave up after the plug-in estimated that it's initial scan of my music would take 4 hours! Frankly, life's too short...

Pros: Unknown
Cons: Time-consuming initial scan

Other music discovery apps (not reviewed):
Audiri - exclusively for unsigned and indies, features streaming radio and some downloads
The Echo Nest - not yet live
GarageBand.com - music from indies
GenieLab - lo-fi web-based recommendation site
Goombah - closed beta test
MusicIP Playground - nice flash interface enabling you to find "tracks that sound like..."
Musicmatch Music Discovery Engine - feature of Musicmatch Jukebox
Foafing the Music - developed by The Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University

Danny Way / Regina Spektor Sky advert

Loathe though I am to take my hat off to the broadcasting brute that is Sky, I have to admit to a certain admiration for one of their current 'What Do You Want To Watch?' cinema ads (it may be on TV but I've only caught at the cinema). It features pro skateboarder Danny Way breaking two world records in one run on a custom-built 'Megaramp' back in June 2003, jumping 75 feet from ramp to ramp and clearing 23.5 feet of air. The icing on the cinematic cake is the accompanying music which is the sublime 'Us' by Regina Spektor. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of that trail online but here's another trail of the same jump from Danny Way's official site.

The rebirth of the personalized homepage

Back in the early days of the web, there was a huge amount of attention given to what users had set as their browser homepage and a whole lot of money spent by ISPs trying to design portals to this end (which would invariably be set as customers' homepage by default - the challenge was persuading them not to change them).

In recent years, the homepage seems to have become less of a battleground, with the majority of web companies accepting the preeminence of Google and instead turning their attention to securing a high ranking in the search giant's results (most notable exceptions: MSN, Yahoo! and AOL).

One off-shoot of the battle for users' homepages was the evolution of the personalised homepage, which enabled users to build their own homepage from pre-determined building blocks. The addition of the personal pronoun to an established brand quickly established itself as the naming convention for these services (e.g. 'my BBC', 'My Yahoo!'). Unfortunately, the dial-up, predominantly HTML web of the mid-90s wasn't terribly well equipped for such services which tended to be slow, unreliable and unlikely to work across different browsers.

However times have changed and the personalised homepage is experiencing something of a renaissance. Instrumental in this process is the explosion in broadband take-up and the advent of Web 2.0 technologies. Decent connection speeds and the application of AJAX makes building personalised homepages on the fly a pleasure rather than a chore and the proliferation of APIs and RSS feeds is opening up the number of potential building blocks for these services.

Alongside offerings from the major players (Google's IG / Personlized Homepage, Microsoft's live.com and start.com, and a revitalised My Yahoo!) are a host of smaller start-ups. Below is a list of my current top ten. Marginally ahead of the pack at the moment is netvibes, by virtue of its ease of use and range of widgets. On top of the usual selection (weather, news, search and email) is integration with some of Web 2.0's poster boys (Flickr, Writely and del.icio.us) and a rather splendid tie up with Box.net which provides all users with 1Gb of online storage. Nice.

Alot of the below services are pretty similar and it will be interesting to see how many of them stand the test of time. That said, there's already more on the way: see Zimbio (ne. Zoozio) and wrickr. I'm personally hoping for a homepage which requires less active setup and maintenance - maybe a Firefox plug-in which tracks your surfing and builds a page accordingly, factoring in the browsing habits of your friends and likeminded individuals.

Of course, there is a downside to the development of these new services, the resurrection of that most hideous of lingusitic conflations: 'webtop'. A small price to pay I suppose...

Top 10 personalised homepage services:

1. netvibes (simple drag and drop interface and great selection of widgets)
2. Pageflakes (clean interface and wide range of widgets. a bit buggy)
3. Protopage (simple, Dashboard-style interface but limited integration with other web apps)
4. goowy (Flash rather than AJAX and more of a desktop than a homepage)
5. Favoor (clean interface but limited functionality/widgets)
6. eskobo (good for managing feeds but limited selection of widgets)
7. LinkedFeed (interesting social dimension but let down by French-bias e.g. TV listings)
8. HomePortals (unfriendly user interface)
9. ItsAStart (messy interface, limited selection of widgets)
10. MyHommy (incomplete english language version)

Visited Countries

Came across a neat little web app the other day called Visited Countries which manipulates the palette of a gif image on the fly to create a map of all the countries you've visited. Turns out I'm not as well travelled as I thought...

TripAdvisor (or How Web 1.0 can still be cool)

Every once in a while I come across a website which doesn't just make me think "wow, that's kinda cool", but actually makes a tangible difference to my quality of life and reminds me just how spectacularly life-changing the internet can be. TripAdvisor is one such website. Very much lacking in Web 2.0 credentials, TripAdvisor succeeds on the strength of its basic premise (aggregating user reviews of hotels from across the world) rather than flawless execution.

The submission process is decidedly Web 1.0, relying on a form upload which has to be okayed by TripAdvisor staff before it appears on the site (normally a couple of days later). You can upload photos alongside your review and rate the hotel against a set of predefined criteria (Rooms, Service, Value, Cleanliness, Pool) as well as recommending an appropriate demographic (e.g. ideal for honeymooners) and rating other reviews as helpful or not.

However, the power of the site only really becomes apparent when you're actually trying to book a hotel. No longer do you have to rely on your ability to read between the lines of the estate agent doublespeak which dominates the commercial booking sites. The traveller now has a voice which carries and crap hotels will be named and shamed.

TripAdvisor's other great strength is the size of its database (4 million reviews and counting), which trumps similar sites which invariably seem to tell me "This hotel hasn't been reviewed yet. Be the first to review it!"

Admittedly, a Web 2.0 makeover wouldn't go a miss. Being able to keep track of your friends' hotel reviews would be nice, as would a rating system based on reviewers rather than reviews. An API could also be pretty handy. I'm thinking a mashup with Flickr and The Weather Underground, which could provide a more comprehensive set of criteria for deciding where to head off on holiday (and save me having to endlessly flick between browser tabs).

None of which seems terribly likely as the site is owned by Expedia, who no doubt see it as little more than another way of pushing traffic to their sales site. However, even if it doesn't embrace the Ajax-coated future, it's still responsible for securing me five glorious days in Portugal and for that I'm immensely grateful.

Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson

It's rare for me to race through a book during 'term-time' (i.e. when I'm not lazing around on holiday), but the 400-odd pages of Rupert Thomson's latest, Divided Kingdom, were dispatched in just under a week, which is tantamount to unputdownable for me when you factor in work and sleep and the fact I'm a really slow reader. Admittedly, I've been a fan of Thomson's for years, ever since I stumbled upon The Book of Revelation in a three-for-two deal in Waterstones and inadvertently found myself a new favourite author. I've now read five of his seven novels are they're all absolute belters.

Divided Kingdom is set in the UK in a parallel present in which rising crime and racial tensions have forced the government to have a radical rethink, the outcome of which is The Rearrangement - the dividing up of the population into four groups according to temperament (sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic). This precipitates a geographical division of the country as the groups are required to remain apart from one another for the fragile equilibrium to be maintained.

Whilst this initial premise feels like a big ask of the reader, those willing to suspend their disbelief will be richly rewarded with a novel of tremendous narrative force. By throwing off the constraints of verisimilitude, Thomson affords himself a giant canvas on which to explore fundamental questions of identity and difference.

I won't detail any more of the plot, as that never serves as an effective inducement in my experience, but instead point you in the direction of the personality test on the official website which promises to reveal how you would be assigned in The Rearrangement (I came out as sanguine).

Divided Kingdom is available in paperback from 3rd April 2006 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon for £3.99.