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.

Walk the Line

Went to see Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, at Brixton Ritzy last weekend and can't recommend it highly enough. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon burn up the screen in the lead roles and in taking care of all the singing themselves, have inadvertently produced one of the strongest albums of the year so far in the shape of the soundtrack. Even if you're not a Cash fan, I challenge you to be unmoved by their version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe - it's a thing of great beauty. Go see/listen.

What's wrong with Kong (it's too damn long)

Enough already. Peter Jackson's King Kong is not a masterpiece. Or a classic. It's not even a very good film. It's an entertaining 90 minute popcorn movie inflated to a monstrous 3 hours by a director too in love with his subject to edit for his audience. Not that a lengthy running time is in itself a crime - Downfall warranted every one of its 156 minutes - but Jackson's mantra whilst editing (or rather, not editing) Kong appears to have been 'Why show something once if you can show it three times?'

Maybe its because I saw it around the same time as Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, which struck me as an infinitely more nuanced piece of filmmaking. Weighing in at a slender 85 minutes (vs. Kong's 187 minutes), Wallace & Gromit is a masterclass in cinematic economy, where every frame is made to count, brimming with a level of detail which demands repeat viewings (I find it hard to imagine Nick Park okaying the ropy CGI on display in Kong's Brontosaurus chase). Wallace & Gromit also delivers a more compelling narrative arc and three-dimensional characters you can engage with. Much has been made of the emotion conveyed by Kong's facial expressions, but for my money Gromit achieves a far greater range with his plasticine mono-brow.

The harsh reality when it comes to big screen blockbusters is that size does matter. By stuffing Kong until it was twice its original size, Jackson was hoping for the cinematic equivalent of Fois Gras. Unfortunately he's wound up with a bloated turkey of a film, which tests both the patience and posterial circulation of its audience.

My Top 25 Films of 2005

Reserving the right to make a few alterations once I've caught up with the films I missed at the cinema on DVD, below are my Top 25 Films of 2005. It's been another good year for films based on real events, be they dramatisations (Hotel Rwanda, Downfall, Ray, Vera Drake) or documentaries (DiG!, Beautiful Dreamer, Guerilla, Inside Deep Throat, Tarnation, In The Realms of the Unreal). The UK managed to keep its end up with an impressive range of dramas (Bullet Boy, Pride & Prejudice, Vera Drake and Wallace and Gromit's first big-screen outing) whilst mainland Europe produced it's statutory three outstanding films (The Edukators, Downfall and The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Even Hollywood managed to tackle some potentially thorny topics with some aplomb (Hotel Rwanda, Crash, The Woodsman). Anyway, enough waffle, here's the list...

1. The Edukators (dir. Hans Weingartner)
2. DiG! (dir. Ondi Timoner)
3. Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne)
4. Hotel Rwanda (dir. Terry George)
5. Downfall (dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel)
6. Crash (dir. Paul Haggis)
7. A History of Violence (dir. David Cronenberg)
8. Ray (dir. Taylor Hackford)
9. Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (dir. Steve Box & Nick Park)
10. Silver City (dir. John Sayles)
11. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (dir. Jacques Audiard)
12. Everything is Illuminated (dir. Liev Schreiber)
13. Million Dollar Baby (dir. Clint Eastwood)
14. Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson And The Story Of Smile (dir. David Leaf)
15. Guerilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst (dir. Robert Stone)
16. Bullet Boy (dir. Saul Dibb)
17. Inside Deep Throat (dir. Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato)
18. The Woodsman (dir. Nicole Kassell)
19. Tarnation (dir. Jonathan Caouette)
20. Vera Drake (dir. Mike Leigh)
21. Broken Flowers (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
22. Closer (dir. Mike Nichols)
23. Lower City (dir. Sergio Machado)
24. Pride & Prejudice (dir. Joe Wright)
25. In The Realms of The Unreal (dir. Jessica Yu)

My Top 25 Albums of 2005

As integral to the festive season as carols and mince pies, the Best of Year list is a godsend for geeks like me, making an otherwise derisory activity (almost) socially acceptable for a few short weeks.

After much deliberation and a couple of near fist fights, I have arrived at my Top 25 Albums of 2005 (listed below). The only criteria is that they must have been released in the UK in 2005 and Greatest Hits and re-releases aren't eligible. I'm obviously banking on no gems coming out in the last few weeks of the year although, aside from Ryan Adams' third (and reportedly best) album of 2005, the release schedule is looking pretty uninspiring for the rest of December.

Of course, the beauty of blogging is that I can reorder my list next week when I realise that Girls Aloud's Chemistry is the true musical masterpiece of 2005...

My Top 25 Albums of 2005


1






Songs For Silverman

Ben Folds




2






Leaders Of The Free World

Elbow




3






The Secret Migration

Mercury Rev




4






Funeral

The Arcade Fire




5






Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

Eels




6






Z

My Morning Jacket




7






Disappear Here

Silver Sun




8






X&Y

Coldplay




9






The Magic Numbers

The Magic Numbers




10






Hal

Hal




11






Back To Bedlam

James Blunt




12






Guero

Beck




13






Supernature

Goldfrapp




14






Kasier Chiefs

Employment




15






The Alternative To Love

Brendan Benson




16






(Come On Feel The) Illinoise

Sufjan Stevens




17






Silent Alarm

Bloc Party




18






The Back Room

Editors




19






Get Behind Me Satan

White Stripes




20






You Could Have It So Much Better

Franz Ferdinand




21






Eye To The Telescope

KT Tunstall




22






In Between Dreams

Jack Johnson




23






Extraordinary Machine

Fiona Apple




24






Horse Fabulous

The Stands




25






Want Two

Rufus Wainwright

Orb: taking the home out of home entertainment

Another recent discovery which promises to revolutionise my media consumption is Orb - a free web service that enables me to access all of the media stored on my home PC from any web-connected device with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player installed. So, from my work PC, laptop, PDA or mobile I can stream all of my music and videos and view any of my photos. Crucially, it automatically detects the device's available bandwidth and media player and optimizes the size and format accordingly. It even copes with the DRM'd Napster/iTunes content, validating the license locally before transcoding and streaming it. Plus, if your home PC has a TV tuner you can access that to watch live and recorded TV on your mobile device. It's obviously a fairly niche service at the moment, but as more people get Media Center PCs it could take off and just conceivably provide an alternative to DVB-H/DAB for TV on mobile devices. Oh, and they've got a cool strapline: "Orb takes the home out of home entertainment". Nice.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the PSP

OK Sony, you've got me. After years of resisting the allure of the all-conquering PlayStation, I've fallen hook, line and sinker for the latest and dinkiest addition to the family, the PSP. Even then, it wasn't until a saw one in the plastic that my resolve crumbled and I had to concede that here was a product that looked like the future and put the modest ambitions of the new video iPod into perspective.

So, two days into our relationship, how are we getting on? Has love (ok, lust) turned sour...? Well, so far so good. The jaw-dropping quality of the screen still hits me every time I switch it on and sets the bar intimidatingly high for other players hoping to enter the mobile media space. The ease with which I was able to log onto the web via my home Wi-Fi network was a pleasant surprise, as was the rendering of the web pages on the built-in browser. The interface also feels pretty intuitive, bearing in mind the number of options it has to marshal (an increasing problem for Apple judging by labyrinthine menus on the latest iPod), and after a few wrong key presses I was soon whizzing my way through the menus.

My introduction to movies on PSP came sooner than expected as Sony sent me a free UMD of Spiderman 2 after I registered the device on yourpsp.com, clearly hoping the magnanimity of the gesture and the quality and convenience of movies on UMD will prompt me to further purchases. Whilst I suspect they'll be disappointed on that front, it does highlight an interesting difference in the revenue models of Sony and Apple's portable media devices. Whilst Apple is famously selling media (songs on iTunes) for little or no profit in order make money on hardware (iPods), Sony is selling hardware (PSPs) for little or no profit in order to make money on media (UMDs).

Both companies have been working hard to offset the risks associated with these contrasting business models. For Apple, the possibility of market saturation is being countered by shortening the product life of each generation of iPod and the 'halo effect' on other Apple products (most notably it's computers). For Sony, the risk of virtual product overtaking physical product (the traditional revenue stream for games consoles) is being tentatively addressed via the downloads available from yourpsp.com (currently free, but paid-for content can't be far off).

Whilst the PSP's support of physical media initially seems like something of an anachronism, one quickly realises it is just one half of a canny 'belt and braces' approach which is poised to take advantage of the final years of substantive physical media sales whilst simultaneously preparing for the preeminence of virtual media via the PSP's wireless capabilities.

The PSP's other obvious weakness (it's relative dearth of storage and reliance of removable media) may also turn out to be an advantage in the longer term, depending on the rate at which Memory Stick Duos increase in size and fall in price.

As for me, my biggest reservation is when I'll actually find the time to use the damn thing. Waiting for a bus seems to be the scenario invariably trotted out during discussions of mobile video/gaming content, but I'm pleased to say that waiting for busses accounts for a very small proportion of my time. What's more, it's a braver man that I who would get out a £180 bit of kit on Brixton High Street.

This uncertainly about how, where and when I will actually use this expensive piece of technology I've just bought reveals the masterstroke of Sony's PSP - they've managed to sell me a device without an obvious USP. Whilst other divisions within Sony seem to be lurching from one half-baked idea to the next (please stop with this ATRAC business, already), the PSP's success is assured and could just provide the necessary momentum to reverse the company's recent fortunes.

Anyway, I'm off to wait at a suburban bus stop...

Next from Apple: Airport Express Video?

After a quiet summer release schedule (sorry, Mighty Mouse), Apple have been showering us with product launches of late, with the iPod nano, the Motorola ROKR (ahem), the new G5s, and the 'video iPod' all announced within the last eight weeks.

Which inevitably got me thinking about what goodies they've got in store for us next. One of the most obvious additions, particularly in view of the introduction of video to the iPod/iTunes product lines and Apple's first serious foray into Media Center territory with Front Row, would be a new Airport Express capable of streaming video. It's already wirelessly sending my music, printing and broadband around the house so why not video?

Things certainly look to be in place from a software point of view, with the H.264 codec now supported by QuickTime (and by extension iTunes). In terms of formats, it's safe to assume it would handle all the video formats QuickTime currently supports (MPEG, AVI, Flash etc.) whilst continuing to leave Microsoft's WMV out in the cold.

Which output socket(s) to provide may prove more of a dilemma as video lacks a connector as universal as audio's 3.5mm stereo jack. In addition, the transition from analogue to digital is far from complete in the home media environment. As a result, failing to provide an analogue output (e.g. S-Video, Composite) would seriously limit the product's potential market, whilst omitting a digital output (e.g. DVI, HDMI) would risk frustrating early adopters and becoming more rapidly obsolete. I've plumped for a video-only Composite RCA socket in my above mockup, with the accompanying audio being delivered to the 3.5mm stereo socket.

Aesthetically, I would anticipate something smaller but not stylistically very different from the current Airport Express, as 'gradual evolution' seem to be the design watchwords at Apple at the moment if the new iPods are anything to go by.

As for timescales, I'd be inclined to think sooner rather than later, as Apple have another opportunity to steal a march on Microsoft, this time in providing an end-to-end video delivery chain which gets video content into people's living rooms without relying on the purchase of a dedicated Media Center PC. Game on...

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

An intriguing evening's entertainment last Saturday. Went to see The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players do their thing at the Pleasance Theatre in Islington. In case you've missed the copious amounts of press coverage they've received off the back of their stint at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, their 'thing' is buying vintage slide collections at thrift stores and garage sales then turning them into pop-musical exposes of middle America. Jason (Dad) takes care of lead vocals whilst alternating between guitar and keyboard, Tina (Mum) looks after the slide projector and Rachel (their 11 year-old daughter) plays the drums.

The evening kicked off on an appropriately surreal note with Jason taking the audience through his extensive UK phone card collection, stopping to greet any latecomers and encouraging everyone to leave their mobiles on "because Oprah calls only once". He then handed over to the support act, Langhorne Slim, who preceded to blow the socks off the audience with a musical tour de force which defies easy categorisation (iTunes/CDDB reckon Country, but I don't think that does it justice).

After a brief interval Jason returned to the stage, this time avec famille, and the (slide) show began in earnest. Whilst there was undoubtedly much to like in the lo-fi presentation of assorted slices of Americana and myriad comic touches in the musical accompaniment I was disappointed that there wasn't more of a coherent political or social commentary. Following such an impassioned performance from Langhorne Slim, the Trachtenburgs began to feel like something of a one trick pony and when the lights went up I reflected that the starter has unexpectedly proved more filling than the main course.

Threadless tees

Have got a few t-shirt designs in the running at Threadless at the mo. For the uninitiated, the site allows any would-be designer to upload their t-shirt design and have it voted on by the Threadless community for the next 7 days. The most popular designs then get printed up as tees and sold via the Shop area of the site. If you're bold enough to submit a design you can expect some pretty forthright comments in return as Threadless users aren't backwards in coming forwards when it comes to sorting the wheat from the chaff. Designers of a sensitive disposition may be well advised stick to rating other people's submissions!

A lick of paint for Last FM

Am liking the look of the new Audioscrobbler/LastFM which relaunched yesterday with a shinier, more professional appearance and some nice interface tweaks. It's like your favourite scruffy nephew just bought himself his first suit. Interestingly, the Audioscrobbler brand appears to have got a demotion in favour of the less techie-sounding LastFM. Other than that, the lists are longer, the corners are more curvy and the icons highlight on hover. I like it.

Creative vision?

A couple of interesting new portable media players on the way from Creative (the nearest thing Apple had to a competitor in the MP3 player market until Sony belatedly got its act together with the NW-HD5).

First up, the Zen Vision, which aims to right the wrongs of the Zen Portable Media Center (PMC) and get a decent portable video player to market before Apple's announces a video iPod (although you could argue Sony has already beaten them both to it with the PSP).

The first thing Creative had to address was the brick-like weight and dimensions of the PMC. The Vision is not only smaller across every axis it is also 100 grams lighter. In terms of technical spec, the Vision offers double the screen resolution (640x480 pixels) and 10GB more hard disk space than the PMC. It's also extended its video format support beyond Microsoft to include MPEG and thrown in an FM radio for good measure. Unsurprisingly, the trade off for the sleeker dimensions and new functionality is a shorter battery life (4.5 hours of MPEG video playback versus the PMC's 7 hours). It's only available in the US at the moment so haven't been able to get my mitts on one yet.

Creative's other new player is aimed squarely at dethroning the daddy of them all: the iPod. Fractionally smaller, fractionally lighter and fractionally cheaper than its ubiquitous rival, the Zen Sleek boasts a 20GB hard disk, Windows Media playback and an FM radio and its looks, well, kinda sleek. Like the Creative Zen Micro only less cuddly. Inevitably it's no iPod killer but it certainly deserves a decent slice of the MP3 player market pie.

This is NOT Spinal Tap

Just been to see DiG!, a glorious behemoth of a documentary charting the contrasting fortunes of two Portland-based bands, The Dandy Warhols and the lesser known Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Filmed over a seven year period, the story of the two bands is really the story of their two leads singers, Courtney Taylor and Anton Newcombe, who's divergent personalities ultimately determine the fate of their bands.

Beginning their journey as friends and collaborators, both relatively unknown and both promising to transform the musical landscape, Taylor and Newcombe end up estranged and equally embittered by their contrasting fates. In between we are treated to a genuine rollercoaster of rock excess, with Newcombe at the heart of it, continually threatening to derail the whole enterprise.

From the outset, Newcombe is like a planet (make that a supernova) around which the other band members (and the film itself) orbit. Marginalised and physically abused, they frequently quit but are invariably drawn back by the gravitational pull of Newcombe's flawed genius.

It is in its presentation of the two singers that DiG! ultimately shows its hand, painting Newcombe as 'the real deal', endlessly passionate about the music and apparently unconcerned with the superficial trappings of success and Taylor as a shallow sell-out. Newcombe's increasingly disheveled appearance is sharply contrasted with Taylor's histrionics over his make-up in a video shoot (which is taken by Newcombe as further evidence of the incompatibility of commercial success and artistic integrity).

Interestingly, Taylor (who also narrates) appears unaware, or at least unconcerned, with this portrayal, happily occupying the moral high ground when discussing Newcombe's drug use and exclaiming that "the drugs we're singing about, they're actually taking!"

Although it would be easy to criticise the filmmaker for conspiring with Newcombe's messianic delusions and presenting more myth than man, it would also be churlish. All contributors seem agreed that Newcombe is a musical genius and as Cobain and Doherty demonstrate, there's nothing like flawed genius to guarantee you a place in the rock 'n' roll pantheon.

Whilst DiG! undoubtedly revels in Newcombe's self-destructive drive and thereby risks deifying a narcissistic sadist ("He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"), it's also a rollicking good watch and provides further evidence that documentary film-making is in extremely rude health. Go watch!

Photo Friday

Thanks to Pikesville for pointing me in the direction of Photo Friday, a simple but rewarding site which revolves around a weekly photo challenge. Every Friday a new theme (normally just one word) is posted on the site which users are invited to interpret in a creative and original way. Entering a photo is as simple as uploading it to your own website (or a photo-sharing site such as Flickr) and submitting the link to Photo Friday. The following weekend, users can vote of which photos they deem most 'Noteworthy', with a list of the top six published on the Monday. This week's challenge is 'Nerdy' which inspired me to snap my new white adidas (above) - even the soles are clean...!

Live music bought to you by the letter B

Birthday and Christmas came at once last week with gigs from two of my favourite artists on consecutive nights. First up was Beck at the Hammersmith Apollo on Wednesday, which was as wonderfully eclectic as you might imagine (too eclectic for some, who sang along to Loser and then made a beeline for the bar - fools!)

The highlight of the set was a clutch of solo acoustic tracks, during which the rest of the band sat down to dinner and performed instrumental duties with the cutlery and glassware (captured at the Glasgow gig by James Grinter on Flickr).

Unfortunately I only got one rubbish, blurry photo thanks to a strictly enforced no photography policy. Not quite sure of the rationale behind trying to prevent punters from attempting to capture the moment - I can't imagine the resultant low quality snaps are likely to dent anyone's profit or reputation. Maybe its a measure of the improving quality of camera phones and the mobile operators' optimistic belief that people will soon be stumping up in their thousands for video streams of live events?

On Thursday, I trained it down to Brighton to catch the mighty Ben Folds at the Dome. Virtuoso pianist, consummate showman and, in my opinion, one of the best songwriters around, the man is quite simply a genius. From the heart-rending poignancy of 'Fred Jones Part 2' to an inspired cover of Dr. Dre's 'Bitches Ain'’t Shit', the audience was enraptured throughout the generous 2 hour set. Simply sublime.

The joy of Creative Commons

Delighted to have my first experience of the Creative Commons in action last week when I received an email via Flickr informing me that one of my photos had been used in an article on podcasting in the The Zimbabwean newspaper. Great to think that one of my amateur snaps can appear in a publication based thousands of miles away, that I've never even heard of, without the need for any legal shenanigans. Let's hope it's the shape of things to come.

The digital expectations of the younger generation

Nice anecdote from my mother who was finishing off a roll of film on her 35mm camera in the company of my almost 2 year old niece. After taking a few photos, my mother had to relinquish control of the camera to my niece who immediately turned it over and began inspecting the back with a look of puzzlement and mild irritation on her face. After a moment, the penny dropped and my mother realised that my niece was so used to digital cameras that she couldn't understand why she couldn't immediately review the photos on a built-in display. My mother tried explaining that the photos would come back in a few weeks time printed out on bits of paper but apparently it fell on deaf ears...

Convergence: not all it's cracked up to be

I inadvertently joined the growing legions of 3G mobile phone owners last week when I called up Vodafone to request my PAC number (to facilitate a move to Orange and their similarly hued Wednesdays) and was talked into staying put with a free handset upgrade and £10 off my monthly bill (sucker!). Interestingly, at no point during my protracted conversation with the sales rep about the handset's technical spec did he mention that it was 3G (perhaps its company policy to talk content not technology after the WAP fiasco...?)

So, what do I make of my new phone? (a Motorola v980). Well, it's certainly not love at first sight. The friendly sales rep was somewhat economical with the truth when it came to relaying the dimensions of the handset and I'm resigned to a few 'is that a 3G handset in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?' comments over the coming weeks.

Of course, it's what's inside that counts and I could easily overlook a chunky exterior if the features pushed my buttons. Unfortunately, it's decidedly underwhelming in almost all departments. The cameras, the integrated MP3 player and the interface all left me disappointed.

Maybe its because, in my mind, I'm comparing a multi-function device to successful single-function devices. Should I be surprised that the integrated MP3 player isn't a patch on my iPod mini or that the interface lacks the simplicity of the early Nokias or that the images produced by the VGA camera sent me running, weeping, back into the arms of my Pentax Optio S4? Probably not.

Industry pundits have been predicting the triumph of the converged device for as long as I can remember, but until the caliber of the individual components increases significantly I, for one, would much rather take 3 devices into the office...

Everything has a price (even this blog)

Intrigued to see whether Google's algorithms deemed this fledgling blog more link-worthy than the lyrics of a vintage Beck song (O Maria, from the criminally underrated Mutations album), I typed fabricoffolly into the search behemoth. In amongst the links to my LastFM and Audioscrobbler profiles, I was surprised to discover a link to the fantasy blog share market, BlogShares which values my musing at 1,000 blog dollars.

Eager to place my net worth in context I searched for plasticbag.org, the award-winning blog of BBC colleague Tom Coates and was suitably humbled by the B$230,314 valuation. Time to pull my blogging socks up methinks...

Silver Sun @ The Garage

I went to see Silver Sun at The Garage last night which turned out to be a most happy reacquaintance. For the uninitiated, Silver Sun are purveyors of a rare breed of perfectly polished power pop who dipped briefly into the mainstream in the mid-late '90s with minor hits such as 'Lava', 'Julia' and 'Golden Skin', before disappearing into obscurity soon after the release of their second album, 'Neo Wave'. As is often the way of these things, the only track of theirs which troubled the top 20 was a cover version - a gloriously overblown reworking of the 1978 Johnny Mathis classic 'Too Much, Too Little, Too Late'.

Seven years later and the boys (now very much men) are back with a new album, Disappear Here and, according to singer James Broad, "there's loads more where that came from". Which is distinctly good news, as they appear to have lost none of their songwriting verve. 'Lies' is as headily harmonious as anything they've written, whilst 'You Can't Kill Rock & Roll' recalls The Beach Boys at their best.

Whilst the album is unlikely to win many new converts and sniffy musos will no doubt continue to sniff, Silver Sun have delighted their patient fanbase by delivering another great pop record. Surely this is how pop music is meant to be: melodic, infectious, disposable and most of all, fun.

Playing to a half-full 250-capacity venue on a grey Tuesday night in May is not the easiest gig in town and the boys (sorry, men) gave it their all. After a blistering hour of high-octane guitar riffs and faultless vocal harmonies they closed the set with 'I'll See You Around'. I certainly hope so. And next time, don't leave it so long...

What is radio in 2005?

A big question, admittedly, but one which 10 or 15 years ago wouldn't have been half as difficult to answer. First and foremost, radio was a communication technology, or, in dictionary speak: "the transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves having a frequency in the range 10⁴ to 10¹¹ or 10¹² hertz, especially those carrying sound messages" (AskOxford.com). However it also came to refer to both a physical device ("an apparatus for receiving radio programmes") and, perhaps most interestingly of all, the content broadcast to it (the OED lets me down here). Whilst the first two definitions may be more dictionary-friendly than the third, my strongest and most immediate associations with the word radio are almost all related to content.

The advent of digital distribution technologies clearly challenges the first of these three definitions. Radio is no longer an exclusively analogue technology, reliant on the transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves. It can now be broadcast in binary via a plethora of broadcast/communication technologies (e.g. DAB, IP, satellite, cable). The radio programme I am listening to as I write this (Radio 4's excellent Reith Lectures) is being delivered to me not 'over the airwaves', but via the internet, as a string of 1s and 0s.

This expansion in delivery methods is mirrored in the range of ways in which it is now possible to receive radio, which brings into question our second definition. Is my computer/television/mobile phone/MP3 player a radio because it is capable of receiving radio programmes? As multi-function devices become more and more commonplace, the notion of radio as physical apparatus becomes increasingly problematic.

So, if radio can no longer be comfortably defined as a delivery mechanism or as a physical device, that leaves us with content. Is there something intrinsic about radio content that marks it as 'radio'? The diversity of output disseminated under the banner of radio suggests not. In which case, does the producer/broadcaster get to decide what is and isn't radio? Inevitably, the digital revolution is blurring the lines here too. The nascent podcasting industry is promising a democratisation of the radio production process, wresting control of what is and isn't radio from the hands of established broadcasters.

Maybe we should look instead to the audience to try to understand what defines radio in 2005. Is it the perceived communality of the listening experience? Or the concept of 'liveness'? Is genuine interactivity between listener and broadcaster the new hallmark of radio?

One thing is clear; our current definitions of radio are inadequate. Perhaps the time has come to redefine radio for the digital age? Or then again, perhaps not. Perhaps attempting to define radio is to miss the point, failing to acknowledge its ultimately ethereal nature. Maybe we should put the semantics to one side and be content to enjoy the manifold pleasures of a medium assured of a bright digital future.

Real life radio in a virtual world

The concept of radio in virtual environments is far from new. Console games have been flirting with the idea of radio as soundtrack for a few years now, most extensively in the driving genre, from the fictitious radio stations of RoadKill and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to the real life radio brands (Capital, XFM, Virgin) which feature in Project Gotham Racing.

However, all of these representations of radio lack one it's most compelling ingredients: liveness. Whilst station idents and barracking DJs may give the veneer of broadcast radio, most users are aware that the 'radio' in SSX 3 is just tracks being played off the CD/DVD in their console.

That all looks set to change. Listening to live radio in a virtual environment is now a reality thanks to the 'Second Life Fever' nightclub, which streams Virgin Radio Groove 24/7 in online digital world, Second Life. Any user can drop in on the nightclub and listen to the music live, with the Second Life application acting as a media player client.

If it hasn't already, it's surely only a matter of time before streamed radio starts appearing in games developed for the burgeoning generation of connected consoles (e.g. Xbox Live).

A hardware solution to bringing real life radio into virtual realms is also on the cards. Last month the chairman of XM Satellite Radio announced that the company was "investing in ways of building its pay radio service into gadgets ranging from MP3 players to video game consoles" (Reuters).

It's intriguing that in this increasingly 'on demand' era there is a concomitant demand for 'liveness'. Fortunately, technology is evolving to facilitate both...