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)