Fire Eagle points the way for online data services

One of my predicted Key technology trends for 2007 was 'Personal GPS/location aware applications', citing Plazes, Everytrail, Socialight, Dodgeball and Zonetag as early indicators of the trend. Turns out 2007 wasn't to be the breakthrough year, with all of the aforementioned sites failing to significantly grow their reach and Dodgeball withering on the Google vine.

However, it now looks like I may have been only a year out with my prediction as Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle (launched in beta at ETech earlier this week) has all the early hallmarks of a game-changer. So, what marks it out from the other products operating in this space?

1.) It's a platform rather than a building

The vast majority of web sites are still conceived as discrete products. They may have feeds in and out, but these tend to be seen as ways of enhancing or disseminating the main product. Fire Eagle, on the other hand, is a service in the truest sense of the word - it exists to facilitate other sites and services. Those who have been criticising Fire Eagle for not having a more fully-featured UI are missing the point - this is Tom Coates walking the talk re. the web of data.

2.) It geo-locates people rather than assets

By moving the geo-tagging from asset-level to person-level, Fire Eagle multiples the possible uses for that data. A geo-tagged photo is only really good for telling you where that photo was taken. Data from a geo-tagged person can be mapped against numerous other datasets to provide previously unimagined combinations of data. For example, correlating my Fire Eagle location data against my Last.fm listening data could populate a map of where and when I - and potentially others - listen to different tracks or genres of music.

3.) It has privacy considerations at its heart

Because Fire Eagle isn't trying to build an all-singing, all-dancing website to retain eyeballs it can instead focus on giving users full control over their location data. So often, user privacy settings feel peripheral or bolted on. Fire Eagle is all about letting you manage what level of detail you want to appear where, with an option to purge all your data should you so wish (Facebook take note).

Because Fire Eagle is effectively only a repository/broker of location data, it will ultimately stand or fall on the strength of the services which choose to integrate with it. The early signs are good with named adopters including Dopplr, Bug Labs and outside.in's On My Radar.

I have three Fire Eagle invites to give away - let me know in the comments if you'd like one.

MacBook Air review

It's just over 3 weeks since I purchased my MBA (that's a MacBook Air, not a Masters in Business Administration - I've not succumbed to the spammers ;) which feels like enough time behind the wheel trackpad to post some early thoughts.

First things first (and the question everyone's been asking me, once they've finished stroking the chrome): why did I decide to shell out almost £1,200 of my hard earned cash (no, work didn't pay for it) when I already have two perfectly good Mactops (a 12" PowerBook and a MacBook)? Good question...



What I've been telling everyone (including myself) is that it was primarily a health consideration - I've been ferrying my MacBook to and from work in a shoulder bag for almost a year now and it's doing my back no good whatsoever - and you can't put a price on your health, right? Right...?

A more likely explanation is that I've fallen victim to the genius of Apple's product release strategy (see Charles Arthur's recent Guardian piece), failing to carefully evaluate the product and being seduced by Steve Jobs and his manila envelope.

And seduction is the right word, because the Air is aesthetically gorgeous. I've not got it out of my bag yet without a flurry of admiring gazes and comments and I still haven't stopped marveling at the design achievement of making a laptop, which is actually almost 2cm deep towards the rear, appear super-model thin. The question is (to paraphrase The Temptations' 1966 hit single) is the MBA's beauty only skin deep?



My first three weeks with the Air certainly haven't been without frustration or disappointment, the first of which was weight. Despite having read the tech spec on the Apple site, which correctly states its weight as 3 pounds (1.36kg), I was surprised by how heavy it felt when I first lifted it out of the box. It just looks so insubstantial that you can't help expecting something feather-light, even though you know there's a fully featured computer inside. Whilst 1.36kg is still relatively light for a laptop, it's only fractionally less than my ancient Toshiba Portege 3110CT (which weighs in at 1.4kg) and significantly more than the ASUS Eee PC (0.92kg).

The paucity of ports and the absence of an optical drive have also been minor frustrations. Pre-purchase, I didn't think only having one USB port would be a big problem but not enough of my peripherals (mouse, printer, scanner, camera etc.) are wireless for there not to be a fair amount of hot-swapping (or the use of an ungainly USB hub). Similarly, the world hasn't quite dispensed with physical media yet and whilst Remote Disc worked fine when installing my printer drivers, it wasn't able to cope with a Parallels' installation of Windows, which required a trip to the Apple Store to purchase an MBA SuperDrive (below).



Mercifully, my fear that my hotel (in Austin for SXSW) would only have a wired internet connection proved unfounded but it reminded me that the Air's lack of an Ethernet port could also potentially be super annoying.

Other disappointments include battery life (which doesn't live up to the claimed 5 hours even when optimised for better energy savings) and the appearance of the kernel panic dialog box on more than one occasion (although I think a Parallels conflict is probably to blame).



It's not all bad, however. The screen is arguably Apple's best laptop display to date and the keyboard is nicely responsive (and glows in the dark!). I'm less sold on the multi-touch trackpad (although I haven't taken the time to properly suss it out yet) and the mouse button feels a bit too skinny and needs a really firm press to register.



Performance wise, the Air's 2GB of RAM ensures it's a fairly smooth ride when using Leopard. I made the mistake of installing Vista using Parallels which runs like an absolute dog, even with the RAM available to the Guest OS jacked up to the max - it'd probably work okay using Boot Camp but I'll personally be steering well clear of Vista for the foreseeable.



Part of the challenge for the MBA is that we're so used to the superlative functionality of the MacBook and MacBook Pro that we're inclined to take all of that stuff for granted and just focus in on the stuff which has been stripped out to lighten the load.

Whilst the MacBook Air is a decent and unquestionably attractive laptop, it's not an iPhone-type game-changer/paradigm shift and I think it ultimately under-delivers on the promise of a fully-featured lightweight laptop. Still, I'm not going to be returning mine to the store anytime soon...

Related fabric of folly posts:
And the winner is... the iPhone
Round-up of best made-for-iPhone web sites/apps
How I learned to stop worrying and love the PSP

(there's also a post in my drafts folder entitled 'Why using Apple products is like a bad relationship' which I wrote in a fit of pique whilst waiting for a slot at the Genius Bar which I may revisit and publish soon).

New (to me) music apps - part three

It's fair to say that since I made the move from BBC Audio & Music to BBC Vision (almost a year ago now), I've posted a whole lot less on audio-related stuff. As a result my del.icio.us feed is now brimming with interesting new (at least to me) unblogged music apps, so I figured it was time for another installment in this occasional series. Below are five apps which have particularly tickled my fancy in recent months.

Moody
http://www.crayonroom.com/moody.php



Moody is a small but perfectly formed desktop app (Mac or PC, although the Mac version is more fully-featured) which enables you to tag tracks in your iTunes library according to mood. The interface is a 4 x 4 multi-coloured grid with the horizontal axis representing a spectrum from Sad to Happy and the vertical axis ranging from Calm to Intense. So a track like Homesick by Kings of Convenience would most likley be tagged purple (bottom left - v. sad and v. calm), whereas Tubthumping by Chumbawamba would be tagged yellow (top right - relentlessly happy and intense). Arguably one for the Nick Hornbys amongst us as you need to put in a bit of tagging legwork to get maximum value out of it (it is possible to download other people's tags, although there's no saying their tagging criteria will match yours).

FIQL
http://www.fiql.com



What marks FIQL out from other playlist sharing communities is the recent addition of video, pulling in (mostly YouTube) videos to match the tracks in the playlist. Whilst its only ever as good as the tagging on YouTube, the random nature of the videos is strangely compelling - you never know if you're going to get an artist's official video or a bedroom cover version. Below is an embed of some of my favourite music videos of all time (see earlier post on Top 20 best music videos ever).



MeeMix
http://www.meemix.com



MeeMix bills itself as "Internet radio that gets you" and the homepage invites users to "start playing the soundtrack of your life, here and now". Soundbites aside, MeeMix is a decent personalised jukebox in the Pandora mold with a slick, if slightly cutesy, interface. You can create new stations by entering the name of an artist or track and then rate tracks using a Hot or Not slider. There's also a Mood Control panel with Pulse and Surprise Me sliders, enabling you to adjust the tempo and serendipity of the suggestions.

Mixaloo
http://mixaloo.com



Mixaloo is an online playlist creator, positioning itself as the digital successor to the analogue mix-tape. Users are invited to select between 10 and 15 songs (from a library of over 3 million) and then share/promote their mix (via a selection of embeddable widgets - see below) with the added incentive of a revenue share on any resulting purchases. Whilst 3 million tracks sounds like a lot, in reality the library feels frustratingly limited - mix-tapes by their nature tend to include more obscure tracks and Mixaloo's catalogue is decidedly mainstream. Still, it's nice to have an alternative to Apple's iMixes, with the added bonus that some tracks are available to listen to in their entirety (rather than just a 30-second preview).



Songkick
http://www.songkick.com



You wouldn't guess it from the name but Songkick is all about tracking tour dates for your favourite artists, which you can either enter manually via the site's 'Band Manager' or get automatically scraped from your music library by the downloadable Songkicker plug-in. Whilst it's potentially a bit of a one-trick pony, the site does offer an appealing alternative to sifting through multiple email updates from assorted ticketing companies (NB. Currently only covers the US and the UK).

Related fabric of folly posts:
Next generation music discovery
New (to me) music apps
New (to me) music apps - part two

Oscar predictions 2008

Trying to second-guess who and what the Academy will deem gong-worthy at tomorrow's 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony is almost the dictionary definition of a fool's game, but hey, I've never shied away from fooldom before (or, for that matter, from making up new words). Below are my predictions for who will be waking up with an Oscar in their pocket on Monday morning.

If you think I'm way off beam and you could do better, please post your predictions before midnight (GMT) on Sunday (either by commenting on this entry or by posting on your own blog and linking back). The highest score gets a bag of Jelly Babies. It's out of fifteen (I've omitted some of the more specialist categories) and the full list of nominations can be found here.

Interestingly, the category I spent longest agonising over was Best Cinematography which boasts five genuinely outstanding nominations, including two from the magisterial Roger Deakins ('No Country For Old Men' and 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford').

Best Picture: No Country For Old Men a
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) a
Best Actress: Julie Christie (Away From Her) r
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) a
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There) r
Best Director: Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men) a
Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country For Old Men a
Best Original Screenplay: Juno a
Best Original Score: Atonement a
Best Song: Falling Slowly (Once) a
Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters a
Best Animated Feature Film: Ratatouille a
Best Art Direction: There Will Be Blood r
Best Cinematography: No Country For Old Men r
Best Documentary Feature: Sicko r

Update (25th February 7:00): I got 10/15 - the Jelly Babies are mine, all mine... (full winners here)

Related fabric of folly posts:
My Top 25 Films of 2007
40 best songs from film soundtracks
Mild peril: The inadvertent humour of film advisory warnings

Photo: Caleb Sconosciuto. Used under licence

Video streaming and ISP traffic shaping

The above chart shows the data transfer usage for my broadband connection over the past month. The noteworthy change from the same usage chart for November? Over 2GB of peak-time streaming. The culprit? BBC iPlayer. Why significant? Because my ISP (PlusNet) uses traffic shaping to discourage/penalise peak-time usage, which I've been doing a whole lot of ever since my colleagues in BBC Future Media & Technology added a streaming component to the iPlayer in December. As a result, my "up to 8Mb" connection has been throttled to a painfully slow 125.87 Kbps (according to thinkbroadband's Speed Test) during peak hours, rendering web browsing tortuous and streamed video unwatchable (which is how it will remain until the end of this month's billing period).

PlusNet has a helpful page explaining traffic prioritisation (presumably so-called because it sounds slightly less sinister than traffic shaping), which contains the obligatory layman's metaphor:

"Think of it this way, the broadband network is like a motorway. When the traffic is light, all vehicles can move at the national speed-limit. Some lanes of the motorway have been reserved for important traffic, such as buses or emergency vehicles. During rush hour, most vehicles are forced to slow down. However, the traffic on the reserved lanes can continue to travel at their full speed."

The interesting word here is 'important' - an inherently subjective term (surely streaming video is important to me if that's what I happen to be doing? I don't want to be stuck in a bandwidth traffic jam if I'm trying to watch BBC THREE live or catch-up on the Six Nations). What ISPs are really interested in, unsurprisingly, is limiting bandwidth-intensive activities such as video streaming and P2P downloading which eat into their profit margins.

Until relatively recently, ISPs had a handy justification for traffic shaping: that the vast majority of video streaming and P2P downloading was illegal. This is becoming less true as more and more legitimate streaming and download offerings emerge (the BBC may have taken most of the heat on the bandwidth implications of iPlayer, but ITV, Channel 4, Five and Sky all offer similar services). Add new entrants Joost, Zattoo, Vuze, Babelgum, Jalipo, Veoh, Brightcove and Democracy (all reviewed here) into the mix and you're looking at a burgeoning market for legal downloads and streams.

So, what's an online telly addict to do? One option would be to change ISPs, although as David Meyer points out in a comment on ZDNet, "Any ISP which says it doesn't use traffic shaping at all is lying, unless it simply doesn't have enough subscribers to fill up its pipes". Part of the problem is that in the race to offer cheaper and cheaper (and in some cases free) broadband, profit margins have been squeezed to the point where a high-bandwidth user is no longer an economically viable customer. Unfortunately, that category of high-bandwidth users looks sets to grow exponentially as streaming and P2P downloading become increasingly mainstream.

One possible scenario, suggested in a typically polemical piece on The Register, is a return to metered pricing. Whilst this may feel slightly counter-intuitive, it is consistent with the idea of broadband as utility. I'm happy to pay for my water, gas and electricity on the basis of how much I use - why not my broadband? Personally, I think this is pretty unlikely. Most people were so delighted to see the back of metered dial-up access that it feels implausible that they'd accept a return to a pay-as-you-go model. A more likely scenario is that slightly more expensive, higher-bandwidth packages will increase in popularity for heavy users who (like me) would happily pay a bit more not to have their streams endlessly buffer.

My short-term solution is to return to off-peak downloading using Azureus, with its handy Speed Scheduler plug-in ensuring that it only downloads between the hours of midnight and 4pm (hence no purple in the Peer-to-peer bar). Not my preferred solution, not least because it requires me to decide in advance what I want to watch rather than sampling on a whim (which I've been doing a lot more of since iPlayer introduced streaming). I'm now back to thinking 'do I want to watch this programme enough to download a 600MB file?' to which the answer's often no.

Longer term I think I could well be shopping around for a package with a more generous bandwidth allocation and/or less severe traffic shaping. Any recommendations welcome.

Disclaimer: I work for the BBC. The opinions expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the views of my employer.

Related fabric of folly posts:
Broadband as utility
Interesting times for the BBC online
Round-up of Internet TV services

On turning three, leaving blogspot and becoming a dot-com

fabric of folly is three years old today so, to celebrate, I've decided to take the plunge and move this blog off the much maligned blogspot domain (with it's 77% splogs) and on to my previously dormant .com address. Whilst I'm guessing I may take a hit in terms of Googlejuice, all old links should be automatically redirected and, thanks to FeedBurner (yet another Google property), there shouldn't be any disruption to my RSS feed (let me know if you spot any weirdness).

If you'd like to join in the birthday festivities please feel free to make use of the newly added tip jar in the column to the right (replicated below for the terminally lazy / those using feedreaders). The default donation is 10 pence so don't be shy... ;-)



Related fabric of folly posts:
On being misidentified as a splog
Blogger beta & fabric of folly 2.0
Losing my blogging virginity

Photo: Damgaard. Used under licence

BBC THREE reborn

Congratulations to assorted colleagues on the relaunch of BBC THREE, not only on-air (where the blobs have made way for user-created junctions - not to everyone's delight), but also online, where the site has been transformed from a rather static, sombre affair (above left) to something more dynamic and befitting the channel's target demographic (above right).

Five particularly cool things about the new site:

- live simulcast from 7pm every day (UK only)
- full integration with the BBC Programmes BETA (= a permanent page for every episode)
- it uses bbc.co.uk's new visual language (hence the extra width)
- it's got an innovative new Flash schedule, which expands whichever day/programme you click on to give you more information
- it's not an island, with sensible presences on Bebo, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube

Lots of people contributed to the redevelopment of the site but a special shout out to Jo Twist, Al Boley, Siobhan Mulholland, Yuri Kang, Simon Clarke, Oliver Bartlett, Beth Meade, Paul Condon and Venus Speedwell who all worked their socks off to turn it round.

You can read what my boss, Simon Nelson, has to say about the BBC THREE relaunch on the BBC Internet Blog.

Related fabric of folly posts:
Lily Allen take-away widget
Interesting times for the BBC online
Torchwood ARG

Channel 4's Big Art Mob

More good web stuff coming out of Channel 4 in the form of Big Art Mob - "a collective effort to create the UK’s first comprehensive survey of Public Art" and part of the wider Channel 4 Big Art Project. Users are encouraged to upload photos (or videos), captured using their cameraphones and tag their location so they can be added to a national map. All the usual Web 2.0 staples are there including comments, Google Maps integration and tagging (though no ratings - presumably they decided art is above ratings). With the exception of some rogue HTML tags on the About page, it's a pretty slick implementation - the functionality of the take-away widget (embedded below) is particularly nice.



Related fabric of folly posts:
JPG Magazine & Picture This
Photo Friday
The joy of Creative Commons

Is it ever ok for websites to start playing audio automatically?

A few years ago there seemed to be general consensus within the usability community that auto-starting audio on webpages was 'a bad thing'. A 2004 survey, quoted on Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox in an article entitled 'Most Hated Advertising Techniques', found that 79% of respondents answered "negatively" or "very negatively" when asked about online ads which automatically play sound. Of course, people get annoyed by most aspects of online advertising, however it wasn't just audio from ads which got people's goat, as this wonderful 2005 thread from an Apple mailing list demonstrates. The thread starts with a query from a web developer about how to add background music to their client's webpage but the discussion soon turns to why he would want to commit such a crime, climaxing with the immortal quote "Background music on a web page makes baby Jesus cry".

Fast-forward a few years and the debate has moved on. Gone are the conversations about the niceties of embedding a MIDI file as background music (thank the Lord). The main game-changer has been the widespread adoption of Flash streaming, precipitated by the growth of broadband and the unprecedented success of a certain video sharing website. Suddenly, every man and his dog is streaming in Flash and the issue of audio auto-start is very much back in play.

Leaving the technology to one side for a moment, the most significant impact of YouTube on the debate is that more and more webpages have A/V as their primary purpose. Auto-starting audio on a page where the media is the main event is potentially very different from a page where it is secondary or, worse, incidental.

That said, many of the same issues remain. A huge amount of internet use is office-based where not everyone has headphones and not all colleagues are likely to appreciate a sudden burst of Chocolate Rain. The growth in broadband has also meant more users will already be listening to audio whilst browsing the web (75% of broadband users have listened to radio whilst browsing according to the Radio Advertising Bureau). Another, slightly less obvious issue, stems from the growth in tabbed browsing (pioneered by Opera and Firefox and then thrust into the mainstream by IE7). Anyone who's opted to restore their tabs from a previous browsing session will most likely also have spent some time trying to track down which tab is responsible for the audio blaring out of their speakers.

I guess it ultimately comes down to user expectations. The web isn't yet at a point where users expect audio to play without their specific say-so. YouTube is a partial exception in that the ubiquity of it's brand promise means that most users clicking on a YouTube URL in an email or elsewhere on the web will know to expect video (with accompanying audio) to start playing automatically. Few, if any, other websites enjoy that expectation. I still feel surprised and annoyed when I land on a MySpace page and audio starts playing automatically. Even the websites of inherently aural brands such as radio and television broadcasters are not yet expected to auto-start audio (yes, ABC, I'm talking about you).

Whether or not audio auto-start will ever become wholly acceptable on the web is a moot point. Web-enabled devices tend to be so inherently multi-function that it seems unlikely that the expectation of self-starting audio will ever take root in a way it has with traditionally single-function devices like radio or television sets. Interestingly, the majority of online advertisers have cottoned on to user expectations in this area, favouring visually arresting but silent videos, with an invitation to users to switch on the sound.

Perhaps user behaviours will shift (I'm already in the habit of hitting the mute button on my MacBook whenever unsolicited audio would be disruptive) or maybe the technology will evolve to automatically detect the appropriateness of audio in any given situation (e.g. computer thinks: it's after 10pm which means the kids are probably asleep so I won't play audio).

I'm personally of the view that audio auto-start remains a no-no on the web. Any potential benefit (e.g. attracting more attention, saving the user a click) is offset by the annoyance it will cause to others, many of whom will be scrabbling for the Back button / volume control and vowing not to return to your impertinent little website.

Interested to hear what other think - please leave a comment or vote in the below poll. Having road-tested PollDaddy a couple of months ago, I thought I'd give Vizu a spin this time...

Opinion Polls & Market Research

QR Codes - not just big in Japan?

Until a couple of weeks ago QR Codes were very much on the periphery of my attention radar. Then some of my colleagues working on the BBC Programmes BETA hit on the ingenious idea of automatically generating a QR Code for every BBC programme (just add /qrcode to the end of any programme page URL to view - more from Tom Scott).

Since then, QR Codes seem to be everywhere I turn. First I caught up with the news that The Sun newspaper has notched up 11,000 registered users for its mobile QR service, launched on the 5th December in The Sun's inimitable style (see below image). Then, today, Silicon Valley Insider revealed that Google is planning to sell newspaper ads with QR codes. Whilst only a fraction of handsets currently have the requisite decoding software installed, Google have a convenient Trojan horse in the form of Android (The Sun is directing readers to download the i-nigma reader).

You can generate your own QR Code of a URL, phone number, SMS or using free text (up to 250 characters) here. The above QR Code is of this blog's URL.


Image: The Sun

Torchwood ARG

Have been enjoying playing around with the BBC's new Torchwood ARG, another example of the BBC treating the web as a creative canvas (disclaimer: I work for BBC Vision Multiplatform, although wasn't directly involved with this commission).

Whilst I'm not sure if it wholly conforms to the received wisdom on what an ARG is, it plays nicely off the broadcast narrative, makes good use of embedded video (clip below) and weaves in a constellation of satellite sites (e.g. New Eden Tech, Venus Clinic and Dark Talk, which also has a MySpace page).

The only downers are the rather clumsy disclaimers (see screencap from Matt Jones) and the rights limitations which mean that you can't view the main content outside of the UK (international visitors are redirected to this page). Google for 'Torchwood ARG' and you'll see that much of the discussion is around the geo-blocking rather than collaborative problem solving, which feels like a shame.

My Top 20 Albums of 2007

Belatedly following on from My Top 25 Films of 2007, below are the albums released in the UK last year which most tickled my musical fancy.

It wasn't a vintage year for albums imho (hence only 20 rather than the customary 25) which is perhaps unsurprising in a year when only three of the artists in my Last.fm Top 20 released studio albums (Radiohead, The Arcade Fire and Kaiser Chiefs), although there were still a few gems...

		Neon Bible The Arcade Fire Standout tracks: Keep The Car Running, Intervention
		Release The Stars Rufus Wainwright Standout tracks: Do I Disappoint You, Going To A Town
		Yours Truly, Angry Mob Kaiser Chiefs Standout tracks: The Angry Mob, Everything Is Average Nowadays
		Person Pitch Panda Bear Standout tracks: Bro's, Comfy In Nautica
		Octopus The Bees Standout tracks: Who Cares What The Question Is?, Love In The Harbour
		Because Of The Times Kings of Leon Standout tracks: Fans, Knocked Up
		The Reminder Feist Standout tracks: 1234, My Moon My Man
		Under The Blacklight Rilo Kiley Standout tracks: Smoke Detector, 15
		Wincing The Night Away The Shins Standout tracks: Turn On Me, Phantom Limb
		Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Spoon Standout tracks: Don't Make Me A Target, Eddie's Ragga
		Everyone Grand Drive Standout tracks: The Skin You're Living In, Plain Sailing
		The Shepherd's Dog Iron & Wine Standout tracks: Boy With a Coin, The Devil Never Sleeps
		We Can Create Maps Standout tracks: You Don't Know Her Name, Back And Forth
		Boxer The National Standout tracks: Fake Empire
		In Rainbows Radiohead Standout tracks: Nude
		Myths Of The Near Future Klaxons Standout tracks: Golden Skans, Two Receivers
		Once (Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova Standout tracks: Falling Slowly, Say It To Me Now
		The Good, The Bad & The Queen The Good, The Bad & The Queen Standout tracks: History Song
		Raising Sand Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Standout tracks: Killing The Blues, Please Read The Letter
		Icky Thump The White Stripes Standout tracks: You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told)

Related posts:
My Top 25 Albums of 2006
My Top 25 Albums of 2005