Christmas Resistability

Well I managed to resist the excellent Orange Christmas box offer  (free Angle & Curve Headphones worth £60 with any PAYG phone over £30)  , and am soldiering on with my first generation San Francisco that fulfils the main requirement of a phone , which is to make phone calls!! It also is fairly good for texts , and OK for internet access . Camera and processor are barely adequate but I can live with them

It seems to me that me are zooming to a point of no return with theese handheld devices . Unless there's another quantum leap in power storage , or distributed power becomes a reality mobile devices will become anything but that if they have to be plugged into a power source!!

No doubt Apple will come up with a marketing idea and Samsung will come up with an innovation , but I cant see for the life of me what it will be . We'll have iPhones 5s , iPad 4s , Galaxy IIIs and some new Blackberry , but we shall see .....

Ghost of Christmas Present

It's amazing how much we have available to us today , how much we take for granted. Today I had lunch with my girls with a choice of excellent Sounth American food in pleasant surroundings at Las Iguanas in Newcastle . Within a stones throw of that are Pani's (Italian) , Dabbawal (Indian) , Hei Hei (Chinese) , The Bacchus (English) , Simply Greek (Greek) , Little Saigon (Vietnamese) , El Torrero (Spanish) and that's just for lunch , and by no means the only restaurants or cafes to eat at. As a kid yohurt and pizza were the height of exotica and if you were really adventurous you could try a Vesta Beef Curry or Paella!

As well as the food technology gives us things like catch up TV , mobile smart phones amd timy music players that will hold most normal people's music collections. Never has life been more convenient with such choice. Despite all the golom merchants predicting global coolapse , the reality is that we probably never had it so good. And it feels good at Christmas

An Orange Widget

This is a very short post to check out widget creation , and see if I can sell the odd iPhone. I do find it amazing how Apple products are spreading  every where , every music player has an iPod dock and according to "Q" magazine without Steve Jobs we would have no music!!

Though this is at a time where Orange have just produced an excellent Muppets based Goldspot advert to promote Orange Wednesdays film nights!!

Steve Jobs - Fur Q

Q's Idiot Side Bar

I know I shouldnt have done it but I did. It was "Q" it had U2 on the cover , but it had "Achtung Baby" covered by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and Patti Smith , it was worth the risk right?

Well the album is generally exceelent if not exactly what expected , so that was a win.

However I then flicked through the nagazine ad came across this article titled "5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music" ,  Err let me stop you there , Steve Jobs / Apple have nothing to do with music , unless you count things like Garageband . Jobs was an OK guy and a master of marketing. He never produced or supported music unless it's ultimate aim was to make money for Apple.

1: He Made Music Truly Mobile: Did he well we've had portable radios since the late fifties , the walkman allowed you to take any music anywhere , mini disc and CD and micro HD drives increased that , then Apple jumped on the bandwaogon with a better looking product that still uses a non standard format for everything it touches!!


2: He Invented The Shuffle: Pardon CDs did random play , even with the 10 disc jukebox in your card . The iPod Shuffle was a masterstroke of marketing . It's hold 250 tracks that it can play in any order and you havent a clue what you are listening to and Apple marketed this as a desirable attribbute . Pure genius.

3: He Revived The Singles Market: Well only when downloads started being counted , adn I reckon Amazon and a lot of others did the same thing at the same time . Again a good marketing move.

4: He Changed The Retail Landscape: Er Amazon did that way before Jobs was properly up and running. Allowing peole to cherry pick albums , well I've been doing that from ripped CDs for years. Again nothing new and was pleased when Pink Floyd won the case to sell albums as albums!!

5: He Made Your Favourite Bands Go Digital: No he didnt , and Q still manage a cheap stab at AC/DC . Bands go digital because there is a market , End of discussion.

So basically a rubbish article about an OK guy , a marketing genius who got lucky and was in the right place and the right time.

October Draws To A Close

I

t's been an interesting month . I've spent the month looking for a free , web based , social calendar and playlist generator and sharer supported by ads. My first points of call used to work but dont now , the concept is simple and works but so many people want to control what you listen to , watch and see. Don't these organisation realise that majorly skews reality !! Although it does ensure that X-Factor take the number one single spot at Christmas and the winners autobiography gets pride of place in Waterstones displays.

Last night I missed a Los Coyotemen gig and the Central , because their gigs are rare as hen's teeth , but I was not feeling physically that well , c'est la vie!!

I've not anything about writing a book , still haven't had an idea , but have enjoyed the slew of new releases than have come out being majorly impressed with the new Half Man Half Biscuit and Magazine releases as well as discovering Beverley Knight - Come as You Are is a scorcher.

Oh aye Apple launched the iPhone 4S and Steve Jobs died on the same day , that's a heck of a way to promote your new product!! You can get it on T-Mobile and Orange on the links below , go on you know you want one!!

Anyway it's 5:42 which is really 6:42 , I'm washed and will just dig out a few embellishments to this before zipping to bed... or not.

Apple iPhone 5 Is Here - Sorry Make That The Apple iPhone 4S

Apple for the first time in a long time don't have a new product. The much trumpeted iPhone 5 , is in fact the iPhone 4S . It's a major improvement on the iPhone 4 , faster , better camera , and all that but you'll have to wait til next year for the iPhone 5. Can't wait to hear Charlie Brooker's verdict , and I know they'll shift faster than a greyhound in a dragster!! Here's Charlie Brooker's first impressions of the iPad - He ended up buying one and loving it

Anyway you can pre order your iPhone 4S through Orange or T-Mobile on the inks on this page!!

Mininmalism #1

Minimalism , or laziness has been the order of the month for 2011, this being my second post despite various things happening and the run up to my birthday , but sometimes life gets in the way of things you plan to do . I still need to find a place that will hire me a reciprocal saw to dismember the tree that fell into my garden two weeks back. It's in manageable chunks , and the leaves have bee disposed of , but it needs chopping into fire friendly sized logs.

Some Winter Fuel!

The other thing is that I'd started this post based on some surprising facts about one of my favourite albums , but that will get it's separate post.

Also we've have Facebook's pointless revamp , making it almost unusable , crashing phone applications and stuff like that , making people very irate , not least of them me, I believe the iPhone app is well and truly shafted. Not a good "customer" experience.



I'm also getting more than a little bored with all these groupon clones , such as Voucher Cloud and LivinSocial. Both available from the Android App Store and LivingSocial insists I'm in Wolverhampton and won't let me change it , but is happy to send me offers from the USA and Eastern Europe. I'm all for saving money , but not when it costs me my time and sanity!!!

Oh and A Kindle has entered the domicile. And yes it is impressive but it's not mine, I'm happy with the reader on my Advent Vega!!

Me and My Content Delivery Device (A Short History of Me & Mobile Phones)

About ten years ago my daughter forced on me an old Pay as you go Motorola phone, and through the years I eventually got a contract , a bike , and then became employed by my present company who provide me with a phone and pay my bill.

When I started I saw article that one of the big cheeses in Orange had hoped for a 25% take up of mobile phones by the population - at that time it was around  130% (a number of people have multiple phones , personal and business). Apart from being able to make calls , you can communicate by text, take photographs , send pictures , browse the internet and interact with social networks as well as playing music and watching video. The latter option could bring some truth to the phrase "It'll Make You Go Blind!!" as watching films of a certain kind on such a small screen cannot be good for your eyes!!

Thr rise of smart phones (big hitters being Apple / iPhone and Google's Android) mean that phones can do anything bar teleportation.. Apples main failing is that you need a PC with iTunes on but they do the job , though the iPad is a big iPhone you cant make calls on!!.

Anyway here's my progression:

• Samsung Tocco - My first touch screen phone - generally very good apart from the fact if you had the number pad on and put it to your ear it started pressing keys and cut you off.
• Nokia X6 - Nokia have great cameras but a terrible operating system and it wmanaged to wipe my contacts twice so it went in exchange for ..
• LG Chocolate - A Gorgeous Looking phone , absolutely brilliant until you switch it on!! This went in exchange for
• LG 505 - Worse than the Chocolate and without the looks
• Orange San Francisco - Android Phone , processor to slow , camera rubbish , but dirt cheap and brilliat in every other department - I do love this phone despite it's few drawbacks . Still have it and can't see anything I want to upgrade it for. Bought myself a tiny Panasonic camera to make up for the picture shortfall

I still can't believe how far mobiile phones have moved on since thefirst ones came out....

Bless My Soul .....Danger Mouse

Apple have created and stunning looking mouse that , is almost completely unusable to the point where users end up in pain after a session with it. It seems to me this is anothers example of Apple's continual triumph of style over substance!!!! It's also amazingly flat!

Incidentally the Roman Catholic Church now have an endorsed iPhone app for hearing confessions!! BBC article here

Apple and Yahoo Encourage Stealing!!

A couple of months back my Yahoo Answers account was stopped because I'd transgressed their rules. They were unspecific , but said linking to my website forum was the problem. The part of the forum was the part which detailed the legal , loss leader MP3s that you can download for nothing , ie truly and legally free. I had also complained about the number of posters who advised using peer to peer services to download copyrighted music without paying for it , ie stealing . Yahoo still give space to these people while I have been permanently banned.

I was also thinking about the rise of the iPod and iPhone as the music player of choice for lots of people . It used to be that you would tape , or get an MP3 of an album and if you liked it , you would then purchase the said album. However now , because the album is on your music player of choice , there is no pressure to pay for the music. So that means that the artists lose out , while loads of kids grow up believing you dont have to pay for stuff. I don't know what the answer is , and the music industry is very resilient , but it is a very worrying trend.

Micro De-Socialising

It seems I've been neglecting the blog of late . Whether this is pure laziness or something else , I'm not sure.

One of the possible reasons is that I can post opinions and links on Facebook and get the things noticed there . though the blog does give me more flexibility.

A worrying (or maybe not) development is the proliferation of personal tracking methods that Apple and Facebook between them have created . It's ironic that people were up in arms about id Cards and invasion of personal privacy under the last (and probably this) government, by use of CCTV and electronic snooping methods , yet are happy to let Facebook / Apple track and publish their every move. If the government really want to keep tabs on people give them an iPhone and a Facebook account and thats the problem solved!!

Indian Jo Knows

It's amazing the way the smart phones have taken off . Apple lead the way with their iPhone but they are being run to the wire with the Google / Android based competitors. There are thousands of apps available , from the ordinary spirit level and compass , to the banal "gaydar" apps , to the useful stuff like banking and share dealing - hell you can even make phone calls on some of them. You can easily customise your phone with ringtones and wallpapers and cases , and the Indianjo site has some great free wallpapers for the iPhone. The site is here:

Sure it wont be long before one has a teleport function.

Is It i?

Is it just me? It seems Apple and their cohorts think that by sticking an iPod dock and i- infront of the name you have a cool product. This is from a company that couldn't even come up with an original name (The Beatles Apple Corps was well established when Jobs & co came along) , and nicked their orginal GUI computer interface ideas from Xerox!

Take the iPig and iPanda , both the sort of thing you'd find in a cheap electronics shop and normally wouldnt give a second glance to , but because you can connect your i-thing to it then you'll happily shell out £50 or so to be ripped off, It'll probably last as long as a Christmas Turkey , but and least you can eat the turkey.

And another thing , why is everyone so impressed that the shuffle facilty can chuck up some music they like every now and then. You put the music in there , it just has an algorithm that will do that every so often . It's not alchemy!!

I'm just wondering how long nefore we get the iPhone Shuffle with no screen that rings random numbers , after all that was their philosophy with music , "Life Is Random" - Right On!!

What else could we have?

• i-wedge Use your iPhone to steady that dodgy restuarant table , or keep the door open!
• i-tile Use it as a stylish kitchen or bathroom tile
• i-plectrum Use it as an oversized plectrum to play some serious rock riffs
• i-hi Insert it in your shoes to give you added height
• i-pod Case for small green vegetables - oh sorry that's been taken
  

The list is endless but you saw it here first

Apple, The Devil and Bloatware

Supposedly The Devil tempted Adam and Eve with an Apple . Now Apple are trying the same withe rest of the human race with theie iProducts.

I recently downloaded iTunes Version 9.0 for the PC , 88 Mb big. What the hell is the reason for that. It plays music and video's and allows you to buy stuff from their store (it their proprietary format of course).

The irony being that physically in the iPod Nano and Shuffle you have some of the smallest music players possible , however you need the afformentioned bloatware to pre load the damned things. Apple arent the only culprits , though , almost anyone with a market presence seem to think that size will impress . NO!! Functionality impresses , though I can't see Microsoft and Apple and the rest going for efficiency while they can make money without providing an efficient product with a relatively small footprint. Meanwhile we can watch Apple's latest product in their (simulated) advertisement soundtracked by "She Got Me Dancing" by Tommy Sparks , available here :

Exclusive? Moi?

What is the meaning of exclusive? Given that Vodafone and Orange have just acquired rights to sell Apple's iPhone , which was previousle only available on O2 , I was surprised to see a full page advertisement in the Sunday Times advertising the iPhone's exclusivity to O2. I suppose you can't believe all you read in the papers then!!!

What I could belive is that my neighbour had provided me with a barrow load of firewood for my wood burning stove when some sizeable branches from his tree fell into our garden whilst on holiday. As well as clearing the wood away he also chopped the thing into stove and chimeniere sized sticks - well deserving of a couple of bottles of Oddbins fizz!!!