I bought one of Pure Digital's The Bug DAB radios, and I've been delighted with it. The quirky design appeals to my sense of humour; and the functionality is superb. Sound quality is great too.
In the last couple of weeks, they've released a new version of the system software. But you'll only find details of it here – not on thebug.com, for some reason. Version 2.0 adds a few nice features, most notably an on-screen Programme Guide. Now, as long as you're not expecting Sky+ or anything, you should be pleasantly surprised. It's a dramatic improvement on the previous attempt (v1.3b). Only the BBC channels are properly covered so far, certainly in my area, but realistically you'd only be using it for Radios 2, 4 and the World Service anyway.
The extended number of 'timed events' (ie scheduled recordings) and the ability to scroll at will through the (usually pointless) scrolling messages may come in handy too. The company claims to have improved various aspects of recording to SD card too, but nothing I've particularly noticed so far.
If you haven't upgraded your Bug's software since you bought it, now's the time to do it. It's a quick and painless process. All you'll need is a USB cable – but be warned, The Bug has a 'type B' USB on it, where you're probably more used to seeing 'type A' sockets. You'll need a type A (male) to type B (male) cable. You could probably pick one of these up from PC World for ten or fifteen quid – or from someone like Amazon for well under a pound.
Month: May 2006
Cameron, Craigslist and capitalism with commitment
I didn't see a tremendous amount of coverage for David Cameron's speech to a Google conference at the start of the week. In fact, virtually none. I'm indebted to Radio 4's Friday night comedy The Now Show for tipping me off.
It's a long speech which centres (more or less) around the notion of a 'desire for capitalism with commitment'. The Radio 4 comics made fun of his reference to Craigslist – which, for those who don't know it, is principally a classified ads site, principally personal ads, most notably 'casual encounters'. He also quotes Innocent Drinks and 'environmentally conscious casual clothing and sportswear' company Howies as examples of companies 'expressing a profound dissatisfaction with rootless, rampaging globalisation and a passionate desire for capitalism with commitment, for work that has meaning and for relationships that are about more than just money and markets.'
There's lots of aspirational, visionary stuff – and almost no attempt to attack Blair's Labour government, which probably explains the lack of media interest. So what's in it for Cameron? I think it's quite simple… anything which connects him to such a powerful and 'cool' brand as Google, with its 'don't be evil' motto, is a positive.
And just as importantly, it's an easy area of distinction between him and Blair – who never seems to miss an opportunity to tell us how terrible he is with computers, as if it's something to be proud of. This could be the start of Cameron positioning himself as the tech-literate younger man.
Update, and confession: I'd never heard of Howies before I read this speech. But I love what I read. 'Whenever a real nice day comes along, it'd be a shame to waste it. So if you phone up and no-one answers, don't worry. We are out there doing what we love. So leave a message and we'll get back to you in a while.' Brilliant. Just a shame the stuff is frighteningly expensive. £25 is a heck of a lot for a t-shirt, albeit organic cotton, particularly when the logo is an anti-capitalist statement.
Ashley Highfield, the Bible and the BBC
It’s worth reading Ashley Highfield’s speech to the Royal Television Society earlier this week, if you’ve got time. As usual with Ashley’s pronouncements, I find myself half agreeing, half violently disagreeing.
You can’t possibly argue that the BBC hasn’t been beneficial to new media in the UK. I mean, at various times, it has employed a good proportion of the entire UK new media industry. (Although not, so far, myself.) But nobody can come close to matching its depth of resources, its lack of commercial pressures, and perhaps most importantly, its predictability of income.
It absolutely is the industry’s 800lb gorilla. There’s simply no way that a UK-based content company could hope to compete. But let’s be fair to Ashley. His specific quote is:
So far from being a 800 pound gorilla crushing the green shoots of plucky cyber-sowers, I believe we have the potential to have a significant and positive market impact.
The truth is, it could potentially do both. Let’s think of it as an ‘Old Testament’ BBC, smiting those who dare challenge its omnipotence; and a ‘New Testament’ BBC, loving its neighbours. And from over a decade in new media, I think I’m safe to say that the new media people are generally hippy-ish, caring/sharing folk. I guess, though, it depends on the ‘suits’.
Keywords and thumbnails
A little something to share with you all. I’ve just fired off an email to a colleague. We’re talking about the possibility of building an internal photo library – basically, Flickr for the office intranet. That led to a discussion about keyword quality: what constitutes a keyword, how specific, how many.
My colleague seemed to be saying there was a ‘right’ set of keywords for every photo, and a ‘right’ keyword search query to lead to that specific photo (and no other). My response was that keywords only need to get you close: the image preview should tell you definitively if it’s the photo you want (or not). Or to put it another way:
A thumbnail paints a thousand keywords.
I’m really quite proud of that. Especially since I didn’t get any breakfast this morning.
3D aerial photos come to UK
I see Microsoft has now extended one of the coolest features of its mapping / aerial photo service, ‘Windows Live Local’ (still hate that!) to the UK. Well, selected parts of the UK anyway.
In addition to the ‘road’ (ie map) view and ‘aerial’ (ie top down) view, you can now see 17 places in ‘bird’s eye’ view… which is 3D-ish. Including, quite astonishingly, my otherwise less-than-remarkable home town of Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. Here’s Bangor Grammar, where I went to school – the memories just flood back. Less parochially, here’s the Millennium Dome, Fratton Park (home of Portsmouth FC), Brighton Pavilion and Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Quick tip: although you can click-and-drag like on the normal maps, you can only drag so far. When you reach your limit, you can click on a thumbnail image to load a new chunk. Oh, and try clicking on the compass to choose which particular 3D perspective you see. Wow.
Nike + Apple: an enticing combination
There’s a lot of commentary today about the business strategy behind Apple joining up with Nike to produce iPod / running kit. Me, I’m a runner… and I don’t currently care about the boardroom stuff, or whether the iPod has become a technology platform rather than just an audio player. I just want one. It’s almost enough to make me buy an iPod Nano, even though I fell out with Apple over iTunes and an iPod Shuffle (both of which I found really disappointing).
Browse Windows Mobile devices like a USB disk
ActiveSync is Microsoft’s software to match up the information on your Windows Mobile smartphone or PDA with your PC’s information in Outlook. And it’s brilliant… probably the single best reason to have a Windows Mobile device. Just plug it in, and all the synchronisation happens automatically.
Of course, there’s a catch. Inexplicably, Microsoft refuses to let you access the information on the phone directly. There’s a button in ActiveSync to ‘explore’ the device, which isn’t far off. But you really want it to work like a removable hard disk or USB stick, available like any hard drive in Windows Explorer and everything else. That way, you can use something like Microsoft’s free SyncToy to sync up ordinary files as well – like photos.
Thankfully, someone’s written a freeware tool to do just that. WM5storage sits on your mobile device, and effectively lets you switch it between ‘ActiveSync’ mode and ‘USB Mass Storage’ mode. (You can’t have both at the same time.) It works a treat with my T-Mobile MDA Pro. You’ll need to sign up as a member of the Modaco discussion forum, but it’s worth the effort.
(By the way, I note there’s a beta version of ActiveSync 4.2 now available from the Microsoft site.)
Google saves you money
If you’re ever about to buy something via a website, and you see a box for ‘discount code’ (or something similar), that’s basically your cue, right there. Get on to Google, and do a search for ‘discount code’ (or however the box is labelled), plus the name of the site. There’s a fair chance you’ll find a suitable code to knock a few percent off the sum about to be charged to your credit card.
I’ve done this a couple of times in the last few days, and it’s paid off – literally. There are plenty of ‘find a bargain’ websites and discussion boards out there, and one of them is bound to have a code going spare. Is it cheating? Hardly. The seller’s margin will be trimmed a bit, but – unless they’re nuts – not so much that they’re losing money on each sale. And if they’re nuts, well, that’s not your fault.
Allemagne 2006 sur la BBC
Full marks to the BBC for one brilliant addition to their interactive coverage of this summer's World Cup. According to this page describing their plans, you'll be able to listen to foreign broadcasters' commentaries. There's just so much more passion in the commentary voices when it's the commentators' own team playing.
Update: they had to ditch the idea. Shame. Full story here.
Goodnight to evening newspapers
An interesting piece on Media Guardian today, about the gradual shift from evening newspapers to morning. It lists several papers – Bolton Evening News, Bradford Telegraph & Argus, York’s Evening Press, Oxford Mail – which are moving, or have moved, to being morning papers.
I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner. I don’t see what place an evening newspaper can have in modern life. There are far too many distractions in the evenings – with soap operas showing up to six episodes per week, live football left right and centre, Sky+, broadband internet. Oh, and maybe even family and social lives.
London-based people often forget that most folk outside the capital don’t travel to work on public transport. The only time I ever find to read a newspaper is when I’m on a train journey; and even then, I’m finding myself spending more and more time catching up on my RSS feeds (thanks to the excellent Bloglines mobile edition), and even listening to the odd podcast (if/when I find something worth listening to).