Pillow talk

Well, pillow music really.. this does look a simply brilliant idea.

http://www.soundasleeppillow.co.uk/

What a bloody great idea!

http://www.optimistworld.com/

The Optimist - It's not all doom and gloom you know.

If you're one of life's optimists – welcome home. If you aspire to be a positive thinker – welcome to our world. The time is right for a daily look on the bright side. Something different. Here at Optimist World you'll find it.

shizzle my orange

Snoop Dogg stars in a new Orange cinema ad

Rapper Snoop Dogg is asked to rap less about sleeping with women and more about phoning them in an Orange ad, by agency Mother.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/jan/31/snoop.orange

4x4 25 quid congestion charge

Hurrah!

Bloody hate 4x4's for cities, so I'm in principle a fan of the proposed Mayor Ken £25 congestion charge.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/story/0,,2249742,00.html

Spoof Parking tickets for 4x4's

Our goals are to make driving a big 4x4 in town as socially unacceptable as drink-driving

http://www.stopurban4x4s.org.uk/

Google lo(e)go

Today's Google doodle - celebrating 50 years of lego.

Go Novak!

Nice work Novak - beating Federer 3-zip. I want him to win it now.

The Serbian No.3 seed, who had only beaten Federer once in six previous meetings, avenged his defeat to the Swiss world No.1 in last year's US Open final with a dominant 7-5 6-3 7-6 (7-5) victory.

Think I'll be supporting Ana Ivanovic for the women's but not sure she can win.

Charming but pointless?

Dominic's work is all very charming but is that enough??

http://www.dominicwilcox.com/work.html

Although his anti-theft stuff is an exception -

13 days of not being stolen in London probably equates to 7 years of non-stealing in the friendly countryside.

Three no longer the magic number

The cone-shaped blobby creatures (devised by Aardman Animation almost exactly five years ago) that danced to the sound of Three Is The Magic Number are dead.

A new identity is born.. I not mad about either but the goodbye idents seem sweet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/jan/22/bbc32

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/jan/22/bbc31

Gig posters

Nice article about gig posters... here are some randomly stumbled upon ones.







http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/01/ive_died_and_gone_to_gig_poste.html

http://www.gigposters.com/

Jason Munn
http://thesmallstakes.com/gallery.php

IE8 passes Acid2 test

IE8 the new web browser from Microsoft, renders the "Acid2 Face" correctly in IE8 standards mode. I'm quite interested in this.. at the moment Firefox 3 apparently will pass the Acid2 test, but Firefox 2 doesn't. Could IE bugs actually become a thing of the past?? Apparently IE8 will banish hasLayout forever.

The Acid2 test - http://webstandards.org/action/acid2/

Microsoft due to release a beta of IE8 in the first half of calendar 2008.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/19/internet-explorer-8-and-acid2-a-milestone.aspx

Jason MacIntyre

British cycling champion Jason MacIntyre, who was killed in a road accident on the A82 near Fort William, Scotland on the 16th.

The 34-year-old MacIntyre broke Scots cyclist Graham Obree's 10-mile time trial record last year. He leaves a wife and twin eight year old daughters.

Offer fox ache

I liked this article.. particular the last comment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2244240,00.html

This week Charlie bought a bit of speech-recognition software designed to prevent RSI by letting you talk instead of type, but gave up after he spent more time correcting its mistakes: "It got every sixth word wrong, which meant you'd swear in exasperation, and it would think you had finished each sentence by saying, 'Offer fox ache', and type that in too."

Brown scared of pen grip

Ping-pong diplomacy hit a new low today as Gordon Brown ducked out of a table tennis challenge from the Chinese prime minister.

WHAT!!

I would have had a bash!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2243025,00.html

No country for old men

Wanna see this as soon as poss.

5 Stars - Guardian

The Coens are back with a vengeance

Wii could help surgeons

Eight trainee surgeons spent an hour playing games on the wii before performing "virtual reality" surgery on a computer system.

Game players scored nearly 50% higher on tool control and overall performance than other trainees.

Marble Mania, in which a ball is guided through a 3D obstacle course - was particularly effective in the study.

Researcher Kanav Kohel explained that the type of game play was crucial.

"You don't gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket. The whole point about surgery is to execute small finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get with the Wii."

The fine control needed to move a virtual marble around a 3D maze is similar to the skills needed to perform keyhole surgery, for example.

Colleague Mark Marshall said the games consoles were cheap enough to be used to train surgeons in poorer countries where cutting-edge virtual reality systems were not available.

Sun to buy MySQL for $1bn

Sun said it will pay about $800m in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock, and assume approximately $200m in options.

Apple launches ultra-thin laptop

Apple launched the world's thinnest laptop and a new movie download system.

"We tried with Apple TV, but it's not what people wanted. So we're back with Apple TV take two – no computer is required. You can rent movies directly on your widescreen TV and you can rent them at DVD quality or you can rent then at high-definition quality."

Costing $229, the system links into the company's plans to offer films to rent over the internet through its iTunes store, also confirmed today. Rumours of the plans had been widely reported in the past week, and the company said it would join with film studios including 20th Century Fox and Sony to allow iTunes users to stream movies live, direct to their computer or TV, for a one-off payment of between $3 and $5.

A thousand new titles

The system will launch with support from every major Hollywood studio, with a thousand new titles and back-catalogue films available by the end of February. The service will be launched immediately in the US, and is set to arrive around the world latest this year. "We're dying to get this international as well," he added.

http://www.apple.com

an hour per point

At the 1936 World Championships contested in Prague, two defensive players took over an hour to contest one point.

Top 10 Hotels of KL

When we were in Kuala Lumpur, we only stayed in two hostels (The greenlodge was good) and then the fabulous Hotel Maya so I can't comment on these.. although Maya number 8 - I certainly thought was amazing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jan/14/kualalumpur.hotels?page=all

.NET Winners

Brand wins podcast of the year.

.NET WINNERS

People's Choice Award - WebJam
Design Agency of the Year - Preloaded
Viral Campaign of the Year - Will it Blend?
Best Mashup of the Year - Flash Earth
Standards Champion - Dan Cederholm
Mobile Site of the Year - Gmail
Podcast of the Year - Russell Brand
Best Redesign of the Year - Apple
Infamy of the Year - MySpace
Interactive Award - Get The Glass
Innovation of the Year - Google Earth
Web Personality of the Year - Kevin Rose
Socially Powered Site of the Year - Facebook
Best Blog of the Year - Engadget
Open Source Application of the Year - Firefox
Best Web Application of the Year - Wordpress

Films I missed of 2007

I'm slowly going to get round to building up to make my lists of 2007.. but I thought I missed so many good films this year, I'd list some of the films of 2007 that I still want to see.

• Michael Claton
• Tell no one
  
• 3:10 to Yuma
  
• American Gangster
  
• The Assassination of Jesse James
• The Darjeeling Limited
  
• Superbad
• Knocked Up
• Once
• Air Guitar Nation
  

Yahoo's Websites of the Year

The winners of Yahoo's Finds of the Year 2007 competition have just been announced - eight of the weirdest and most wonderful websites to come out of the UK in the past 12 months.

Ethical
The Nag: A site that helps people do one thing a month to 'make the world a better place'.

Travel
World Reviewer: Travel site that uses reviews of world tourist locations to inspire your next holiday.

Innovative
Move Me: Online guide to moving house, from removal companies to mail redirection.

Educational
Friends Abroad: Social networking for learning a new language

Social
Doggy Snaps: Social networking for your pooch.

Weird and Wonderful
Faces in Places: Snaps of faces in everyday objects.

Charitable
Free Rice: Test your vocabulary while donating food aid to developing countries.

Shopping
Nigel's Eco Store: Online retailer of environmentally friendly products and gifts.

Bond Stamps

New long stamps produced for Royal Mail issued to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, each stamp begins with the cover from first edition hardbacks before progressing through paperback versions from the 1960’s, 70’s/80’s and current Penguin editions. Compare first to last image in each set - Notice the dumbed-down, sexed-up nose-dive from intriguing subtlety to crass commercialism.

Pandora closes to the UK :(

Man, I hoped this would never get sent too..

There is an obligatory facebook group to try and save it.. but I'm not holding my breath.
http://www.facebook.com/n/?group.php&gid=6878879451

hi, it's Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK. If you are, in fact, listening from the US, please contact Pandora Support: pandora-support@pandora.com.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable...so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we'll get beyond this. We're going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We'll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I'm very, very sorry.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

Free Music

This is from the Guardian site, some excellent resources for music downloads.

Best for electro/techno: ill-ec-tro-nic
ill-ec-tro-nic.blogspot.com/

When London blogger Langer started ill-ec-tro-nic two years ago, there weren't many MP3 blogs dedicated to writing about underground electronic music. These days there are plenty, but Langer's (which he co-edits with his friend RAW) still stands out as one of the best. The site has a catholic remit, with experimental electronica, techno, remixes of indie tracks and even the odd slab of psychedelic rock thrown into the mix. "No cheesy house, though," says Langer. "And we've gradually steered away from the whole electro house/new rave stuff as every other blog seems to be posting it and most isn't very good."

Download: Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill (Ripperton Dub) (posted 30/12/07)

Best for new sounds: Pitchfork Media
pitchforkmedia.com

Some see Pitchfork as the world's brightest beacon for new music. Plenty of others lambast the site for its florid writing and self-congratulatory tone. But nobody can deny Pitchfork's influence. Thirteen years after it was established as an indie-rock webzine by Minnesotan high school graduate Ryan Schreiber, the site now receives more than 1.5m unique visitors each month, with around half of those living outside the US. That's enough for Pitchfork to make a significant global impact on any new band's fortunes. The Go Team!, M.I.A. and, recently, the Black Kids have all benefited from their support and the site is acknowledged to have kickstarted the Arcade Fire's career with its glowing 9.7 out of 10 review for the band's Funeral album.

Download: Cave - Hunt Like Devil (posted 14/12/07)

Best for B-sides: The "B" side
redkelly.blogspot.com

"I don't think B-sides are a dying art," says blogger Red Kelly, "they're already dead". Perhaps so, but Kelly does a sterling job of keeping the memory of old flipsides alive. About once a week, the New Yorker thumbs through his extensive collection of classic soul and R&B 45s and picks a B-side to post on his blog.

Download: Kim Tolliver - I'll Try To Do Better (posted 28/12/07)

Best for hip-hop: Cocaine Blunts
cocaineblunts.com

A surprisingly small proportion of MP3 blogs dedicate themselves to hip-hop. So, while unsigned indie-rock acts can expect blog exposure almost as soon as they've formed, upcoming MCs can struggle for attention. "There are a lot of local and niche scenes [in hip-hop] that are painfully under-represented on blogs," says Nos, a Washington DC-based hip-hop writer. Since 2003, Nos has done his bit to redress the balance with the excellent Cocaine Blunts, writing expertly about both the latest hip-hop micro-scenes and big name releases, often with accompanying MP3s.

Download: Battles feat Joell Ortiz - Leyendecker (DJ Emz Remix) (posted 12/12/07)

Best for live gig bootlegs: Smuggled Sounds
live-bootleg.blogspot.com

Live concert bootlegs used to be badly recorded cassettes sold by furtive-looking geezers at record fairs. These days, thanks to Smuggled Sounds, any computer owner can relive gigs in impressive quality audio, for free. Since the blog took its current form in August 2006, its prolific London-based author, ZazafromJahor, has posted recordings of hundreds of concerts, all available to download as large MP3 files (so you'll either need quick broadband or plenty of patience). Last month, the site offered a bootleg almost every day, including shows by Ike and Tina Turner from 1972, the Beatles from Hamburg in 1962, reggae legend Yellowman from 1983 and brand new recordings of reunion concerts by the Police and Led Zeppelin. As if the frequent posting didn't give you enough options, the site's download links seem to stay live longer than many blogs', so it's worth trawling back through the archive. Björk's 2007 Roskilde show and a belting 1985 Springsteen set are two November 2007 highlights.

Download: Björk - Hyperballad (posted 26/11/07)

Best for covers: Cover Freak
coverfreak.com

US blogger Steve McIntyre is, by his own admission, "obsessed" with cover versions. "I've been giving covers CDs to my friends as Christmas presents for years," he says. "The site is an outgrowth of that." Every Sunday since October 2006, McIntyre has posted five cover versions on a particular theme, be it war, ukuleles, Johnny Cash, drinking or California.

Download: Tricky - The Love Cats (posted 30/12/07)

Google bashing

I reckon that there will be some more of this, this year.

The gist is that Google seems to bend the truth .. Both in times that it reckons pages were added / updated, the number of results (68 actual vs. about 455 reported) and why use terms like "found"

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/01/02/isnt_google_wonderful.html