Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Apple’s cloud music service sounds good

    This could be interesting. Businessweek:

    Armed with licenses from the music labels and publishers, Apple will be able to scan customers’ digital music libraries in iTunes and quickly mirror their collections on its own servers, say three people briefed on the talks. If the sound quality of a particular song on a user’s hard drive isn’t good enough, Apple will be able to replace it with a higher-quality version. Users of the service will then be able to stream, whenever they want, their songs and albums directly to PCs, iPhones, iPads, and perhaps one day even cars.

    Sounds good, but of course price is going to be the key factor. The article suggests that it might be rolled into MobileMe, the£60-per-year cloud sync service Apple currently offers. That makes sense: MobileMe’s been due a revamp for a long time, and the rumours have been suggesting a music angle for a few months now.

  • “128 seconds that made people so happy”

    I spotted this on MetaFilter: a superb and desperately sad article about the rise and fall of Bill Haley.

    After ten minutes or so Billnitzer would bring him his food. But usually he was thinking about something, so he ignored it. After a while, though, he’d start to shift in his seat and look around. And then he’d start to hum. Billnitzer, refilling his coffee cup, knew the tune—everybody knew that tune. It was “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock,” the best-selling rock song of all time. She smiled, because she knew what he was doing. He was giving people around him clues. He wanted people to hear him and say, “You’re Bill Haley, aren’t you?”

    But they rarely did.

     

  • Cloud computing and Pippa Middleton’s arse

    Me, on Techradar, about Google’s brand new Chromebooks:

    Ah, says Samsung. “With nothing stored directly on the Series 5, malicious spyware, trojans and viruses are a thing of the past.” They’re a thing of the past on my Windows 7 PC too, because I’m not an idiot who opens unsolicited files that claim to be details of tax refunds or photos of Pippa Middleton’s arse.

  • Coming to a Kindle near you very soon

    The book isn’t ready yet but I thought Ronnie Brown’s cover design was too good to keep under wraps. More soon.

  • A wee plug for some nice guitar people

    I don’t play as much as I used to, or would like to – RSI tends to rear its ugly head fairly quickly – but one of my most treasured possessions is my electric guitar, a 1989 Fender Telecaster. I bought it second-hand a loooooong time ago, and I’ve been meaning to get it sorted out for several years now: the pickup switch was wonky and the guitar itself needed some serious TLC. And of course, the longer I left it the more work it needed.

    I finally decided to bite the bullet a few weeks ago and asked around for recommendations, because I don’t even know which guitar shops are still going in Glasgow. I was pointed towards Strung Out Guitars, a wee place across the road from the 13th Note venue. They’re very, very busy – my repair and setup took a fortnight because they had so many guitars to get through – and I can see why: my Telecaster came back looking and playing better than it has since the day I bought it.

    They’re a nice bunch of people too, and they clearly love what they do. If you need guitar-y things done, give them a shout.

     

  • This is why some of us worry about copyright cops

    When people like me get worked up about ISP censorship, national firewalls and other wonderful ideas, it’s not because we condone theft. It’s because the people who do the censoring are often idiots. Here’s yet another example: the UK Music Publisher’s Association (MPA) managed to get an entire public domain music site taken offline because it – wrongly – believed that the site was hosting an illegal music score.

  • Record companies: sell records? Us? Don’t be silly

    An illuminating piece by David Hepworth:

    When you have built up some anticipation around the release of anything, what on earth is the use of delaying that release and allowing that anticipation to fade into disinterest? Public attention is a finite resource and it is quickly diverted on to something else.

  • Kurt Vonnegut story grids

    This is wonderful.

    I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything.

    He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life.

    He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let’s look at a few examples.”

    [Via Spikemagazine.com]

  • Is Amazon working on a Kindle tablet?

    I’ll be amazed if it isn’t. Andy Ihnatko:

    A Kindle Tablet would have an instant clarity with consumers that no other tablet can communicate … not even the iPad.

    There’s a real perceptual problem with tablets. Just what the hell are they, anyway? And how is the average consumer — someone who’s by no means intimidated by new technology, but who’s in no way mesmerized by the shining shininess of its shine, either — meant to know why they would want to have a tablet and their notebook?

    Even the iPad suffers from this problem. It’s a brand-new category of computing and the differences are subtle if you’ve never spent time using one. You’ll get a clear picture if you sit next to me on a four-hour flight and ask me an innocent question about this computer on my tray table, but trust me: this solution comes with its own unique set of downsides.

    But what’s a Kindle?

    “It’s a book reader.” Sold!

    The word “Kindle” is as intimately associated with that product category as “iPod” is with music players. Amazon wouldn’t need to describe their new tablet as “magical” when they already have “Kindle.” That one word would get millions of iPad fence-sitters inside the tent. Why should Amazon even care if these folks don’t discover the web browser and the email client after a few days? Or if it’s a couple of weeks before they install their first app?

    The current Kindle is a wonderful device, and getting new stuff for it is a joy: find, click, read. I think Ihnatko’s right when he says the iPad is as much about its ecosystem as the device itself, and I think he’s right when he says Amazon has its own content ecosystem.

    This is all complete speculation, of course, but I’ve been spending a lot of time covering tablets recently and nothing really jumps out in a “never mind the iPad 2; look at this” kind of way. A Kindle tablet would.

  • The iPad 2 is £399

    That, boys and girls, is Apple waving its arse at its rivals.

    Wi-Fi only: £399 / £479 / £559

    Wi-Fi and 3G: £499 / £579 / £659