Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Plastic Logic’s e-book reader: I want one

    Details and video at TG Daily.

    Manufacturer’s blurb:

    Differentiated by a stunning form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it’s thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience – better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market today.

    The Plastic Logic reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. It has an easy gesture-based user interface and powerful software tools that will help business users to organize and manage their information. Users can connect to their information either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device. The reader incorporates E Ink technology for great readability and features low power consumption and long battery life. The Plastic Logic reader is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009.

  • Fan hits the shit

    You might think I’m only linking to the YouTube clip of Noel Gallagher being attacked on stage so I can use that headline.

    You’re right.

  • It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I’m thinking about iPods

    Later today the boffins at CERN will switch on the Large Hadron Collider, which will – depending on who you believe – usher in a brave new era in physics, turn the planet into Swiss cheese, or open a portal for Satan to come and enslave us all. Which may well overshadow the latest iPod.

    iPod Nano 4G
    iPod Nano 4G

    It’s a really nice upgrade, I reckon, but I do wonder where the iPod can possibly go from here. Pico-projectors that enable you to show video on nearby walls or bald people’s heads? Integrated kazoos?

    Tangent: during the keynote Steve Jobs made it clear that he wasn’t too happy with third-party accessory firms leaking supposedly secret products, as happened with the nano. I wonder if pre-release access to Apple’s plans is going to be more restricted now. Why help add-on manufacturers get to market quickly if they’re going to blow your big reveal?

  • Got a Sony Vaio? Don’t like fires? You should probably read this, then

    Sony’s recalling a whole bunch of Vaio TZ laptops because of an unfortunate “burny burny” feature that’s slipped into some of them. The recall includes these models:

    • All model numbers beginning “VGN TZ1” (e.g. VGN-TZ11XN/B)
    • All model numbers beginning “VGN TZ2” (e.g. VGN-TZ21WN/B)
    • Certain model numbers beginning “VGN TZ3” (e.g. VGN-TZ31VN/R)

    Full UK details here. [Via Engadget]

  • What your taste in music says about you

    Pointless but amusing survey via the BBC:

    Indie: Low self-esteem, creative, not hard working, not gentle

    Chart pop: High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle, not at ease

    Jazz: appalling taste in music, ugly shoes

    I may have made one of those up.

  • Thoughts on using Apple’s Time Machine as a remote wireless hard disk

    Nope – at least, nope for iPhoto and iTunes libraries. This is a job for Captain Ethernet.

  • Google Chrome: that’s no moon

    Google’s much-anticipated operating system turns out to be real – but it’s built into a browser.

  • “Like those yucky strings of poo sometimes seen dangling from goldfish”

    A nice contrast to blog evangelism: PC Pro’s Dick Pountain on why he doesn’t blog, and why he thinks blogs are bad for writing.

    Publishers, being straightforward capitalists, have a duty to maximise their profits, and one way to do this is to pay writers less or pay fewer writers. To them, the blogosphere is starting to look like a huge open-cast mine of free copy, and the fact that it’s neither researched nor necessarily true is beside the point: that just means they can fire the research department too…

    Lacking any quality control mechanism, blogs easily sink into a Hobbesian state of nature – rule by the loudest and the nastiest.

  • The futility of flogging music (and the despair when you can’t even give it away)

    An excellent article about selling records, file sharing and trying to flog MP3s via Word Magazine:

    web technology lets us see exactly how many people are listening to our music. We can see the MySpace hit counters spin round, with the total number of listeners for each track. Our stats pages on our blogs show us how people arrived at our page, which country they’re from, even which web browser they’re using. We’ve got information about the reach of our music that we couldn’t have dreamed of 10 years ago, and it tells us that thousands upon thousands of people have their ears open, and they’re listening. But, by and large, and with a few exceptions, we can’t fucking sell music to them.

  • So long, Glaswegian indie rock radio

    XFM Scotland, the radio station formerly known as Beat 106, is to become part of the Galaxy dance music network.

    The switch, which will be made in the autumn, is likely to see a radical overhaul of the station’s music output.