Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Media

Journalism, radio and stuff like that

  • Techradar: YouTube versus PRS, and banishing software irritants

    It’s Tuesday! First up: why the YouTube/PRS spat is bad news for musicians.

    Ultimately, though, the spat is like watching two bald men fighting over a comb. On one side we have a multi-billion dollar corporation demanding that musicians pay the price for its inability to find a properly profitable business model; on the other we have a rights agency that appears to be stuck in a pre-internet age and can’t or won’t accept that online streaming simply doesn’t bring in the same amount of money as traditional broadcasting.

    Also, 7 annoying apps you don’t have to put up with.

    Printing, as Eddie Izzard once ranted, shouldn’t be hard. Control-P-Print! So why do printer manufacturers insist on installing applications for every conceivable task, such as programs that enable you to add gaudy picture frames?

    Long-term readers will immediately spot that one of the nasties, Snap Shots, was briefly on this blog. I was young then, and crazy.

  • The New Yorker on Watchmen

    What a brilliant, brilliant review. Anthony Lane:

    The bad news about “Watchmen” is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation. The good news is that you don’t have to stay past the opening credit sequence—easily the highlight of the film.

    As David Hepworth writes:

    There’s something about a thunderingly negative review that makes it the most exhilarating of reading experiences. It might be as effective as taking a peashooter to a steam engine but the sound of that pea pinging off steel is nonetheless strangely warming. This particularly applies with huge blockbuster films because it helps to remind us that the bigger they are, the more likely it is that they are also absurd.

  • Bugger off and take your Beatles with you

    A slightly inflammatory piece by me on Techradar: why the music industry doesn’t deserve government help.

    Now, like General Motors, the record companies are hurting – and like General Motors, they want the government to save them. GM wants cash; the record companies want ISPs to act as their policemen, while the Digital Britain report suggests a broadband tax to create a new organisation to fight piracy and find new and exciting ways for DRM to annoy us.

    Why doesn’t the government tell them to get stuffed?

    The New Music Strategies blog linked in the article is well worth your time.

  • Interesting things: an article about netbooks and an article about the Kindle

    Wired Magazine has a fascinating piece about the rise of the netbook:

    For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did.

    And Richard Cobbett’s posted a great piece about the Kindle and ebooks in general:

    I’m aware that there are some people who will happily read a novel on the iPhone. These people are crazy.

  • Fancy a year of .net magazine for free?

    Between now and the 17th of March .net’s giving away free subscriptions via the mag’s Twitter account. More details here.

  • Techradar Thursday: 3G sucks, Google should buy things

    More words on the Internet. First, six companies Google should buy including, yep, Twitter:

    Google’s search spiders are amazing things, but they can’t do what Twitter Search does: let you see in real time what six million people are saying. Bringing Twitter into the fold could work in two ways: as a search tool in its own right, and as a way to refine web results based on ‘trending’ – that is, up and coming – topics people are chatting about. For Twitter users, Google could offer better reliability: while Google Mail has been up and down a bit over the last few months, you’re still much more likely to see the Twitter Fail Whale than have problems with a Google site.

    Then, 3G sucks when you’re in the sticks.

    On a good day, outside, you’ll see the little 3G icon. Go indoors, though, and it disappears. That’s on a good day. On a bad day, like yesterday, there’s no 3G signal at all. We couldn’t even use GSM. Phone calls? Yes. Data? Nope.

    The further from the cities you go, the worse it gets. And Scotland, like Wales, Northern Ireland and the North of England, doesn’t have too many big cities. If you stick to the big motorways, the cities and the very biggest towns you’ll get decent coverage. Everywhere else – and in Scotland, most of the country is everywhere else – you won’t.

  • Arena closes, men’s magazines still suck

    mar_09_coverI wrote this four years ago:

    Arena’s confused – it can’t make its mind up whether it’s going after GQ readers or Loaded readers, and falls flat between the two

    Today’s Guardian reports that Arena is to cease publication after 22 years.

    In the same post, I wrote this:

    Perhaps the problem is that there’s no real need for a men’s magazine, because most other magazines are for men. Computer magazines are largely read by men. Car magazines are almost exclusively read by men. Music, film… men men men men men.

    I think that’s still the case. Any sign of this?

    A magazine that isn’t aimed at sniggering schoolboys, that doesn’t write ten-page features on the correct way to wear cufflinks, that doesn’t tell me that I need to spend 18 hours a day in the gym to get the perfect body, that doesn’t cover a single subject (cars, gadgets, books, music) and that doesn’t hate, fear or envy women. A magazine that doesn’t make me skip 90% of its pages. A magazine that I wouldn’t be embarrased to have in my house.

  • Belated Techradar Tuesday: seven reasons why Apple should make a netbook, and why laptops are just handbags

    First up, a feature: seven reasons why Apple should make a netbook (and a few reasons why it shouldn’t). Here’s one of the reasons why it shouldn’t:

    An HD Touch would be more compelling

    Take one iPod Touch, make it twice the size, give it some desktop-style apps and you’ve got something that no other computer firm can deliver (or, we suspect, even imagine). You’d have all the things you expect from an iPhone, plus decent e-book reading and document editing. How great would that be? Bluetooth support for an external keyboard, 3G modem as an option, best computer ever.

    Then, a column: if Confessions of a Shopaholic was about tech instead of handbags, we’d think it was great. Tech Firms! You’re doing it wrong!

    …the tech industry is just like the fashion industry. It sells you stuff and tells you you’ll look like Audrey Hepburn or Brad Pitt; six weeks later it’s shouting “You look like your gran!” and telling you to buy something else or kill yourself. An overpowered laptop is no different to a £1,000 It Bag: it’s just more crap that helps fuel credit crunches and contributes to climate change. When we’re eating each other for food and having fist-fights with polar bears in the High Street, we’re going to regret it.

    The column isn’t up yet. I’ll post the link when it is.

    Update

    Here’s the link: why netbooks prove that the tech industry’s gone nuts.

  • Techradar Thursday: cool things in the labs, clown computing and 3D gaming

    Two by me, one by Neil Mohr that I thought was really interesting. First up, Cloud Computing – or Clown Computing?

    So much for the cloud.

    Can we really rely on web-based services and software? If you’re expecting us to say no, surprise!

    Then a look at some of the interesting things Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Mozilla have got cooking in their labs including:

    4. Google Mars
    Fancy looking for Martians or discovering whether The Watchmen really do have a base on the Red Planet? Google Mars brings the power of Google Maps to nearby planets. Sadly Street View and Local Search aren’t yet available, so if you’re trying to find a kebab shop you’re out of luck.

    This piece by Neil Mohr caught my attention: 3D gaming. Is it ace, or is it arse?

    At its best with Left 4 Dead, some primal instinctive part of the brain lights up as you realise you now have depth perception. Zombies flailing towards you suddenly have a natural order and a beauty as they spiral in space with a well-placed shotgun to the head. Blood spurts in awesome Jackson Pollock-esque fashion onto your virtual camera lens that views this apocalyptic world. This is the 3D at its best; it works straight out of the box complimenting the gameplay, even enhancing it.

    Yay! But it’s a qualified yay:

    At its worst, though, it’s a frustrating mess. A crosshair that makes you feel you’ve drunk five pints, constant ghosting from lights and effects, while struggling to make the stereo effect work at all without inducing eye-strain. Somewhat akin to magic-eye pictures, it’s an effect that you gradually get more and more used to or not at all.

  • Is the Safari 4 beta any good?

    Yes. Yes, it is. Guess where the link goes? That’s right! Techradar!

    Overall, we like Safari 4 a lot. We’re not convinced we’ll actually use Top Sites or the visual History Search, but flashy gimmicks aside it’s a fast and pleasant way to do stuff online.