Category: Technology

  • Recommendations wanted

    Never mind blogging about blogging: I’m so hardcore that I’m blogging about writing about blogging. And if it works, I might write about it and then blog about the writing about the blogging about the writing about the blogging. Er… anyway. I’m doing a feature about great British blogs, and I thought I’d ask your…

  • The best Xbox 360 game is £4.25

    …if you buy it second hand, or around £9 if you buy it new. And it’s… [photopress:B00006IR20.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg,full,pp_image] Okay, it’s not actually *for* the 360 but Bungie’s tweaked the graphics via the 360’s backwards compatibility and I reckon it looks much better than, say, Perfect Dark Zero. There are a few bugs, but not too many…

  • Flickrs of talent

    One of the reasons I stopped playing in a band (other than the obvious ones: geography, a face only a mother could love and the increasing feeling that once you’re over 30, you’re too old to rock) was frustration: while a lot of the stuff we did was really, really good, I never felt it…

  • Total Broadband

    I’m quite impressed by BT’s Total Broadband service, which gives you 8MB broadband, a wi-fi phone, 250 minutes per month of BT OpenZone Wi-Fi access and if you go for the most expensive option at £22.99 per month, the Fusion service that turns your mobile into a landline when you’re at home. I nearly ordered…

  • Fascinating and disturbing

    The camera never lies, but here’s yet more proof that what appears in print often bears little or no relation to what was actually photographed. Brian Dilg is insanely talented, but his description of a Ralph Lauren job involving a child model has made me utterly depressed: This is a good example of some very…

  • Ripping CDs to iPods is illegal, says BPI boss. No it isn’t, says BPI boss.

    Q: Do you believe people who are buying CDs legally and copying that music to an iPod should be punished – as they are, in fact, breaking the law? A: Consumers don’t have the right to copy CDs in the UK and never have… BPI boss Peter Jamieson speaks to BBC online, January 2006. On…

  • You don’t need to spend a fortune on Word

    As I mentioned yesterday, I was a guest on Edinburgh’s Talk 107 radio station to talk about piracy and things like that. I ended up in a (good-natured) argument with the presenter about software piracy, and he argued that people pirate Word because they need Word. It’s become the de facto standard for documents, so…

  • Google Spreadsheets: so what?

    Michael at TechCrunch is clearly in a bad mood, but he’s bang on the money: After I wrote about the launch of Google Spreadsheets this morning, one commenter said “Its very nice and sleak. Will be very useful for keeping track of money etc”, as if this was the first spreadsheet he’d ever seen. Some…

  • If it’s too loud, you’re too right

    Stylus Magazine has published a superb feature about music, which answers the question: why does so much modern music sound crap? It’s all about loudness, apparently: not volume, but compression that’s designed to make tracks sound as loud as possible. That’s why Keane are twice as loud as Nirvana, which is wrong on so many…

  • Future’s launching two heavyweight sites

    So says Rob Mead, and he knows things. They’re not live yet – the launch is scheduled for the Autumn – but TechDaily and TechTested sound really interesting. Me, I don’t know anything about them, but I do know some of the people beavering away on the sites in the background. Judging by their track…