-
Google’s much-anticipated operating system turns out to be real – but it’s built into a browser. [more]
-
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… [more]
-
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… [more]
-
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. [more]
-
Sorry, on deadline just now so this’ll be quick: Mozilla’s Ubiquity could be amazing. More on MetaFilter. [more]
-
Despite reports, Girls Aloud are not planning to recruit a new member – at least, not according to the official site: Over the weekend the papers have been filled with false stories on the girls. But instead of the tired old ‘split’ stories, they have invented rumours of a brand new Girls Aloud reality show.… [more]
-
An unusual request: does anybody know of a crystal case for the first-gen iPhone that *doesn’t* let you use the touch screen? I want to use it as a portable video player for baby bigmouth, but the touchscreen means she turns off the clips in seconds and then beats me around the face with the… [more]
-
My Xbox 360 developed the dreaded Red Ring of Death the other week, and after trying the various troubleshooting tips it was pretty obvious that the ‘box was broken. So with a sinking feeling I called tech support to try and arrange a repair. What I expected was this: Hours on the phone being passed… [more]
-
An interesting post on Broadstuff about Pandora, the web-radio service whose extremely high royalty payments may force it out of business: it’s clear that Pandora and its ilk will live – it’s far too good to lose – [so] it will just go to the P2P freenet if this practice continues, thus hurting the Industry… [more]
-
Last year, I wrote a column for .net about the increasing importance of clicks – that is, judging the success of something not by how good or bad it is, but by how much traffic it generates. A few weeks ago, the music reviewer from The Herald newspaper went to see My Chemical Romance and,… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
