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Sunday, April 18th, 2010

Dancing with the Devil
Playing with the Devil by skarpi on Flickr

This week’s edition of my what I’ve been reading on the internet is slightly different to last week’s. At times I may have to replace the word “reading” with “viewing” as a lot of it is quite visual. This week’s “This Week In Reading” is a “Volcano Special”.

You will not have escaped the news. A volcano blows its top in Iceland (not a rare occurrence) and as a result all aircraft in the whole of the UK, in fact most of Europe, are grounded (that is a rare occurrence).

Dr. Erik Klemetti is a geologist so he knows a thing or two about volcanoes. His blog titled Eruptions seems to be one of the best sources of information there is on Eyjafjallajökull.

The BBC are good at keeping us in the loop with their live volcano updates online.

The Yahoo Editors picked the best of the volcano images online. There are some truly spectacular photos in that set. But the best image of the week had to come from *ice on Flickr, a very rare photo opportunity captured on camera.

While you could smell the ash in Aberdeen during the week (smelt like blocked drains), you couldn’t see it. It’s too far up and too dispersed. From space however you can, and Nasa have a photo set on Flickr showing you trails of dust.

Sometimes I read stories and see pictures online that bring out a side of me that wishes I was back home in Shetland. Fellow Zetlander Tom Morton managed to achieve this on Friday after he posted a couple of images on his blog of the ash that had fallen from the sky overnight.

With all this fire, explosions, airplanes being grounded and dust clouds, it doesn’t come as a surprise to find that the Top Gear team had an involvement in all this. I predict that when the next series of Top Gear starts, it will turn out all these grounded planes was the biggest stunt the show has ever done (after the Richard Hammond crash stunt that is).

Best find of the week is the RaderVirtuel.com site. It’s a tracking site for planes. Except looking at it when everything is grounded you may as well just look a normal map because there’s not a lot going on.

The most unlikely headline of the week award goes to: “Showaddywaddy gig in Shetland cancelled because of volcano“. That’s the sort of headline you’d see on Mock The Week. Gutting for all concerned I’m sure.

And one final link. While the end to the airspace restriction doesn’t seem to be in sight, it may be worthwhile keeping an eye on every one’s favourite volcano.  My dad e-mailed me this link, a webcam at the base of Eyjafjallajökull. At the time of writing she was still grumbling away. Volcanoes are she’s right?

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Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Book collection

I enjoy reading newspapers and blogs far more than I enjoy reading books. Now I’m going to start sharing some of the articles I have enjoyed in a weekly blog post. It’s an idea I’ve nicked straight from James Cridland’s blog. Clicking on any link should open it up in a new window or tab, so get clicking.

The Digital Economy Bill was quickly passed through during the week with seemingly little thought put towards it. I often wonder if Peter Mandelson has ever used the internet?  If you’d like a quick run through of what this all means, Robert Andrews of paidContent:UK has given us this “Quick Guide To All 45 Measures“.

I don’t think any of us have escaped the news that this week the Queen dissolved parliament and Gordon announced a General Election.  This election will be the first proper social media election, and spreading like wildfire through Twitter this week were images from the website mydavidcameron.com, Photoshopping at it’s best.

In the week that Apple announced their latest update for the iPhone, Os4, Gizmodo report “How The iPhone Could End Up In Second Place“.  It’s a worthwhile article for any company that’s thinking about developing solely for the iPhone platform.

The Guardian is one of my most visited websites. It quite often holds the crown of being my web browsers homepage.

Their article “Spare a Flickr of sympathy for professional photographers” makes interesting reading.  In it it states that the popular photo sharing site now features billions of pictures by amateurs and squeezing income out of the photographic industry. I suppose I fall under the category of the photographer who owes everything to the easy shoot digital camera. But like every industry, times are a changing, and professional photographers need to get with the them.

It could be an interesting year for Bebo users. AOL want to either shutdown or sell the Social Networking site.  For me Bebo, in 2005, was the first site of it’s type which had proper mainstream appeal.  But it lost out to Facebook. Feature wise, privacy wise, and design wise, it was way out of the league of Facebook. I deleted my Bebo profile a long time ago. Most people I know now use Facebook.

What I’ve learned this week.  If you have the opportunity to name a ship, don’t name it Titanic. Surely that one was obvious? And if you are going to put your old redundant suitcases to a charity shop, check inside them before you let them go. And 2000 years after he rose from the dead, Jesus has decided to come back in a piece of chewing gum.  That story particularly got my goat.

If like me your a radio presenter who every now and again needs content for a quick link, the Daily Telegraph’s “How About That” section is an excellent resource.  And speaking of local radio presenters, back to the Guardian, “What I’m really thinking: The local radio presenter“. It’s all true.

The excellent Flight Level 390 blog continues to keep me longing to leave radio and become an airline pilot, while GERT on Blipfoto.com continues to keep me longing to leave radio, skip the idea of an airline pilot and get a job on the high seas instead.

So much reading, so little time. Thankfully Google Reader keeps it all in one place for me. Same time, same place, next week for more.

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Saturday, April 10th, 2010

Synchronized Saturday

One of the plus points of my job on a weekday is that I don’t start till 10am. That’s just about the right time for me. Any earlier is too early.

On a Saturday however I start at 6am. That is far too early for any sort of sense to be made. I shouldn’t complain, the Saturday shift pays for my rent every month.

During the winter it’s a right scunner. It’s dark, it’s depressing and you feel like you are the only person in the whole world awake. Now that the mornings are lighter it’s quite nice getting up early and making the most of the day.

As I was driving in this morning, I was thinking how it’s amazing that I see the same things and the same people in the same places at the same time every Saturday on my way into work.

I live under a flight path and as I make my way out to the car on a Saturday morning without fail the plane pictured above passes over my head. I think it’s the early morning flight to London.

I drive as far as the first roundabout and I always meet the same bus. The number 2.

After I’ve turned right I drive down the road and I pass the same female jogging into her work. I wonder if she spots the little blue car that passes by her every Saturday morning? Probably not.

There’s always the man in the the high visibility yellow jacket riding his bike. He’s very unstable on it. You’ve got to watch out for him. Just as well he’s wearing that jacket.

Finally, just before the big roundabout, another bus always pulls out in front of me slowing my final leg of the journey into work down.

All that happens in the same order, at the same place, every Saturday morning. If more than one of the above events doesn’t happen, I know I’m running late and the whole day will be out of sync.

This photo is part of my “a photograph every day” challenge. There’s a new photo every day over on my Blipfoto and Flickr profiles, with the best of these photos being added to this blog.

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Friday, April 9th, 2010

Nokia N97 and iPhone 3GS

I’m going on about this like a stuck record, but it’s something I feel strongly about.

I was in a meeting at work the other day. The subject of the meeting was streaming formats, bitrates and accessibility to these streams. The usual boring work related subjects.  Along came the topic of mobile listening.  Asked by someone in the meeting “Do you own an IPhone David?” the answer was “no, no I don’t.”  And just like that, almost instantly, I was dismissed as having any sort of knowledgeable viewpoint or understanding of mobiles, streaming and their future.

Trying to bring to the meeting the idea that media organisations shouldn’t just concentrate on iPhone development, but multi platform support, bringing in devices such as Android and Blackberry was almost frowned upon, because it wasn’t the latest ‘in craze’, the iPhone.

Thinking about it afterwards, I should have said yes to the question posed to me. While I don’t own an actual iPhone,  it would seem that the term ‘ iPhone’ has become an umbrella term for anything smart phone like, and I do own an smart phone, a much smarter phone than an iPhone in my opinion. In pretty much in the same way that I own a Hoover, well I don’t, I own a Dyson, and the Tannoy system in our school was actually made by Panasonic, therefore it wasn’t Tannoy at all because Tannoy is a brand name of Sony.

I know a lot of people who love technology, love media, and quite often show me the ‘latest amazing thing’ that their iPhone can do. If I try and do the same with my Android phone I’m ignored because it’s not an iPhone.

With Apple releasing details of their latest iPhone OS4.0, news outlets like the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and loads more are all over the story. I like these newspapers, but sometimes their over biased coverage of Apple products amaze me. And this is why your bog standard punter doesn’t know or like anything other than the iPhone, because Apple get so much coverage and the mainstream media are not at all interested in anything else.

This isn’t a dig at anyone I work with. It’s not a dig on iPhone users. It’s a dig on the general ignorance and perception of iPhone’s as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some things Apple and the iPhone do far superior than my Google Android phone. Brilliant marketing, seamless integration with your computer, well timed regular software updates and the games and graphics on an iPhone is far superior to any other phone I’ve seen .  But we shouldn’t put all our development eggs in one iPhone shaped basket. Once the iPhone app is ready we shouldn’t just sit back and rub our hands with glee because we have an fancy pants  iPhone app, because if we do that, we are alienating A LOT of people.

The future of mobiles isn’t the iPhone. It will play a large part of the future, but so will Android, Symbian, Blackberry, WebOS, Meemo and who knows what else as time goes by.

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Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Thirsty Thuresday

On Ash Wednesday I gave up Coca Cola for Lent. I had a can everyday, sometimes two.

I just about survived the 40 days and nights of Lent. At times I struggled. At times I nearly caved. But I held strong.

Last Sunday was the end of Lent and my chance to have a can of coke again.

I can confirm that my addiction is over. It’s not that good. I’ve decided water is better. It’s cheaper. You can drink lots of it without feeling ill. And it keeps the dentist bills down.

Sorry Coca Cola, your profits are going to fall and it’s all my fault.

This photo is part of my “a photograph every day” challenge. There’s a new photo every day over on my Blipfoto and Flickr profiles, with the best of these photos being added to this blog.

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