Download the KLF

Ah, the sounds of the nineties… Give ‘em an email, and they’ll give you the White Album. Seems like a fair deal…

(via Gromblog)

Slang makes youths unemployable, redux

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think this story is a load of bollocks. The only source quoted is from a company whose business is in communications skills training. The principal comment is from a bunch of gibbering reactionaries who will seize any opportunity to hark back to the good old days of grammar schools, compulsory corporal punishment and children who knew their place. Oh, and there’s a rent-a-quote from the “banning the right of companies to mince up peasants for cattle fodder will be bad for British business” CBI. Hardly investigative journalism at its finest, is it?

Starbucks offer download service

I’m suprised noone has done this already - the idea of being able to burn your own custom CDs rather than pick off the one or two decent tracks off a pre-recorded one has definite appeal.

But I can’t imagine that the service will be anything more than a) crippled beyond belief - no recent releases, DRM-infested, that kind of thing; and b) significantly more expensive than the alternative walk-into-a-record-store option. Anything else would require a degree of intelligence on the part of the labels, and we haven’t seen much of that recently, have we?

And anyway, who wants a CD? What I want is a service where I can walk into a store, plug in my [insert MP3 player of your choice] and download tracks there and then. And I’m not holding my breath for that.

Slang Makes Youths Unemployable

I loved this story on the BBC about how “slang makes youths unemployable”. Partly because it reminded me of the interview-on-speed in Trainspotting, and partly because it’s the kind of spluttery middle-aged ranting that you’d expect from the Campaign For Real Education - definitely an organisation harking back to the days of the 3Rs when “house” rhyming with “mice”.

Evading the brand police

There’s been a running theme of late in the Scobleizer (and others that he’s linking to) about the way in which blogging is under the corporate radar - tolerated and encouraged, even. I’m a bit sceptical about this - after all, in most big corporates the brand police get upset if the the ‘i’s don’t get dotted just-so - I vividly remember having a heated conversation with a PHB from a corporate communications function who was getting really quite uptight about why I couldn’t guarantee that his emails would reach their intended destinations in pitch-perfect 11-point Garamond. I can’t imagine most corporate PRs being overly-relaxed about hundreds of freelance opinions being pumped out of the organisation unchecked.

But having said all that, all the unchecked voices from Redmond are putting a human face on the Vole, for me at least. (Anyone know why the Inquirer keeps refering to M$ as that?). So maybe a lack of control in one respect has tradeoffs as positive vibes in others? And maybe that’s what the Scobleizer is all about - after all, there can’t be much time left in the working day after all that blogging…

Comment spam

I must be missing something here, because I’m really struggling to see what possible point comment spam could have - unless it’s some kind of Google trick to get the links up the rankings. You’d have to be pretty damn desperate to go to the lengths of posting comments into blogs in order to get eyeballs, so presumably it’s something to do with leeching on the back of my google-worthiness. Although it did make me wonder - if Links Are Good as far as Google is concerned, wouldn’t this have the perverse effect of marginally improving my blog rankings? Or are Google wise to this, and mark it down…? Not that I’d want to be googled as a result of some of the keywords…

In any case, MT-Blacklist is doing a fine job of zapping the crap as soon as it arrives.

Pulling an all-nighter

Currently (re)installing a Win2K server. And have been for the past 12 hours. Sleep is for wimps.

Archos GMini 220 and resulting flights of (gadget) fantasy

MobileMag have a review of the Archos GMini 220, a hard disk MP3 player that looks to be a credible competitor to the iPod. Not quite got the edge on style, admittedly, but it makes up for it in features.

Now my question is this. If it’s a hard disk in a (small) box, and it’s got a fast USB 2 connection, is it bootable? If it is, doesn’t this mean that I can carry an entire personally-configured PC around in my pocket - I just plug into the USB port of the ‘host’ PC and it boots up my software? Which would effectively eliminate the need for a laptop.

I’ve seen the same thing done using flash-based pen drives, but unfortunately my software requirements are a bit more bloated than the 16Mb that I’ve got on my pendrive. But 20Gb I could live with quite happily, and 40Gb would be more than enough for both music and software.

Which then leads to another thought. Isn’t there a convergence trend here? So I carry around my unfeasibly large personal hard disk, complete with my software and my data and my music and everything else. Effectively it’s a personal area network server, and it’s Bluetooth-enabled, so it can talk to all my client devices. It’s got a PDA-style interface (or a detachable one that’s even smaller and slimmer). There’s a GSM chipset embedded so it can act as a mobile by talking to my headset. Naturally it’s also a music player, and there’s probably a multi-megapixel camera thrown in as well. Because it’s wireless, it can sit in an inside pocket, so the “interface” devices that I actually have to handle can be as small as they can get while still being usable. When I need a large screen and keyboard, I just “dock” into a base unit - and because it’s a USB device and the software is all plug-and-prayplay, any old base unit will do.

The questions are, where can I buy this, and if I can’t buy it, why not? Why isn’t Nokia embedding iPod-like functionality into their mobiles? Why isn’t Apple embedding GSM-like technology into their iPods? You’d expect that if someone somewhere was working on this kind of device it would have made it’s way onto the wow-look-at-this-cool-new-gadget weblogs by now, so why isn’t the convergence taking place?

Wasting time with Outlook

I’m getting hacked off to the point of migration with Outlook. First it’s unilaterally decided to put the Sender field back into a custom view I’d set up for all my Newsgator folders; then it decided that it wasn’t going to shut down cleanly, leaving a lingering process every time I closed it; and now it’s only deigning to talk to the Fastmail IMAP server every second or third attempt. And for some reason best known to itself, it won’t reconnect using the ‘Connect to…’ option - instead I have to close it down completely and restart it every time, running the gauntlet of problem #2. Assuming it’s actually possible to shut down - I’ve spent a significant proportion of the afternoon watching the little progress eggtimer spinning idly to itself while it ignores anything short of Ctrl-Alt-Del.

It’s had both Office service packs applied, and still it’s giving me grief. Considering this is about the only piece of software that’s holding me back from dumping this bag of bugs of a laptop in favour of a Mac or Linux, my days of being a Slave Of Redmond are looking numbered.

Compare and contrast with the three Linux boxes in my life, which currently have uptimes of three months-plus. The chances of me even contemplating an upgrade in the direction of Longhorn are diminishing with every passing hassle.

BT wiring colour codes

A sheet with the colour coding for BT voice cabling has been kicking around in the bottom of my toolkit for years, with the net effect that it’s never to hand when I need it. The last time I needed it I had Google to hand, but it took waaay too long to find the information, mainly because I couldn’t figure out the search string that would bring back the right hits. So this time I’m giving a title that means something to me, in the hope that Google will pick it up and I won’t have to ratch around for it again.

1 - No connection
2 - BLUE with WHITE rings
3 - ORANGE with WHITE rings
4 - WHITE with ORANGE rings
5 - WHITE with BLUE rings
6 - No connection

Simple enough when you know it, but impossible to remember if you don’t.