New $5/month Yahoo music service – I’m sold, if I was in the US.

May 11th, 2005

Yahoo! has launched a cheap and cheerful new music service. Yes the price is cheaper than iTunes and the Real and Napster music subscription service. That’s a bonus but what I like most is a post about it from Ian Rogers. I think he sold it for me. Ian worked on building the player for the service. When will us in the EU be allowed to avail of this Ian ?

He has a post on his Yahoo 360 Blog (What horrible url addresses it has) entitled Why You Should (or Should Not) Use the Yahoo! Music Engine, if you can’t see it then go here instead.

It looks like a great system and even if it is stuck with drm I’d still use it. BUT it seems only for US Residents only. Now that sucks.

backstage.bbc.co.uk launches – “Use our stuff to build your stuff.”

May 11th, 2005

“Use our stuff to build your stuff.”

BBC Backstage looks to me like a Content SDK.

Blurb:

You can participate in BBC Backstage by either building an application or web-based prototype that uses BBC content or, if you have an idea to use BBC content in new ways, then write it up, preferably with some designs as to how it could ‘work’ and share it.

Ben Hammersly who works on this stated “it’s laying down the gauntlet for the rest of the world. It proves the point that on the internet, hiding your content is suicide. It says that you can either open up, and we can all flourish together; or you can remain closed, and die alone.”

A new standard has been set, I look forward to the way this will grow and flourish and change as more more people interact and collaborate with this service. This is the future of content sharing and distribution. ANd I always thought the Beeb were a conservative lot. Not so. Seems like the hippys have taken over. Far out maaaan.

iTunes to do Video, TV, Ogg and WMA ?

May 11th, 2005

Huge speculation still but via iTunes Apple might just start selling TV Shows and other content via it’s iTunes store and use the AirPort Extreme product to stream it to your TV/Stereo. However the iPod will not become a video player but may support WMA and OGG files and maybe more if the new unused icons in Tiger are anything to go by.

There’s a thread about it on Slashdot where either an Apple insider or else a very clever Apple fan has been giving details. Some very intelligent commentary in that thread.

Also Playlist Mag mention that new Contacts and Calendar tabs show up in iTunes as well. Turning the iPod into more than just a pic viewer and music player. Still no radio though.

Cringely talks about OGG and WMA and seems to think there will be a video iPod.

The classifieds eating the rest of the paper.

May 9th, 2005

This is how stuff happens. In this case, it’s the classifieds eating the rest of the paper. Go, Craig!

Great quote. More in-depth thoughts on this later this week when I have time to talk crap. Citizen journalism is about to happen.

It gets easier: Automated(ish) GeoTagging Flickr Images Process

May 9th, 2005

Set of Greasemonkey scripts that makes adding GeoTags to your Flickr images and submits to GeoBloggers an easier and more automated process.

Concentrate \ Blog|RSS Tools

May 9th, 2005

Concentrating when studying

10 questions you should ask in an interview

RSS to Javascript generator. Use this generator to display and format RSS feeds on your website.

RSS Mix – Mix any number of RSS feeds into one unique new feed! Maybe Planet of the Blogs could do something like this for users that don’t want some displayed to them ? Would take a bit of processing power though.

Digital Divides

May 9th, 2005

Seth describes another digital divide though this one is more about choice than availability. Interesting nonetheless.

The New Digital Divide

   

The Digerati The Left Behind
Uses Firefox Uses Internet Explorer
Knows who Doc Searls
is
Already has a doctor, thanks
very much
Uses RSS Reader RSS?
Has a blog Reads blogs (sometimes)
Reads BoingBoing
(or Slashdot)
Watches the Tonight Show
Bored with Flickr Flickr?
Gets news from Google Gets news from Peter Jennings

Sunday Snippets- Since Bernie’s not about

May 8th, 2005

Since Bernie is away I’ll take over covering what the Sunday Tribune is saying about IrishBlogs until Bernie comes back, and here we go…

That’s When I Fell for the Leader of Iraq

There was an election this week, apparently, on that other island, and a bit of this one. Much of the last phase of the campaign had been about re-fighting the Iraq War, so it was fitting that one of the world’s most famous bloggers, Salam Pax, who became famous for blogging the Iraq War from Baghdad as it happened, got into the mix.

He’s been filing reports from the heavily Muslim Bethnal Green constituency, where George Galloway is running as an anti-war candidate. Harry’s Place chronicles the pro-Iraq War Iraqi trailing the dyspeptically anti-Iraq War/pro-Saddam Hussein Galloway.

And Best of Both Worlds notes that Salam Pax isn’t the only visitor with a stake in the election – there are all the “Overpollstered, overpaid, and over here” American political consultants, like those mentioned by the New York Times in its coverage this week.

BOBW quotes the NYT as mentioning one adviser known in certain Irish back rooms – like St. Luke ‘ … a senior adviser to Senator Kerry’s campaign, is a friend and sometime adviser to Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer and almost certain successor to Mr. Blair eventually – it’s Bob Shrum”

And it adds “No doubt Shrum can take advantage of his visits to England to see another client — Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who’ll need advice on the latest rabble-rousing policy proposals to disguise the abject incompetence and cravenness of his government. ”

Meanwhile , American blogger It Comes in Pints? revealed that he once worked with Conservative MP and Spectator editor Boris Johnson in the Conservative Research Department in the mid-1990s, so he had a front-row seat on the Tory meltdown from which they have yet to recover, recycling the observation that “the worst thing that ever happened to the Tories was winning the 1992 election.”

Take him out? Ooh, I’d Rather Just Take Him

Twenty Major made some satrtling “revelations” about a Dublin criminal known as the Little General:

“His real name has not been released but I know who he is. Obviously then I can’t name him but I can tell you some things about him and you should tell all your friends so that when they hear about the Little General they immediately associate these things with him.

So here are some facts about the Little General from Dublin:

  • He likes to dress up in women’s clothes, particularly ‘sexy’ basques and suspenders which he buys from Ann Summers.
  • His favourite TV show is ‘Will and Grace’
  • He likes to sing songs by Barbara Streisand, Liza Minelli and Brian Kennedy
  • He’s an enormous fan of Siegfried and Roy and personally sent a bunch of pansies to Roy when he had his head nearly bitten off by one of their tigers

    We’re not sure Twenty has a future in crime reporting.

  • Damien – Vanity time

    May 8th, 2005

    Searching for results in:

    15th in Google.com
    15th in Google.ie
    11th in Google.co.uk
    9th in Yahoo.com and Altavista.com

    This seems mainly due to Planet of the Blogs IrishBlogs and the technorati section. I’m quietly confident that I’ll hit the top ten by years end.

    Closings tabs – quick links

    May 8th, 2005


    Via Engadget is the networked emoticon device. Pretty cute.

    OpenBSD BitTorrent encrypted server
    Blurb:

    the data you copy to the server gets encrypted and the data you read from it gets decrypted, all on-the-fly…

    How to make a homemade cheap TiVo with a spare computer. Nice howto that’s been seen on many a website but if you were to purchase all the software in this tutorial it’d cost a fair old whack. There are loads of open source alternatives out there these days. Such as here.

    keeping to the TV theme: The BBC allows viewers to upload and share their videos. How cool is that ?
    Blurb:

    BBCi has launched a programming service for digital satellite viewers that showcases short films made by regular people across the UK. The service, dubbed Your Stories and accessed 24/7 by pressing the red button.

    BlogPulse – Search the blogs. Woeks a bit faster than technnorati. Handy for vanity searches or to check what the latest buzz is. Look at the stats:
    Total identified blogs: 10,603,693

    New blogs in last 24 hours: 39,909

    Blog posts indexed in last 24 hours: 359,639

    New tagging blog. Contributors are: Christian Crumlish, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Don Turnbull, Gene Smith, Jon Lebkowsky, Kaliya Hamlin, Mary Hodder, Peter Merholz, Timo Hannay.

    Mosh Girl. Just look and laugh.

    Thinker – A Cognitive Psychology Resource.

    What I Would Be Thinking About If I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going to Be a Piano. Hilarious.