Peter-Jenkins.com: General

Open message to BBC worldwide

2012-01-20T19:49:00.002+02:00

Subject: Non iOS version of iPlayer and full access please!

From: Peter Jenkins

To: bbciplayer@bbc.com

Hi,

Why limit the global version of iPlayer to only Apple mobile devices?

When you tried to have a Windows only iPlayer the reaction was rightly very bad:

(in case your memory is short)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer#Development

Here is the money quote from the BBC trust:

"the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings"

Why did you think you could pull the same trick twice?

When the existing iPlayer service is web based and cross-platform, why did you make this new service closed and only on Apple hardware?

I have access to several computers at home (Apple Mac, Windows PC, Linux) and an Android phone - none of which can run this software so I'm forced to not pay for BBC content even though I would be happy to.

I really want to pay to support good quality BBC content, but currently can't. There are plenty of cheap services which allow me to watch the UK version of iPlayer without paying the BBC from my home in Finland.

For example, TVexpat is charging 30€ for 3 months access:

http://www.tvexpat.eu/subscribe

Of course, I'm not a UK resident, so can't pay the licence free even if I wanted to (I don't).

You must see you are missing a huge revenue opportunity by offering a closed software platform with a restricted range of programming locked to specific countries. With each week you delay resolving this mess more and more users will figure out services like TVExpat or use other means to view BBC content without paying. For example:

http://isohunt.com/torrents/Top+Gear?ext=&op=and

I think you'd be surprised how many people would pay for content if you make it possible to do so.

Cheers,

Pete.

Cultural differences: Car Wash

2011-04-02T12:34:00.000+03:00

You wouldn't know it from reading here, but these days I'm living and working in Finland. After a while living in a new place you really start to notice all the subtle differences between countries. I thought (ok, I was told), I should write about the here.

Car wash

For reasons I can't explain, in Finland it's seems a social faux par to wash ones own car. I've just not seen any car washing going on in our part of suburbia (Olari, Espoo). Instead you must either use the expensive hand wash places in most car parks or go to the automated car wash machines - both places are an experience.

Most car parks in Finland are underground (and double as bomb shelters lest the Russians invade) so the workers in these underground car washing places, in my imagination at least, are rather strange creatures, deprived of light and perhaps only fed after washing each car. A basic wash costs about 25€, which seems a lot because it is.

The automated machines here are roughly twice the size and price of the equivalent automatic car wash in the UK. Gone is the social stigma of using a automated car wash which, at least in my family, is seen as being lazy and a waste of money. Instead of going into the garage shop and buying strange mythical tokens from the hunch backed sales person, you go straight to the car wash and are greeted by real life members of staff happy to take your cash, fold down your ariel and fire up the huge machinery. I like to imagine that they stand behind a lead screen like operators of an X-ray machines before pressing the big red WASH button.

But of course not. The button says "PESU".

Window cleaning

In surprising contrast to the car washing situation, I realised this morning that there are no window cleaners (at least for peoples homes). In the UK its common for a window cleaners to turn up at your house a few times a year and offer to clean the windows on the outside. Finland has solved this problem in a more practical way bymaking all windows not on the ground floor open inwards. Even the really large windows can be opened right into the room.

At first I thought this was a brilliant idea because you don't need a ladder to clean the windows, but after experiencing the hot summer nights here with only a few hours of darkness I realised how annoying is to want to close the curtains with the window open into the room. Maybe this summer I should just wear a blindfold.

0.085p per track

2010-06-22T10:06:00.000+03:00

Regular readers will note my interest in how much artists get paid for their music. Essentially I'd like to see total transparency and realistic options for musicians to make it big without signing to a major record label.

This is just an uninformed ideal of mine, so I was really interested to find this article about the prices musicians are paid for online music streaming.

It seems we have a long long way to go:

We7 does indeed pay the 0.085p per stream rate that the PRS set. I ask him why, according to their press release, 1m streams can generate anything from £2,000 to £4,000. Is it because different record labels have different deals with We7?

"Yes, the range is indicative of unsigned artists (but registered with the PRS), small labels through to significant labels," Purdham said. "Most of the music on We7 is popular music so on average we tend to pay at the higher rate of the scale." In other words, songs by major-label artists get a higher per-stream rate (this does not apply to songwriters, however).

via Behind the music: We7's streaming success | Music | guardian.co.uk.

I've not used we7, but I am a big user of spotify and last.fm. I thought it would be interesting to work out how much revenue I might have given to some of my favourite artists assuming they'd been paid 0.085p per track and they were all streamed online. Neither of these assumptions are true but these days I'm almost exclusively using spotify so it's an interesting statistic.

Since October 2006 I've been logging most of the music I've played through last.fm. I've played 36438 tracks since then. You can view what I've played here. At 0.085p per track that would be 3097.23p or £30.97. A CD might have 12 tracks so thats roughly 1p per album to the artist each time I play the record.

That seems a pretty small, but really it's very hard to tell if that is better or worse than the traditional model of CD's and radio play. A key advantage of internet music technology is it should enable much greater transparency around pricing. But it just isn't happening. I think less people would buy from iTunes or stream from Spotify if they knew how much the middlemen were making compared to the artists. I guess this is why the pricing discussed openly ...

Gas vs Charcoal by Steven Skoczen - SixLinks.org

2010-06-17T23:22:00.000+03:00

The Dilemma

It's summer here in the Northern hemisphere, and evenings are perfect for grilling. But as you head out the back door with a plate of veggie burgers and kebabs, is it more sustainable to light up some charcoal, or use a propane tank?

via Sustainability Showdown: Gas vs Charcoal by Steven Skoczen - SixLinks.org.

Great bit of green geekery, I like the level and tone of the analysis:

The CO2 production in beef or pork far outstrips the CO2 you make cooking the food. So if you're looking to be more sustainable, the most important place to start is with what's on your grill.

Google preparing to launch music store?

2010-06-15T14:20:00.000+03:00

According to multiple music industry sources, Google could launch a music service that offers song downloads and streaming music as early as this fall.

Google has already signaled that it wishes to give users of phones equipped with Google's Android operating system a better music offering. At Google's I/O conference last month, the search engine offered attendees a demonstration of a Web-based iTunes competitor.

via Google music store could launch this fall - CNET News.

I really hope they do this in a more open and fair way than Apple, Spotify etc have done.

It would be great to see more transparency around pricing, especially what % goes to the artists vs the labels vs google. It would be a great opportunity to change the model to an open music music service behind an API where applications and not just users could access any track. The artists/labels should be able to charge what they want and the users/applications/aggregators/radio stations should be able to decide whether a given track is worth the price ... you know, like an open market ....

Todays sledging action

2010-02-14T22:05:00.000+02:00

Had some fun today!

Push off! The internet is global and so is your market

2010-02-01T10:51:00.000+02:00

Thanks for trying to access the microsite for Sigh No More - Mumford & Sons

Unfortunately due to contractual restrictions, access to this promotion is not available to residents of Finland.

From Push Entertainment (if you are in finland).

Yet another case of legal nonsense stopping fans listening to music. This is particularly stupid since I was trying to access "bonus content" for those that "own a copy of sigh no more".

Before signing to a major label (Island) Mumford and sons did a good job of promoting themselves using sites like myspace and rawrip. The latter lets them give away tracks to fans or sell them and take 100% of the money. I was hoping they might get big without a major label to help.

I'd downloaded their first two singles and listened to the tracks tons (as well as the tracks on myspace) all for free. When the album came out I bought it straight away. I've paid to see the band at least 5 times. I'm a fan that wants to support some musicians trying to earn a living.

Its sad to see large corporations continue to screw it up like this.

Island records: The internet is global and so is your market. Adapt or die.

BTW: Sigh no more is an amazing album!

Technlogy and music industry predictions for 2010

2010-01-19T12:50:00.000+02:00

I've read so many of these now it feels like I'm cheating and, but I'll do it anyway!
Sadly I've not done predictions before, so I can't share with you how wrong I was last year.
Hopefully this will be entertaining in some other, as yet undermined, way.

Google Chrome will overtake Firefox in browser market share

Many of the users that hated IE and switched to Firefox will switch to Chrome. They will then do the same on their parents and grandparents computers. By next Christmas Chrome will overtake Firefox and will start to eat into IE's market share too.

Reasons for change will be: Stability, transparent updates (no nagging), ease of use (especially for the older generations)

Wave goodbye: relic of the IT industry

Dispite all the wizzy demos, Google Wave solves a problem most people don't have (or don't know they have). The effort of switching to Wave outweighs the benefits.

Remeber Microsoft Bob? Wave will die, but unlike Bob we will see it copied elsewhere, and soon. It will be viewed as a grand proof of concept of what social networks can become. Facebook and maybe twitter will borrow some of the better ideas and Google themselves may integrate Wave into some of their existing communities (YouTube? Orkut?).

Tablets and Google Chrome OS will not take off in 2010

Tablets remind me of the ... oh yeah Tablet PC. I just don't see what has changed that makes this a viable platform. People don't like voice or handwriting recognition, they don't much like onsreen keyboards either. I'm not sure even Apple's hype machine will get people excited about this form factor for it to take off.

Phones will continue to stay small and get more powerful. Laptops will get cheaper and more portable. Tablets will be squeezed into an ever decreasing gap.

Chrome OS looks really, really good, but I'm not sure it will become popular this year either. For one the device will be seen as almost useless without internet connection. No Chrome OS will need more time, and it won't sell many Tablets.

People who read blogs rather than a daily newspaper might like one of these, but they will probably carry on using their laptop and "wait till the get cheaper".

Google will get further into the music business.

As a music fan I've realised google sucks for music. It's one of the few things I don't search for much directly (I use last.fm or discogs.com or spotify). Google will address this firstly by rolling out their music search previews internationally leveraging their partners (which rather interestingly includes LaLa whom Apple recently acquired), then maybe by aquiring or developing an iTunes-like desktop media player/library.

I suspect they are as frustrated by the lawyer run music industry as consumers are (don't you just love it when spotify has the track, but it can't be played in your country). I suspect they are as frustrated by the music industry as they are with the telco industry and regulators.Till now they have stayed out of music sales and out of mp3's and devices. Now with Android they have a bit of a gap.

Apple has iTunes, iTunes music store and the iPod/iPhone. Amazon has a direct store and their store is integrated into doubletwist and songbird both of which sync your music to lots of devices. Napster is integrated into Windows Media Player which syncs many devices. Spotify Mobile lets you play music on iPhones and Android mobiles.

Google just has an okish mp3 player on Android phones, and little ecosystem: no desktop player, no means of syncing devices. In one way it's a nice situation for consumers since there is none of the lock-in of the iTunes/iPod world (which is what happens when you let lawyers design technology), but its not straightforward enough for people to plug in their phones and sync music to them.

Google has in the past bought companies to bridge gaps in their offerings. Picasa filled a similar sized gap when google bought them a few years back, letting you pull photo's off your device and onto the internet.

If Picassa is Googles answer to iPhoto where is there answer to iTunes?

The iTunes/iTunes Music Store/iPod/iPhone dominance will begin to decline.

Competition and consumer awareness will force Apple to adapt and it will no longer set the pace in this area. More consumers will realise how restrictive iTunes is start using other music library tools.

The iTunes Music Store will be forced to lower prices further and will launch a stand alone website where users can buy music without iTunes. The new iTunes store will offer full track streaming audio like spotify does, but probably only for tracks you have purchased or a monthly subscription - no ads. Users will stop buying iPods by default and instead use a wider range of devices to play music, especially mobile phones. This diversification and openness will benefit everyone and Apple will remain a major player albeit not always leading the industry.

The other iTunes store products like movies and mobile applications will prove less sticky and users will get this content from other providers. Movies and TV shows will begin to be sold direct from the studios, applications will be downloaded directly to phones without centralised control (like Android does).

Android (google's open source mobile phone operating system) will become the #1 mobile operating system

The sheer number of vendors selling Android devices will drive the platform to a leading position. Several vendors (Motorola?) will go Android-only for their high end phones, saving on development costs by using the free and open source platform. Nokia will continue to do it's own thing and struggle to compete as a result.

Low cost Android phones will appear as free upgrades to many people on phone contracts. This new audience will get the app bug and a whole new wave of useless fart applications will flood the Android store.

Interesting apps will then start to be released/updated on Android first and then ported to iPhone, Blackberry etc later.

As the Android open source project gains momentum more 'distributions' of Android will emerge. Some will come from the vendors who will lump extra crap on top of the stock OS (HTC Sense is an early example of this). This will mirror the situation of buying Windows laptops where vendors "add value" by installing the Yahoo toolbar. The Android technical community will continue to produce lightweight distributions which run faster than the stock OS and these will become well known (like linux distributions are today) in the technical community.

Ultimately consumers will want less crap on their phones, but only the geeks and power users will care enough this year to change their phone's OS and the rapid acceleration in mobile CPUs will mask the worse effects at the expense of battery life.

Argumented Reality (AR) won't take off, local search will.

I read much hype about AR, but it won't be used much. It's fun to play with for 5 minutes, but it doesn't really help you find stuff.

Instead I think Google maps (and the decent copies of it) will be what people use. Because it works well and you can see where stuff is. One or more popular mobile searches like "pizza", "bar" or "toilet" will be in the top ten overall searches of 2010.

Apple will begin to be viewed in the same light as Microsoft (i.e. disliked)

Come on! Bundling everything including a browser and music/movie/TV/application shop with the OS? Isn't this way worse than what the US and EU sued Microsoft over? Expensive hardware. Lock in. Desktops, laptops and mp3 players that only work with their stuff.

Why do we tolerate this? It looks nice. It works (mostly).

I can't see this goodwill lasting (and I use a MacBook and an iPod).

A new popular TV series will be distributed solely on-line

The Wire, Lost, The Sopranos, 24 ... these are stronger brands than most TV stations and music/media stores. With social networks it is now possible to promote a new show very cheaply and effectively. It will take a brave studio or production company and some genuinely good content and then we can begin to take out the middlemen. This will start to end the nonsense which is geographically staggered releases and 40 minutes of good TV interrupted every 10 mins with loud adverts selling crap I don't need.

Heck people are already downloading stuff on bittorrent just to see it before its on TV and then they go out and buy the box set. We citizens are good people who would like to give money to creative people who make good content!

Update: I made a mistake in my original post about who bought LaLa the music streaming company. I said it was Google that bought the company, but it was in fact Apple. Google partner with LaLa among others for their US-only music-streaming-search. I guess this a partnership which might not last given the souring relationship between Apple and Google.

What about the artists?

2010-01-06T22:36:00.000+02:00

I'm pleased to see the online music is now largely DRM-free (and WMA seems dead too). Consumers can now buy music online and play it on any decent mp3 player.

In the past I thought mp3 downloads were a rip-off, now that this is changing I think there is a bigger problem.

Tunechecker (and no doubt countless others) allow you to shop around and find the best price for a given track or album (I'm far more interested in the latter BTW). It's great the see the market finally squeezing the big record companies on price.

So things are looking better for the consumer but what worries me is the artists ... especially the emerging artists. What percentage of the, now heavily competitive downloaded album price, are they getting? I bet it's not much. I bet the situation is getting worse as the record companies try to squeeze more money out of their broken business models.

I would like to see a site where consumers can choose to buy music (and gig tickets, t-shirts and other merchandise) where the artists get the biggest share of the purchase price. I'd like artists (not their record labels) to be able to point their fans to the best retailer for a given track/album/ticket.

Failing that maybe it's better to download illegally and "donate" money to your favourite bands? I wonder when we will start to see paypal "donate" buttons on myspace pages like we see on good free software pages today?

One of my favourite bands, Los Campesinos! has made the odd attempt to point fans to the cheapest ticket agency for upcoming gigs and reading between the lines of their excellent blog it's clear they aren't making much of a living from selling music and playing gigs despite being fairly successful. It should be easier for artists to get paid for what they do.

Meanwhile I think I'll continue to do the following:

Listen to stuff before I buy using spotify, last.fm, myspace (and file2hd as necessary), download stuff illegally if it can't be found legally.
Try to get money to the artists of the good stuff by buying stuff they make including CDs, DVDs, legal downloads, gig tickets, t-shirts and anything else they do (Björk makes cool books!).

My cycle to work this morning

2009-08-26T14:26:00.000+03:00

This was my route to work this morning:

View Route to work in a larger map

I used Google's http://mytracks.appspot.com/ app for my new android based HTC Hero. I'm pretty impressed with the results and it was easy to clean the initial mess caused by the poor GPS reception in my flat using google maps. I left the rest of the journey un-modified ... it's quite amusing to see how much the taller buildings disrupt the GPS signal!

Fist of Fun: Simon Quinlank

2007-11-12T20:41:00.000+02:00

"You can drink your flask of weak lemon drink now or save it for later!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwEVzOegqzw

Lightbulb inaction

2007-10-15T20:39:00.000+03:00

Keen readers will recall this posting from last year about the petition to "levy a tax on energy inefficient light bulbs so that their long term financial and environmental cost is visible in their retail price". I've just got an email telling me of the governments response: (my comments in line)

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has written the following message exclusively for people who recently signed petitions on the No10 website about climate change.

Why not share it more widely Hilary?

Mr Benn highlights the UK Government's commitment to seeking international agreement on a post-2012 climate change framework, and encourages petitioners, their families, and friends, to use the new CO2 Calculator.
Message from Hilary Benn

I understand that you recently signed a petition on the No10 website about climate change.

As Government, business, and the public, we all need to work closely together to tackle climate change. Climate change poses the most urgent challenge to humankind - a challenge that threatens not only the environment but international peace and security, prosperity and development.

That is why the UK Government is committed to seeking international agreement on a post-2012 climate change framework and is showing leadership on how we can build the low carbon economy that such an agreement will promote. Our Climate Change Bill, for example, will make the UK the first country in the world to put our commitment to reduce emissions by at least 60% on the statute book. And the Prime Minister recently announced that we will ask the Climate Change Committee, once it is established, to review this target to see if it should be even higher.

I hope you will feel that the Bill demonstrates that the UK takes its responsibilities for reducing global emissions seriously. This challenge is for all of us as individuals too. That is why the Government is helping people to act on reducing CO2 emissions. Given your interest in this issue, I thought I would bring to your attention the Act on CO2 Calculator that is now available on Directgov: www.direct.gov.uk/ActOnCO2 (new window)

You can use the calculator to work out your own carbon footprint, and to obtain recommendations about how you can help tackle climate change.

I hope you will find this useful and that you might think about recommending it to your family and friends. As the carbon calculator has recently been launched, we would also appreciate your comments, using the feedback link on the site itself.

Finally, we are looking at ways in which we can keep people up to date with developments on climate change, and would like to do more using the web and e-mail. If you would like to receive e-mail messages and alerts on the issue in future, please click here and complete the form (if you cannot access this link, please type https://qbaseprojects.co.uk/defra/survey.asp?id=7 into your browser).

If you do provide your details, they will be used sparingly and solely for the purposes of communicating with you about climate change.

Thank you for your interest in this vital issue.

Best wishes

Hilary Benn

Secretary of State, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs

Ok, Hilary thanks for the message, it seems like you've ignored the request of the petition and simply used this an a chance to market your online CO2 calculator. Don't get me wrong I'm all for the mesaures you've highlighted, but you haven't acknoledged the subject of the petition or explanined whether you think it is a good or bad idea, whether you think it is feasable etc.

Thanks for nothing!

Change is afoot. Probably.

2007-10-11T19:26:00.000+03:00

Well I've not posted here since May I think its about time I started again. In case you care I've not changed electricity providers yet, but it is now on one of several todo lists.

Quite what will happen here next I'm not sure, but I hope I'll more motivated to write stuff here.

Right, I'm off to make a new todo list ...

Time to switch electricity providers (again) ...

2007-05-30T18:07:00.000+03:00

Melanie's Bean Sprouts blog makes for interesting reading if you are interested in practical things to help the environment. Having changed our electricity supplier last year to npower's Juice tarif I had assumed I was buying electricity from 100% renewable sources. It turns out I'm not ...

Bean Sprouts - Melanie Rimmer

[..]

... The electricity companies' implication is that if you're on a green tarriff, they input as much extra renewable energy into the grid as you use (making your use effectively "green"). But this isn't the case. In reality, the companies generate as much power as they can sell to the grid at any given time, period. So your decision to go on a "green" tarriff makes no difference to the power generated - it's still 4.2% renewable, and nothing has changed unless the supplier is bringing new renewable plant onstream with your money. And there's the key; most of the companies offering "green" tarriffs aren't doing that.

[..]

It's not all doom and gloom though ...

... if you want to change your electricity supplier because you're concerned about climate change, it's important to choose a supplier which invests in new renewable energy projects.

Fortunately there is a website to help you do just that. It is http://www.whichgreen.org/. I have included the latest figures from them as the image in the top left of this article. As you can see, Ecotricity comes top of the league by a long way.

[..]

Like Melanie I'm currently using npower, which actually wasn't too bad a few years back, but now sucks. I just wish I didn't have to fill in a load of forms and talk to people to switch suppliers.

Man cuts off penis in restaurant

2007-04-24T19:51:00.000+03:00

Pretty low I know, but ...

BBC - Man cuts off penis in restaurant

A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London restaurant. Police were forced to use CS gas to restrain the man when they entered the Zizzi restaurant in The Strand on Sunday evening.

[...]

It continues...

EMI gets it (sort of)

2007-04-02T18:55:00.000+03:00

EMI have announced today that will sell non-DRM protected music through iTunes. This is fantastic news for the consumer and shows that the music industry is finally begining to understand what people (I) want and what they (me) are prepared to pay for.

According to the BBC Eric Nicoli boss of EMI said today:

"We have to trust our consumers," he said. "We have always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and convenient."

Finally! Someone gets it! I just wish they had simplified the offering further:

bbc.co.uk

The higher price will apply only to single tracks that customers download. On iTunes EMI tracks free of digital rights management (DRM) software will cost $1.29 (99p).

Itunes users will be able to upgrade previously purchased EMI songs and albums for 30 cents (20p) a track.

[...]

All EMI albums will now be free of DRM and at the higher quality with no increase in price.

[...]

I hope they realise that charging more for the same content as an individual track, but not as an album serves only to confuse and irritate their customers. Also, why not offer existing customers a free update to the "premium" quality versions of tracks they have already bought? Why charge more for DRM free content? What makes EMI content more special than any other labels content?

I'll be very interested to see how the other labels and music stores react to this announcement. I really hope they all follow suit and quickly. Then we can worry about the real issue in the music business: cutting out the middle man and giving musicians and consumers a fair deal. Something tells me the major labels wont be so keen to let that happen!

Enlightening times

2007-03-13T00:59:00.000+02:00

Aaron Cohen

[...]
Following on from Australia's pledge to phase out the usage of incandescent bulbs, the 27 leaders of the European Union have decided that all member states will have to use energy efficient lighting before 2010 (yes, that's just 3 years away). The switchover, which will affect all of the EU's 470 million+ citizens, was developed with the aim of meeting targets to reduce energy usage by 20 percent by 2020: to that end, a commission will be accepting proposals for enabling the switchover "for office and street lighting to be adopted by 2008 and on incandescent lamps and other forms of lighting in private households by 2009."

[...]

Great to see that the low hanging fruit is finally being plucked. Aaron's blog is well worth reading if you are interested in the enviroment and a perspective of what my employer (Sun Microsystems) is doing about energy efficiency.

Go Greenpeace!

2007-02-15T19:42:00.000+02:00

Guardian
At the high court earlier today, Mr Justice Sullivan granted the environmental group Greenpeace an order quashing the government's decision to build new nuclear power stations.

Greenpeace had accused the government of reneging on its promise to carry out "the fullest consultation" before making its decision.

It said the government failed to present clear proposals and information on key issues surrounding a new generation of nuclear plants, such as the disposal of radioactive waste and the financial costs of building new plants.

Mr Justice Sullivan said the consultation document gave every appearance of being simply an "issues paper".

It contained no actual proposals and, even if it had, the information given to consultees was "wholly insufficient for them to make an intelligent response".

The information given on waste was "not merely inadequate but also misleading".

Sarah North, the head of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign, said: "The government's so-called consultation on nuclear power was obviously a sham, and we're pleased that the judge has agreed with us ... They've now been forced back to the drawing board to conduct a proper and lengthy review."

I'm opposed to Nuclear power. Working day to day with computer systems I know that if technology can go wrong, it will. If that technology is inheriantly dangerous and there are safer alternatives we shouldn't use them. Moreover if the safer technologies need improvements before they are efficient at larger scales then lets spend government money on improving them and selling them to the rest of the world!

Better generation

2007-01-26T00:55:00.000+02:00

I went to a really good event on Tuesday night to launch the results from Forum for the Future's Future leaders survey. I met several great people. One of whom, Sebastian Wood, told me about his new startup business Better Generation which advises on saving energy and generating electricity at home. They have a shop which sells energy saving light bulbs and the power saving plug I mentioned a while ago.

Great to meet people who understand there is a good business to be made from saving energy and the environment.

Finally I can see the bands I like!

2007-01-14T23:33:00.000+02:00

If like me you are always missing out on seeing your favorite bands becuase you only hear about the gig then it is in the news for selling out in 15 minutes then you need tourfilter. You give it a list of bands you like and where you live, it emails you when they tickets are on sale. It works really really well (provided you live in a city that is supported).

Check out the ical feed which lets you see the gigs in your own calendar if it supports it (try using sunbird/lightning if you don't use iCal on Mac).

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

2007-01-11T02:31:00.000+02:00

I just watched "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" on TV and it moved me almost as much as when I saw it at the Cinema. If you've not seen it I highly recommend you try and see it, just make sure you are in a pretty good mood before you do see it!I'm sure his life is summarised elsewhere, so I shan’t repeat it hear, but the film raises so many issues about mental illness, faith, organised religion, parenting, love, music, the music industry, American society...

It's just really, really good.

Hmm, maybe I should stear clear of film reviews ;-)

Good Thing: Offset the carbon emisions from your flights

2007-01-03T19:20:00.000+02:00

Happy new year all!

I've just offset all the carbon emmisions from my flights last year (London to Florida for work, London to Madrid for work and London to Croatia for holiday). You should consider doing the same. I used carbonneutral.com and it was easy and informative. They explain it far better than I can:

www.carbonneutral.com

One single shorthaul flight produces roughly the same amount of the global warming gas as 3 months worth of driving a 1.4 litre car. And we're all flying more.

You can't do much about the fuel efficiency of aircraft, but if you need a holiday or if you're travelling on business, you can help reduce your personal contribution to global warming by making your flight CarbonNeutral. That means we organise for the CO2 associated with your flight to be ‘balanced out’ by forestry and climate friendly energy projects which save equivalent amounts of CO2.

Now if I could only find the courage to claim the offset costs for the work flights ;-)

Save energy by turning off your appliances automatically

2006-12-18T18:19:00.000+02:00

As has been discussed in comments on my "light bulb action" posting devices such as TV's, DVD players and set top boxes that are in standby mode rather than switched off waste power. This wasted power costs you money and generation of that power most likely released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The simple solution to this problem is to turn devices off at the wall socket (if your countries power socket standard includes a switch). The problem is this is a pain, and being lazy I rarely bother to do this. So I was pleased to learn about the following products which save me the effort of turning devices off myself:

And this one:

These devices have one special socket and then two or five normal ones. The special socket can detect whether the connected device is switched on or off turns and the other sockets are controlled automatically. I've set this up in our living room to test it. I was annoyed that the Cable TV box was always left on when the TV was turned off. I plugged our TV into the special socket and the cable box into one of the others.

I found it to be really good. It doesn't matter if I turn the TV off using the remote (putting the TV into standby mode) or using the actual power on/off switch on the TV the one click device detects that the TV is switched off and turns off the cable box.

One word of caution is that our cable box takes about 2 minutes to boot up from power off (because it is the cheap one the cable company gave us). This can be really annoying if you turn on the TV wanting to watch something specific. So clearly you need to think about how you will use this device before you get one, but I think its a very simple and useful product.
I bought mine from QuietPC because I was buying other things at the time, but you can also get them from Maplins and no doubt other places.

To find out more about how it works the website is here: http://www.oneclickpower.co.uk/. For international readers this UK only product probably isn't much use to you. I've found a similar product for the US market, I'm sure there are others (please leave a comment with a link if you know of one).

Carling: Please stop ruining live music

2006-11-24T19:42:00.000+02:00

I went to see Gomez at the Hammersmith Apollo last night. A friend had a spare ticket and I'm always up for going to a gig (as long as its not totally talentless crap R'n'B or Pop. I've not followed Gomez at all so I only recongnised a few of the songs, but I thought they put on a good show.

Two things annoyed me about the night.

Gigs are starting way too early. The band came on at 8:30! We'd only just left the pub by then! We missed the first few songs by the time we got in. The band played a full set, but we were out and back in the pub before last orders (11pm). The situation wasn't quite as bad as Koko (where they use the venue as a club that starts at about 10:30, forcing the band on stupidly early), but it still sucks.

Crap beer. Please Carling just stop ruining live music venues. I don't wan't to pay £3.50 for a plastic bottle of 4% dishwater! (To non-UK readers Carling is the crap R'n'B of the beer world, think Budwiser but with slightly less gas). Why not offer a choice of drinks rather than beer or water!

Some readers may be supprised to learn that a company that makes beer is buying up large music venues, but its true. Its a sad state of affairs and they are ruining the atmosphere of the venues they run. If wish I could boycot Carling venues and still see great bands but the fact is most bands don't play more than one venue when they come to town. I guess the only thing I can do is support independent venues and only go to the larger venues for bands I really like.

Light bulb action!

2006-11-21T19:26:00.000+02:00

Here is a chance for us all to be heard!

Energy inefficient light bulb petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lightbulbs/

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to levy a tax on energy inefficient light bulbs so that their long term financial and environmental cost is visible in their retail price

(International readers this is a UK only petition but I think you'll appreciate the sentiment. If there are similar efforts in your own country leave a comment and tell people about it. If there isn't why not start one!)