There’s no influence on the final vote, there’s no feedback to the main team here, it’s purely to see what would happen if there was an Internet jury.

Poll will close as the official voting lines close

• Introduction to Junior Eurovision.
• What’s different about Junior Eurovision?
• How to watch Junior Eurovision this weekend no matter where you are in the world.
• Download your JESC Scorecard.

Tomorrow of course is the competition, and I’ll have one more article – a quick guide to all the songs – tomorrow. But for now, what do I think are going to be the highlights of the two and a quarter hour long show?

The Little Prince from Russia

After an opening song that could easily represent Sweden in the full contest, it’s time to get the full power of Junior Eurovision with twelve year old Ekaterina Ryabova and a little game of hide and seek.

Roy Castle Lives!

Honestly this song could sit at the bottom of the scoring table all night, or be a real Record Breaker (…sorry). It’s a definite Jazz hands number and if he was American a guest spot on Glee would be beckoning.

The Yodelling Belgian

This song will delight the UK audience watching on the live stream because it’s the perfect Eurovision song… if it was 1975. How this is going to work over Europe will be interesting – can we live with a yodelling chorus and a singer who can switch form that to regular swinging at the drop of a hat?

Ani Lorak in the middle

Ukraine’s Shady Lady, who came second in the regular Eurovision Song Contest in 2008 is the Interval act. Riverdance this isn’t and I suspect the show will be toned down just a little bit for the audience, but expect fireworks and high energy no matter what.

The Scoring and Green Room

Let’s be honest here, it’s unlikely there’s going to be any hidden emotion on the faces of the children as the votes come in. With the green room actually a seated section on the stage, there’s every opportunity to capture the highs and lows as “’ello Kiev, here are the votes of the Belgian jury…” rings out through the auditorium. Every country gets twelve points just for qualifying so there’s no nul points, but someone’s got to come last…

 Junior Eurovison starts at 1915 UK time (2015 CET) this Saturday. You can watch the international live stream for free at www.junioreurovision.tv , and I’ll be providing a Twitter commentary via @ewan.

Unlike other Bay Area companies, Google has been known to get it wrong, so just because they are doing something, it doesn’t meant that they will make a success of it. With Chrome OS they’re making the biggest play to cloud computing yet. By cloud computing they actually mean “we’ll be your hard drive that you can connect to wherever you are in the world.”

Yes Google have brought us full circle back to the days of mainframes Dec52’s and VT-100s. Lovely. But now it’s got a shiny name (“cloud”) and a big name behind it. Which it’s going to need because they’ve triggered a holy war.

At the an of smartphones the discussion had been one-box or two-box. Would people want all the functionality in a single potentially compromised device or two dedicated devices that talk to each other. History has pointed to the one-box as the preferred solution but a good two box beats an average one-box… and vice versa.

I think that we’re going to see the same with Google Chrome and netbook OS’ in general, but it won’t be as clear a solution as Colly remembers. Essentially you’ll be choosing if you want your portable computer to be a thin client that relies almost totally on being connected for every operation (even your word processor) or if you want a full Operating System so you can do everything yourself.

Personally I’ll always err to the latter, but I can see the former being very attractive, especially coupled to cheaper hardware and so called under-powered computers. That of course means under-powered for windows because even today the difference between something shoe-horned into a netbook (Windows XP) is much less flexible than Easy Peasy.

I also mean underpowered by today’s standard. Probably the best low-powered mobile computer – the Psion Series 5mx – trundled along with 16MB of combined storage and execution memory and a 32mhz processor. Yet the core functions on that device are still faster in real use than today’s netbooks and laptops.

And where would a 5mx fit into Google’s plan?

Hmm…

In previous years I’ve just pointed to the BBC for people to get their card, but as they’re not taking part in Junior Eurovision (boo!!!) I’ll just have to do it myself.

 Download your Junior Eurovision 2009 Scorecard

Laid out in the running order for Saturday’s final, you’ve got a handy picture of each act (as a preview or reminder), the country, song title and singer. I’ve followed the BBC format here so you can score the song, performance and outfit to get a final score and your personal winner.

And then you can tweet me your top three on the night (@ewan and tag it #jesc) and we’ll see how we all get on!

If you live in one of the countries entering the Contest, then you will be getting live to air coverage of the concert (except for Sweden who are showing it on Sunday morning… I can only assume they are using a Tardis to count the SMS votes). So what can everyone else do?

Well, use the official live stream! Head over to the Junior Eurovision website and you’ll spot the Mediaplayer option. Click here and you‘ll get the streaming media player. It will carry the concert live on the night – until then it’s broadcasting backstage footage or you can choose to watch archived shows from previous years.

As you’ll need the Octoshape P2P plug-in, I’d advise checking out an archived show to make sure everything is in place and set up before Saturday night.

You’ll also spot a Twitter tab on the right of the player – so if you wish you can post to your Twitter account while watching the show – a nice touch from the @EurovisionTeam.

Personally I’ll be using a second computer; using one computer to stream and a second to run a number of Twitter clients and search pages so I can run my own unique style of tweet-coverage and field all your questions. If you want to follow me, I’m @Ewan on Twitter and I’ll be using #jesc as the hash-tag (#junioreurovision is a bit much to type!).

  Nista Licno (Serbia) at rehearsals,
picture by Indrek Galetin and Giel Domen, EBU.

Guess what arrived in the post this week? That’s right, just one Geekstack card.

Which I think is a genius marketing move. Arguably this is little more than a business card, but Peter Christensen has pushed this as a sample card – and by putting a physical card out it builds emotion and connection to a product that might be available in beta decks just before Christmas (GPO strikes permitting).

And he gets another blog post from many people. See, told you he was smart!

Who can sing?

Given the name of the contest it’s a children’s song competition, so they need to be between the age of 10 and 15. Those singing the song must also have written the song (but from last year adults can help them a little bit). Each song must have been selected through a live National Final unless there are exceptional circumstances.

What about the songs?

Unlike the adult Eurovision, the ‘national language’ rule is in effect here so each song must be sung in one of the official languages of the country being represented. It must also be between 2m 30s and 2m 45 s long.

How do I vote?

Given that “the internet” is not yet an official EBU member, only those people watching in the countries that have entered a song can take part in the televote – details on how they can do that will be on screen during the broadcast.

Perhaps I should set up a voting form here to be “the jury of the internet?”

How does the scoring work?

Exactly the same as this year’s adult Eurovision. Each country runs a televote, which makes up half of the score, with a jury making up the other half. The best placed song gets 12 points, then 10 points, 8, 7, 6 all the way down to one single point. Highest score at the end of the night wins.

Wouldn’t it be fun/awful if a kid scored nul points?

Yes it would, and something that would probably stigmatise someone for life. So the organisers, in a rare “let’s protect them from the harsh reality of music” automatically award everyone 12 points at the start of the contest just for turning up.

What do they win?

A trophy and a certificate. Thankfully in this economic climate the winners do not automatically host next year’s contest – it is bid for in a similar way to the Olympics.

How can I watch and enjoy this on Saturday?

It starts at Just put in 2015 CET (1915 in the UK, 1415 Eastern, 1115 Pacific) this Saturday, the 21st November. As to watching it, well, that’s where the Internet does come in useful. Come back here tomorrow, I’ll explain it all then!

If your smartphone is all about personalisation, why is it that we are left with the manufacturer’s default choice of applications in the firmware? Years ago you checked the memory size and radio frequencies, now it’s interrogating the firmware load-out. It’s a given that no matter what Symbian OS product comes out, there are caveats in the review as to why application (a) was left out while application (b) made the cut. With the example omission of Podcasting from Nokia’s recent E-Series smartphones,

Yes there are (arguably) operational reasons for these omissions. Each design team for each model is going to make their own call on what their user group will want, what they’ll be using the machine for, and they will also have a budget (of time and money). Put all that in balance, and choosing which 50 or so applications ship on a device isn’t always a clear-cut decision.

But it shouldn’t need to be this way. There is a lot of effort put into the customisation options on a device, from your wallpaper and ringtones to the application icons and screen fades and wipes. So why not have the same ability for your second line applications?

Here’s my suggestion. When you first switch your phone on, there already are some set-up things that have to be done. The date and time are obvious ones, as is setting up email. So why not have a (likely widget-driven) application that lists all those optional components, such as Podcasting, Nokia Messaging, Ovi Chat, and so on. You could even use it to promote the Ovi Store and certain third party applications – all with the requisite disclaimer. And behind it you have ‘generic’ versions of these not quite core applications which you know will happily run on all the devices out there.

The full article and more discussion at All About Symbian.

Every Eurovision entry stands on the shoulders of giants, the artists and myths that have built up over time. Portugal’s inability to get any higher than sixth place, the almost pathological gallic need to sing in French, the ability to avoid doing a Jemini…

But representing Ireland comes with enough baggage to fill Terminal 5 at Heathrow. This is the most successful country in the contest; the western country that people can vote for without having any political qualms; this is the country that managed to contribute to the greatest Father Ted episode of all time.

Even now, listening to “They Can’t Stop The Spring” you’d think it would do well at Eurovision. A great song, wonderful composition, powerful lyrics, a showcase of all the best of Irish music. Why were we not back in Dublin for 2008?

The full article can be read on is on Boom Bang a Blog; Travelling Show, by Dervish, is published by Whirling Discs and is available from Amazon.

Download audio file (tpn_psp_20091112_109.mp3)

MP3 File – Show Notes – RSS Feed – iTunes Link

After a little delay it’s time to Motor on with a Storm of titles running up to Christmas, along with a few puns and some mini-games in the mix.

It’s yet another driving game, giving you quite a few to choose from this year (NFS Shift and GT already, with F1 to follow at the end of the month) but Arctic Storm has one big advantage.

It’s fun.

Is it enough though? You’ll have to listen to the show and the latest news round-up to find out.

As well as Facebook and here, you can listen and subscribe to the show in Apple’s iTunes – and leave your own review there as well.

Knowing the UK readers of this blog, I’m sure it won’t be long before someone pops up and mentions Minipops, but I’ll point to Hollie Steel if we get into an argument… deal?

All the trappings of Eurovision are here, there’s national pride at stake; there’s the amazing voting patterns of Georgia and Armenia; the scoring delights of douze points and calling all the countries; a spectacular half time performance (Ani Lorak this year, the Shady lady from Eurovision 2008); and of course the songs, costumes and dances.

With only 13 countries entered this year it feels more like Eurovision of old and gets everything in a two hour show that airs this Saturday from 7.15pm in the UK (2015 CET). The chances are that it won’t be broadcast in your country – it’s definitely not on in the UK, but this is the 21st Century Eurovision. You’ll be able to watch a live and official stream from the main website junioreurovision.tv.

As with the streams from previous contests, there is no official commentator; it’s the feed from the concert venue with the hosts providing all the interaction. Unlike May though, I’m not at the show so I won’t be able to record a commentary track and upload it here. Neither have I worked out the best way to create a new video stream with my commentary over the visuals that (a) stays in sync and (b) is legal.

But you can be rest assured I’ll be busy on Twitter on Saturday night in the run up to the contest with views, insight, commentary and repartee about and around the contest. The hash-tag is going to be #jesc.

Expect some more previews on the site here in the run up to the 21st November – and get ready for a secret Eurovision party that you never knew was happening!

And can I say just a little thank-you to Michelle for the subtle hints.

N-Gage, both in it’s hardware iteration and it’s Software and Services iteration have been great ideas. It’s fair to say that the original mobile gaming vision in 2003 was a good four or five years ahead of the pack, with online gaming, connected community and software downloaded over the internet (although perhaps that was more thanks to the pirates than the software demos).

But after the initial vision what was there? A first pass at implementation, some bug fixes, and then Nokia moved on to something else, leaving a half-hearted effort for users to try and get along with. That’s what doomed the N-Gage, and it’s repeated time and again when you look at the platform. I’ve laid this out in details over on All About Symbian. if you’re in a rush, this is the conclusion:

Here’s the worrying question for Nokia. Is it just N-Gage that was plagued by this strategy? If we looked at the Ovi Store, would we find the same initial wonderful idea, an average first pass at implementation, and then see it simply pushed aside because it just about works, while the marketing department focuses on the next big project? Hasn’t that already happened to Ovi Share (and Ovi Files – Ed) (and Ovi Sync – Rafe)? And what about the haphazard way that the one year anniversary and lapsing subscriptions to Comes With Music was handled?

What indeed.

The N-Gage was a brave new world when announced in 2003. The revamp showed that, despite the poor implementation of the hardware solution, lessons had been learned. The question now is if any more lessons have been learned and if the Finnish company can apply those lessons to the rest of their Software and Services – the same services that they are proclaiming to be the future of Nokia.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that I feature on a number of lists about smartphones and mobile technology, such as SOS100’s Wireless and Mobile list, Shadamehr’s Nokia Related list or various generic ‘tech’ lists. Given my use of Twitter and other Social Media tools The Dull Figs Social Media Tech list is also expected (see also Jerome A’s Tech list).

Podcasting is also there, with Rob Usdin’s Podcasters list and Paul McElliot’s Podcasting list.

But it’s the more flamboyant lists where I’ve been added that makes me think, hmm, why am I added to… Pioneers; Scotland’s Got Talent; The A-List; Celebs and Kooks?

And I’m sure many will agree that my addition to JenATX’s Peeps Who Make Me Laugh list is very much up for debate!