Monthly Archives: October 2008

Top Gear’s Stig gets a gong

30 Thursday Oct 2008

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Top Gear’s infamous Stig collected a Gong for Top Gear as part of the British National Television Awards, as Top Gear won the best factual program.  I dont know which is funnier the Stig collecting the gong, or Top Gear winning a factual programme over BBC’s quality documentary production.

Facebook in the office

29 Wednesday Oct 2008

Posted by in Technology

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According to a new article on the BBC News site some research has been done looking at the use of Facebook within the work environment. The research suggests that a blanket ban on the use of social networking sites such as Facebook can be counter productive. although this on the surface may be counter intuitive, the arguement is that social networking sitesfacilitate alternative communication channels that may facilitate the execution of work, such as reaching out to a wider audience for help with a problem.  This is far from a new concept, as such informal channels of communication to obtain help/communicate informally was identified as important in Frederick Brooks’ Mythical Man Month, and how such channels are important, this is sometimes referred to as a water cooler effect.

The research acknowledges that the situation can be abused, but if managed can be of benefit to an organisation. In addition to this the are also the tensions that may occur as younger staff are more likely to feel more at ease using such technologies resulting in a divide within an organisation. The crucial element that the news article fails to recognise is the possibility of sensitive information slipping into public domain (either deliberately or accidentally) when public sites such as Facebook are used. Such leakages could be detrimental to the organisation.

It is in these situations where services such as Ning and Huddle or for larger organisations private social network sites could come into their own. Although separation of the sites may create a barrier for adoption, when you can use a common site for both work and personal activities its adoption is going to be easier than where there multiple different sites for different activities. Although with the Open Social efforts driven by the likes of Google may reduce this problem.

 

RIAA Litigation is going to get ugly

29 Wednesday Oct 2008

Posted by in Music

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According to Digital Music News a legal battle between one of Harvard Law’s top professors Charles Nesson has be ducked by the RIAA but has resulted in the professor contributing to another case that the RIAA have against an individual. The contribution to the case is a counter claim that says the RIAA have abused processes across state and federal jurisdictions.

It would appear that sooner or later Nesson and the RIAA will end up in court, and given the RIAA’s history and current appeals against them relating to how they identified and proved file sharing the prospects dont look too pleasant for the organisation.

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Beautiful Beatles collector’s box

22 Wednesday Oct 2008

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 Engadget have picked up on this lovely limited edition box set of Beatles music. which comes with specially logo’d iPod. The irony is that the Beatles catalog isn’t available on iTunes so you’ll probably have to rip all the CDs in the set yourself.

 

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The disappearing single

21 Tuesday Oct 2008

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Popjustice have a neat little article about the fact that most high street retailers have now abandoned stocking singles (that is of the CD variety for old readers).  This situation has been brought on my both technological progress i.e. web, downloads, MP3 etc but as I’ve said the the past also the likes of the BMI who limited the number of tracks for it to qualify in the charts, the cheap option of getting remixes or simply instrumental versions to fill the space and son on.  All very sad, although such a thought according to Popjustice now puts me in the category as vinyl elitists – I suppose my musical snobbery was going to get called out eventually.

So what constitutes a single now?  As popjustice asks, can it be any track on any official download site, how about songs released virally? Should illegal downloads count,?

Will we see seens like this in another 5 years?

 

Free Eels Live EP

21 Tuesday Oct 2008

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The Eels are making a live EP freely available for a limited period through their website  (http://www.eelstheband.com/), direct link here.  The EP is only available until 28th October 2008.  The EP with four tracks includes:

  1. Fresh Feeling
  2. Packng Blankets
  3. Jeannie’s Diary
  4. Climbing To The Moon

The site is also promoting special limited edition copies of the Eels’ last studio album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

Kaiser Chiefs – Southampton Guildhall

16 Thursday Oct 2008

Posted by in Music, Music Reviews, Technology

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We managed to catch the Kaiser Chiefs on the small venue part of their European tour to promote the new Album Of With Their Heads.  Initial impressions of the new songs is that good ones are very good, the  others are only so-so, B side material, and leaves a me with the feeling that the album was rushed so that the pre-Christmas sales season could be exploited which is a shame.

I took some pictures at the gig with a new Samsung Soul mobile phone with what seemed to be a nice 5mb camera.  Although its ability to focus in the conditions of a concert appears to be disappointing. To help with that I started using the multi-frame mode and discovered that when you do that it reduces the image resolution notably without any warning. I think I need to experiment some more with poor light conditions but at the moment I’d would say that the lower resolution Sony Ericcson K800i coped better at gigs.

 

Photoset at filckr here.