Month: February 2006
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TV on Mobiles – Original Programming
Emily Bell in today’s Mediaguardian: Watching television on your mobile is a stupid idea. Nobody will do it for any length of time at any sustained cost. But obviously the expansion of what is considered to be a mobile – size of a matchbox or size of a front door – will expand and so…
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Tesco VOIP
I noticed the handsets for Tesco’s VOIP service at the weekend. They come in at a very reasonable £19.97 (whats with the .97 price point?). But I don’t want to use Tesco’s service particularly. So can I use the handsets with Skype? Sadly, plenty of Googling reveals nothing obvious.
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Free DVD Update
A bumper weekend is in store this weekend for us collectors of free DVDs. The Telegraph papers are going “kitchen sink” crazy with Saturday Night, Sunday Morning in the Saturday paper, followed by A Taste of Honey in the Sunday Telegraph (top tip – if you struggle to find the Sunday Telegraph, try looking at…
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Valentine’s Day Is Coming
I mention this because around now, every ecommerce site is busy sending out email explaining how their products make the perfect Valentine’s gift, including plenty of pink backgrounds and heart logos in their emails and on their sites. What could be more romantic, for example, than buying your significant other a Dell Dimension desktop? With…
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The Real Hustle
I don’t know if this is some kind of precurssor to a new series of The Hustle, but BBC Three has just shown a programme called The Real Hustle. They showed a series of genuine “hustles” using their own hustlers on unwitting members of the public showing some common scams with hidden cameras recording the…
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PR or News?
What is it about some companies that means that even the smallest new product launch or enhancement generates widespread coverage in the media? This week is an excellent case in point. Apple have announced some price cuts for their iPod Shuffles and the introduction of a 1GB iPod Nano. Lovely. Meanwhile Google’s upgraded their Google…
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Turkmenistan
For a while Turkmenistan has been a country of fun and a source of jokes for writers everywhere. For example here are a couple of mentions in The West Wing:- BARTLET: Well the President of Turkmenistan just officially extended the date of adolescence to twenty-five. (Swiss Diplomacy) WILL: What about Turkmenistan? JOSH: It’s a nation…
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Le Grand Départ
I was very excited to learn about the route of Le Tour when it arrives in 2007 for Le Grand Départ. The prologue takes place on Saturday 6 July 2007, and is a 7.9km time trial starting in Whitehall just down from Trafalgar Square, running through Parliament Square (think pictures of cyclists with Big Ben…
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Shocking Websites
‘Shocking’ is probably a bit too strong, but Channel 4’s website has always felt poorly designed to my mind. And the thing is, I bet it’s really well resourced. Case in point. I wanted to get to the website of the new Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd, where you can watch episodes in advance…
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Burn Baby Burn
The best bit of the Guardian Guide comes to life. Excellent.
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Select Your Country
If there’s one thing that annoys me on when you’re filling out forms on the internet, it’s those drop down boxes where you choose a country, and they always helpfully put United States of America at the top before Afghanistan and the rest. The implicit message is “USA gets to the top of the list,…
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Rail Replacement Services
There’s no greater feeling than when you reach the train station, late in the evening, ready to embark on the trip home, only to discover that the train’s not running the whole way, and you’re going to have to get off and change onto a bus. Great. You’re already tired and just want to get…