Ian Richardson

When I get to Hell, there will be 5 blades on every razor.

0 | June 9th, 2009 | Posted in Opinion

Watch closely - here comes the science bit!

Have we become so accustomed to in-your-face advertising that we actually believe some of these outlandish claims? Or do we just habitually classify them all as Boswelox?

Almost every night (but especially after a nice fruity Shiraz) I find myself shouting at the TV “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SHAMPOO “TECHNOLOGY”!! - IT’s JUST SOAP DAMMIT!” but my cries go unheeded as we are treated to yet another CGI animation of some poor epidermally-challenged soul having their pores filled. Can I change channels with a bottle of shampoo? Can I make a telephone call with it? Exactly… no technology there then.

Have we really become so tolerant of the TV ad that advertisers believe that they can continue to feed us this hogwash?

I think not. But maybe it’s time that we told them. The times, they are -a- changin’ and feedback from consumers to advertisers is becoming more prevalent - although in some cases, I suspect that the advertisers would rather keep the feedback to themselves, lest their clients become aware that we don’t all believe that Ally McDowell is really only 29.

My favourite load of “Boswelox” at the moment is the current spate of TV ads for wrinkle cream that distinguish themselves from “surgical procedures” in such as way as to actually associate themselves with it. It works like this:

If you are an advertiser for wrinkle cream, then of course, you are aware that your demographic includes ladies “of a certain age” who would, if they were (a) rich enough or (b) brave enough, have surgery. Instead, you offer them the alternative - wrinkle cream that is “not surgery” and show them some graphics like, maybe a syringe, or a face mask, in order to further make the connection that this is “not surgery”.

This is actually quite a clever (if annoying and unethical) technique, in the same manner that you might convince a teenage boy that masturbation is not “ACTUAL SEX” with “HOT HORNY WOMEN” who will “BLOW THEIR FREAKING MINDS” - get the idea? It’s possible to state that a product is NOT something - yet still associate it very strongly with that particular something.

Watch also for products that promise “Healthy looking hair” - (because they can’t legally promise it will actually be healthy).

“Now for the science bit…” Almost every ad for cosmetics in particular (but not only cosmetics) will woo you with expensive and convincing GCI which will demonstrate everything from pore-smoothing to the startling efficiency of 5 razor blades. Presumably, if I showed you an animation of how inserting a cucumber in your ear would improve your hearing, it would be just as convincing. This technique relies on our predisposition to assume that any visual presentation is factual - it’s not - it’s just a cartoon. Watch out for them and you’ll be surprised at how often they are used with absolutely no supporting evidence.

Talking of razors - do you know how you can double the sales of razor blades? You just put 2 blades on every razor - Genius! Triple the sales by adding 3, quadruple them with 4 and so on (don’t forget - you’ll need some convincing animations for this).

So watch your TV with my cynical eye, and see if you too, are convinced that it’s all just Boswelox.

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Tagged in: advertising, cosmetics, humour, TV

Simplify Your Twitter Life in 10 Easy Steps

0 | June 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Ramblings

Just before take off... now FLAP!!

Block anyone who has the words “Marketing Coach” in their bio. Do the same for “SEO coach”, “Monetize” and “Show you how”. With few exceptions, these guys are drowning in Bullshit, and need desperately to shovel some of it into your life to stay afloat.
When browsing new followers, immediately block any account with a man’s name, but a profile pic of an attractive girl. Reason? This account will almost certainly be run by one of the people in item 1. (A big hairy dude BTW).
Unfollow anyone who posts more than 10 tweets in a 5 minute period. This is called “Flooding”, but you can’t get insurance for it.
De-stress by using Twitter to insult your government, local politicians, tax department or whoever gets on your nerves. These groups are too square to be on Twitter (at least in person) and so the backlash will be negligible or nil. Avoid berating anyone at your workplace - we’re trying to get the economy back on it’s feet here! (Unless you work at a bank - in which case all bets are off).
Don’t try to please everyone. You won’t succeed and you run the risk of either diluting your personality, or becoming a politician (in which case you will cease to have a personality.
Don’t follow only celebs. (If this is you, go back to the gossip rags where you belong you saddo). This applies especially If you are a celeb. Only following your showbiz buddies makes you look like a superior twat.
Don’t try too hard.
Don’t tweet only famous quotes. Jeez, we could just buy a book already. If you’re following a quoter, send them a shakesperian sonnet explaining how boring they are and how they should probably work for Microsoft designing new and spectacularly boring products.
Remember, it’s only Twitter. It’s not the ICU.
There are no rules! Don’t let anyone tell you how to use Twitter! (This is therefore, either irony, or a trick - depending on which makes me seem the most entertaining).

Wanna add to the list?

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The MotherF****R Of All Broadband

3 | April 22nd, 2009 | Posted in Ramblings

The Broadband Max Speed Test Shows 1.6MB from my 20MB Virgin Narrowband Connection

It’s the “Mother of All Broadband” according to the ads - Virgin Broadband - although I use the term “broadband” reluctantly, because the service I got from Richard Branson’s cable ISP was about as broad as the mind of my school headmaster, Mr Knackerlaffer.

I should have known from the start really, that things weren’t going to go well. The “engineers” who visited to do the installation forgot that they were installing both broadband Internet *and* a phone, so that meant adding a second cable for the phone line - meaning that I now have 2 cables nailed to the front of my house instead of one and both of them terminate in a fluorescent green plastic tube which seems designed by NASA to be visible from space.

The engineers explained to me around their juicy-fruit, that the job was a good-’un and that they had tested it with a handheld wotzimathingy and it was all working. They then exited rapidly leaving piles of brick-dust behind them. I was not concerned however, because now I had 20MB broadband! - Only I didn’t.

A quick test revealed that I didn’t, in fact have any kind of band to which the term “broad” could be applied. It was, in fact rather on the narrow side. So narrow in fact, that it took about 45 seconds to load the Google home page. To Virgin’s credit though, it only took 3 days to dispatch a new engineer and this one, in fact, was rather helpful. He found that his baseball-cap wearing precedecessors had managed to short-circuit the incoming cable, resulting in a loss of most of the signal. He fixed it and was on his way. Good job!

Shame though that solving this problem only highlighted another - the speed of my connection would randomly fluctuate between about 12MB and 1MB as measured on a speedtest website. Surfing the web felt much slower than even 1MB though, as each new connection took up to 20 or 30 seconds. I called Virgin again. Three or four days later yet another engineer arrived.

He explained that there was too much signal coming into the modem and he installed an attenuator to bring it back within acceptable limits. OK, so far so good - it seemed to work, the speed meter went back up to around 15MB and that was good enough for me.

But it lasted only a handful of hours before I was back to 1MB again. Beginning to weary, I spent the next few days on my back-up ADSL connection, which, though rated at only 8MB was at least consistently giving me around 6, and that’s not bad. Heck, I would have been happy with this from Virgin’s 20MB connection if it had *stayed* at 6MB.

It became apparent after a few days that the situation wasn’t a temporary one, so I called and arranged engineer number four. He explained that there wasn’t enough signal coming into the modem and replaced the attenuator fitted by engineer number 3 with a different one. Again, there seemed to be an improvement and off he went, probably to clean up some brick-dust left by engineering team 1 somewhere.

Guess what? Yep - another 12 hours and back to less than 1MB again. I had lost my enthusiasm at this point, so my wife called and arranged another visit from an engineer. I’ll save you the details, suffice to say that the visit had a strange deja vu quality about it.

By the time we got to engineer request number 6 the other day, Virgin had decided that there wasn’t actually a problem and that they weren’t prepared to send any more engineers (presumably they are all busy making little brick-dust sculptures, or maybe sending messages in fluorescent lettering to passing UFOs).

My wife explained that was fine with us and we’d just cancel the service and use our ADSL connection full-time. Only we’re not allowed to. It seems that Virgin want to enforce the 12 month contract that they have with us, despite their product being virtually unusable and their inability to make it so.

Now, I’m normally a placid kind of chap, but I don’t react well to being bullied. I have simply stopped paying Virgin and I’ll look forward to explaining in court my reasons for doing so. I even tried Twittering Richard Branson ;o)

What I do have evidence of, is the fact that Virgin, a previously trusted brand has managed to turn me into a Virgin-hater. I am not simply disappointed with their service, I am outraged by it. No doubt, given my reasonably high web-profile, I will now be contacted by a Virgin representative, who promises an investigation into this “highly unusual” experience. Well guess what? I’m not interested. I think five engineer visits is more than enough to fix a problem. I’m now convinced that Virgin’s service simply doesn’t do what they advertise (at least not in my area) and coming to me after the fact isn’t going to cut the mustard.

Instead I shall laugh wryly each time I see an ad for Virgin’s new 50MB service. Fifty!! Yeah, ok, I believe you - despite you’re being unable to reliably deliver me FIVE.

Thanks a lot, “Mothers” of all Broadband ;o)

No wonder you look concerned. You've got too many users on your network haven't you Richard?

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Twitter’s Most Conversational Celebs

4 | April 11th, 2009 | Posted in Ramblings

Everyone knows that 77.6% of statistics are made up on the spot, but have you ever wondered which of the Twitter celebrity users are the most interactive? I have and so I set off on a quest to find out.

Let me start by saying that there is no “right” or “wrong” way to use Twitter. There are already more rules in our lives than there are sales at DFS, so I think it’s perfectly fine to use Twitter however you like. If you just want to broadcast your life and never interact with anyone, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Likewise, if you’re a chatty Kathy then great, good luck to you. Please don’t assume that because celebrity ‘X’ never replies to anyone, then that’s somehow wrong. It’s not - and you ultimately, have the choice of following … or not.

Be mindful too, that Twitter users with a lot of followers have a tough time. Even on an efficient client like Tweetdeck, seeing anything more than last 50 or so replies is difficult - and if you’re popular you’ll get another batch every 60 seconds. On a portable device like an iPhone, users are doing well to cope with more than maybe 25 replies at a time. So cut users like @stephenfry some slack if he hasn’t replied to you. When he gets literally thousands of replies, he just can’t speak to everyone. Every person on this list has a lot of tweets to deal with.

Some people have also been critical of popular users who don’t follow everyone back. Again, there’s not much point. Once you get more than about 500 followers, you just can’t see everyone’s tweets all the time and your followers list starts to look no different from your @replies list. Plus you have the added problem of thousands of DMs to deal with too. ( I follow almost everyone back, unless they insist that I will become a millionaire by next Tuesday, but then I’m a geek with special training - please don’t try this at home ).

So, with that firmly in mind, here are the numbers I’ve found for some of the more popular users. Since I’m in the UK, I’m, biased in that direction. I’ve also excluded politicians, as they almost always have someone else do their tweeting for them and that’s just cheating. If you’d like me to run the numbers for a particular user, let me know and I’ll add them!

If you’re squinting, click the table - it’ll open a bigger version.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that if you’re expecting a reply from Richard Branson, don’t. Believe me, I’ve tried explaining to him in the most polite terms that his broadband service is rubbish - he’s not interested.

People who don’t use Twitter are often skeptical … well, in general, but specifically about whether the celebs are real, or whether you can actually converse with them. The answer is that you can converse with a surprising number of them. Twitter, unlike real-life, is a startlingly positive community and you may be pleasantly surprised.

One other great benefit? Celebrities can now speak directly with fans. This has the great advantage that they aren’t misquoted by the press. If you’ve read the recent stories about John Mayer you’ll have noticed how the press love to quote his “Twitter addiction” and burble on about how he talks about his relationship with Jennifer Aniston. What a lot of codswallop! Follow him and you’ll see for yourself.

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Welcome to the United Kingdom of the Paranoid.

0 | April 10th, 2009 | Posted in Opinion

Is it only me that's thinking - if there's rubbish to be analyzed, why don't the bin men do it?

The government seems to be working to an agenda which includes introducing a new anti-terror law almost every week. I’m as anti-terror as the next guy, but the latest rash of legislation seems to have less to do with curbing terrorism than it does with curbing the freedoms that we used to take for granted.

In recent weeks the Government has introduced the following legislation:

Tracking Travellers.

Anyone travelling by land, sea or air, will have to provide passport details and information about their travel plans will be stored on a government database for 10 years. 60% of travellers will be logged by the end of the year.

Tracking Internet Usage.

UK Internet Service Providers are now required by law to keep a record of every website you visit, the recipient of every email you send and (if you have an Internet phone) every phone number you dial and every number you receive calls from. Even more worrying is that the sender of every email you receive is also logged - including all that junk mail. No-one knows what happens if a group of terrorist sympathisers decide to add you to their mailing list - presumably you then become a “known associate” with all the benefits that such a status brings.

Photographing the Police

It is now an offence to photograph a member of the police force - something which caused uproar amongst press photographers - and rightly so. How they can be expected to photograph incidents, or even sporting events without including the police is still something of a mystery. Events at the G20 protests in London this week bring this restriction sharply to the forefront of public opinion. It is only thanks to the vigilance of anonymous members of the public that the assault of Ian Tomlinson (who died of a heart attack shortly afterward) was captured on tape and handed to the press, fuelling calls for an independent enquiry. Without the freedom to film and photograph the police, how can we expect freedom of the press? Without freedom of the press how would we know about incidents such as occurred at the G20 protests?

Other forthcoming attractions in the Government’s “anti-terror” campaign include:

Tracking Social Networks.

Facebook,MySpace, Bebo and Twitter and internet calls on Skype will be monitored.

According to The Guardian, a Home Office source said “We have no way of knowing whether Osama bin Laden is chatting to Abu Hamza on Facebook. Or terrorists could be having a four-way chat on Skype”.

It’s exactly this kind of stupidity that causes the government to become so paranoid that they introduce equally paranoid legislation. There seems to be a prevailing belief that terrorists are cave-dwelling, technologically infantile, bumbling idiots. The idea that they would “have a four-way chat on Skype” would only occur to a politician - and even then, only one who still lives with his Mum. Modern terrorists are technically savvy, extremely well funded and at least as intelligent as you or I. Have no doubt that that When Osama Bin Laden talks to Abu Hamza, he is well aware of which communications media will be monitored and is equally aware of how to avoid them. If he were not, I doubt that he would still be at large enjoying the millions that he made from the construction industry.

As if the Orwellian nightmare of Internet Monitoring were not enough, a proposal by Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith describes her intention to outsource the monitoring of our communications to a private company. One can only presume that given the Government’s apalling record on data security, they don’t feel competent to take on the job themselves. However, especially in an era of paranoia, outsourcing the gathering of public data on a massive scale is tantamount to madness.

Seemingly reading my mind this week and in a manner which skillfully proves my point, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, Britains “Top anti-terror officer” got out of his car outside number 10 clutching a top secret document which he managed to display to the press so effectively, one could almost believe he did so on purpose. The document was a plan for imminent terror raids in the North of England. He has since resigned over the blunder.

These are the people we entrust with our National Security. Do our best efforts really consist of wiretapping every person in the country on the off-chance that someone may hear bin Laden? And what’s behind tracking the movements of everyone who leaves the country - perhaps Jacqui Smith is concerned that militant Britons may sneak off to secret meetings with Abu Hamza at Disneyland Paris?

Whatever their speculations, it’s clear that there are serious holes in both our strategy and the people responsible for implementing it. We, it seems are the technologically inept and the bumbling incompetents who accidentally disclose national secrets and attack innocent bystanders.

If there is one area in which the Government is consistently efficient, it is in eavesdropping on it’s own citizens. There certainly seems to be a pattern in the legislation (and plans for future legislation) that the Government has up it’s sleeve for us. The pattern is one of building an infrastructure which will allow the monitoring the general public on a 24 hour basis. All that’s required now to complete the picture is the introduction of ID cards and the successful implementation of vehicle tracking - both of which are already in the works.

One could even argue that the current “rat on your neighbours” anti-terror campaign has, as it’s sole purpose the planting of millions of tiny seeds of paranoia, which, when watered with a steady stream of scare-stories about terror raids across the country eventually grow into fully-fledged xenophobia.

If there really is mileage in looking for the debris of bomb factories in garbage, it certainly would seem a much more effective use of public money to simply train the bin men to do it wouldn’t it?

Sources

Tracking Travellers: BBC - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7877182.stm

Internet Tracking : VNU - http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2233212/uk-government-outsource

Social Network Monitoring : The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/25/social-networking-sites-monitored

Photographing Police : The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/4632459/Why-cant-we-take-pictures-of-policemen.html

Osama Bin Laden & Abu Hamza background : Wikipedia.

Thanks to James Holden for the anti-terror billboard tool - http://jamesholden.net/billboard/

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Microsoft targets Apple - and Fails.

0 | March 27th, 2009 | Posted in Tech

Ok, so lets be upfront about it, I am not an unbiased reporter. I don’t like Microsoft, for a whole host of reasons we won’t go into, but the new TV ads, entitled “laptop hunters” epitomise everything I dislike in one handy little package.

The ads feature ordinary Joes and Janes trying to find a laptop for $1000. But Microsoft don’t sell laptops do they? What exactly are they trying to prove? Well, their partners, like HP do sell laptops and so by proxy, that’s where most of Microsoft’s sales come from. Most people in fact, don’t buy Windows as a stand-alone product, it comes pre-installed on the computers that they buy.

OK, fair enough, but if you want to encourage people to buy PC’s and not Macs, then you really need to understand why people buy Macs. Microsoft assume in almost all of their advertising that people buy Macs because they think that they are “hip” and “cool”. Well yes, they are actually, but the principal reason that people buy Macs is because they work!

Take me for example. I’m working at the moment on a contract where I cannot connect a Mac to the corporate network. As a result, I am forced to use a PC. All of the usual software that I use is not available, and I’ve had to try to find PC equivalents. In the main, there aren’t any. Outlook mail is bloated, slow and overcomplicated. Internet Explorer is something of a joke amongst web developers (and for good reason) and don’t even get me started on Windows XP. It’s just not a stable, or secure platform to work on.

And this, is why once people buy a Mac, they love them. they are happy to pay a premium for a better product. the hardware is beautifully designed, both aesthetically and functionally and the beauty of the Mac platform is that the hardware and software and made by the same manufacturer. All of those wasted hours hunting for drivers and fixing registry problems just went away when I bought my first Mac and were long forgotten until I was forced to use XP again.

I understand that in the recession, people will be more cash-conscious of course, but actually, the price difference between Macs and PC’s of similar spec isn’t a lot. It’s a small price to pay for a dramatically better set of tools. That’s why the new ad misses the point entirely.

Take a look at this billboard that Microsoft are running:

Shopping for a laptop - why not get diapers too!

This seriously compares buying a Macbook, with a Toshiba PC, a cheap router and 600 diapers. Of course! There’s a recession on - I’ll take the PC and the diapers!

So, Microsoft, I think you’ve done it again. In a classic demonstration that you are the dodgy uncle dancing at the wedding, you have proved that you only exist because of a huge market dominance, obtained by being one of the big boys in the playground. But you don’t understand that you can’t compete with Apple on price. Price isn’t what it’s about. Quality and skill is what it’s about. Please try to hire some - competition would be good for the market.

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Travel Plans and Personal Details to be Tracked by UK Government

0 | March 14th, 2009 | Posted in Opinion

Following a recent Orwellian trend (which includes making it illegal to photograph the police), it has now emerged that the UK government is introducing a sophisticated tracking scheme which will require every person who leaves the country to supply detailed travel plans and personal information.

The government cites anti-terrorism as the reason behind the scheme. For some reason they think that international terrorists backed by billionaires and planning attacks for years will be unable to procure fake identification or hire unregistered transport.

No, I’m not falling for that explanation either. The truth is that the government wants to know where you are at all times. Why do you think they are also planning to have satellite tracking in all vehicles? To “improve road safety” - yeah, of course. George Orwell is at this very moment turning in his grave, and no doubt that very action is being recorded by ultra-sensitive government seismographs.

If the government has it’s way - and it will - pretty soon your location will be known by the government at every minute. But if you’ve got nothing to hide then why should you be bothered? I’ll tell you why fellow citizen, because this kind of thing is always the thin end of the wedge. When governments introduce legislation which infringes upon our liberties, it’s only a matter of time before that ever-growing government starts using that same legislation to further it’s own agenda at the detriment of yours.

Benjamin Franklin said in 1775 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” He knew that corruption by government was not only a possibility, but an inevitability.

Watch the news over the next few months with a cynical eye and I guarantee that you will see other signs of this creeping Orwellianism. Little by little they increase the size of government and it’s grip on society. You shall be allowed to drive to work, providing that you are GPS monitored along the way, and you shall be allowed to travel to the shopping mall and the DIY store at the weekend. In the meantime, you should confine your consumption of information to soap operas - the powers that be are a little worried about the Internet.

On that note, watch out for coming legislation to track everything you do on the Internet also. there is already more tracking going on than you would care to think about - but this tracking will soon start to become censorship, sold to us no doubt, on the basis that it is necessary to prevent the threat of terrorism. Perhaps the government will contend that they will legislate against freedom of the Internet on the basis of “protecting children”, which assumes of course, that we are incapable of doing that without their help.

So, make sure that you have your passport, GPS tracker, ID card, credit cards, store loyalty cards, mobile phone, tax and medical records all up to date please. And stay in the cities where you are on CCTV 24/7. After all, you wouldn’t want Big Brother to miss anything would you?

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Rick Bender - my old buddy.

0 | March 12th, 2009 | Posted in Ramblings

I used to have a regular comedy slot on local radio. The character, “Rick Bender” was a spoof US news reporter who couldn’t get anything right.
Here’s a couple of episodes that I came across while browsing through iTunes today:

The OJ Simpson episode was used by the station in their Sony Radio Awards entry - which they won. I claim no influence ;o)

Rick on Airline Pollution:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rick on the OJ Simpson Trial:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Whatever happened to Innovation?

1 | February 17th, 2009 | Posted in Tech

“We do so much better with a clear competitor in the space.”
Aaron Woodman, director of Windows Mobile consumer experiences at Microsoft

Oh how true that is, but for all the wrong reasons. It’s just emerged that Microsoft are planning a range of phones and a download store to compete with the iPhone and iTunes app store. I like competition, it drives innovation and forces manufacturers to compete on price, but I’d really like to see some of that innovation in this marketplace.

Time and again, manufacturers bring out iPhone ‘clones’. Why? Unless you are going to do something different, or at least make a better version of something, why would you choose to make an inferior copy?

The Microsoft phones have only just been announced, but several statements by Microsoft representatives lead me to believe that I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting for innovation. Here are a couple of examples:

“We recognise that consumers buy a phone, they don’t buy the software.”
Actually, the phone and the software should not have a distinction to the user. It should all be viewed as a single entity. Consumers (especially no-technical ones) make no distinction between the hardware and software on a phone - it’s just a phone - and the software is just a part of that device.

This statement is a clear indication that Microsoft thinks that they have some decent hardware to offer (let me guess, it will look rather similar to the iPhone) and so they’ll cram an over-engineered, re-vamped version of Windows mobile on it and think that they are innovating.

“So few people attach their phone and PC together [to make a back-up]“.
This is true of non-technical users, but Microsoft are not going to be selling what I will call ‘utility’ phones (which are primarily used for voice and photos), they will be selling ‘Smart Phones’. This is a different market - it’s the one dominated by the iPhone and presumably the one in which they want to compete. In that case, these smart phone users not only already connect their devices to their computers, they want more and easier ways of doing so.

I’m not advocating Apple as a panacea, but love them or hate them, they do understand their market and their target user. The iPhone has flaws - and some quite fundamental ones like no video and no copy-paste function, but it’s the overall impact of the device that matters. You have to be able to hold it in your hand and consider it a trusted friend. You want your friend to help you, not cause you technical frustrations. You want your friend to be beautiful, you want your friend to be cool.

And there’s the fundamental problem with competitors to the iPhone - and in fact Apple products across the board. Apple is cool. Watching Microsoft trying to compete with cool, is like watching your uncle dancing at a wedding.

So what should they be doing instead? Well for starters, everyone knows that when you try to be cool, you fail. Here’s my wish list for an iPhone competitor:

Launch at least 2 variants of the device. One should have a touch-screen display and one should have a keyboard.
Use the best optical quality glass you can find for the display. Make the display fan-flipping-tastic - even if it inflates the price.
Have at least an 8 megapixel camera on board with a flash and user-selectable software settings.
Make it record video at a decent resolution and upload it straight to youtube.
Have a download store - but also enable downloads from anywhere.
Music is easy on a device. Make this one different by having it wirelessly connect to a PC / Mac or speakers and stream it’s music.
It must have at least 32GB on board and be expandable with external memory cards which are user-interchangeable.

Most important of all - and what the device will live or die by is the software. The software is what provides the user experience. the software is what makes the device cool. the software is what turns a phone into a ‘friend’.

Now, what did Aaron say again? Oh yes…

“We recognise that consumers buy a phone, they don’t buy the software.”

Aaron is ‘Director of Windows Mobile consumer experiences’ for Microsoft. He should be ashamed of himself.

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Sharing music between users on a single Mac

0 | February 14th, 2009 | Posted in Tech

@pauldoussay asked about sharing a single iTunes library between 2 users on an iMac.

There are several ways to do this, but the simplest solution is probably the one that Apple reccommends at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1203

It boils down to moving your iTunes music folder to a shared folder on your mac, so that it can be accessed by other users on the same machine.

As always, it’s a good idea to make sure that you back up your music folder before you start this, in case you balls it up (that’s web 2.0 terminology) and need to start again.

Good luck!

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Ian Richardson

When I get to Hell, there will be 5 blades on every razor.

Simplify Your Twitter Life in 10 Easy Steps

The MotherF****R Of All Broadband

Twitter’s Most Conversational Celebs

Welcome to the United Kingdom of the Paranoid.

Microsoft targets Apple - and Fails.

Travel Plans and Personal Details to be Tracked by UK Government

Rick Bender - my old buddy.

Whatever happened to Innovation?

Sharing music between users on a single Mac

Who is this guy anyway?

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