So it was announced today that Spotify have released Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited but what’s new?
Spotify Open.
Spotify Open
Spotify Open is the new ‘free’ version of Spotify, but where it differs from Spotify Free is that you now don’t need an invite to use the service and also you are limited to only 25hr listening time per month you also can’t use the radio feature.
Spotify Unlimited
Spotify Unlimited is the new paid version of Spotify and for £4.99 a month you do away with the adverts,
Check out the Spotify website for more info on all the different plans
Sony have announced that they will finally stop selling the storage format in Japan from March 2011.
3.5 inch floppy disk..
Earlier in the year Sony had stopped selling the Floppy Disk in most international markets because of reduced sales and the competition from other storage formats.
I’ll be honest, I thought the floppy had died out years ago, because lets face it there isn’t much you can keep on 1.4mb, not even one photo or one song. There was something nice, however, about putting a floppy into the slot, it was nice and clunky, like putting a cartridge into a snes or N64.
I saw this article in the news recently link about a small village which raised £37,000 to offer 200 homes the super-fast broadband that BT would not deliver.
Ethernet Snake by shadphotos.
Recently there has also been talks about a broadband tax so that the government could afford to offer everyone 2mps broadband. I’d be perfectly happy to pay a broadband tax if it were going to vastly improve the service, I pay for 16mps at the moment ad get between 10 and 16, so why would I pay for something that isn’t going to improve mine.
Why not aim to give everyone 40mps because then we’ll have an internet speed that will last a long time rather than 2mps which will need to be upgraded only years down the line.
I’d like to know whether or not you would band together with your local community to pay for faster broadband?
If you’re sick of all the X-Factor rubbish in the charts, clogging up the air ways, then ‘The Razorbax – Something To Believe In’ is the album you need to buy. Each song is delivered with the intensity of people who love what they are doing, you can feel the raw passion from the music.
Image Caption goes here.
The quality of this album in both the actual recordings and art work would put some well known acts to shame. The album is 12 tracks of pure honest rock ‘n’ roll that ‘deals with the struggles of the unemployed, drug/alcohol addiction, love, lust, heartbreak, life, death. ‘
The Razorbax are definitely a band to watch out for, with great live performances, a great sounds and great album it’s not going to be long until they get the recognition they really deserve.
Track List:
Available to Download and listen at Spotify/Amazon/iTunes et al
I must admit the title may be a little misleading as I don’t think the new layout sucks. Is it perfect? No, but was the last layout perfect? Certainly not.
New YouTube Layout.
I suppose the question as to whether it’s better or not comes down to the amount of things that are better or worse than the last one.
Parts that are better
-@ replys in the comments
-Thumbs up and thumbs down rather than 5 stars
-Tells you the amount of videos that user has made at the top
-Video quality changer doesn’t seem to stick anymore
Parts that are worse
-Too much white
-Videos in the side seem to be random and I would prefer my videos there not related.
Verdict
So it seems that there are more parts to the layout that are better, When the option to use this layout came out in beta I chose to stick with the old one. The major turn off was the thumbs up button meant favouriting the video which was the stupidest thing ever.
But as YouTube decided not to go with that and just a ‘Like’ thumbs up (There is a ‘Like’ list that almost acts like a favourites) which I think is the better option. I’m fairly happy with the new change, hopefully they’ll slightly update it with some colour but otherwise it’s a change for the better.
New YouTube Comments system.
The video shown above is ‘Gabriel’ our Film Dash 2010 Entry. Watch it here
Don’t know who Sarah Killen, 19, is? Well you’re right not to know, she has become the sole ‘followee’ of talk show host Conan O’Brien.
Sarah Killen Twitter photo.
Since Conans departure from the ‘Tonight Show’ he has turned to twitter to keep in contact with his fans, he has amassed a following of 627,000 followers but until recently was not following a single person.
On Friday 5th March Conan tweeted ‘I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.’ Since then the 19 year old, who is planning on getting married, has received a new iMac computer and offers to help pay for a dress from a New York designer and drinks for her wedding. She was gaining followers at the rate of 150 a minute and now has 24,564.
Sarah fiancée John Slowik Jr. has asked Conan to be his best man at their wedding.
So it has come to the end, Film Dash 2010, what a tiring but exciting weekend it has been.
Filming on the Saturday was good, we got everything done. The only bad thing was the weather, it was freezing cold, by the end I could barely move my fingers they were just stiff and frozen.
As you’ll see in my previous post our criteria for the film were;
General theme: Happiness
Line of dialogue: “It’s not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It’s far, far away.”
Prop: Blue Balloon
We decided instead of just having the prop something that appears once in the film, we would make it one of the main features. Editing was fairly painless some things we couldn’t do but the film worked without that.
So have a look at it below if you haven’t seen it already.
Along with Studio 279 (David Poole) we signed up to take part in the 48hr Film Contest, Film Dash.
Film Dash Logo.
Film Dash is run by Chris Unitt and Ian Ravenscroft and consists of a challenge where “Teams of film makers will script, shoot and edit a film in 48 hours.” Each team has different criteria, which they must include in their film. The things we had to have in our film were; General theme: Happiness
Line of dialogue: “It’s not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It’s far, far away.”
Prop: Blue Balloon.
After coming up with several ideas we came up with an idea that we all decided was fantastically brilliant. I think giving away the plot line would spoil the film so you will have to wait until tomorrow at 7pm to see the film.
But here are a few stills from the shoot to tide you over.
An amendment to the Digital Economy Bill could see sites like YouTube and Vimeo blocked from the UK.
YouTube Logo.
In the new amendment we will see big TV and music companies having the right to demand their material be taken down, the copyright holders will ask the ISP and the website itself to take down their material. If it is not taken down, a court order can force the ISP to block the site.
The law is aimed at sites which host a ‘substantial’ amount of copyright material. It is, however, unclear as to what ‘substantial’ means and we could see entire sites being blocked over some minor claims.
Secretary-general of the Internet Service Providers Association, Nicholas Lansman, said: ‘Our members are extremely concerned that the full implications of the amendment have not been understood.’
As ISPs will have no other choice but to block these sites as not doing so would result in huge lawsuits against them.
This is indeed another stake in the heart of democracy, where we see multi-billion dollar organisations ruling governments.
This month BBC iPlayer has doubled it’s requests from 61.5 million in January 2009 to 120.3 million in January 2010.
Graph showing iPlayer viewing figures. (Click image for more info)
iPlayer is the BBC’s on demand television service available to license fee payers. It went live on the 25th December 2007 after having been in open beta for over a year. The BBC had hoped programmes would be watched half a million times in the first six months. This turned out to be a gross underestimate, as 3.5 million programmes were streamed or downloaded in the first three weeks alone.
The wii and PS3 iPlayer application account for 4% and 8% of the views,respectively, while PC is dominant with 79% and Mac being 9%.
People watching television over the internet, and especially BBC iPlayer, show no signs of slowing down. With all the UK terrestrial channels having their own catch up services and Ch 4 and FIVE releasing it’s content on Youtube, I can see the introduction on ‘web only’ content on all catch up services in the near future.
How often do you use it? Is it easy to search and find the programmes you’re looking for?
