Rowan's blog

Christmas shopping in London

Mum and I went to Kensington, Knightsbridge and Oxford Street yesterday to check out the Christmas lights and window displays.

I discovered two rather original Chrismas pressies in Harrods:

1. A silver vegemite lid. Cost: £95. Yes, you read that correctly. What the?!!

2. A four wheel drive car for kids. Cost: £21,995. For a fiver more you could of course buy an adult size Ferrari with only 30,000 miles on the clock - but what would be the fun in that?

After exploring Harrods, we walked down Oxford Street. Nice lights.

I particularly liked the look of Carnaby Street.

The Wedgewood china-tree was pretty cool too.

Ended my day at a Christmas Carol concert in Richmond with Dad and Heather. The kids got up and sung 'Away in a manger' beautifully (they'd be bribed with chocolate buttons). I think Away in a manger and a guy playing a 'Hurly Burly' (medieval instrument) with pipe were the highlights of the concert for me. Plus of course the mince pies in the interval. Very, very British!

Nokia's first Internet Tablet

The 770 is Nokia's first Internet Tablet and first Linux handheld. Apparently Nokia is launching a Linux development platform "maemo" specifically for this new range.

"Nokia sees browsing and email as the primary uses, but the Tablet will be bundled with internet radio, voice over IP and an RSS feed reader. It's an open platform, and unlike its phone range, there's no built-in DRM or similar shenanigans to cripple the user experience." Source: The Register

Interesting although it doesn't seem to have inbuilt GPRS capabilities or standard phone (does have VoIP).

Read more about the Nokia 770.

I'm not so interested in the evolution of technology itself, but what people will do with it.

With Internet technologies becoming more available and consumer interest in TV declining, will the BBC, ABC etc start making their archives available online to be accessed on demand?

Should government subsidies be given to produce quality online media? Will individuals start producing/selling their own content (ebay model)?

Will someone devise a CMS system that supports all the media so it's searchable & accessible through one interface? How would that be different to Kazaa (with more content partners :)? Will free peer to peer, (with ads & some digitally rights managed paid for content) or a subscription model prevail? If subscription, who will pay - taxpayers?

Who's going to come up with a naming convention and standards that everyone can use to name their shared content files and search for others? Could there ever be one interface that acts as a world wide search engine for downloadable content on the web?

Maybe I should stop asking questions and start writing sci-fi.

Graphic hotel rooms

Ever wondered what a hotel room would look like if it was designed by a graphic designer, urban artist or illustrator?

Check out the rooms on each floor of Hotel Fox in central Copenhagen.

My personal fave is Room 121. I wanna jump in, giggle & have a ridiculously childlike pillow fight.

I'd like to sleep in 208 - elegant & sophisticated.

309 looks mischievous.

Most of the rooms are simply scary and would give me nightmares, but this hotel will undoubtedly be successful. If this isn't a perfect example of a Purple Cow, I'll eat one.

The Oakley Thump

Now I couldn't do without my sunnies or my MP3 player, but these are two products that really don't seem right bundled together. (Some clever geek suggested it should be called 'EyeTunes'!)

Check out the product details. It feels like we've reached 'the future' all of a sudden...

Wave pillow

I found this on the blog of Lars this morning...

New invention: WAVE PILLOW - A pillow that vibrates according to how good the surf is. Read more about it here.

Not much use in Denmark, eh mate?!

Skype 1.0 released!

Make free calls, PC to PC! Get Skype from: www.skype.com

Then put on your headset, click this link & say hi: callto://robabe/

Skype has caught on faster than Hotmail

"The new internet voice service is adding 1.2m new users a month, compared with the 1m a month Hotmail added at its peak.

According to its website, Skype has drawn about 8.5m users globally - a level that Hotmail took 14 months to reach. Hotmail became the biggest provider of free internet e-mail before being sold to Microsoft in 1998."
(Richard Waters, for FT News)

Read the article here.

Get Skype from: www.skype.com. Then Skype me - it's fun, not least 'coz it's free!

'Grey Album' goes Gold (in one day)!

The music industry likes to think it's in control. Yet people are proving they have the power, time & time again.

DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a mix compiled from Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album started showing up all over the Net, as well as offline.

EMI quickly shouted 'Cease and Desist!' Outraged by that, DownhillBattle promoted a 'Grey Tuesday' on 24th Feb, encouraging sites to make the album available for one day. It's success floored a lot of people, especially EMI.

"We are certain that the Grey Album was the number one album in the country yesterday (by a lot)," says DHB.

"Danger Mouse' moved more units than Norah Jones and Kanye West, and the Grey Album easily went gold in a day (over 100,000 copies).

Read p2pnet.net article here.

Snapshot of today's world

My Sony T1 digital camera arrived today. At the post office. I bought it on the internet from the respected 'B&H Photo - Video - Pro Audio' store, in New York & had it shipped over to Aus.

I figured now was the time to invest in a digicam. Prices have dropped considerably over the last 3 yrs and the technology has significantly improved. And then there's the story of the US dollar...

The camera cost me USD$545. Shipping cost USD$60. In Aussie dollars, the camera + shipping costs totalled $810.
GST (Aus tax) cost me AUD$75.90. Total cost = AUD$885.90.

The Sony T1 arrived in retail stores in Sydney last weekend, priced at AUD$1,099.00. So, importing electronic goods from the USA in the quantity of 1 is now cost effective. I figure England would be in a similar position to Aus.

I'm rather pleased with my purchase. After collecting it from the post office this morning, I showed my new toy to my colleagues. It received many and ooh's & aah's from the tech geeks I work with (I, by the way, am not a geek).

Read a review of the Sony T1. Geeks might be interested in the Carl Zeiss Optical 3x lens.

Isn't the world crazy?