I was recently introduced to the Android App Locale and it is really rather good. I thought I would share, although if you are a Google Android user, you have likely found this already. It is basically a fancy way of storing some 'if statements' in your phone to make certain things happen. I have only set up one, but will share with you as an example: I get a …

Of course, I'm not talking about real life friends (what are they?), I'm talking about the sitcom. This is my favourite TV show ever on earth, and my real life friend (oh!) and I used to spend hours watching and memorising the episodes. I was going to make this a top five list, but then realised firstly that I couldn't narrow it down or decide which was my overall favourite. …

Another reason print is dead (to me). Once a month, F1 Racing falls through my letterbox on a Saturday morning at 8am with a massive clonk and wakes me up. PDFs do not do this.

The BBC have teamed up with online video service Blinkbox to deliver some of its TV Shows for a price, plus a few programmes for free that come with ads. It's important to point out this is BBC Worldwide, which is the commercial arm of the Beeb, and essentially completely separate from the non-advertising public service broadcaster. I have never heard of Blinkbox before, but it looks as though it …

An interesting thought about the Kindle that hadn't occurred to me. I wonder how many people have not only fallen for the sheer alleged convenience of Kindle, but because it has filled their minds with works they would not otherwise have touched. Could Kindle be a way to re-educate the world? Could it help us to bypass those scheming, artsy book designers and finally be true to our own genuine …

This is quite a cool game: Can you name the most used passwords of all time? Not a catchy title, I grant you, but it's fun all the same. You get three minutes to guess the most popular passwords. A couple of them are obvious, and I actually only got five. I am also slightly concerned as to how this data is collected. Either someone is reading and collecting passwords, …

The BBC have always been good at pushing forward new music, even as the industry changes around them. It used to be supremely hard for unsigned artists to get their music heard, but with MySpace and Podsafe music, it's easier for word to spread. Although this is better for artists, I imagine it might make the BBC's life a little harder - there is such a wealth of music out …

A Panda Cub's Prison Break, thanks to Alex for finding this.

Eidos are taking a leaf out of Radiohead's book, and charging only a processing fee for their new game. Users are requested to pay what they think the game is worth. The Championship Manager 2010 game is available until September 10th, when the full game hits the shops and the price rises to £29.99. There's a rather snazzy video of the press conference, and Eidos say: We’re keen to see …

Over in the US, the purchase of digital music over CDs is rising. The NPD Group released some statistics suggesting that digital sales now make up 25% of the overall sale of music, and that figure is only growing. From the press release: Many people are surprised that the CD is still the dominant music delivery format, given the attention to digital music and the shrinking retail footprint for physical …

I've just discovered this really interesting page on Flickr (via The Next Web) which collates information from all its users and shows us which camera is the most popular. The iPhone has made quite the leap, and other graphs on the page, show that it is by far the most popular supplier of photos from cameraphones. All the point & shoot cameras are Canon's as well, which is just plain …

I have been watching a couple of new advertising initiatives that have really worked on me, and I am only talking about them to encourage more of the same from companies in the future (because I have that kind of power, you know?) and not because I necessarily have an opinion on the brand either way. Other [insert product here] are available. Firstly, I've been reading Mighty Girl for a …

I was actually going to record this as a kind of video blog, but am missing a rather crucial USB cable that without it means I have to crawl around under desks and dismantle Mr C's rather tidy cabling. I don't think he'd thank me for that, but I feel the stories are worth sharing before they get too old, so I'll post the transcript instead. This is also my …

Mashable posted an article a couple of days ago, with a rundown of 12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive. The majority of the pointers seem to reiterate the notion of not trying to fight the web, to embrace it, and to go niche to protect your brand in print. This makes perfect sense, because the best way to keep newspapers and magazines going is to ensure they provide something …

Whilst I've been getting more and more attached to my T-Mobile G1, it looks as though the Android development team are going through the opposite emotions. According to this story on Engadget, G1 users really need to make the most of their recent Cupcake software update, because it will probably be their last! Supposedly, HTC put a limited amount of internal flash space into the G1, and the Android operating …

The tomatoes did turn red in the end, and they were delicious.

Part two of a media-related post on our sister site Sidepodcast. Do some keywords fare better than others? Which headlines provided the most interest? Everything is completely transparent, it’s quick and easy to tailor things on the fly and straightforward to vary advertisements according to budget. We have, in the past, run an advertising campaign purely for the live commenting of races. At most that means running ads for a …

Part one of a media-related post on our sister site Sidepodcast. Linking makes the social, well, more sociable and without it conversation takes considerably more effort. Which is why we know print is dead. It’s been a long time coming, but social networking has finally rendered the printed page obsolete. Remaining marginally rational for a moment, it’s probably worth adding that the length of the printed material and the type …

If you work in an office it can be quite a grind, but there are loads of toys and gadgets out there to help the day go a little bit faster. Here are some of my favourite ones at the moment. The Desktop Henry Hoover is an ideal gadget because not only is it cute and a talking point, but it also cleans your desk! It takes a couple of …

Two Pandas Credit: La Rusa Loca/Flickr Baby Panda Eyes Credit: Elaine Gast/Flickr

This is singularly the best moment from Never Mind the Buzzcocks ever. In my opinion, Buzzcocks got better when Simon Amstell took over, although some of his humour was, it's fair to say, evil. Bill Bailey also made a great addition, and his weird moments could be very amusing. Bailey left and was replaced by guest captains, then Amstell left to be replaced by guest hosts. Apparently Noel Fielding and …

LibriVox is an organisation with a simple goal - to make all public domain works accessible in audiobook form. I've been involved for a long while now, part of an enormous group of volunteers who record chapters, poems and entire books to attempt to reach this goal. My latest solo book has been catalogued: Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School. It's one of those books that is probably aimed …

What unbelievably good weather we had in the UK this past weekend! Mr C and I were so impressed we actually headed outside. We found our way to the river, and ended up on a boat. I didn't want to take the wheel to start with, but after a while I was desperate to take over, so I drove us up and down, whilst Mr C took some pictures and …

There has been some speculation recently that Franck would be signed up by AGR to race for them in a forthcoming IRL event, and now it has been confirmed. FKM will take to the wheel of the No. 25 on the 22-23rd of August, in his IRL debut. He says: I am certainly looking forward to my IndyCar debut in Sonoma with AFS and Andretti Green Racing. I was able …

I actually didn't discover this song until quite recently, one of those ones that I've heard plenty of times but never really knew what it was. As ever, Mr C was more than happy to educate me, and now I really, really like it. It's not so much the song that I like, but the fact that this song, and more importantly the video, creates amazing conversations. For the record, …

I mentioned the Best Job in the World previously, worrying that the successful candidate - Ben Southall - will find it difficult to top his six months in Australia. What has occured to me now is that I can't bring myself to read the blog. I subscribed to it as soon as the blog went live, because I was one of those who followed the selection process with interest. The …

Sony has announced two new ebook Readers - the Pocket and the Touch. Specs, more pictures, and a brief review available on CNET. At least this one is available in the UK. Are you listening Amazon?

Rupert Murdoch and his many, many media enterprises announced huge losses recently, and that has prompted the newspaper giant to announce that their online news presence will not be free for much longer. Murdoch says he is aware that this will cause copyright problems, and they’ll tighten up on that considerably. However, he is looking forward to cashing in on the celebrity gossip hunters who visit such sites as The …

Recently, we were enjoying a relaxing weekend and decided cooking wasn't part of the plan. On Saturday, we wanted an Indian restaurant. We didn't know where the nearest one was, so I pulled out my G1 and googled the area we were in, plus the type of restaurant we were looking for. As it turns out, we were just round the corner from one, that we had walked past several …

Here we are, then, eleven weeks on, and my gardening adventure has come to its conclusion. Most of the stuff died. The lettuce seemed to expire. I cleared out the strawberry pot, and I was left with a weird Jekyll & Hyde tomato plant. The tomatoes are at least trying to turn red now. I am not sure whether I should pull them off and ripen them, or if I …

This is my last blog entry about the safari park trip, I promise. The thing is, as we were going around the park, we realised that there was one fundamental problem with the whole premise. Why are we driving? Our experience of the safari park was: turning off the main road to get to the ticket booths, queuing to buy the tickets, then driving excruciatingly slowly round the park. Thankfully, …

It’s no secret that Radiohead aren’t afraid to try something new with their distribution models, particularly in the scope of online delivery. Their free release of In Rainbows, where consumers were encouraged to pay what they felt it was worth, garnered them a lot of media (if not money). Now, Thom Yorke has spoken out in Believer magazine, admitting that CDs were never his favourite: There’s a process of natural …

A report out this week suggests that TV viewers in the UK are now consuming more ads than ever before. This is purely taking into account actual television viewing, and not online TV, and the stats line up something like this: 16.7 hours of commercial TV per week on average in the first half of 2009 that’s up 9.9 minutes on 2008, which isn’t a lot, but who was expecting …

I have just found out about a new park opened in New York called the High Line. I don't ever intend on travelling to New York, but if I did I would want to go and see this. The High Line railway opened back in the 1930s, as a way to stop pedestrians getting knocked over by freight trains. The tracks ran alongside the big warehouses, allowing buildings to have …

Of course, after saying I had not experimented with the share feature on Google Reader, I went and clicked on the button and now I'm hooked. It's like bookmarking things on Delicious but so much easier! I've only been using it for about 12 hours, but already it's the best thing since the last best thing and before the next best thing. There's even a selection of my latest shared …

I was converted to Google Reader a while ago, after I decided I needed to be able to check my RSS feeds while I was out and about. Until then, I had happily used FeedDemon, which then became Net News Wire when I switched to a Mac. It didn't take long for me to be convinced that Google reading is the way to go, because: If you're on a site, …

As heard on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud, EMI are apparently backing out of deals with smaller retailers in the US, preferring to only sell to the big stores, such as Walmart and Best Buy. I don’t know why they’d stop, surely it is the same price to deliver to one store as it is to another, however, this is bad news for physical music sales. Independent CD shops tend to …

I have been waiting for a decent way to sync my feeds to the desktop from Google Reader, whilst still being able to keep up with them out and about. My only problem with this so far is that I forgot I already had NNW installed, and my two sets of feeds have merged somewhat. It’ll take a while to sort, but I have a feeling it will be worth …

Here are some more of my favourite photos from our visit to the West Midlands Safari Park: As I alluded to in the previous post, the lions were quite popular, and the traffic backed up as we got towards the corner of the park where they were all resting. Considering how long it took to get near them, it's only fair to come away with a great picture like that. …

Apparently the successor to the somewhat aging USB 2.0 interface will be known as Super Speed USB. The current interface answers to the name High Speed, leaving little wiggle room for 3.0 to go bigger, but bless it for trying anyhow. I cannot wait to learn what comes next. Should we take suggestions now? I’m pitching Supercalifragilistic USB. You? Written by Mr C.

Leo has added to his ever-expanding network with a new show: This Week in Google. The first show is live, featuring Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis, with topics including Apple blocking the Google Voice app, drunk emailing, and Google Wave. Always recommend checking out a new TWiT show, even if it’s not your thing.

This past weekend, we visited the West Midland Safari Park. It hadn't actually been part of the plan, but sometimes visiting animals you wouldn't normally see is the only way to brighten up your day. There were the usual deer type animals, some buffalo, and plenty of zebras and things. It was the rhinos and elephants that we enjoyed seeing though. It was interesting that as we were going round, …

This is one of the best blog entries I've read in a while, despite the fact that it is in the form of an image, which I would normally frown upon. The topic in hand is the progression from terabytes to the next level petabytes. It took me a while to get my head around this at first. A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, a petabyte is a thousand terabytes. …

If ever there was a need for baby pandas, it's today. A Pandogropher (Cassie)/Flickr

There are studies emerging all over the place regarding who actually uses Twitter and what they get out of it, and it seems as though the powers that be are starting to take notice. The social networking site has long since ceased to be a place where you answer the original question "What are you doing?" In fact, I just had to go and check the website itself to see …

Our hero FKM has finally opened up about Le Mans, and it makes good reading (even when murdered by Google Translate). There's a lot of detail about the broken leg, and the race itself, but the best bit comes at the end, when he talks about why he looked grumpy on the podium: Sorry ... I am not proud of this moment for my guys, for all the work we …

I recently uncovered a site called 11 Points which compiles top ten lists, but with eleven items. Some of the lists are rubbish, and the site is very garish to behold, but there are some gems to be found. I have always liked top ten lists and similar. The first podcast I subscribed to was Top of the Pods, which is sadly no longer broadcasting. The idea was a simple …

With all the current news and info emerging about the Apollo 11 mission - celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landings - it's hard not to think about space travel and what the future of it is. During a reunion of the Apollo 11 crew, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong seemed to think that Mars should be the next destination. They also didn't stop at dreaming up _visits _to …

Today, the first LibriVox book that I co-ordinated has been completed and catalogued for the wider world to enjoy. If you're at all interested in a book that follows the life of a prehistoric caveman, then I recommend The Story of Ab by Stanley Waterloo. It was quite exciting when I saw this book turn up in the new releases RSS feed, as it is with any book I'm involved …

I don't really enjoy hot drinks much, the occasional cup of tea or hot chocolate, and certainly not coffee. That being the case, I feel like I am missing out on the joy of the vast variety of mugs there are available to purchase. I was doing a little searching, for no particular reason, and came across a couple I would want, if I could justify buying them only to …