I stumbled across Chris Evans’ blog last week, and the first thing I saw was a very cluttered desk. The DJ himself was very kind and offered to help the desk owner tidy things up, and the results can be seen here. This reminds me of the time Mr C and I first had a heated debate about the amount of clutter on my desk. It was a few years ago, and looking at it now, I can’t really understand how I functioned in such a state of disarray.

From the Peugeot press release: Franck MONTAGNY: “It’s great to have won the Mini Le Mans! It all feels very weird, but I think the organisers were right to stop the race, because the conditions really were dangerous. We had an excellent strategy and our car was very fast once we were able to run on slick tyres.” I am wondering if mini Le Mans has been translated badly, but I quite like it. I may call it that from now on. Here’s a picture of lovely Franck with added trophy.

Franck won the race - hoorah! The Montagny/Sarrazin car was in the lead when the race came to an end, although it wasn’t exactly a stunning victory. The entire race was marred by bad weather, with a lot of the running halted due to lightning concerns. McNish was dominating up until a serious downpour, when he spun on his cold tyres, and let the lead change hands. It may not have been a thrilling way to take the trophy, but nevertheless, a win is a win, and it’s all about being in front when it matters. Well done to Franck, he did a fabulous job!

Here we are with the second episode of this rough and ready podcast. Don’t be expecting them on any schedule, mind you, just because I’ve done one for the last two Thursdays, and just cos I mention next week. Shh. Kinda Hard to Describe in Audio This week we discuss all things piracy and newspapers, plus an iPhone app, a Google Labs project, and a really expensive gadget. All that and more in our whirlwind round up of all things future media.

The first test day is complete, although Audi finished the day on top just ahead of FKM and Sarrazin’s car. The difference was only about 0.16 seconds, so that is a good start. One very important thing to note, from the Peugeot press release: Running in blue and chrome livery, the two Peugeots will be distinguished by: white mirrors and wing for the N°07 Peugeot 908 HDi FAP Pedro LAMY (Portugal) / Nicolas MINASSIAN (France), blue mirrors and wing for the N°08 Peugeot 908 HDi FAP Franck MONTAGNY (France) / Stéphane SARRAZIN (France)

Baby Panda with added pillow. Credit: Pok Kusuwan/Flickr

Chris Packham has hit headlines for resurfacing an old argument of his, that pandas should be left to die out with dignity. This is bound to ruffle my feathers, because I am one of those people he so resoundedly sneers at, donating £3 a month because the panda is cuddly. But why shouldn’t I? In the original argument, Packham introduces his theory, pointing out that the panda lives on the poor nutrition of bamboo, and isn’t exactly “rabbit-like” when it comes to reproduction. But then he says:

I really enjoyed this film, despite its obvious flaws and that really awful supposedly French accent. There were laugh out loud moments which make up for some of the bad points, and it was a good story with a happy ending. What’s not to like?

Okay, fine, I’ll hold my hands up and admit it, not only am I a blogaholic, I am also a podaholic. Instead of writing several posts on our very new project Media Future Change, I thought I’d dive straight in and create a podcast. It’s a simple trip through some of the news of the past week or so, looking at how the media is changing or resisting the changes that are coming. It sounds kinda weird, I know, so let me clarify. The first show looks at video advertising in magazines, music editing on the web, and why there’s no camera in the iPod Touch. It’s only six minutes, so you may as well have a listen, and let me know what you think!

It’s all quiet in FKM-World right now, so here’s a quick photo to brighten up your Friday. Credit: Mark Mattox/Flickr

I found myself with quite a few stories to discuss today, and rather than spend time trying to string sentences together on the page, I thought I’d bite the bullet and get on with the podcast. If You Want More Than 140 Characters A roundup of media news over the past week, including behind the scenes of TV shows, editing podcasts in the clouds, and a small victory for ebook fans.

People, I have found a new game! It’s been a while since I subjected you all to the addictiveness of I Love Traffic, and the wackiness of Skywire, so I thought it was time I shared another gem with you. This time we’re talking about Meeblings. At first it looks like a lot of random coloured blobs on the screen, and actually… that’s exactly what it is. It ever so slightly resembles the addictive Lemmings, in that you have to save the Meeblings by getting them to the Way Out sign. The non-orange Meeblings provide you with ways and means to do this. Click and hold on the yellow ones to drag all the blobs towards that particular Meebling. Click on the pink ones to reverse gravity. A grey one switches any electrical items on or off (normally fans). The green ones in the above picture, well, they grow into trees. I haven’t really figured out why yet.

If you have access to the BBC, and particularly iPlayer, I want to recommend the Saving Britain’s Past series. I have seen the first couple, and was very struck by the second episode in the series, all about the Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. The programme tracks the attempts to save some of the more iconic developments in Britain’s history, with other episodes focusing on country houses and the iconic buildings in Bath. The episode about Sheffield really captured my imagination though.

I have just remembered that Mr C asked me to write about the downside of the Google map via Android experience, just to provide a bit of balance to my previous post on the subject. We were headed out and about to visit the lovely Alex and Kat, but only managed to get five minutes from our house before hitting some serious traffic. We don’t tend to sit in traffic if we can help it, and would prefer an adventure through all the back streets rather than sitting snapping at each other. You don’t normally expect to have to break out Google maps before you’ve even got going, but this we had to do.

Ah, stupid Thursdays. Here are some baby pandas to help us all through the day. Credit: Dustin Crawford/Flickr I also want to point out the latest ZooBorns post on pandas, which introduces us to the newest cub at the San Diego Zoo. Nick, over on Sidepodcast.com, said the cub looked suspiciously like George from Rainbow. It does too!

Another film that I have seen before, but this was a spur of the moment purchase on iTunes so I had no real thoughts or expectations when it came to watching it. Not even slightly how I remembered it. A lot more bloody, and certainly more moody than I recalled. However, that was mostly endearing (aside from the ear), and the characters are awesome. I never quite know where I stand on writer/directors who cast themselves in movies though. At least it was only a small part.

Here are a couple of Twitter bits and pieces I have found that I wanted to share - when Twitter does good. Cabbie’s tweet reunites lost Blackberry with owner - a simple tweet saved a lot of headaches, which is a really nice story. However, the way Twitter is organised at the moment makes this kind of thing really unusual, as you have to be searching for something specific and just happen to see the tweet in question.

It finally happened - the App that has been hitting headlines for weeks now has made it into both the Android and iPhone store. There was a lot of doubt over whether Apple would allow the app into their store, particularly over in this corner of the web. However, it’s there, it exists, and it’s time to see what all the fuss is about! Here’s a first impression review of the iPhone app.

I have spent my Sunday evening arguing with Final Cut, however, I got there in the end. Here’s some footage I put together from this year’s Bournemouth Air Show. Music: Manda and The Marbles, Upside Down Also at the air show, the Avro Vulcan Bomber. Mr C donated some money towards getting the Vulcan back in the air, so we’ll dedicate this short clip to him!

I bought a new pair of shoes! These are pretty cheap shoes that were in a sale from one of those cheap shoe shops, so I am not bragging about the style or quality of the shoes. The point here is: it was an impulse buy! I hate buying shoes. Really and truly, it is one of the worst things I have to do, second only to getting my hair cut. I have big feet, shoes don’t tend to fit me, and I am not a fan of parting with money for something I take very little notice of.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of baby animals that are cute. I’m quite specific when it comes to which ones I like, but either way, it doesn’t seem like a sensible idea to take me to a country farm show. Where there are cute baby animals. For sale. No, I didn’t get one. Sadly I didn’t have £75 on my person, but if I did… well, we could be having a very different conversation right now.

I went somewhere recently and saw a chocolate fountain (pictures coming soon). I know that isn’t particularly exciting, but mmm, chocolate. In my travels across the web, I suddenly uncovered a mini chocolate fountain. This is sort of desk sized. A while ago, I talked about things you could have on your desk to brighten up the work day. I think a chocolate fountain would just about do it! I suppose it could get a bit messy, and it would be hard to pick up the phone in a hurry if you were also covered in chocolate. Perhaps it is better off at home, but that’s okay. I found some more great stuff to go with it.

Here we go then, a selection of photos from the amazing A Perfect World of Pandas Flickr Group. Credit: xu ye/Flickr The one one the end so looks like it is sucking its thumb. Credit: hwee__ling/Flickr I’m not actually sure this one is a baby, but so fluffy! Credit: Cheryl/Flickr Ah, the cuteness.

Okay, perhaps this doesn’t really count as reading, but it is a book, and I started at one cover and got all the way to the end. This is more of a scrapbook with all kinds of snippets from each character. Nessa guides you through giving birth, and provides some letters to her former lovers. Smithy talks about beer and football - a lot. Gwen submits her application form for Dragon’s Den, whilst Bryn has a lot to say about technology and about Wales, and preferably the two together.

I’ve seen this film before, probably a couple of times, and I even saw it in the cinema when it was first out. It always fascinates me that the film is 90% Hanks but not boring. As good as I remembered, and on every viewing, I don’t understand how this film is interesting. Nothing happens. He makes fire. He knocks out a tooth. He spears a fish and drinks some coconut milk. But it’s great!

I’m not a short story reader normally, but I’ve been getting more and more into the format recently. I read the original Twisted book a long time ago, and have had this sequel sitting on my bookshelf since it first came out. I adore Jeffery Deaver’s writing and have read most, if not all, the Lincoln Rhyme novels. The amount of detail and knowledge about crime, the police system, forensic evidence, it boggles my mind.

Going back to the book, though, I did find it tough going. I think it was another one of those issues where I couldn’t relate to this 13 year old girl who dreamed big. She was so full of thoughts about politics and the future. When I was 13 I thought about pop music and bubblegum. I feel terrible about this. Still, I did manage to read it all the way through this time, which is something to note, as I believe I have tried and failed a couple of times before.

One photo today - busy, busy, busy. ‘Tis a cute one though. Credit: Ben Beard/Flickr

Not only have I just uncovered a new site covering the world of eBooks, but it is a site that is asking for contributions. Yay! Starting from the beginning, I read the Random Acts of Reality blog which is written by an ambulance technician (I’m not sure they’re still called that, sincere apologies), and is a really fascinating read. The author, Tom Reynolds, also compiled a book on the same subject, and is now starting this new venture: Paper Not Included. There isn’t much on the site yet, but just the title got me excited.

For some reason I feel like I should make excuses for watching this film, but hey, it’s not just for kids. Who doesn’t love a good bit of Pixar? Perhaps this film isn’t AS much fun as it was the last time I watched it, but it’s still a perfectly acceptable way to spend an hour and a half, Pixar certainly know what they’re doing creating multi-level films, especially with all the little things you only notice on multiple viewings.

The Telegraph has been doing some digging into when Hulu will reach European shores and although it looks like deals are still be negotiated, progress is being made. Of course, they only have “a source” for their article but it claims that ITV are the closest to signing a deal with the online video provider and that would most likely have some exclusivity associated with it. The source says: Hulu has been in talks with all the major British broadcasters but has made the most progress with ITV. It has offered each broadcaster the chance to take equity in the company in exchange for full-length programme rights.

Franck’s official site has updated with thoughts on the race at Sonoma, and confirms what we all thought - a disappointing race but FKM still showed well. We would have loved seeing Franck repeating his last year’s success in Long Beach as he scored a strong second place for his first Champcar race. That was finally not the case this weekend but Franck still did an amazing job getting used to the car so quickly. He scored the 3rd-fastest laptime during the race! Pretty good for rookie!

At the moment, I am pretty good at dreaming up something to write about and getting it done within a few days. For a while, I went through a busy stage, where I created a lot of draft posts for this blog, with the intention of writing them up later. Some of them have come to fruition, others are just getting older and older. I had a week off last week with the intention of catching up a little, but even that didn’t work. So, instead, here are some of my notes that will never make it into full blog posts.

Boo. I can honestly say that I stayed up to watch the race, and then went to bed once Franck had to retire from the race. How disappointing. FKM had been involved in an incident on the very first lap, when the cars in front tangled together leaving little space for those behind to squeeze through unscathed. Although he was now running towards the back, miles away from his 8th place starting position, it was still going okay.

Hello! I know I have been quiet since Franck’s race seat was announced, and I should have been following his performance in testing as well as in qualifying yesterday. Apparently rookie’s get a bit of extra time on track which is a really good thing to see. I saw some of qualifying yesterday, although I never really established which car was Franck on screen, and only caught the last few minutes of Round 2.

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 lot of notifications on my phone for emails, and as quite a lot of the services I use are in the US (LibriVox, for example) these can come in at odd times of the day and night. Rather than be woken up every half hour, I thought about switching the notifications off. But that’s annoying. I thought about putting the phone to silent, but that is also not ideal.

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. Secondly, I was worried that I would have missed an epic moment from somewhere in the ten years, and be annoyed about it later.

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 is a UK version of Hulu, gathering content from all over the web, from many different providers.

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 interests?

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, or people are more than happy to share what their password is.

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 there, you have to wheedle out the good stuff. I can speak from experience and tell you that trawling through podsafe music is not fun!

I have seen this once, a long while ago, and I remember very little about it. I feel like I should like it because it has Queen songs and involves transcending time which is on a par with time travel. Perhaps I don’t like this film as much as I thought I did. The Queen music is awesome, obviously. But the sword fights are laboured, the accents are annoying, and it doesn’t really make sense. The gathering, the quickening, the prize, it’s all nonsense! Still, Queen!

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 as many people as possible playing Championship Manager, and think this is a great way to get people playing. There is a small transaction fee to cover costs encountered in delivering you the game and a 1p minimum charge, but the cost for the full version of Championship Manager 2010 is yours to choose…

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 products," said Russ Crupnick, vice president of entertainment industry analysis “But with digital music sales growing at 15 to 20 percent, and CDs falling by an equal proportion, digital music sales will nearly equal CD sales by the end of 2010.

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 wrong, if you ask me. We all know the best P&S camera in the world is from Lumix.

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 long time now. I’ve followed Maggie through plenty of adventures and didn’t really think much of it as she created a list of 100 things she wanted to do before she died. It sounds kinda morbid but is actually quite inspiring really.

_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 way of teasing the fact that there may be more in the way of video coming soon.

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 that the internet cannot. Glossy pictures and feature articles work better on paper, whilst up to date news doesn’t fit the print model any more.