Take part in the A List Apart - Web Design Survey 2007, it's quick, easy and painless
I found this mp3 via my del.icio.us parody mp3 feed - I was amused and intrigued enough to do some Google delving whereby I found the Burn Back Myspace page and the official Burn Back site. This intriguingly has prominent links to here and here, Portfolio Night apparently kicks off May 3. So, amusing Spinal Tap meets The Darkness style advertising and design related songs. What's going on? Smacks to me of a viral campaign to promote advertising. I for one think it's quite funny.
I’ve had my new Xbox 360 for a whole weekend so it’s clearly time to reflect on the experience thus far. I’m sure I’m bringing nothing new to the 360 table as it’s been out for years but this is my first serious experience with it.
Thoughts on the Xbox 360
I now have an Xbox 360. Quick initial notes, it took a while to set up, typing with the controller is a pain. It's kind of cludgy in a Microsoft way but does some clever stuff with the friends flashing up and voice messages etc. Oh and here's my 360's blog - as is popular.
Comedian and actor Stephen Fry joins Tony Blair for a chat in our latest podcast.The pair met in the Pillared Room of Number 10 for a wide-ranging conversation about multiculturalism, the use of technology in politics and Britain's role in the global community. Mr Blair reveals his belief that Britain is more comfortable than ever before with being "diverse, plural and tolerant". #
Lifehacker: Save time by using your phone number for your email address. Clever idea.
Have a listen to the 6 April 2007 podcast episode of The Now Show. Now it's quife funny so that's a good reason for starters. If you listen just over half way through (or so; just past the also funny Supermarket Easter questionnaire) they do an iTunes/Apple/EMI skit to do with the DRM dropping. It's fairly funny, but just full of inaccuracies; iTunes apparently selling MP3s and inventing DRM just for starters. Enjoy.
"I think, however, that the appearance of a hole in one of a pair of my socks three months after the Pope's death is surely another sign of his miraculous powers. The hole is the shape of Antigua, which I have never visited, but which is on planet Earth like me, so (by Catholic logic) this has to be infallible proof that the dead Pope's miraculous powers are responsible for it." #
Following closely on the tail of the first giveaway - here is my second theme giveaway of most of my previous designs. This was an inverted version.
As before, note that these are given away as-is, or Caveat emptor. I offer no support for these and no promise that they will work in your system, though they should do. I have removed all my personal information, links and images so you will have to do some initial digging around in the code to put in your information but it should be fairly clear.
If you do decide to use the design or elements of it please credit me. You can redistribute it with credits to me, but not commercially.
Once again, please enjoy my very messy code and download it from here. More is planned so keep an eye out.
The grand fool giveaway part 2
After lots of hunting on the internet, I found press release and webcast (downloadable) about today’s Apple and EMi announcement of DRM free and higher quality tracks from EMI on the iTunes store. Sounds like a pretty major announcement to me and I hope to read more on Apple’s site soon (so far there’s no mention I can see).
Seems the higher quality, DRM free tracks also cost more money - not so good.
“DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song.” Apple’s US press release.
”We are going to give iTunes customers a choice — the current versions of our songs for the same 79 pence price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 20 pence more”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.” UK press release.
I noticed that DRM free full albums are the same price as the DRMd, lower bitrate ones - nice. MacBreak Weekly has a special with John Gruber on iTunes + EMI - DRM and a video interview from BBC.
DRM free music from EMI on the iTunes store
I have been experimenting. No idea what this is good for but there you go.