Chrome Life

I do all of my work, most of my blogging - in fact, pretty much everything on Chromebook. Thinking about it now, it fits into the change I've been trying to achieve. It's lighter, cheaper, simpler. It's a rationalisation of my tech settings.
I like that I can search for simpler solutions: is there a chrome app instead of software? is there a cloud-based storage answer? I've changed a lot of my previous habits: chiefly, I no longer rely on huge storage-based software like iTunes and iPhoto. Google photos has sorted all my photos, and cured my need for a huge hard drive. iTunes? Well, it just feels like bloatware now, and I only really use it for organising files within Rekordbox.
I've had a macbook air, but just stopped using it. My iPad? That's just for playing pinball. I do use the iPhone 5s for most of my mobile needs, but the Chromebook really is the hub for everything.

Multiplayer game fun.......

How about playing Asteroids with THOUSANDS of people?
While we're on the subject of games, but delving back into more analogue forms of entertainment, i've been delving back into my Pinball obsession recently.

This is the closest to my own Pinball machine that i've found online, it's even a Gottlieb! According to this, (Bowling Queen, July 1964) there were 2650 made, I wonder how many can have survived these four decades?

Have you ever paid for a ringtone?

You might want to read this.....

How much longer will it be with us?

Happy birthday, the CD.

As you might expect....

The internet has, unsurprisingly, been aflame over the past few days with discussions, musings and out-and-out lust for the iphone.
Hmmmm. I'm still not sure. don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't love nice new toys: I do! But I've been through a PDA phone phase....and came right out the other side. I just liked my mobile to be, well, like a mobile phone. To feel like a phone, to look like one, to work like one. It's that last one that's the killer, for me: does it WORK like a mobile? In other words, can you be mobile with it? And that's mobile as in "away from your desk/office/home/country for SEVERAL DAYS"
So, for the past year or so, I've reverted to using one of these, and I absolutely love it (I'm not alone either, check those reviews!) It's simply the only phone that does what it says on the tin. PLUS, the battery is still amazing, here's a radical concept for a future phone: one that you can take on holiday for a week, without a charger, and when you get back it's still working.
:)
So, there you go, that's me; but what about you? What phone do you use, and why?

And our second pic of the day...

Is this. My USB drive. I've had it ages (it was a freebie Tiscali thing from last year's Reading Festival) and it always been useful. Just HOW useful has been revealed to me this morning. This is my USB drive shortly AFTER its visit to the Launderette.
It endured 30 minutes on a hot wash, a 1400rpm spin for about 5 minutes, then went into the dryer for 45 minutes at maximum heat.
And as I type this, it's plugged into my laptop, and i'm playing the mp3 files that were stored on it. Amazing!

Get on this quickly......

Techcrunch has got 10 thousand invites to Joost's beta launch.....FYI, it's web TV, 2.0 style, and it's great....lots of ads at the moment, and slightly fragmented content, but it's still one of those apps (download required) that'll impress your mates......

Looks like I got out at the right time!

Xfm ditches daytime presenters
Oh dear, what a foolish thing to do. And the idea that the listener will suddenly be able to access a huge range of music is just absurd. They'll get access to the daytime playlist. The end result will be exactly the same songs you hear now, just in a different order.
*sighs*
I was listening to Xfm whilst I was in the bath this morning, it just made me very sad to think how far it's fallen. It was such a big part of my life and i'll always have an affection for it, but it really does feel as though they are trying to squeeze the life out of the station.....
Been rocking this recently, another one of those useful tech start-ups: Tubes

I love it when people fire off a great rant.......

Even more so when it's pertinent, well thought out and debunks every myth about having to buy new technology just for the sake of it.
Stop buying products that serve any other master than you.
Related: Don't bother with the iphone, either.
Today has been, if I'm honest, a singularly depressing sort of a day. The weather is closing in over my head; slate-grey and silver clouds teem with fat droplets of dirty rain, the roads are like shiny black snakes, squirming their oily curves beneath the river of cars trying to avoid the western limits of the congestion zone. Work is a tightrope walk between the technical back-end and the brand-management of the on-air strategy and I'm finding it hard to stifle my sighs.