watch tHe skies

So today a lovely man from Unicar came and installed my Dension Ice>Link Plus for a paltry £40. Some of you regular readers may remember I tried to get Halfords to fit one of these only for them to fail badly and annoy me in the process. However this time, he was done in half an hour (it took Halfords all day to tell me they’d screwed up) and it works so perfectly I think I wept a few tears of joy.

So what is it? The operation is simple: ice>Link Plus translates CD changer messages to iPod controls and switches the iPod automatically on and off as you select/deselect the CD changer source. The iPod is controlled from the head unit‘s CD changer keys and steering wheel controls. So no more crackly music through an FM channel - this gives me CD quality sound and the ability to control my music from the car head unit.

If you are interested in getting one, it’s cost me £140 in total. Argos do one for £99 fitted however that doesn’t allow the unit to be controlled from the CD player apparently.

If you’d like to see the install, read on (beware big piccies and gratuitous shot of my thumb). (more…)

Good old BBC have reported a recent demonstration in Japan of the latest in android technology. The video you will find on the page features a scarily realistic looking lady with silicone skin, a breathing action and very detailed rubber hands.

Couple that with the bipedal robots I’ve seen on the web recently and we aren’t far from walking talking, human looking androids. Next step Bladerunner? Hmm maybe. The step after The Matrix? Hmm possibly. Although more likely the world will end up like that Two Ronnies thing where the women took over and made all of the men wear aprons.

Thanks to Andy my workshy mate for spotting this one.

Well I guess it was inevitable. Few have fought the gadget monster and lived to tell the tale, and I barely escaped with my life, only the swanky MDA Vario II from t-mobile appeased the beast and forced it to retreat to its cave, sated. For the time being. (more…)

So following the clearout of the DAB radio and a few other bits and bobs on ebay, the gadget monster retreated in to his cave and fell in to a deep sleep. Leaving me to work through my cheapo Photoreading course bought from the ‘bay for a fraction of the $600 plus taxes that it costs to import it from the US of A.

Until one of the Engineers at work showed me her latest phone. She nearly bumped in to me in the corridor at work as she was busy typing on her phone.

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“Ahh you see I’m talking to my friend on messenger.” She said.

I was puzzled - messenger has been banned at work, as has personal email and blogs, leaving me completely isolated from the rest of the world between 9am and 4.30 pm on workdays. Sure I should be busy working but if they expected me to work solidly all day then they would have to pay me more. A lot more.

“Messenger? You can get messenger on a phone?”

“Yes, and with this lovely T-Mobile PDA and their ‘Web N Walk’ package, I’m online all the time and it doesn’t cost me any more a month.”

“Oh”, I said. “I wished you hadn’t showed me that, for it is the equivalent of waving a bottle of black label Smirnoff at a recovering alcoholic”.

With that she laughed and walked off down the corridor, deep in textual conversation with someone out in the ether, leaving me wishing that I hadn’t left my office to get a coffee.

The MDA Vario II is a thing of beauty. Slide-out keyboard, Pocket PC, word, excel, email, websurfing, wifi, video calling and instant messenger all in one wondrously compact chassis.

All for a relatively inexpensive £27 a month.

And so I wake at night in cold sweats, the hunger has returned and I’m not sure how much longer I can fight it. The thought of being constantly online, able to blog, email and message wherever I am, for a fixed monthly fee, is almost too much to resist.

And I’m not sure how long I will last, but I will fight it with every ounce of effort that I can muster, trying to ignore that evil inner voice that even now, as I type, taunts me from deep inside my mind.

“Gaaaaaadget”

“Gaaaaaaaaadget”

For there is no killing of the gadget monster. He is an invincible spawn of primal ID that exists in all gadget freaks, often dormant for months at a time, yet awoken by the slightest sniff of novelty and completely uninterested in financial viability. When the gadget monster is hungry, he must be fed, less he begin to deactivate basic human functionality until all that remains is the basic reflex of breathing and being able to punch in your PIN code at Currys.

Aaaah the wonders of ebay. Buy a pocket DAB radio for £50 and sell it for £60 on the very same website. Amazing.

Still, sad to see such a thing of beauty go, but as it would only pick up a signal in the village when I was standing still on a hill it was never going to help me listen to the footie whilst mowing the lawn. I guess I should have known, considering that I fitted a DAB aerial in the loft and piped it through the TV co-ax to each room to get a better DAB signal.

In fact I’ve taken the opportunity whilst I was on ebay to clear out some CDs before no-one buys them any more. Sure I’ve made more profit off the postage than on the CDs themselves, but the extra revenue and space can be used to procure a new gadget to keep the monster happy.

Struggling to find a present for your mate who has everything? Then get him a beer belly! Play have this bizarre device that acts a bit like a Camelbak water bladder, but is designed to sit on your waist and deliver four pints of lager to your gullet without having to lift the pint glass…

Oh well it seems that although my PocketDAB is indeed a lovely bit of kit, it fails to get a signal either in the garden or in mothercare - the two places I intended to use it in. It works beautifully at the top end of the village, however it seems that we live in somewhat of a dip, and the mothercare is pretty much a faraday cage as far as dab is concerned.

So back on ebay with you, my beautiful but ultimately useless portable DAB radio….

At least the gadget monster’s call has quietened for a time.

So I didn’t buy a new iPod. Said I wouldn’t didn’t I? Not enough new features or shiny sexiness to get me to upgrade. At least not yet.

But the gadget monster needed feeding so I bought a portable DAB radio so that I can listen to the footie whilst mowing the lawn or sitting in Mothercare.

So I picked up an “as new” Pure Pocketdab 1000 on ebay for £50 (sell for over £110 in the shops), sniping the auction with my bid 20seconds from the end.

And this morning I get the following despatch notification.

“As we began preparations for dispatching your order, PURE DAB Digital Radio Walkman- PocketDAB 1000 - AS NEW,  the lights dimmed and a special glow appeared around the item.  The team joined hands in eager anticipation as it was carefully lowered into the special protective packaging.  An urgent telegram went out across town and soon everyone had rushed to wave it on its way, whilst a spectacular fireworks display went off in the background. It is with great pleasure that we can therefore confirm that your item has now departed and should be arriving shortly.

We hope you had an enjoyable experience shopping with us on eBay? If you have any questions or issues about your order please don?t hesitate to get in touch. We would very much appreciate you leaving a feedback comment for us, and we will of course do likewise if it hasn’t been done already.”

And with that, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. My “faith in human nature” meter filled ever so slightly, and somewhere inside I cried a tear of joy. It seems that being nice to people is still ok up in Perth…

So the “It’s showtime” event from Apple came and went yesterday, leaving me all a bit happy and sad. Happy because they have finally eliminated the gaps between songs on the iPod and Nano. Sad because it isn’t a firmware upgrade to existing machines and also because the new iPods have little else new about them to tempt me to buy one.

Sure the big daddy iPod is now 80gb with a better battery, but the screen is still the same size. There is some new search feature but really the way I manage my music I know where everything is so that’s of no use to me.

Nanos get an upgrade in memory and some whizzy new colours, neither of which affects me as I can fit all of my “in favour” music on a 4gb Nano without too much concern.

Now Steve Jobs did promise a media streamer in Q1/07. This could be the device I’ve been waiting for, with a simple Apple menu system, DRM-AAC compatible and quicktime video encoding all wirelessly streamed from PC to TV could be a winner, so I am looking forward to that. Also the upgrade of iTunes to version 7 has got some very neat features, such as a new view of your library that lets you flick through your album covers like old vinyl - lovely, and the fact that it now gets album art for you when it is missing. I tried this last night on a new album and it is quick.

So, a bit of a disappointment really as I was looking forward to getting a whizzy new iPod. Looks like my secret gadget fund will remain in tact until sometime next year…

Oh I forgot to mention that in the US you can now buy movies for your iPod the same day as the DVD comes out. But as this won’t hit UK shores until next year at the earliest, I couldn’t really care that much to comment.

Well it has been nearly a year since the last new iPod was announced, and if the rumour mill is to believed, the Apple press conference on September 12 will launch the new product range to fill Santa’s sacks this holiday season.

Google “ipod rumors” (yes unfortunately the american spelling reaps the most rewards) and you will find suggestions of all or any of the following:

1. Upgraded iPod Videos (40gb and 80gb respectively)
2. A new iPod with a full-body screen and virtual click wheel used with touch-sensitive screen
3. A new iPod nano with metallic body a la the mini, in many colours and (maybe) video capability with 8gb flash memory
4. The iChat Mobile, a mobile phone that doubles as a nano

If you read the various sites, it seems that 1 and 3 are the most likely tomorrow, with 2 and 4 definitely in the pipeline, but it maybe a little too soon for them. We shall see. Which ones will persuade me to upgrade from my 2g 20gb iPod? Possibly all of them, maybe none, i’ll let you know on tuesday…