I should mention that, quite a while ago now, I did a comparison between the top five smartphones, including the Hero.

Note: The poor picture quality is more of an advert against the Palm Pre’s camera.

The Hero itself is a teflon-coated masterpiece of construction, albeit one blemised by the unsightly and pocket-cumbersome chin that HTC initially adopted as a staple design feature but appears, thankfully, to be undergoing a swift phasing out. The casing is good to hold but it’s kryptonite appears to be colour: models I’ve seen come in a choice of either a sexy dark blue/black or a dull cream like the puke-stained lino flooring in a particularly underwhelming nightclub. The latter colour tries so hard to play off Apple’s “sterile white” motif on some models of Macbook that it’s remarkable to turn this thing on and not be confronted with the stoic apple symbol that you automatically associate with crushing dejection. I make such references to the colour because my review model came in this ghastly cream that will quickly start to grow murky and give the handset the colour of an old plaster.

The Jay Leno chin houses a standard trackball and a search and ‘back’ button for web browsing, the chrome portion below the screen flaunts the standard phone keys to navigate the Android OS. The top and bottom edges are for the ports, standard headphone jack atop and mini-USB port for charging beneath. Save a volume rocker, itself barely visible as it matches the casing colour, HTC have elected to keep the edges of the phone fairly bare, no doubt harkening to Apple’s iPhone strategy of having only the bare minimum in ports and buttons. The back sports a rather good 5 megapixel camera that delivers a remarkable picture quality that far outstrips my Palm Pre (as the handset images above clearly indicate). Crispy 320×480 screen with 16-bit colour offers a passable display, but not one you’d want to watch a particlarly high quality video on, the recessed screen creates a poignant seperation between touchscreen and viewscreen that was slightly offputting to use but not a significant problem.

HTC have superimposed their own “Sense” User Interface to the Android OS, allowing features such as multiple customisable homescreens and multi-touch web browsing, to leave their own mark on the device. This additional UI includes a plethora of built-in widgets and gizmos to make personalising the fully customisable homescreen easy and reduce the need to go wade through app stores on your first use of the phone; one of the best widgets is the Twitter widget that includes a real-time feed and allows you to tweet directly from the home-screen. Other widgets include a website bookmark slideshow, message displays and the ability to customise multiple home-screens for different purposes, such as having one set up for work purposes and another for day-to-day, toggling between them with a simple side-swipe. This is the first Android phone to support multi-touch, pre-installed through the tweaking that HTC provided in ‘Sense’ – however, it’s far from the comfortable pinch-zoom you get on the iPhone or Palm Pre and can sometimes feel jittery and unresponsive. The onscreen keyboard is standard Android, which I feel is where ‘Sense’ has missed a trick, the keys are small and hard to manipulate properly and writing anything at length was a nightmare (which is odd because my nightmares usually consist of my flatmates attempting to shave my legs). As usual with Android, they’ve done what they can and heavily integrated text-prediction systems can turn even something as obscurely typed as ‘wrotwra’ into ‘writers’ without needing to be prompted, though this can lead to some confusing moments when you try and enter a non-dictionary word (particularly applicable when tweeting) as it persistently tries to correct you, like the aforementioned pseudo-erudite fuckwits at a dinner party.

Spotify mobile came out late last year as a subscription-based service, allowing music streaming across your data connection. The app, which has been provided for the review model by 3, lets the user find and play songs, create/import playlists and save them directly to the phone (albeit in a DRM laden format that will only work within the phone itself). Perhaps my biggest criticism of the phone comes in here, it’s sound quality can be tinny at times – it has two rear speakers with a larger one on the front of the phone for phone calls, but when, for example, music is playing the device and is placed on it’s back the sound is severely muffled. This shouldn’t be a problem for calls and can be resolved by placing the phone on it’s side, though this is an awkward solution that you wouldn’t use long term. Songs on Spotify come in at a reasonable quality, when using headphones, the same as you would experience from a standard MP3 file, and will buffer and play astoundingly fast for it’s standard 3G connection in the Reading area. As this is a premium service, the app comes sans-adverts that you hear on the free computer software and is available for £10 per month. While you can upgrade to a higher bitrate package, also lacking the adverts, with a standard 3G connection and larger files to stream, this may be more trouble than it’s worth. The app is intuitively laid out, allowing you to switch between ‘Now Playing’ and search modes without interrupting the song or getting lost in a haze of settings; a five button lower menu allow you to move between all the commonly used features and an ever-present search button allows you to find a song faster than Nick Clegg’s popularity fluctuates.

Skype is a useful, responsive app that integrates VoIP into your phone so you can call other Skype users in the same way you would call someone’s mobile being so bold as to use Android’s self-same UI. It integrates all the same chat features as you get on the real thing and contacts are imported easily, as yet there’s no clear feature to include video chat. The best bit of the Skype app is that is is completely free, requiring no data plan nor pay-as-you-go minutes, giving it a key advantage over phone calls, the only problem I see is that this is a featur that you could only use in certain situations given the relatively niche user-base of Skype over the ubiquity of mobile phones. On a call to Tech-Squared co-host Louis, I was told that the call quality was very good, precisely what you’d get on a phone call, which leads me to my conclusion; overall, the Skype app is a nice touch but, I can’t help feeling, an ultimately hard sell given it’s competing, more or less, with the telephone. A great tool for business calls as it includes the conference features you get on normal Skype, but only really useful if you know a lot of key people who use it. Besides, if you have the data contract to affordably browse the web and use other data-heavy features of the HTC Hero, you probably have a decent amount of voice minutes. This is not a criticism of the Skype app, as it’s definetely worth keeping on your phone because it’s both free and, when used right, can be invaluable, it’s a expected disadvantage with any web service – if Facebook or Twitter had a low number of users, they’d have a hard time presenting their services as cohesive Web 2.0 tools, Skype appears to suffer this problem. Windows Live Messenger apps are quite useful, laying out conversations in a manner strikingly similar to the SMS display on the iPhone, that’s not a criticism, however, as it is extremely well organised and intuitive to use, though it’s become apparent that a lot of people are defecting away from WLM and heading towards Facebook Chat, so if I were to make a recommendation to these developers, I’d say look into that. Ultimately, the Skype and WLM apps are fantastic tools but are, due to the rapidly changing Web 2.0 landscape, a little bit outdated. As apps for VoIP and IM services, they still stand on their own merits, but if they were directed more at the current tools, rather than ones of now-dwindling popularity, their use would be wider.

Of the latest phones, HTC and Android are so ubiquitous they’re becoming the phone equivalent of a screensaver. The HTC Hero handset is fairly standard, the operating system, on the other hand, is saved from repetitive drudgery by HTC’s addition of the innovative ‘Sense’ UI which, though far from perfect, has a lot of potential for HTC to drop their Google overlords in favour of their own refined OS (which, considering the release of Google’s Nexus One phone, looks increasingly likely). If you’re looking to unify your phone and MP3 player, I recommend the Spotify app, £10 per month for unlimited music (incidentely, if you’re not on an unlimited data plan, avoid it like the plague) on a portable device is a great system, just check your phone’s audio quality to make sure it’s worth it first. Skype is free so worth a go and WLM is fantastic if you’re a heavy user.

My overall rating – a comfortable 8 out of 10. A perfectly usable phone saved from being another unremarkable HTC/Android lovechild by the inception of the ‘Sense’ UI allowing customisation and a very fun user experience. The phone has some design issues, however, which have detremental effects elsewhere, like in sound quality or the awkward feel the chin gives an otherwise very sturdy handset. The Hero is aptly named because it shows that the previously shy HTC are beginning to experiment on their own products and not be ruled over by Google – the HTC Hero is your cheap, flashy comic book superhero, but more the literary underdog hero that you can invest in both emotionally and, in the case of a phone, functionally. Given that Google have a history of being ball-breakers for companies they join up with, I just hope that HTC won’t need to bring out the Tragic Hero.

UPDATE: It was previously stated that the Skype app required a data plan, later information indicated that it doesn’t. This has now been corrected.

This sign was put up outside the SXSW in Austin, Texas last month, the annual show included a live episode of Diggnation at a local bar Stubbs. Evidentely, they reached capacity and a lot of jumped up little geeks were name/blog-dropping, feeling that this would impact enough on the bouncer to let them in. Louis showed me this last week when we were filming an episode of Tech-Squared, but they just covered it on Diggnation as well so, given it’s apparent coverage, I feel it’s something I have to say for my fellow bloggers.

Now then, I’m a blogger – that’s a fact, but I am also an aspiring writer. The line between blogger and writer is contentious but here’s my take on it: bloggers are people who write about personal things (i.e. an inane commentary on their comings and goings which only show that they have a boring and repetitive life) and people who give opinions on news relating to a certain topic, usually under a domain of their own name, like me. In early posts I mingled tech news with personal shit and, after realising this wasn’t what would interest people in my writing, made a cardinal rule to myself never to write anything personal and keep it closely stuck to the topics I write about. I consider myself a blogger specifically because I fit into the latter of the two types of blogger, but I also consider myself a writer because I do other things, such as writing for my Uni newspaper, technical writing and so on which allow me to practise writing in a serious capacity and will hopefully serve me well for a career as a writer. If I were writing my blog alone, I wouldn’t be, nor would consider myself to be, a writer – I would be a blogger. Being a blogger carries no shame in it, it simply means that one shouldn’t assume some sort of literary prowess from being able to sign up to Wordpress.

I’ve certainly never considered my blog as something meaningful in technology news because, let’s face it – it isn’t. My Google Analytics results are not something to be impressed by. Even if I was gaining a significant number of hits, I would never consider something like that to be in any way impressive – I don’t include this blog on my CV specifically because it’s a cliché, every geek or wannabe writer mentions a blog or gives a URL in the vain hope that this will seem impressive but we all know perfectly well that it doesn’t. My other undertakings in the field of writing allow me to practise writing, blogging also allows me to practise writing – but practise is no substitute for the real thing – until I have something meaningful published, I am simply an aspiring writer.

I like to think that most bloggers don’t consider themselves writers, and certainly don’t believe that they can gain any sort of status from this fact. Some do and that’s, in a word, hilarious – plus it’s stirred me to write a long brewing post on blogging, even better.

Google have been, for lack of a better word, prolific in their endeavours – rising from an obscure, oddly named search engine to a main player in almost every digital pie they can stick their grubby little fingers into. Having perfected and, with increasing speed, enacted the art of data collection, and having catalogued nearly every scrap of data, they’re moving on to the most old school of old school information distribution and are attempting to digitise books…

For around six years now, Google have been feaverishly cataloging books faster than a hyperactive librarian, meticulously scanning page after page and applying character recognition to create a vast database of books and their content, with a view to have search terms passed through the data and return books that contain information on your search term. The amount of content that you’ll get to see from results is, as of yet, undetermined, as Google are, as you’d expect, being put through the motions of copyright issues. The overarching concept is that, rather than searching to find websites with the information you need, or having to face the daring feat of going to your local library for books on the subject, you can get information the credibility of a book without the hassle and trauma of standing upright.

We’re missing the bigger picture here – Google have tirelessly worked to build what is essentially a global centre for websites, videos, shopping and anything that the internet can do. But there’s always been a divide (a ‘digital divide’ if you will) between information readily available digitally and what’s hard to obtain, but often more useful, in hard copy – once again, also, it’s a trade off between convenience and precision.

It’s not unlike Wikipedia, show me a single regular internet user who hasn’t used the editable encyclopedia in some capacity, it is used because it is a prolific and centralised hub of information. The problem with Wikipedia, as with any website, is that there is a big difference in how this information is moderated – although, despite the bad press it gets, Wikipedia is arguably a more reliable source than other sites as a whole, because it is moderated to a degree whereas the web is not – which means there is no guarantee that the information you see is correct. Getting a book published is another aquatic vertebrate teapot, however, as a manuscript, reseach and information is subject to detailed editing, proof reading and review before a publisher sinks it’s cash into bringing it to paper and print. Non-fiction, therefore, and in particular publications of a scientific or otherwise factual matter is heavily moderated and it’s content is, again arguably, of greater veracity. Google is using their technology to make an online encyclopedia of entirely moderated information, with a plethora of fiction to boot.

I’m usually the first, or at least the second, to bemoan how a new project or gadget won’t be a success for this reason or that reason – but for once the sneeringly cynical side of my brain is taking a holiday, because I think this is fantastic. Many have accepted the sad but ultimately inevitable fact that libraries and books aren’t the primary method of getting information anymore, as with everything the convenience of our ability to retreive massive volumes of information with little more than a few finger movements has lead to it’s downturn. However, if we can get the same availability from sources as reputable and scrutinised as books, plus Google’s ubiquity as an information source, the oft-quoted dystopian vision of a world built on unmoderated and inaccurate information can be shut down by the luddite morons that preach it.

If Jobs is to be believed, the printed word might be dead, but it lives on in another form, albeit an abstract and entirely non-physical form, almost like a spirit…it’s oddly poetic. Gah, that was sickeningly sentimental.

Oh yeah, and if anyone smugly declares anything about the printed word technically living on as eInk screens on eBook Readers they will receive a swift and precise beating with my Sherlock Holmes collection – which is a heavy motherfucker.

CES 2010
Mat Greenfield

Amongst the glitz, glamour and gambling geriatrics of Las Vegas, January saw the arrival of the biggest technology trade shows of the year, the Consumer Electronics Show, parading the latest innovative, shiniest and weirdest tech that bespectacled geeks and corporate suits have to offer. Unfortunately, the Spark* budget didn’t quite stretch to shipping me off to Sin City to attend the show in person, but I’ve still managed to put together a round-up of all the gadgetry-goodness that you’ll be craving in 2010.

New mobile phones were an inescapable point of intrigue this year, as Google showed off their first handset – the Nexus One. While Google have had their Android OS on the market for some time now, this is the first phone that they have designed themselves, with the aim to sell it directly to consumers SIM-free rather than going through network providers. Motorola demonstrated their quirky new phone, the Backflip, a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard on the back that you can flip out rather than the traditional slider. Both these phones are gimmicky and otherwise unremarkable 3G touchscreen handsets, the former dripping with hype, having been promoted far and wide as the “Google Phone”, but lacking any particularly groundbreaking features that set it apart from its HTC cousins. Relatively unknown phone manufacturer ‘Sonim’ garnered more publicity than they’d hoped when they challenged BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons to break the “unbreakable phone”, who subsequently rendered it inoperable by smashing it on the corner of a fish tank.

Netbooks, having well and truly embedded themselves into the realm of the everyday use device, were less innovation and more preservation this year. Asus announcing nothing new to their eeePC range but more carbon-copy models that have barely changed since the last CES besides slightly new cases and more names totally unrelated to their use or purpose (i.e. the Seashell or the Surf with no discernible beach link). The only major innovation on the show-floor here was the theatrics of Alienware in demonstrating their M11x gaming netbook, the first small laptop with sufficient graphics and processing power to run all the usual niche features of a gaming laptop, like customisable case lighting, without breaking your spine when carrying it, a definite plus.

While the turn of the decade didn’t see the invention and full-scale integration of flying cars that we’ve been promised since the mid-eighties, Ford have done their bit in making modern cars seem a little more Futurama by introducing Sync. A user interface fully integrated into the car, allowing you full scale control and customisation, allowing you to almost totally change your displays on the dashboard, console or any display around the car. Along with advanced phone synchronisation via Bluetooth, voice commands, navigation and, most importantly, cup holders.

Other tech treats from CES included the Powermat wireless charging technology, an adorable TV screen embedded in a toy polar bear from Hanspree, media streamer the Boxee Box, more information on Microsoft’s Project Natal, seeking to rid the gaming world of controllers and a NIMble microwave with a touchscreen Android phone built into it – for some reason.

Surprising no-one this year was the appearance of new eBook reader models, devices that can store and display digital books with e-ink screens to avoid eyestrain and glare. To take on the Amazon Kindle, Samsung wasted no time in announcing a range of eReaders, the E101 and E6 models come in 10-inch and 6-inch displays, have built-in Wifi and touchscreen and support ePub formats which allow flexibility with ebook stores instead of tying you to a device’s store. Entourage’s eDGe eReader is a clever dual-screen device has an e-ink screen attached to a tablet computer, allowing integration between the two devices, such as opening links, searching for references and viewing images in colour from the eBook page on the tablet screen. The Que ProReader set itself apart by being “a professional tool, not a leisure device”, which explains it’s cumbersome A4-page screen size, 3G internet and news subscription feature on the home screen. This costly device would look more at home on the desk of a pristine office, not hastily crammed into a bag and would certainly awkward to carry around or read on. The Copia Ocean 9 eReader seeks to turn digital-literature into the next Facebook with social network features built into the device, allowing discussions and reviews between other people reading the same books as you. But if all these different models and features are too much to handle, the simple jetBook Lite solves that issue with a simple, cheap and no-thrills eReader, with 100 free pre-loaded books to get you going, or Bookeen’s small Cybook Opus. It seems that, with the 2009 showing just how profitable the eBook market can be, companies are eager to write their own chapter, unfortunately their desperation to stand out has lead to many bringing out overly expensive and impractical devices that will not, in the most part, stand up to everyday use.

Keeping up with 2010’s futuristic theme, the appearance of several new Tablet PCs at CES this year exploded the ‘don’t need but really want’ synapse in every gadget-geek’s brain. These new devices blur the line between netbook and smartphone, boasting the processing power of the former with the convenience of the latter; even though they can seldom fit in pockets. Dell showed off their Mini 5 Tablet Concept, a prototype device that so closely resembles a smartphone and even runs Android, though Dell were adamant that this qualifies as a genuine computing device and not a phone, despite needing a data plan SIM card to surf the web and its ability to take calls. Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer made an unusually reserved appearance at a keynote speech to talk about new slate computers running Windows 7, with particular focus on the HP Slate, a touchscreen device tailored for the OS. Lenovo came out with their Ideapad UI, a sleek touchscreen tablet that runs a Linux OS for 3G web browsing and on-the-go usage, but also comes with a keyboard attached to a laptop-esque casing. Sliding the tablet into this case instantly turns it into a Windows 7 machine for more intensive work and solving the onscreen keyboard problem that, for many tablet-adopters, will be a bitter pill. Though Apple has been rumoured to be developing a tablet computer since Steve Jobs had hair, the company was, as per usual, absent from the proceedings in Las Vegas. But did, last week, send out invitations for an event on January 27^th to the US press emblazoned “Come See Our New Creation!” so, with ever more persistent rumours and the explosion in tablets so huge it can be seen from space, odds are that Apple will announce their tablet as this goes to print; I apologise if it turns out they announced a new line of toasters.

With the release of Avatar at the end of 2009, 3D films are officially here to stay, and CES was packed with displays showing how home-cinema will handle the new format. Sharp paraded their 3D “quad-pixel” technology adding yellow to the RGB configuration that’s happily been in place for years, whereas Samsung triumphantly brandished (and rotated simply for emphasis) their pencil-thin 0.3 inch display. Panasonic are perhaps the company embracing 3D the most, announcing the best quality 3D-HD television at CES and showing off their 3D camcorders. Panasonic even announced a partnership with US satellite service DirecTV, which will allow broadcast of 3D HD content to homes in the States, as will Sky in Britain later on. Unfortunately, enjoying the new format almost definitely means you’ll need a new TV, new cabling and a new receiver, meaning that (like HD) it will take a few years to become widely used; if it takes off successfully at all.

Yeah I know this isn’t rounded off particularly well but the article had to be in four sections and I don’t know how my editor wants them arranged, but didn’t mention any sort of closer so yeah.

Feedback please! Much love.

Google, who you would’ve thought had already dipped their toe in the smartphone waters, found it tepid and thrown it’s considerable weight into the clear blue; splashing up it’s Android OS, prevalent in the smartphone market simply for the amount of devices it’s on. It seems that they’ve gotten jealous of the amount of money HTC has made on handsets, providing their open-source OS must’ve been relatively cheap, and decided to build their own pool – “shocking” the tech world by unveiling their new phone – the Nexus One.

This smartphone will, unsuprisingly, run Google’s Android OS and, to be honest, doesn’t seem to have anything that I’d be persuaded by. Sure it’s perfect synergy – other companies made the handsets, Google made the OS and then the two were welded together like some hideous Frankenstein’s Monster smartphone – and if Google has control of both, you’d get the impression that the handset and OS would be optimised for one another. Indeed, the handset is reportedly much faster and runs far better than other Android phones, but past experience shows that this does not mean Google know what to do.

Remember, this is the first time Google have released ANYTHING entirely hardware based and making their debut with something as intricate, market-refined and closely scrutinised as a phone handset, and then having to “deal” with the heavy publicity after some scallywag “leaked” pictures of the handset late last year – by which I mean creating so much hubbubery – seems like a strange idea and, if I’m honest, the general result of that is that the handset will be crap.

Microsoft was sitting pretty for a long time as the only real contender in the smartphone OS market, whilst sitting pretty much on their arse the whole time. Apple released the iPhone with it’s own OS and inadvertedly inspired companies to release their own. Apart from this, regular phones have almost always come loaded with an OS designed and made by the handset manufacturer, and they usually take a few generations before they become comfortable on the hardware. Because Google release an OS first and their handset second will mean that they will spend a few generations with a good OS but a crap phone and the result will remain out of sync rather than allowing both aspects to be refined simultaneously.

That’s a view you could take but I think Google have played a blinder here. Rather than sink their own capital into a handset to test the waters (I’m back to that awkward swimming pool analogy) of their own software, they’ve lent it out to other manufacturers to get their “Google phone” publicised and tested out their OS, found that it’s become immensely popular and now feel that the OS has had enough time, enough tweaks, enough alterations to release hardware that will cater to the needs of the OS, as defined by the user this whole time. HTC, the most prolific conoceur of Android-laden handsets, has been little more than a vehicle for testing. Everyone whose bought an Android handset so far has been an unwitting beta tester for kind old Uncle Google lending out their OS, smiling warmly and saying “have that on me!”. Now cracks the noble heart and dawneth the second stage of Google’s master plan. I will not be suprised at all if, in the next few months, Google halts provision of Android to other manufacturers and begins allowing Android only on their own handsets, to create the sense of exclusivity that iPhone and Palm Pre have with their Operating Systems.

Of course, I maintain that Google doesn’t know enough about the hardware aspect to make a phone that will live up to the OS. I anticipate there will be many complaints about the phone being sluggish to load and other similar problems with the hardware once it’s in the hands of the user rather than being flashed around by some marketing executive in a Google-coloured suit. Although, I wouldn’t buy anything from a man who dressed like Colin Baker.

Their catchprase for this phone is also baffling, “Web meets Phone”? – the web met the phone in 2001, they’ve already married, had kids, grown apart, have increasingly frequent arguments and only stay together for the sake of their kids little 3G and his retarded older brother WAP.

I read a news story not one hour ago, regarding Channel 4 (a broadcasting company in the UK) and their deal with Google to provide full television shows and content on YouTube, probably ad-supported (much like the channel itself). Like all the major broadcasters in the UK, they have their own Video-on-Demand (VoD) service online with which they stream full shows (with interspliced short ad-breaks). The big difference between this channel’s VoD and the one run by the BBC, the iPlayer, is that television shows are available from the time they were broadcast and remain (supposedly) available indefinetely, whereas the iPlayer streams programmes for a limited time after initial broadcast, most of the time one week.

For a bit more background, there was a recent project between the aforementioned British broadcasters to provide a single, universal VoD service that would stream all the broadcaster’s content (details are sketchy) in one place. The project was codenamed Project Kangaroo and came to an untimely end when the Competition Commission deemed that a universal service run by all the broadcasters could be “too powerful” and expressed fears that the service could “hurt competition”. The project was ended but subsequently bought by another company in July who said they would launch in the coming months, no such development appeared and there was no indication of how the formal blocks imposed on the project by the CC would be dealt with.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I heard about Kangaroo when it was in it’s initial stages and was excited by it, as a teenager I watch a lot of TV but socialise, meaning that it’s a pain to have to keep switching between websites and services to get the show I’m looking for when I miss something. The idea of a universal service was delicious and it was disappointing to hear of it’s blockage. But if Channel 4 are willing, and (thanks to Google, only time you’ll hear me say that) able, to put their entire back-catalogue on YouTube, and will run in parallel with 4oD (their own catch-up website) to put new shows online shortly after broadcast, then doesn’t it follow that other broadcasters can to? What do we get then? Why, my friend, we have a universal platform for VoD!

Of course, there are problems to overcome. First, and foremost, the BBC will have to get off their license-fee-funded high horse and put their content on indefinetely (and backlog their old shows if they so choose), which will probably never happen, and then they have nothing to lose from putting the same content on YouTube as well. It wasn’t clear, while Project Kangaroo was still somewhere in the mist, how the Beeb were to run their online content with Kangaroo, given that Channel 4 would undoubtedly have their content on there permanentely and the BBC may not have agreed to do this also, but there is certainly the scope for them to do so which would be the way for the BBC to get full shows on YouTube. Once they’re on-board, it’s quite likely that the other main broadcasters (ITV, Five and Sky) would follow suit, and if they didn’t it wouldn’t really matter (all you’d really miss is Corrie, Neighbours, Gadget Show, Fifth Gear and Futurama). But if they did.

There you have it, a Video-on-Demand service on one univeral platform, which most internet users are familiar with and already know and love. This could be easily acheived without any discussion or deals between the main broadcasters themselves and all they would need is the go-ahead from YouTube (arguably a broadcaster in their own right). This would also avoid all the crap and red-tape from the Competition Commission as long as it’s only ever seen as several individual deals between the broadcasters and Google and never as a joint venture and be far easier to manage if it’s each channel working their own account on the Tube.

This would be the ultimate makeshift Project Kangaroo, and far more convenient than the travesty of watching the universal VoD service in the USA, Hulu, attempting to get it’s act together for a UK service (they were allowed in the US so presumebly avoid the bureaucracy here). It would be far more adaptable and keep up to date with changes on YouTube and with online video content delivery technology in general, without the BBC or any other channel having to shell out to beef up their technology.

Now I think about it, the BBC might as well opt to put their shows on YouTube, it’s mostly already pirated anyhow! Plus, if you don’t pay your license fee, though you can’t watch live tv, you are still allowed to watch BBC iPlayer, so there’s no loss of income by joining this than there is with just iPlayer on it’s own, in fact it’ll probably break up or share out the server demands on the BBC that ISPs are so pissed off about (yes, I know iPlayer is peer-to-peer but the point still stands) and reduce the BBC’s bandwidth cost considerably, so the Beeb could actually save money by doing this.

This is staring them in the face, why don’t they do it!

In other news, I finished The God Delusion the other day and have made a sizeable dent in The Great Gatsby. In any other context you probably wouldn’t consider 30 pages sizeable but given that Gatsby is only about 200 pages, small by most standards, it’s a respectable chunk. I’m hoping to finish it at the weekend to free up shelf space in my flat and add it to my shelf at home – I’m proud of that collection.

Speaking of awesome things, namely me, I was saved £30 today. When I was on the verge, indeed the very pinnacle, of buying Windows 7 Home Premium edition online using my Student Discount to get it cheap. I realised I had to go to my lecture where, talking to someone, I discovered that the University had an educational license to distribute Windows software for FREE. Better yet, it’s available now, so when I’m home for the weekend I will take advantage of the fast internet connection in comparison to here to download the installation file and upgrade my laptop (so I call it because I can upgrade without it deleting my files/programs). At home it will take hours, here it will take days, to download. Now all I need to do is work out how to uninstall my Windows 7 RC dual-boot install, presumebly I can delete the partition that has the OS installed on it but I’m worried it’ll screw up my boot menu that appears when i start up my laptop with which I select an OS installed on the hard drive (7/Vista). If anyone can help, let me know.

Oh and also does anyone know a good image host, I currently use turboimagehost to quickly put my images online so that I can embed or link them into blog posts but the one I use now is pretty unreliable (if you can’t see the picture of John Barrowman on my last post then it’s down again and my point is proven) so if anyone knows a similar but more efficient image host comment and let me know (I have flickr but it takes too long to sign in and I’d rather have a quick and easy one).

I’ve run out of sign off ideas! Goodbye!