Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Pete Townshend gave the inaugural John Peel Lecture yesterday.

I was initially rather surprised by the choice of Townshend. Peel, it seems to me, stood for the fearless exploration of new music and the blurring of the received boundaries between “mainstream” ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

No, I don’t normally do hardware reviews here, especially not of computery-type stuff, but hey, here’s the exception…

I may have mentioned before that one of my favourite Apple products is the iPod Shuffle. I got a 1st generation Shuffle (A WHOPPING 512MB! ONLY ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

It’s no longer a surprise to see Google doing their own version of just about every other Internet Big Thing. They’ve probably seen what Mark Zuckerberg is worth these days, hence the launch of something that, on initial investigation, looks pretty much like ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Not, however, at the latest allegation that the NOTW hacked the voicemail of 7/7 victims. What’s really struck me since I wrote the last post is the slowly developing picture of life behind the scenes at News International. It’s a strange mix of sinister global ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

After reading the latest chapter in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal…

Missing Milly Dowler’s voicemail was hacked by News of the World (Guardian)

… I jokingly remarked that at this rate it wouldn’t be long before a tabloid admitted to kidnapping ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

For the past year and a bit, I’ve had a couple of blogs on Posterous, mostly for stuff that was too long for Twitter, but too short to warrant full blog posts here. One was for musical recommendations and discoveries, the other for daft little photos I took in ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

I’ll be voting ‘yes’ to AV tomorrow. That’s not to say I particularly want AV as our voting system, but unfortunately we don’t have the option of proportional representation. It’s Alternative Vote or First Past The Post, and I don’t see British politics (or our ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Even assuming Twitter doesn’t go all evil on us, there are going to have to be some changes even to maintain the current level of useability (whatever your opinion of that). Even if the userbase doesn’t change, the rising popularity of linked apps will result ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Dear Mr Twitter,

If you prevent people from accessing your social networking facility via third-party clients (such as Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Dabr, etc) I will simply stop using you. There’s evidence around various websites and social networks today to suggest ( Read more... )

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Oops, sorry. Custom Transcription work has been a bit hectic recently, and I’ve been neglecting all this sort of online social stuff. Anyway…

The world is going to end on 21 October, by which time we’ll have spent five months on the Big Naughty Step after ( Read more... )