I play, you play, we all play with iPlayer

The iPlayer is the best thing to come out of British television for a long long time, along with Dr Who!

I use the iPlayer almost every day, generally just catching up on TV that I don’t watch when it airs. I also used the radio iPlayer almost every day to listen to my favourite radio shows.

Today, the BBC launched a new iPlayer interface in beta, combining both television and radio. I was really looking forward to being able to listen to the radio catch-up on my iPhone in bed through the new iPlayer beta, and whilst this is no problem using my computer, I didn’t realise that the programmes are encoded in Real player format, obviously meaning my iPhone is a no-go. I have sent a feature request into the BBC for this, I really hope others do the same.

 

Otherwise, I really like the new interface. The ‘recently watched’ section is extremely useful, recording what shows have been accessed recently and updating those with new episodes as they become available. There are also RSS feeds available now for certain streams of programs.

I encourage you to try it out if you haven’t already done so. I realise this post sounds like a promotion, I don’t work for (or have anything to do with) the BBC

“Religion is no more the parent of morality than an incubator is the mother of a chicken.”

 

Chicken update!!! We have a couple of chickens in the garden that we keep as pets, just chuck them some food every day and out pops an egg – fantastic isn’t it!?

A few weeks ago, we made a visit to Penistone market and ended up coming home with 10 fertilised eggs. Anywhoo, to cut a long story short, they hatched today! Three this morning and another a couple of hours ago plus another chicken trying to make its way through the shell. 

It’s really fun to watch them stumble around for a couple of hours after hatching, trying to get their feet and then just randomly dropping to sleep whilst walking around. Anywhoo, above is a shot of the first chick hatched, quickly brought in front of the iSight to take a quick snap before being put back to sleep with the rest. Bless him, his first Mac experience!!

Bye for now.

Click to identify song

I remember a couple of years ago a mobile-phone service that was being hyped at the time. The idea was that you held your phone up to a music source, and it texted you back the artist and song name, of course the disadvantage was that it cost quite a bit. I’m sure that service is still out there somewhere, but I found a free alternative today whilst trying to cheat (sshhh) on a radio competition.

Tunatic is a free piece of software for your Mac or PC that uses your computer’s built in microphone (or external one) to listen to a track and then give you the artist and song name.

I found it quite fun to play around with this morning, it picked up most tracks as I was randomly shuffling through radio stations. It did tend to get stuck on tracks that weren’t exactly mainstream however, for example it correctly analysed Duffy’s new single Warwick Avenue but couldn’t identify Bonnie Tyler’s I Need A Hero (it was playing on Magic).

Either way, it’s a fun app and will entertain you at least for a half hour, chucking as many tracks as you can at it to try and fool it. You can also help out with improving Tunatic’s database of songs, if you please, by downloading Tunalyzer (Mac only). An app that scans your music library and sends track info back to it’s servers, helping other Tunatic users with their song indentifying.

Best of all, it’s free.

Andrew.

Coming to you in 2.1 surround sound

I love my iMac, I really do. But, as many people agree, it’s speakers are pretty poor. They’re great for computer sounds, online videos and the odd music track but when it comes to volume and clarity I felt I needed something more. I’ve been putting off buying a pair of speakers for some time. I, like many other Mac users, like things to be minimalist and I cannot stand cluttered desks, therefore I wanted speakers which not only sounded great but looked great too. As of last week, I’d narrowed my options down to two. Based on the reviews of various sites (primarily iLounge), these were;

• JBL Creature II
• Harman/Kardon Soundsticks II

I opted for the Soundsticks based on reviews of it’s sound quality (I actually think the Creature looks a bit better) compared to it’s price. I’ve never really bought speakers before so I thought £100 was a bit on the high side, but….WOW!!! I don’t regret spending it one little bit. They’re awesome!

The set comes with two ’satellite’ speakers as well as a subwoofer. The sound they produce is fantastic, the base is fantastic and spoken word also sounds great (I listen to a lot of radio talk show podcasts). I do have a couple of gripes, there is no dedicated on/off switch either on the speakers or on the base, the only way to fully turn them off is to unplug them. This hasn’t really caused me any problems but we’ll see about that tonight when I try to get to sleep with the blue light of the sub glowing.

Also, reviews have complained that there is not treble dial, I don’t reckon this will be too much of a problem because I’ve already tested the sound with music/audio I regularly but again, we’ll see about that.

A really cool feature is the click-wheel like volume controls. Touch (or hold) on the +/- metal plates, and the volume changes accordingly. There’s a really quick video of that below.

I’m really glad I paid a bit more for these speakers, they sound great and look awesome too. I’ll leave the last word to iLounge,

“They look great, sound great, and won’t kill your wallet.”

Andrew