No money for new Nails

Following in the footsteps of the likes of Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails have offered their latest album as a free download and also deliberately leaked it onto file sharing networks. The album, entitled Ghosts I-V, is available as a free download with an extended high-quality version available for US$5. On top of that, fans can also order the CD for US$10 or get tow "deluxe" versions with photography and a blu-ray disk for $US75 and $US300.

On his blog, lead singer Trent Reznor said “We believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them."

MyTake - Not all content is created equal and the recording industry needs to understand this. By offering a number of different variants, the value of the content becomes clearer, you get why you are paying 5 bucks for the high-quality version, you get why you need to pay for the Blu-ray dick - because the content is worth more.

St Paddy goes virtual

The world loves to celebrate St Paddy’s day – usually with a few pints of Guinness. But how about celebrating with a few virtual pints? Tourism Ireland has hosted a virtual St Paddy’s day parade in Second Life featuring up to twenty floats and a treasure hunt around recreated landmarks such as The Guinness Brewery.

MyTake – great move and interesting content, they have really thought about the network and provided residents with something interesting to take part in. We’re seeing a lot more brands getting involved with Second Life, the tipping point can’t be far off.

Normal service will resume soon...

For those of you that regularly read my blog, apologies - I'm actually on holiday. For those of you that are new to it or just dip in from time-to-time.... it's usually a lot more interesting than this! 

I've just spent a brilliant week in the Hunter Valley and I am feeling chilled and ready to deliver some more Digiwedoness soon. 

As you can see from the picture (and for those of you familiar with the Hunter Valley) I made it to the Blue Tongue Brewery, very worth while! Also, for those wine enthusiasts out there, I can highly recommend Tranquil Vale as a place to stay and buy some wine.

Anyway, normal service will resume soon.  

Are you sitting comfortably…the wascally wabbit is about to begin

Once upon a time there was a little rabbit called The Nabaztag WiFi rabbit and he liked to read RFTD tagged children’s books. What that mean is that this wascally wabbit responds to books that have a special tag inside them, the end result is that it reads the content of the book (the story) to your child – as a parent, I’d probably say that’s our job, but hey.

There are already a few RFTD tagged books available in France and in the UK, with plans for a global roll-out later. In addition to the books, you can also get "ztamps" for your wabbit, which are basically RFID stickers you can stick on anything you like – i.e. keys, teddy bears. When the sticker is held to the wabbit’s nose, it responds with a pre-set response such as playing music. The other cool thing that it can do is subscribe to RSS feeds and spit them out when prompted.

MyTake – I don’t like the idea of removing the parent from reading time, I think it’s important to bond with your child and encourage them to read, something that the wabbit probably won’t do. On the other hand, the idea the child can interact with the wabbit is very interesting and encourages them to interface with technology at an early age. In addition, the RSS feed function could be a great way to share fresh content with your child instead of pulling out the same old books every night. I like the idea of sitting round the wabbit with your child for your their personalised RSS feed adventure.

i(pod) of the tiger….give me two more!

Personal trainers, love them or hate them, they usually get results for you. But not everyone likes to have some muscle-moulded bloke or whippet of a women screaming “One more! One More!” at them. Well, there could be a new choice on the horizon. As part of the Nike + iPod partnership, the fruit ‘n’ swoosh duo are working with a number of gym-equipment manufacturers, including Fitness, Precor, Star Trac and Technogym, to make their equipment compatible with the Nike + iPod system.

The result would see gym goers hooking up their iPod Nanos to a piece of gym equipment, record their workouts then upload the results to the nikeplus website. Presumably, this would then allow them to analyse the results and help with their next workout session.

MyTake - It’s very interesting to see that more and more personal data is being captured by us, the individual. More and more aspects of our lives are being digitised for us to review, analyse and share as we choose – in this case you could imagine mates gloating about their calorie-busting sessions, or 20 minute sprints, hey, there could even be a Facebook app in there. Through the different tools out there, it seems we are creating almost real-time digital versions of ourselves - what we like, what we feel, what we want, and now, how hard we are exercising. The more of us we have out there, the easier it is for others to interact with us, which is the true power of the social network. “Alan is….”

The goggles never lie

You know those arguments where someone says “I never said that” or “I’m sorry, I don’t remember that meeting”, or even “No, I never touched that”? Well, these phrases could soon be a thing of the past if some researchers at the University of Tokyo have their way.

They have developed a pair of video goggles that records everything that the wearer looks at and recognises objects and assigns names to, then to top it all, another program goes back and creates an easily searchable database of the recorded footage. Ultimately designed to function as a high-tech memory aid, the goggles promise to make losing your keys, wallet or mobile phone a thing of the past.

MyTake – I think the goggles have an even more interesting use beyond that of a memory aid. As I suggested at the beginning of the post, those sticky situations of did they/didn’t they could be easily resolved, plus perhaps a more interesting use could be as a UGC capture device. News crews could be fitted out with them when going to cover a story, or even holiday makers could purchase a pair of “Holiday goggles” to ensure they never missed a second.

Girls geeking it up?

If you ever end up at a tech or games conference, there’s one thing that you’ll notice fairly quickly – the male to female ratio being heavily skewed towards the men. But, according to new research out today from a UK supermarket this could be about to change, with the findings suggesting that girls may now be better at some computing tasks than boys.

The survey of over a thousand 7-16 year olds revealed that girls were more likely to know how to set up a word document, put a profile on a social network or upload a video onto YouTube. In addition, the survey also revealed that 10 per cent of the boys said they weren’t confident with computers compared to just 6 per cent of the girls.

MyTake – As a very strict History Master of mine used to say – Inconclusive. I don’t really think a survey of this nature can predict the number of girls that will end up in IT. As we are required to become more and more hands-on with technology, it’s only natural that our level of awareness increases. The other interesting thing here is the findings that girls are more likely to know how to set-up a profile on a social network or upload a video onto YouTube - So, in essence, they are more likely to engage in socialising using the web, which in my book is simply an extension of their offline behavior. I think a lot of this comes down to preference not ability.