They have some pretty large artists like Kanye West and Kate Perry while having lots of small indie artists and electronic people. The way the SixtyOne was setup is that you can browse the site and have your songs play in the little sidebar player. Last.FM sucks as doing this and you have to open another window, and then browse. I have it open on my littleside laptop playing through the day and it’s great! The music that I find is more suited to me than ever before, Last.FM think’s i’m into hardcore heavy metal - which I’m not, sorry.

Overall - the SixtyOne is a pretty amazing site, I defiantly recommend you check it out! When signing up, use the referral name as: bayliss and then we both get some love.

But recently, I found the service was slowing down, and the films weren’t being delivered as quick as they could. I then discovered that they had been purchased by Tesco (a supermarket in the UK). I simply thought that £14.99 a month for unlimited DVD & Game rental (2 at anytime) is allot of money for the service that they offer.

Does anyone else use LoveFilm and what do you think of it? How do you get your films, and how do you watch them? I’d like to know!

Have a read of this: Times Online

Hannah is a very opinionated young woman. In 2007, HCPT took her with them to Lourdes, France. HCPT is a charity that take handicapped children to Lourdes, France, for a nice family holiday, free of charge, without their parents - allowing them to have rest time. She had an opinion on everything that we did, we have to take into consideration, that this girl of 13.

What the point of this blog post? Well - this current news that has spread across the media is a PR stunt. Her mother has pointed out that she asked Hannah multiple amount of times that she is sure that she wants to have the operation, and all the time she has said no. I have met Hannah’s mother, she is ALSO a opinionated and someone who likes to take over situations and be the boss. In one meeting, hannah wasn’t allowed to talk and for her mother to do all the talking for herself..

Hannah wanted a dream holiday to Florida? - FARSE! I want a dream holiday, but she wants it for free because she isn’t going to live? Excuse me? You have been offered a heart transplant, yet you denied but you want a FREE holiday? I’m sorry, but this is one stupid little girl. But now she can’t get travel insurance? ARE you surprised?

Now she using her illness (which can be fixed) to get

a) Free Holiday

b) Travel Insurance

c) Donations

_________

I’m am disheartened by this, I know for one - this a PR stunt, she wants a free holiday, and not a decent life. I for one, would want a better life, than a holiday to florida. 

I gave up up at this point because  I got so annoyed. My dyslexia cut in on this, and I’m sorry for about speech. - I made a recording instead:

Original - MP3

Eh? A proxy in otherwords?

Yes, that’s essentially really what we are doing - for those are confused by a proxy - it’s the middleman between you and the location that you are trying to reach.

Today, i’m going to show you how to use SOCKS, or a SSH Proxy. Now, you will need a web host for this, and it needs to have SSH support for this. I know MediaTemple & Dreamhost do - check with your host just to make sure.

We’ll be doing on this a mac and using Firefox as our browser

So first we need to open the terminal - for those who don’t know where that is:

Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal

Now we need your username and address of your server.

ssh -ND 9999 you@example.com

Now, of course you replace this with your credentials which you should. It will then ask you for your password, you should also know this too. For dreamhost - this is the same as your default FTP details.

After you have entered your password, it will not print anything else - it’s job is done and ready.

Setting up FireFox to work with your SSH Proxy.

If everything looks like that, then were good to go! Hit ok, and so if you can load the start of FireFox.

I hope you find this helpful, it’s works for me and I find it useful at WiFi hotspots where sometimes you don’t feel secure. If you have another medthod, please leave a comment or send me an email.

A NetBook is striped down Laptop, with little “extra’s”. It’s a low powered and small! With the average screen size of nine inches, your not going to be using this as your first computer. Alot of larger computer companies have stared playing the netbook market including Acer, Asus, Advent, Dell, HP, MSI and Samsung.

Most of them all contain:

• SSD or 120/250GB HD
• 1.6Ghz Intel Atom or higger.
• 1GB of RAM
• 8″ - 10″ Screen
• WiFi
• Webcam

These are very appealing to people on the market to buy a cheap, sensible, portable Laptop as an extra to their already powerful desktop computer.

The Acer One

One of the best netbooks on the market and certainly one of the cheapest for the low-end model. With a cool white or blue finish, this is certainly an excellent choice. Reports have shown that the SSD model is very slow. The model above it however the model with a 120GB HD has been getting praising reports.

Asus EEE-PC

The main machine to start of the trend and is still one of the man competitors in the game. Compared to some of the other netbooks, It can be overpriced. The eee-pc to my does not look that good, and other models look alot better. But the hardware is better than other devices.

Advent Netbook Family

One of the quieter brands here in the UK, yet still produces pretty hefty machines at low prices. Looks good with a minimalistic look and approach to their models. I’d pick one up, but i haven’t seen any decent reviews on them yet, if someone can point me in the right direction, that would be excellent.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

Even dell has had a bash at the market, coming in with a machine. Compared to the rest of the other machines, it’s rather pathetic. You can’t have a normal physical hard drive, and instead SSD only which is a blow to people who are wanting to store a bit more than their iTunes library.. Over here in the UK, it is overpriced compared to the other machines that you can purchase.

HP Minibook

The most powerful and beautiful machine, but seriously overpriced. But, there are several reasons for why it has such a high price point. The keyboard - it is allot better in comparison to the others. The keyboard is nearly full size and has large keys. The display is also noticeably better with much more vibrant compared to the Acer & Asus.

MSI Wind

One of best, yet is one of the most unknown. Most people recognise the Wind for the ease of putting Leopard onto the machine (Yes, Apple Leopard!) - it has a fantastic battery life, display and keyboard. A range of features which in comparison are allot better compared to the Acer & Advent

Samsung

Samsung has not yet released their models over here in the UK yet so I have been unable to test them for myself - but looking at the review, it scored quite high. With a decent sized keyboard and a quality display! Decent hard drive sizes and a overall winner - the price is certainly high over the rest.

Considering a NetBook, which one are you thinking to get? or have you got one? Leave me a comment!

Why Should You Enter?

Show casing your name, your work and your effort - that is the key. You worked hard to get those pictures the way they are, and worked hard to buy the equipment (if your me anyway). There are lost of Photography competitions online, and locally.

Pffttt… I’ll never win anything..

I think I’ve injured my self with disbelief - I didn’t even think anything of it and to my amazement, I won! You don’t have the most biggest and the best camera ever. A local person won a competition here with a disposable camera. Yes, a decent camera can help sometimes but not always.

Just enter, have some fun, and just have a good time. It’s about taking part not winning.

If i have more than one page of apps on my first generation iPhone, it becomes incredibly sluggish, and the user experience isn’t a good one. Therefore I’m not a fan of them - i have only 5 or 6 apps.

These are:

• Aim (AOL Instant Messenger)
• Last.Fm
• Twitterfon
• Brightkite
• Fring

Notice how they are all social network sites and communication tools? The iPhone to me is a phone and it will be nothing more. (Apart from a music player too).

I want to know: What do you use on your iPhone? What apps do you use on a regular basis, and what are your opinions!

1Password is from AgileWebSolutions, and I was luckily enough to snap up 2 Licenses. One for me , One for a lucky reader of mine! (another post about that soon! Subscribe to my blog for updates!)

What is 1Password?

1Password allows you to store and management all your online user name and passwords. It also has a password generator which is excellent for providing strong passwords. Then the app handles all of these, and keeps them safe in your KeyChain.

What’s The Point of 1Password?

A while back, I was using the same password of multiple sites not realising the consequences of someone finding out that password and then abusing all the sites that he could access. After I purchased 1Password, I went to all of those sites, reset the password and used the inbuilt generation to make some seriously strong passwords. I don’t think anyone is going to be cracking into the passwords that I set up on those sites.

So, it’ll only work with Safari?

Ah! No! 1Password works with Safari, Firefox, Camino, Flock, OmniWeb, Fluid and even NetNewsWire! They all have the application setup inside of the browser so you can easily log into your favourite websites.

What about I’m on the move with my iPhone, and need to know a password?

1Password has the ability to sync with both your iPhone and Palm device, this is one of the best features apart from the app it self. It works like a charm! Also, if you own a MobileMe account, you can sync the key chain to multiple computers, allowing 1Password to operate on any computer that you own that is synced with MobileMe.

I hate filling out forms with my details, it takes to long. Is 1Password for me?

1Password has the ability to create identities which fills all the information on web forms for you. Including Name, Address, Email, etc.. Very simple in your in rush!

Overall

It’s one of the best apps I’ve seen in a while from the Mac Community, I give it a 4.7 out of 5.0!

Along comes, OpenTape which has something fascinating about it. It’s hard to tell the different between this web app and a muxtape. Both work exactly the same, with a flash app running in the background protecting the original track from being downloaded.

This idea has to be one of the smartest idea’s that i’ve seen, and that’s free and of, course Open Source. The worry to me is that if you share copyrighted content, e.g - a song from, Snow Patrol. The issue of legality comes into view. And if you’re sharing their tracks without permission… hmm.. This is awesome for a little & local band that want to share their music with their listeners with ease and without having someone develop an web app for them.

Overall: An excellent, open source idea that works.

• BBC iPlayer

• C4D - Channel 4 on demand.

• ITV Online

• 5Demand

Two out of all four of these are Mac compatible, annoying some mac-only households. With a complete lack of support for one of the most rapidly growing platforms, it seems a little unfair to offer these services to people who have Windows XP & Vista. I know that licensing can affect how companies distrubute their content but really need to think of the end user.

My Mother recently missed an episode of an a program on ITV1, which she missed to record on our SKY DVR. I told her about the ITV on demand service and off she went on her Laptop, navigating her way to the correct page, until she came back to me and asked for help.

The ITV service had asked her to install Microsoft Silverlight - I am not a fan of the app/platform but I know it works well in some situations. She had successfully installed it, and congrats to my Mother who is a bit scared of getting something wrong, especially with her Laptop. What had happened was that her Laptop had blue screened giving me a stop code, which I could not find any specific information on the code that was given unfortunatly. SilverLight is availible for the Mac giving the ability to watch the ITV service, which worked fantastic, no problems. Thumbs up for ITV.

After a simple restart everything was working well, until when she started to play the video. The audio was out of sync with the video, another restart of Firefox, and attempt to use IE fixed this issue. Seems like support FireFox is limited by Microsoft, unusual really…

Channel 4 is also in the same position apart from it uses Windows Media, and a DRM codec, and the same with Five on demand. Microsoft don’t offer any Windows Media player alternatives for the Mac, and Flip4Mac is incapable of handling such Codecs. Channel 4 have a really great service when on Windows. They allow you to download and keep old shows on your computer and availible to watch at anytime. The quality is poor when streaming, but once download it is fine. The library of programs on 4OD is fantastic ranging back to the very start of programs! Including every single episode of Shameless!

BBC’s iPlayer is only the real service that offers support to all most modern OS’s which have a Internet browser and Adobe flash installed. You can also use iPlayer on your iPhone & iPod Touch which is fantastic for when your sitting in bed and there is nothing on the television! The most recent use came to me when I was sitting in a Coffee shop waiting for a friend, but she was stuck in Traffic. I popped out my iPhone, connected to the WiFi that was there and i was away watching that weeks Mock The Week.

I had a workaround for the Windows Only services, and this was to open my virtual machine of Windows Vista and use it this way, this was tough even on my MacBook pro with 2GB of Ram, which really needs to be boosted up to 4GB If I was going to be doing allot of the time.

Another work around Is to spend a bit dosh, and purchase an EyeTV stick which uses up a USB slot but turns your computer into DVR, allowing you to schedule recordings ahead of time, and watching live TV. It also allows the videos that you have recorded to be converted and then synced onto your iPhone, iPod.. etc.

Overall, the services that a offered are aqudate to me, but overall are somethings pathetic. Some required fast internet connections, at least 2mb/s downstream. I want to see more compatibilty with services.