last.fm Announces Free Music
last.fm has announced a new feature whereby you can listen to any track the whole way through up to three times for free.
last.fm team - you legends.
last.fm has announced a new feature whereby you can listen to any track the whole way through up to three times for free.
last.fm team - you legends.
Yep, I still say that to myself every couple of days.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Pandora to cut off UK listeners
Once again, congratulations must go to the British music industry for successfully screwing-over (sorry, there’s no politer phrase) the consumers.
In the e-mail sent to all those reaching Pandora via a UK net address, Mr Westergren said efforts to negotiate an “economically workable license fee” had proved “impossible”.
The rates demanded per track by UK licensing authorities were too high to support, he wrote.
Wow. That’s a new one. The music industry (by which, like everyone else, I mean everyone except the artists who get paid very little) trying to squeeze so much money out of people that they give up and nobody can listen.
Get your act together. You’re selling to people something which they enjoy and provokes emotions, not office equipment. They want music, the artists want to give them music. Let them without thinking about your wallet for once.
[As a side note, Rob is a great supporter of last.fm, whose free radio let him discover Interpol and Death Cab for Cutie, both of which he has subsequently bought albums of.]
Many thanks to Mike (@Mike - is this URL current?) for pointing out the Mac app Genius to me.
Genius is freeware (donations accepted) to help you learn things. You pair answers and questions and then plough through them. It is very useful for learning commercial law cases, as I am doing now (what fun).
Walk into my room at the moment and you will find a few new bits’n'pieces: a heater that makes beeping sound not unlike a microwave (appropriate since it will happily cook the room quite quickly), strewn-about bits of paper detailing exactly how direct effect in the EU works (or doesn’t), but most crucially, a shiny new MacBook, dusted to within an inch of its life.
The new MacBook is, of course, stunning. More on that later (after I’ve finished this essay and revised for exams), but for now just a quick example.
As predicted, OmniFocus syncs with iCal, which syncs with my old iPod. What I didn’t predict was the built-in Bluetooth, which syncs iCal todos and dates and the address book with my mobile phone.
Hell. Yeah.
P.S. I’m sure there are 101 different ways to do this on a PC, but they all seemed to involve either Outlook (which is no longer standard in the Home & Student edition of Office which I have) or some other bits of software, most likely which are paid. With the exception of OmniFocus, this is all built-in.
I’ve recently bought another hosting package, this time with A2 Hosting. I bought it on Christmas Eve, and so was unsurprised to find it still inactive today. Nevertheless, the e-mail said to open a support ticket after 48 hours if it wasn’t working, so I did with a fairly light message stating that I wasn’t concerned as it was the holidays, but wondering if they could tell me when it would be active. I immediately received an e-mail telling me it had been submitted and giving me a reference. Within 12 minutes (yes, that’s twelve) I had received this e-mail:
Hello,
We are very sorry for this inconvenience, we will work to resolve this issue as soon as possible and will contact you when it is resolved. We thank you very much for your patience and will contact you soon.
Thank you,
Maybe it’s because I’m used to the slower support of PurpleCloud, but I’m looking forward to using these guys, purely on the basis that they seem to have immediately admitted fault without making excuses. Details on what the website is soon.
According to Douglas Adams, one of the two reasons that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy succeeded was because it had the words “Don’t Panic” printed n the cover in large friendly letters.
Macs appear to be similar. Error messages are scary things, but my MacBook has just reassured me that “Mail closed unexpectedly. Mac OS X and other applications are not affected”. Perhaps not as friendly, but certainly not as incomprehensible as some Windows errors. No system is perfect, or the crash wouldn’t have happened in the first place, but I am rather liking this little bit of polish.
Thanks to Windows Live Messenger which showed this incomprehensible nonsense just now.
Bad grammar or bad spelling? You decide!
Remember the e-mail I sent to PayPal? I finally got one back:
Dear Rob [surname blanked out by me],
Thank you for contacting PayPal. We believe we responded to your recent
inquiry either through a call into our service center or through another
e-mail from you.Please know that we appreciate your business and we want to address your
questions in a timely fashion. If you still need to speak with a PayPal
representative, please feel free to contact us at 888-221-1161.Thank you for choosing PayPal
Guess what folks? I never received an answer either by phone or e-mail! Even better, they gave me an American phone number to call. Not much use when I clearly mentioned in my e-mail PayPal UK.
The question readers (both of you), is should I follow this up and ask again?
[UPDATE] I followed it up and asked again, pointing out that I had received this non-answer, and guess what? It happened again! Two e-mails from PayPal, both effectively refusing to answer and claiming that I already knew. Morons.