Mighty Music Mashup

Found another great customisable internet radio service: Pandora. Check out My Profile.

To add an extra dimenshion there is a Pandora FM mashup that feeds tracks listened to on this site into your last.fm profile.

I'm happy to say that they don't restrict the buying links to iTunes (of which I am not a fan), but also links to amazon (call me old fashioned, but I like my music on CD or Vinyl).

Library Thing

Check out the Library Thing Website. It lets you catalogue all your books, and see recommendations for books you would like, or un-recommendations for books you won't like.

I'm just putting together my own catalogue on the site now.

This post is (apparently) not heretic

Here are the results for my "Are you a heretic?" and "What's your theological worldview?" tests. Thanks to Mel and Rich Burley for finding these first, and to QuizFarm.com for hosting the quizes in the first place.

Are you a heretic?

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.

Chalcedon compliant		100%
Monophysitism		50%
Pelagianism		33%
Docetism		0%
Arianism		0%
Apollanarian		0%
Donatism		0%
Adoptionist		0%
Modalism		0%
Socinianism		0%
Nestorianism		0%
Albigensianism		0%
Monarchianism		0%
Gnosticism		0%

What's your theological worldview?

(I should point out that the final result was a tie-break between the top two results)

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Emergent/Postmodern		82%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan		82%
Neo orthodox		43%
Classical Liberal		32%
Roman Catholic		29%
Charismatic/Pentecostal		29%
Modern Liberal		29%
Reformed Evangelical		21%
Fundamentalist		11%

A new way of looking at photos

Washington University & Microsoft Research have come up with a really cool idea Photo Tourism that lets you look at lots of images from a scene and zoom in and browse round etc. even if they are from different photographers, times and cameras. Worth checking out the demo. What's more, this is being developed into a program that we'll eventually be able to use with our own photos, Photosynth. Worth checking out the videos from there too.

"Martin Needs"

This isn't my idea, in case someone accuses me of taking credit for something that isn't mine. Interesting list, just follow these instructions to create your own...

1. Go to the google search engine
2. Type in your name and put needs after it. (eg. "John needs") making sure that its in quotes!
3. Post whatever comes up...

My List

Martin needs...

1. big outing for Jets.
2. TO GET DRUNK.
3. Medical Treatment
4. to return to earlier form.
5. to act on this now, before it's too late.
6. Brand X Clarity
7. to fix the bed
8. nothing.
9. his freedom
10. Advertising Advice.

Finally, take a look at the live list.

Strange Multimedia Corporate Sprawl - Part 2: searching & messaging

Finally, it's time to look at the strange growth of corporate sprawl, and how it is affecting how we communicate, and how we find out about the world.

Google's image is slightly less great than it was. People still like and use it's search, but things like gmail have recieved a more mixed response. Whilst many love the free-nes massive capacity, accesibilty from anywhere in the world, and spam filtering, for many there is darker side. How can this be free? Well, the advertising of course! But this is no ordinary advertising. Building on the text adverts, google now search for keywords in your emails. The question is - is this Spyware? And if so, what else is?

All this kicks of though with the death of the browser industry, which is starting with the rise of firefox. Okay, internet explorer is still the leader by a massive margin, but I'm sure that all the parties realise that this market itself is not the great control it once was. Now, more important than the browser itself, are what is comming through the browser. Now is the time of the web-service.

So how do bussinesses get beyond the traditional email, blog etc. How can they get into your computer, and how can they ensure you use them and see their ads instead of someone elses?

One answer to this has long been given from MSN, Yahoo and AOL. The instant messenger. This sits on the users computer, and in the case of MSN shows 1 banner ad in the main window. But this isn't the main thing. Links from the messenger send you to their own searches, their own email etc. And the anti is always being upped. Skype offer voice services, so everyone else must be seen to be doing this too. Now google, afraid of being left out, has launched its own instant messenger and voice service. However, there is always a way of staying with seperate tools, hiding the ads, using a different search to messanger (I use google, but also MSN messanger - competitors).

The final piece of the puzzle, the one that really links things together, and changes things dramatically, is desktop search. This is where I stop, and think, hmm..., not sure I want this. Yes the tool appears, and probably is very useful. But this is where they tread very close to malware. Your searches for PC documents can now be used to target advertising to you. Nothing is secret from the corporations. Who knows what will happen to the data...

Interestingly, this pits companies against each other in a strange way. Now Apple battles not only Microsoft on its operating system, but also Google on its desktop search, and skype on its voice messaging. Strange indeed!

I think I will leave you now with a link to epic, the future of search...

might be of interest to web type people

There is a new style for the a list apart website, along with (finally) some new content. Take a look at http://www.alistapart.com/.

That's it for now - Maybe something more interesting later. Actually, just had an idea - maybe tomorrow...