Last FM Rocks

I watched The Gadget Show on Five tonight. Are you surprised? They had quite a fun feature where they tried to wean one of the presenters off his Apple habit by doing things like giving him an electric shock whenever his iphone was slower than the competition.

One of the things that came out of this was a mention for last.fm as a replacement for iTunes, the Apple music store. This went down a storm with the Apple lover, and so I took a look myself.

Turns out it is wonderful. If you fancy a completely free, streamed service that will send you your favourite tunes to a PC or mobile device (the iPhone client is lovely) then you would be bonkers not to take a look.

You calibrate it by giving a few of your favourite artists and then it either plays tracks from them or suggests others you might like. All for free. If you actually want to buy any of the tracks that you are hearing you can press a button and download them there and then. The new iTunes has a feature called Genius that works like this, but it either plays your own music or suggests things that you can buy.  Last fm on the other hand gives you a free soundtrack for your life anywhere you can get a network connection, including 3G and even Edge (although I guess the quality won't be the best on low bandwidth connections).

Actually, while I'm mentioning amazing things to do with iPhones, I should really give a shout out to Shazam (you can get it for other platforms too).  It is a free application that tells you what music is playing on the radio. Let the program listen to a snatch of the song and it will go online and then more often than not come back with full details. It is truly amazing, and I've no idea how it works.

Windows 7 - Putting the win back into Windows

I've been using Windows 7 as my main desktop for a few weeks now. I love it. There are a few rough edges, but nothing that would send me back to Vista. From the point of view of what you can do with it I've not noticed much different, although I haven't looked very hard to be honest. What I have noticed is the speed. Things happen an awful lot faster. Programs load and run at the kind of rate that they should do on a machine with a 2G processor.  File copying and archive unzipping are now happening at a proper speed. People I know are digging out old and slow machines that won't run Vista very well, loading up the Windows 7 test version and turning them into useable devices, which is very interesting.

It used to be that a new operating system meant a new computer. If the final version of Windows 7 manages the same level of performance of the one I'm using it could actually reverse this trend. One of the reasons why Vista didn't work very well in the early days was that some suppliers did a pretty poor job of supporting it with drivers, leading to lots of people with brand new "Vista capable" machines that didn't work properly. This must have made Microsoft a bit upset at the time, but with Windows 7 Microsoft might just get their own back on the hardware makers, since everyone will rush out and buy the operating system and have no need to get new machines.

Need for Speed Undercover Mostly Wanted

I'm a bit of a sucker for the Need for Speed games. I think this dates from my early experiences on the Playstation 1, where you got to drive a real Ferrari  (honest) through a flickering landscape of pop up buildings. I even got one of the first steering wheel peripherals to enhance the, ahem, driving experience. I especially liked the way that you got cuffed and stuffed if you failed to outrun the police.

When I got my Xbox 360 I spent ages playing a downloaded demo of "Need for Speed: Most Wanted" where you had to break free of the cops in a large city environment. Great fun, even if number one son complained that the car handling was floaty and imprecise (it was) and the way the graphics engine chugged when there was a lot going on made him sea sick (it did). However I enjoyed it so much I even bought the game.

Because the next two Need for Speed games seemed to play down the police chase aspect I wasn't that interested in them. I think that the publisher EA probably got into a bit of hot water for making a game that encouraged you to indulge in such anti-social activities as ramming road blocks and forcing squad cars into bridge pillars. Fortunately I seem to be able to distinguish the fantasy world of video games from real life, and so this was never an issue for me, but I missed the car chases.

Until now. Need for Speed Undercover turns you into an undercover cop infiltrating the evil world of dangerous driving by being the, er, most dangerous driver of all. I read some previews of the game where the developer was talking about the advanced car mechanics they've used and the new graphical enhancements and stuff. and they had it cheap in Sainsburys when I was doing the shopping and so I bought it.

Turns out that the car handling is still floaty, and the screen still chugs when there is a lot going on. I reckon they've taken the old Most Wanted engine, changed the layout of the city a bit, turned up the brightness and shipped it.  It is still fun though (but racing purists might not like it as games like Burnout Paradise do this thing a lot better - except for the cop chases).

New Xbox 360 Experience

I fired up my Xbox 360 today and installed the new "Experience". It is a free download from Xbox Live and replaces the original "Blade" front end with a completely different look which I reckon is much easier to navigate. It also lets you create mini-avatars of yourself to use for your interaction with games and other Xbox 360 users. I've no idea where they got the idea for this. I spent a few minutes tweaking my avatar appearance to add my distinctive good looks, which was great fun. Or not.

One of the wonderful things about modern software based devices is the way that they can sprout new behaviours years after you got them thanks to the magic of the firmware upgrade. I now have what feels like a brand new replacement of my console. If you have an Xbox 360 you really must check this out.

Cheered Up by Students

Bit fed up today. I hate it when I'm not where I should be, and I had been looking forward to going to Copenhagen. Never been to Denmark before and it might be a while before I get the chance again.

The good news is that being back in the office meant that I got a steady stream of students coming by with programs to look at and projects to discuss. And that really cheered me up. I love seeing people making progress and doing stuff. Thanks folks.