Wired Magazine recently ran an article ranking and analyzing the gadgets of 2010, taking into consideration the stage of development, the spec tweaks, the price point, and, of course, sales. Understandably, the iPad takes the proverbial cake, and we’re not surprised to see new and improved Apple products (Macbook Air, iPhone 4) basically book-ending the list. However, we were pleasantly surprised to see the Kindle finally out of its “beta” stage. Also, Microsoft’s Wii-hunter, Kinect. Check out the rest of the well-argued ten over at the Wired site.

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The live webcast of the ‘Spike Edney & Friends’ event, presented by Last Ext and Flint during the Internet Week Europe, attracted a live online audience from 53 countries around the world. Fans of Queen, Graham Gouldman, Madeline Bell, I Blame Coco, Tom Robinson, Rokhsan Heydari and the Cash Cows (the Bear Bones) were voting online for their chance to influence the playlist and hear their favourite artists.

The Twitter feed was also noted as amongst the top Internet Week Europe hashtags and tweets.

the webcast can be viewed here www.spikelivemusic.tv

feedback, comments and live Twitter feed is @SpikeLiveMusic on Twitter

Some fun pictures from the venue itself @Bathhouse, London

I Blame Coco on stage performing Self machine

Graham Gouldman and Spike Edney performing Under Pressure by Queen

Bear Bones performing their incredible music mix

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LAST EXIT and FLINT present “SPIKE EDNEY & FRIENDS”, an interactive, live-streamed music event, where viewers can interact with host and renown musical director Spike Edney and featured special musical guests.

Following the 2008 launch of the hugely successful Internet Week NY, on 8^th-12^th November, INTERNET WEEK EUROPE 2010 is being launched with a ground-breaking five day festival celebrating the very best of Europe’s digital industry and London as its digital hub.

London will play host to a series of web focused events including this long-awaited show at The Bathhouse, London on Wednesday 10^th November.  The featured event “SPIKE EDNEY & FRIENDS”, presented by digital agency Last Exit, and video communications agency Flint, is the brainchild of rock band Queen’s keyboardist and musical director Spike Edney and will allow people all over the world to share in the excitement of this inaugural event and Internet Week.

The event will be streamed live (details to follow). The 2 hour webcast will feature Spike in conversation with invited close musician friends and special celebrity guest artists and rising young stars – talking about their careers, musical influences, favorite songs, highs/lows and amusing stories from their years on the road; followed by live acoustic guest performances in an intimate setting with Spike and his all-star band. Each artist will be asked to perform one of their hits, followed by a favorite John Lennon song, chosen by the online audience.

Artists being featured will include legendary song writer

Graham Gouldman (10cc) www.grahamgouldman.com

Sensational jazz, soul, rock and pop singer Madeline Bell (Blue Mink, Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield, Elton John…) www.madelinebell.com

Iconic UK songwriter and BBC 6 Radio music presenter, Tom Robinson (Tom Robinson Band) www.tomrobinson.com

Emerging UK artist Coco (I Blame Coco) www.iblamecoco.co.uk, UK street band The Cash Cows www.myspace.com/cashcowsrock

Up and coming ACM (Academy of Contemporary Music) student, Rokhsan Heydari (imagine Lilly Allen dipped in Stevie Wonder’s Motown Soul…) www.myspace.com/rokhsanmusic.

The online audience will be invited to ask Spike and his guests questions and make their song requests via twitter.  The top requests will be displayed live, allowing people to add their votes and change the playlist in real-time.

“This event takes live music to the next level”, added Steven Blackman, Managing Director of Flint. “It allows the band to interact in real time with a global audience, who are sharing the experience.”

For further information and updates, please follow @SpikeLiveMusic on Twitter

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After months of rumours, Facebook has finally set the date for the geo-location announcement.  Whether it will really happen tomorrow or not, this is a significant addition to the evolving GLS market, which has grown to involve both fans and brands alike.

Watch this space.

source: http://mashable.com/2010/08/16/facebook-location-august/#

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Twitter has announced that it is taking over the ‘retweet’ button from TweetMeMe and turning it into the ‘tweet’ button, which will work in the same way as the Facebook’s ‘Like’ functionality. The move towards owning a social media action is a significant message to the remaining social media community and an interesting evolution in channelling the digital landscape.

Social media networks have successfully shown that creating and owning a popular action is not only a trademark but a unique way of engaging the fans and providing the interaction. More than that, today’s announcement from Twitter has shown that this button is more than an effective viral tool. The ‘tweet’, ‘digg’ ‘Like’, ‘buzz’ and the rest have effectively formed the TV remote control of Social Media and a powerful way for fans to switch between channels.

With the audience increasingly moving towards learning their preferences and choosing the favourites, the battle for the top place on the social media remote control is on.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/12/twitter-tweet-button/

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Evernote, the virtual memory, filing and storage start up with a single mission of ‘helping the world remember everything’, has grown to 3.7 million users globally and today launched Trunk. Evernote’s Trunk is part App store part an expanding showcase of their integration capabilities and services. The company announced plans for further expansion into social media sharing as well as analytics and search.

Source: http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2010/07/evernote-extends-elephant-memory-with-trunk/

Source: http://blog.evernote.com/2010/07/14/the-evernote-trunk/

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Mine is not a popular view right now, but I think the Apple iPad is the new Sony Walkman. We won’t realise we need one until we have one. And it will be a big success.

The argument against the iPad goes something like this. Why do we need a device that sits between an iPhone / iPod Touch and a Macbook? And disappointment because it is a big iPhone. The disappointment is easy to deal with – what did anyone expect? Something with poor industrial design and a dodgy interface? And I need a device of this size – for the increasing amount of time I spend surfing while watching TV, or reading on the loo (we all do it) or reading in bed (nothing kinky). The iPad is perfect for this – my iPhone is too small and my MacBook Pro makes an unnecessary connection with work and has a keyboard that for browsing photos, surfing or watching video is mostly redundant.

The Last Exit museum has both form factors of the original Newton, a device that was way ahead of its time. Many people still use them – just look at this community http://www.newtontalk.net/ Many people probably think the iPad will go the same way. I am not one of them.

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The BBC reports here that the Symbian operating system will be made open source.   Symbian is currently used by Nokia and Sony Ericsson and is owned by a consortium formed out of the UK electronics and PDA maker Psion.  I owned several Psion devices and they were well ahead of their time.  But, that was over 10 years ago; prior to implementation of Bluetooth and prior to integrated smartphones.  The operating system was great, but was never really developed further under the Symbian tab.   Hopefully, hopefully, the open source community will be able to do something great with it.

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I’ve always been a huge fan of the FPS (first person shooter) game and can remember being awestruck the first time I played Doom on the PC way back in 1993.  I even handcoded some custom levels using the first version of DEU.

So, to see the Doom sequel, Quake come to be a browser based game is pretty exciting.  The fact that it is an amazing port of the game is even more amazing.

Check out Quake Live.

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News in today that Kazaa will follow rivals Napster by legitimizing and moving to a subscription based service. This must be good news for the entertainment industry who is still struggling with ways to muscle through the problems they perceive with illegal downloading and sharing of content by imposing bigger fines and greater sophistication in digital rights management and copy protection.

I just had lunch yesterday with two leading executives from one of the big TelCos, who looked on me with suspicion when I suggested the following notion: “people will do the right thing, if you give people them opportunity to do so through an enjoyable and transparent experience”. I referenced iTunes, and they response almost suggested that it was a fad, because Apple are not a music/entertainment company, only enforcing the notion that duopolies are bad and innovation is key to a sustainable future.

But beyond the argument over financial models, what interests me here is a lifestyle change where I no longer have media stored locally, whether it’s in the form of hard media such as CDs or a hard drive full of digital files. Rather, the subscription based, all you can eat model, keeps everything remotely for you to draw on as you choose, constantly pushing towards virtual computing and cloud services to deliver them. Perhaps this is what the telecoms companies should be focusing on instead of exercising the strong arm of the law on every petty (download) thief?

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