The Back Burner

I wouldn’t say I was a gadget freak, but some gadgets do appeal to me. Nor am I a fan of listening to music on the move; I originally got an MP3 player to listen to audio books and podcasts while out walking. My first was a cigarette-lighter sized Creative Zen, which worked so well it was pinched by my husband to use as a dictaphone when he was out walking

I replaced it with a pretty red iRiver the same size as the Creative. The sound quality on this one was superb, even better than the Creative (which was pretty good), but it had two flaws which meant I eventually stopped using it:

1) because of the size and shape of the player, the display was tiny. I found that even with my glasses on, I simply couldn’t read it (to be fair, this was a problem with the Zen too, for the same reason). So the only way to find what I wanted to listen to was to scroll through listening to the beginning of each item. Couple that with tiny, invisibly labelled buttons, and it became problematic.

2) It was designed to work with Windows Media Player. Problem: I don’t use Windows. A firmware upgrade meant I could use it like a standard removable drive in Windows, instead of having to go through the painful, clunky WMP to transfer files, but it wouldn’t play with my Linux PC at all.

Of course if you are a Windows user with very good eyesight, these problems won’t apply to you, and the iRiver is a very good player for its size.

Anyway, I allowed myself to be tempted by a special offer from Amazon, and snapped up a 2Gb Meizu. This has a completely different form factor: the size and shape of a credit card, only thicker (just thick enough to fit a headphone jack on one side, along with the mini USB connector). The aesthetics are beautifully thought out: mine is glossy black, with a mirror-finished back that can be used as … a mirror! Of course it picks up fingerprints very easily, but a little cloth is thoughtfully provided for polishing it up to a beautiful lustre and it has a little case to protect it from scratches.

The big plus is the bright, high-resolution 2.4 inch screen, intended for watching videos. I’ve never understood why people want to watch video on a screen that size, but I’m obviously just too old. In any case, for me it means that menus and track information are easy to read, even in sunlight. Alongside the screen is a touchpad which you use for navigation, scrolling, and volume control. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after a skim of the manual I found it easy and intuitive; for example when listening to something you can increase the volume by simply sliding your finger up the touchpad. The same technique is used for navigating menus; tapping “Enter” at the bottom of the pad selects an option. Again, the sensitive areas are big and well-labelled enough for it not to be fiddly to use.

There are lots of possibilities for customization, including pre-set EQs for jazz, classical, pop etc. — or you can choose your own custom settings. The sound quality seems pretty good to me, from what I’ve listened to so far.

The other excellent feature is that it is OS-agnostic. To transfer files you simply plug it into you computer with the supplied USB cable and drag and drop files (videos have to be converted using Windows-only software, but I haven’t bothered with that). This works just as smoothly in Linux as it does in Windows, and you can organize the files in a way that suits you. It even supports the open-source OGG format, which neither of my other players did. Note that you should make sure MP3s and other audio files are tagged appropriately, then they will automatically be organized by artist, album etc. You can create your own directories in addition to the default ones for videos, music, and pictures — for example I created one called Podcasts — and use the built-in browser to access them. And of course you can create playlists, though I haven’t tried that yet.

Like both the iRiver and the Zen, it has a dictaphone feature, so I will have to keep it hidden from my husband Unlike them, it doesn’t use standard AAA batteries (which didn’t seem to last long and were always running out at inconvenient times). Instead it has a non-user-serviceable internal battery and charges via the USB port. We’ll see whether this proves to be a problem in the long term. Battery life is said to be excellent, but I haven’t used it enough to know yet. Some people complain about lack of an option to charge directly from the mains, but as I am rarely far from a computer, I don’t see that as a problem. If it were, I believe there are USB-to-mains adapters available.

A handy reminder today of the incredible potential for both bad and good represented by the Internet.

The good:
ConceptShare, a new online collaboration tool for graphic designers to work collaboratively, viewing and marking up designs online. A rare example of excellent use of Flash to do something genuinely useful.

The bad:
Stanford University says that if we were designing the Internet today we wouldn’t start from here.

We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet’s shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and ‘backward-compatible’ style of academic and industrial networking research.

The ugly: new exploits using Javascript inserted on unsuspecting third-party websites to at best show unsolicited adverts and at worst download and install malware on Windows computers. An interesting post from Ethan Zuckerman explains, and proves the point that if you accept input from users and display it on your website for others to see, you should filter it for unwanted HTML and script tags first! Interesting that Google is now detecting these exploits and warning site visitors.

Hat-tip for pointers to all of these to John Naughton’s eclectic Memex.

Yes, blogs are *so* 2005! But our plan to start an email newsletter for clients was overtaken by events. Nowadays it makes much more sense to create a blog which can be syndicated via RSS, avoiding all the problems associated with inboxes overflowing with spam. And I was shamed into it by the fact that Glenn had me set up a blog for him in November, and I still hadn’t done anything about the one I’d been meaning to do myself for months.

The plan is to post stuff that will be useful to us or our clients. Currently there is no definite posting schedule — I’ll just post when I feel I have something useful to say.

A further purpose of this blog is to show what you can do with free or open-source tools. Although I could easily have installed blog software on our server and spent hours customising it, I’ve deliberately chosen to use a free service to create the blog. It took me about ten minutes to set up this blog — I hope that over the weeks you’ll see it evolve to blend with our existing website, as well as gaining new features.

It’s called The Back Burner because … well, it’s been on the back burner for a long time!