We are the Cheeky girls

Following my last blog entry, you need to know that while my Boxing Day cooking duties were made all the more fun by listening to streamed music, there is one event that needs telling.

Having been dancing round the kitchen (not a pretty sight - eldest son "that's why you're single" - charming!) to Snow Patrol, the next song to come on was "we are the cheeky girls", which I was pretty certain I don't own! For a good ten seconds I stood transfixed to the centre of the kitchen with a "what!!" expression on my face.

Then I realised, Matt had gone into my room and found "les Cheekies" on You Tube and then hit play at the appropriate moment. 

Panic over, but well done Matt you got me!

Rocket man

A while ago, my good friend Steve, who lives in Newport, Kentucky, (and on his blog describes himself as " an Englishman living amongst the American lumpen proletariat") very kindly gave me a Rocket FM transmitter. 

At the time I may not have been as grateful as I should have been, as my then laptop was, to be honest, useless on most things requiring some intuitiveness from the software. Suffice to say after a small amount of playing with it, it sat on a shelf, looking good, but not much real use.

I rediscovered it, however, about 4 weeks ago and with both my new laptop and the iTunes remote application via my iPod Touch, it is without doubt a completely genius piece of kit and Steve thank you very very much for that gift. 

What I am now able to do is effectively stream music from my iTunes library, via "the Rocket" to any radio in the house (88.1fm) and using the iPod and the remote application change what I'm listening to, without leaving which ever room I'm in! 

I'm as happy as Mr Happy from Happyland on the day his lottery ticket came up with the top prize and his football team won the Premier League!

Licence to ill

Through the power of the Internet you can now watch the BBC live on your PC, laptop or (if you've got the right one) your phone.

Now that got me thinking about the licence fee and what it covers and more importantly how they can now police it?

If I'm sat at home watching TV then I should have a licence and i guess if I'm watching at home on my laptop then equally I should have a licence. But what if I'm in McDonalds (using their free wifi) & watching on my laptop, or on the bus watching on my phone, how do the licencing authority know whether I've got a licence or if so whose name it is in? Equally at present each house hold needs to have one, but can an 18 year old son use his parents licence, when he's at the other end of the country, say at a football game?

I'm a huge fan of the BBC and don't want it funded in any other way, but the way we watch the BBC is only going change further and get less TV focused and more multi-platform. Is the licence flexible enough to keep up?

Music

...is my first love! Like most people my buying pattern has changed over the years. First it was vinyl, then cassettes, then CD's and now mainly downloads. My online store of choice is iTunes, but on Wednesday a new online store opened to give Apple a real threat to it's market leading position.

The new player is Amazon, who now sell MP3's on line and unlike iTunes they have MP3's from all the major labels. They also have a handy little download tool, which automatically adds the purchased music to your iTunes library, with no additional effort required. It's very impressive! It's also very impressive that they have new release albums for £3, I presume that the low pricing is for this week only to encourage us all to give it a go, but it's a really good idea and I guess numerous copies of the new Take That album will be purchased for £3!!

Monopolies are always dangerous, so a real alternative can only be good for the choice (and price) of downloads going forward.