Apple’s flagship, open 24 hours Manhattan store = nerdgasm.

NYC Disillusionment Alert

Following other people’s and my own comments here about our dreams of living in New York, Penelope Trunk, whose blog is an addictive combination of excruciatingly personal revelations and interesting career advice (mainly for slightly younger and more go-getting peeps than myself), suggests you ask yourself a few questions first.

Geekwatch – facesquatting, Wired UK, iPhone 3G-S(tupid?)

Facebook vanity urls caused a bit of excitement on Twitter this past weekend as people raced to get theirs before someone else stole their very identity out from under their nose. The term Facesquatting was coined. Mine is www.facebook.com/milomclaughlin (but you’ll have to add me as a friend to see my profile) In order to set yours, once you are logged in just go to www.facebook.com/username

 I’ve been a reader of Wired US for some time, at least when I can find it in RS McColls – so was interested in buying Wired UK when it came out. I like it so far, but there seems to be some crossover of content from the US one to the UK one which leaves me a bit confused as to whether I’ll now have to buy both to make sure I don’t miss out on any decent articles.

Anyway this column by Warren Ellis is shaping up to be a must read he’s right on the button when he speaks about the iPhone in the current, third issue- guilty as charged!

“Enter the iPhone, that vile, characterless slab of 1980s Star Trek plastic banality from the Bay Area Federation. Bad enough that everyone I know in tech/design circles swaggers around with one jammed in their pocket, like they’re getting cyber-frottage from a magic wand. “Look,” they whisper to me, holding it up as carefully as if it were some elf they’d found close to death in an enchanted forest and had nursed back to health. “It even makes phone calls!”

Speaking of which..

iPhone 3GS(TuPID?)

A whole bunch of disgruntled O2 customers here in the UK are not happy about having to either wait until their contract ends or buy it out at an extortionate cost to get their hands on the new, slightly improved iPhone 3GS. Not only that but the new tethering facility is also far too expensive. I think there are similar issues with AT&T in the US and they’re not even offering tethering or MMS yet.

Of course if you enter into a contract you are getting a subsidised phone which you are then paying off with each monthly installment so it’s only fair you should have to come to the end of your contract before that agreement comes to an end, however the misalignment of the contract period and Apple’s annual upgrade cycle seems to be the real problem here. Jailbreaking the iPhone would allow for free tethering, but then you wouldn’t be able to upgrade to the free 3.0 software out tomorrow.

And I for one am too excited by the possibility of (gasp) cut and paste and (swoon) MMS to wait even a second longer than I have to.. Seriously though, the thing I am most looking forward to in the 3.0 update is the finder like search ability so you can search for apps and also search within email at last.

Overall the new iPhone is only a minimal improvement so I’m happy to wait until the end of my contract by which time a new one will be imminent. I do think it’s a pity though that the price cut for the 8GB model to $99 doesn’t appear to have crossed the Atlantic – and would like to see some justification from 02 on that particular decision.

Music Watch

Have combined the two this week due to a lack of time. Perhaps I am trying to do too much having a geek watch and a music watch though. 

Anyway, I’ll try to keep it brief.

Mmmm Cheesecake!

Glasgow Podcart have discovered possibly the greatest band of all time – well they have a great name and one great song so far – I present to you Cheesecake, who kick off Glasgow Podcart’s current podcast with 8 minutes of instrumental brilliance. They feature members of a few other well known local bands but I’m not sure if they want that to be public knowledge just yet..

Rob St. John who is a great musician who thinks I am purposely avoiding his live gigs (though I promise I am not going to any gigs right now, not just his!) has written a great post for Under The Radar in which he rightly credits Tracer Trails for re-invigorating the corpse of the Edinburgh music scene with a well-placed injection of decent music and clever choice of venues.

AND FINALLY – MORE MALCY!

Here’s a brilliant wee documentary about Malcolm Middleton which makes me jealous in all kinds of ways – I love it. I like what he says about writing sad songs not meaning you’re a lonely, sad person, it’s just that he writes songs when he’s in a certain mood. (via Andy Lobban & Fence Records)

Malcolm Middleton – ‘Waxing Gibbous’ from Mike Hemsley on Vimeo.

Don’t forget you can hear Malcolm’s song Carry Me on this month’s podcast. 

 

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