Here are Rob's Blog entries for March 2004.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
My train is delayed outside East Croydon at present. There is a track worker trying to put out a fire on the line next to us. Hopefully it's visible through the graffitti on this train's window.
Well I've just seen The Who at the Albert Hall, and they were amazing.
Roger Daltry was suffering from a heavy cold, but still gave a cracking performance.
Although advertised as Tommy, it was really a greatest hits show with Tommy as the encore.
The Coral are supporting The Who at the Albert Hall tonight!
Someone has put detergent into the fountain in Colchester's Culver Square.
Bubbles!
There is a rather clever advert at Moorgate station in London.
You enable infrared on your mobile phone and point it at the red light on the poster. The light will then turn green and you receive a vcard on your phone with a competition entry number on it.
A very clever use of interactive technology!
I've just seen the Levellers playing at The Forum in Kentish Town.
There's only one way of life!
The Who live!
It doesn't get much better than this!
The Nytol motorised bed was parked outside work today.
Is it ironic that the instructions on the pack encourage you not to drive as the pills may cause drowsiness?
Slash is in the building!
Here's a sneaky snap of him being interviewed as i walked past.
I spotted this poster at Oxford Circus Underground Station whilst being lazy and standing on the escalator instead of walking up.
It features a rocker playing his guitar in a tube train with a message for people to keep music turned down whilst travelling for the comfort of other passengers.
However that doesn't bother me. What I want to know is just where he managed to find a carriage with so many empty seats.
Maybe I should follow his lead and take up playing loud metal music on my way to work if it means i can get whole carriage to myself. Hell, i'd be happy with just a seat!
Rock on!
On Monday I asked are bendy buses safe?
It seems not, as the entire London fleet of 130 bendy buses has been taken out of service for a week for safety work to take place.
Mercedes, through it's Evo Bus subsidiary, and TfL decided it would be safer to carry out safety modifications before letting the buses carry passengers again.
See the TfL press release on the withdrawal of the Mercedes Citaro buses for more information.
Soon the 73 bus I catch from Victoria Station will be changed from an old Routemaster to one of the new bendy buses.
I'm not so sure this is a good idea, especially since the new bendy buses have a habit of catching fire and becoming burnt out shells in a matter of minutes. Four of new new vehicles have been gutted by fire since December, compared to only three Routemasters in the past 45 years.
Mercedes, the manufacturer, is having to install automatic fire fighting equipment and carry out nightly inspections as the safety record is so poor.
It's time to save the 73!
Aloud.com won the Revolution Award for Best online property from a media owner on Friday night. We were up against Runners World, The Sun Online and ThisIsMoney.co.uk.
Here's what the judges had to say about us...
To capitalise on the growth of the music event market, Emap Performance relaunched Aloud.com in March 2003. It aimed to attract customers with a unique and innovative ticketing service, based on a number of core principles.
It wanted event search and ticket purchase to be succinct while offering users all the necessary information options. Aloud.com aimed to draw on the heritage of other Emap Performance brands to provide a depth of editorial content that would interest users.
Aloud.com looked to exploit the UK's largest music-media machine to push brand-specific inventory across multi-platform campaigns, maximise the potential of each event as it became available, and drive sales by event-specific marketing.
The site was given a clean, functional design, showing users how to find their choice from more than 5,000 events in the UK, with instant access to tickets and only four clicks to purchase. Users can search by a combination of artist, date, town or venue and then the results by date, price or alphabetically.
Aloud.com came through one of its biggests tests with flying colours by selling 90,000 Glastonbury tickets in 11 hours, which it claims is a world-record festival sell out. Overall, ticket sales grew by 400 per cent, averaging 20,000 a month with unique users rising by 60 per cent a month. Registered users went up by 120 per cent.
Aloud.com is now the seventh most-visited UK music website, according to WebTrends.
I built and maintain the site technically.
We've just won Best online property from a media owner with Aloud.com at the Revolution awards.
Here's Simon and Gigi with the award itself.
So, what is your opinion of Channel 4? (requires Flash).
Has Belle de Jour finally been unmasked?
The Times claims she is really Sarah Champion, a 33 year old author from Manchester.
Dan Foster, a literary sleuth, searched Google with quirks in Belle's writing, and the only match seemed to be Miss Champion.
Both Sarah and Belle share a lot of personal details. They have relatives in Manchester, love obscure bands (Sarah worked for NME) and are both widely read. Sarah also lived in South London, an area Belle appears to have detailed knowledge of.
However, Belle's agent, Patrick Walsh, has denied Sarah is really Belle. I have never heard of her
, he says.
This is straight from Popbitch, but made me laugh.
Colchester looks lovely in the spring. There are large banks of yellow daffodils along all the verges on the way to the North Station.
A very cheery sight first thing in the morning when you still want to be tucked up in bed.
Will Young has decided to murder Outkast's Hey Ya.
The track is available on Jo Whiley's Live Lounge page for the 15th March 2004.
Is no song safe from him?
Is Will becoming the new Mike Flowers Pops?
Well how was the journey in the new Electrostar train?
Uncomfortable, in one word.
The seating was very hard, and difficult to get comfortable on. The grill at elbow level was very unpleasant. The train also seemed a lot less smooth than the old slam door train, with a tendancy to rock about alot. There was no room in the aisle for a trolley service to come down.
However, the train was warm. It was also a very quiet ride. The train was well lit and was clean.
However, I believe that train should not have been on the London Victoria to Eastbourne route. I caught a train from Hampden Park to Easbourne this evening, and it was one of the new Electrostars. This one had 2x2 seating, arms rests (so you didn't touch the grill), and padded seats. That was quite a comfortable journey, though leg room was a still a bit of an issue.
Wow! South Central are running one of the new Electrostar trains to Eastbourne. As you can see i'm first on.
So what are my opinions of it so far. Well it's clean! However, the seats are narrow and are running in the 3x2 metro cattle truck style. I'm sitting in a disabled seat as they have enough leg room so i'm not pressing my knees against the seat in front. The side has a grill just where your arm rests and is very uncomfortable. There is also a heater sticking out from the side meaning you can't sit with your legs straight, as one is pushed inwards. That will probably get very uncomfortable is the journey progresses.
Followup follows when I get home. ,
The Mail on Sunday has a two page spread on Belle de Jour, the infamous London "call girl".
Most of the article seems to focus on trying to expose who Belle really is. Suspects include, Isabell Wolff, Rowan Pelling, Candace Bushnell and Toby Young. It even suggests Alistair Campbell, who in his younger days wrote the sex diary of a Reviera Gigolo for Forum magazine.
The usual facts are brought up, she claims to be from Yorkshire, yet uses American terms, etc...
All I can say is "good luck" to whoever Belle really is. She's created a fantastic hype and a fascinating blog. Real or not, just enjoy it.
Never ever try to buy a pack of fruit gums from the bastard vending machine at Eastbourne station.
I insert 50p, it tells me I have 50p credit, I select fruit gums, it tells me they are 50p and to select again.
What is it about 50p this stupid machine doesn't understand?
In the end it sold me fruit pastilles for 50p.
grrr...
It seems that Emap, the company I work for, has been voted one the top 100 companies to work for in the UK.
I have to say that I really love my job, cheesy as it may sound. The company is generally very supportive of ideas and I'm hoping they can provide some resources for me to explore the mobile internet in the near future.
A few interesting facts about Emap...
Have a quick laugh at the Emap corporate video.
One of the funniest things I've read for ages is Simon Travaglia's BOFH: Protecting bodily waste in the public domain.
It's a brilliant take on SCO's claim that it owns some of the code in the Linux kernel so users must buy a licence from them to use their intellectual property.
In the BOFH's bosses words, it's shit!
I was lucky enough to be at a fascinating talk given by Pamir Gelenbe, Director of Corporate Development at Flytxt, on the current state of the Japanese mobile phone industry today.
One of the most interesting things was the use of barcodes, as previously mentioned by Chris Heathcote in his article on using RDF as barcodes.
We were shown magazines, including a rather naughty one, and they were littered with QR codes to take users directly to mobile sites. Bar codes containing money off discounts are even sent from these sites to the phone that can then be redeemed in a store using a normal barcode reader at the checkout.
All phones are colour, and most have cameras. Java is very wide spread, and phones have also have Flash installed. This leads to some very compelling content, and something I'm looking forward to experiencing in the UK when it finally arrives.
It is with horror that I read of the 173 people killed in Madrid by terrorist bombs on trains.
As a regular train traveller in the UK, I know just how vulnerable these services are. Mainline terminals in London are very alert to baggage left unattended, but if a bag was left on a train it would probably go unnoticed.
So who was to blame for this? Naturally the finger has been pointed at ETA, but the Arab resistance
has also been blamed due to Spain's strong support of The War On Terror.
I guess it had to happen at some point, the Swiss Army knife is now USB enabled.
So now we can get stones out of horse's hooves, cut our finger nails, gut a fish, and keep our important word documents with us, using the same handy device.
South Central Trains are currently running a Bear Facts advertising campaign, with an 'amusing' cartoon bear telling us why things are crap, but to 'bear' with them, hoho.
The current press release, Why the Big Pause?, tells how things may improve in the next 12 months.
The new trains will make a huge difference to your journey. They are spacious and comfortable, with enhanced safety and passenger information systems. Facilities for people with disabilities are provided and the trains have large toilets with baby changing tables.
Well at least they are honest about them being spacious, the new Electrostar trains have 58 fewer seats per 4 coach train that the old slam doors they are replacing. Less chance of getting a seat and having to stand will make a big difference to people's journey.
I've only travelled on them a few times for short hops between Hampden Park and Eastbourne as they don't run to London Victoria yet, but they also seem to have less leg room and seat width than the old trains.
Let's see if things really have improved in 12 months time...
What is it about using the London Underground that turns people into psychopathic morons?
I hate getting the tube in the morning as it's always so dangerously overcrowded. I travel between Victoria and Oxford Circus, two of the busiest stations on the network. The station and platforms regularly close due to overcrowding, leaving huge masses (I can't call them queues) of people waiting at the ticket gates or outside the station.
Today I was with a friend who hates getting the bus, so I tried to catch the tube with her instead. Whilst in the mass of people at the ticket barriers, a fat middle aged man with short grey hair, grey fleece and large holdall pushed in front of me and painfully elbowed me in the ribs at the gate. The other side I saw him push other people out of the way, and my friend said he had also shoved her.
So what is it that makes people want to behave like that? I'm sure they wouldn't do it anywhere else. Maybe it's just the sheer weight of people crowded down there that makes some people just go a bit stir crazy. The odd thing is, going the other way in the evening, everyone is really polite and considerate.
Anyway, back to the 73 bus tomorrow I think. It's far more civilised.
One thing I've noticed since writing my last I Love Horses blog entry is that when you search for I Love Horses on Google, Deagostini have a sponsored link on the side of the results.
The link itself is very interesting, if you click on it you end up at http://www.deagdev.co.uk/track/landing_page.php?url=http://www.deagostini.co.uk/ilovehorses/index.php&country=1&title=19&campaign=cpcv1&page=landing&prefix=http://www.deagostini.co.uk/ilovehorses/.
If you change the url attribute to another website their server will proxy your request, however the links are relative to the deagdev.co.uk server if they are not absolutely specified. Setting the prefix attribute to a site fixes that by making all the links absolute to whatever site you want. This only gets the body of the page, not any assets like images the page tries to include.
I think it's time to fire off an email to Deagostini's techies to warn them of this potential security hole, unless it's meant for horse loving dissidents in Iran to get to banned websites of course.
Last month I mentioned how Deagostini had been in touch asking me to remove my I Love Horses ringtone, well now they've followed my lead and made a version commercially available for 1.50.
It's not my version, but it's cut to the same places so they probably liked what I did. The example sound sample of the I Love Horses theme on their website drops straight into the WSC-MA2-SMAF WAV to SMAF ringtone converter I used to create my version with a couple of months ago, and they both sound exactly the same. I guess it's not really that surprising as there is only so much you can do with the jingle.
However, the good news is that they also now have the official, full, I Love Horses jingle available to download.
Are you brave enough to download it and have it lodged in your brain for the next few weeks?
Emap have decided that all web traffic from our office needs to be sent through a proxy server.
There are several annoying issues with this, mainly with it caching .swf files and not allowing us to reload them. Naturally the guys who set it up won't take any support calls so we're stuck.
However, I've now managed to get the Openwave SDK 6.2.2 to go via the proxy successfully.
My office proxy server is called lonsqd01.emap.net and goes via port 3128. The example below shows how I made the emulator use the proxy to access WAP sites via HTTP.
lonsqd01.emap.net Aloud.com has been shortlisted for Best Online Property From A Media Owner at the Revolution Awards 2004.
We're up against Thisismoney.co.uk, The Sun Online and Runner's World.
Time to dust off the dinner jacket and make more room on the trophy shelf. :-)
Coca-Cola's new bottled water Dasani comes straight from the tap.
Mains water fed to the Kent bottling plant is filtered and injected with ozone before reaching the bottle.
The BBC has the full story on it's news site, Soft drink is purifed tap water.
Let's hope the 7 million pounds Coke is spending to market the water isn't money down the drain, so to speak.