iPod’s first words

March 12th, 2009

Yesterday Apple released a new iPod shuffle, and it talks.

No really, apparently it’s just too little to have a screen (it’s smaller than an AA battery), and this is why rather than showing you what’s playing, it tells you.

How clever is that? What I’m coming to learn though, as I become acquainted with my new MacBook, is that the whole damn operation is just clever. Not in a geeky showy-offy way either, in an actual, practical useful clever way.

Why trawl through loads of windows on your desktop when you could swing the cursor into the corner and get them to line up neatly? Why change all the settings on each of your iPhone functions separately when you could have them gathered together under one button?

When I read the stories about the new shuffle though it dawned on me that perhaps Apple are too clever for their own good. A couple of years ago I got a lovely shiny 80GB iPod classic as a present and it’s still going strong. So I’m reluctant to get an iPhone (I have a phone too you see) and I definitely don’t need a shuffle.

I’m sure there are a few people who’ll throw their old non-talking shuffle aside and rush out to buy the new one, but to the rest of us the old one’s still working fine thanks very much.

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TFI Friday and the wire-free world

February 15th, 2008

Is it just me – or did this week have 12 days in it?

Start of the week is a bit hazy – combination of industrial strength Lemsip and numerous new business proposals. The middle of the week had a couple of 32 hour days (or so it seemed at the time). And the past few days; well, they definitely had a Groundhog Day feeling about them.

So, now it’s Friday, with a couple of days rest to look forward to.

I wish.

The five day working week is history, as are 9-5 “opening hours”. In the marketing business, you’re working when your clients want you working. It goes with the territory. It’s understood. When you’re working in online PR, where deadlines roll for 24 hours and your public is every person with an Internet connection and an opinion, then it’s doubly so (at the very least).

But – thankfully – I enjoy what I do. And the beauty of living in an inter-connected world, with easy access to WiFi around the house, means that I can write this – my last blog post of the working week – sat at the kitchen table, using my trusty MacBook and nary a wire in site.

It’s a blog post now, but could just as easily be development of a social media newsroom, posting to a newsgroup, mixing a podcast or one of the 101 different online services we offer.

But, for now at least, work’s over. So, with the sound of a cork exiting a bottle of red echoing in the background, it just remains for me to shamelessly plug our new Facebook ‘fan page‘ – and invite you to join.

It’s not a replacement for the web site and blog, more a support to them. We look forward to welcoming you

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