So…do you have access to Google Wave? If so…add me…!

Contact me and I’ll let you know the email address that I’m signed up with.

There are a number of services which offer some great alternatives. I’ve not tried them all, indeed I couldn’t try some of them such as Spotify as they have a limited membership at the moment.

However, I have tried Grooveshark and I find it pretty cool. It plays quickly, has a nice interface and you can tell it if you like or dislike a song, and it should offer similar music that it hopes you’ll like. In reality, I’ve not tried it out for long enough to know how good it is at recommending sogns, but it’s still a pretty neat service. You can pay an optional $3 a month to remove the ads – which seems fair!

One major downside I’ve noticed so far is the management of music. Songs are not well categorised into albums, so a search for an artist will reveal more than 1 entry of a particular track, with slightly different names (ie 01 Track Name, Track Name, Traack Name etc). This is a bit of a fundamental mistake IMHO – proper management of their library would result in significantly less space on their services, and a much easier to use service.

I have heard that they now offer a downloadable desktop app to manage the process for you, and it’s meant to be a bit faster than the browser version, however, it’s not prominently advertised on the site and I haven’t tried to find it.

Want unlimited music for free, any time? Try Grooveshark.

What does surprise me, is that even though the internet was born through the need to share files, the music industry was amazingly slow to move into this market. The EPI, and similar bodies around the world, should stand up and thank Apple for bringing it into the mainstream. Without iTunes, I estimate that over 99% of music downloaded last year would not have been paid for.

While it’s no secret that I fundamentally disagree with the charging structure employed in the music industry today, I am not against paying for music. On the contrary, I look forward to the day when record labels loosen their protectionist grip on their artist’s media and finally catch up with the obvious raging demand out there today. While iTunes, Amazon, Play.com and some other big boys are now offering music for sale, it’s essentially the same defunct business model in a new marketplace. Apple recently announced that they will now sell all their tracks DRM Free (allowing them to be played on more than just a single iPod linked to the computer they were downloaded on), but quite simply this isn’t enough.

For change to really happen in the way society acquires and uses music, and other media, there need to be some big changes led by the industries involved. Slowly responding to customer demand isn’t going to cut the cheese, they need to look forward with new ideas and new business models if they really want to reduce this figure in 2009. Sites like justhearit allow you to listen to virtually any song in the world, free of charge, whenever you like. I believe this is a powerful insight into the way music is going. I would much rather manage my playlists online, than spend time downloading and managing music on my hard drive…and I would pay for the pleasure.

Cloud computing is poised to be the next big thing, and it would be great to see the people behind some of the world’s most creative songwriters doing something a bit different in the year to come.

PS feel free to ignore my last post…i don’t expect anyone to read it…me included!

The site tells the story of Alfie Haggis, a wayward chap making his mark around the universe. The rather cool part, is that by signing up to the forum, you are able to vote on what you would like Alfie to do next. Each week (or so) a new episode is posted, based on the results of the previous week’s votes.

I think that this type of community based fiction will become increasingly popular, and hope that Space Haggis leads the way!

Fundamentally, i believe that all media should be free. That includes primarily literature, music, tv shows, films and software. I think that consumers should pay for any products containing, or relating to, that media, such as the CD which holds the music, or the physical book which contains the story. However, the actual media should be free.

In my understanding, media is a service, and that virtually all media published is freely available, but that publishers or producers limit and control access to that media, and charge for the privilege of getting it when you want it. Let me explain this point with a few examples:

You can listen to a particular song on the radio for free when the station decides to play it, and the station pays for the ability to play it when they want to. You can even request that a station plays a particular song when you want them to and you can listen to it for free, roughly when you want to (although it’s a rather tiresome). So, you can listen to any song when you want to completely legally, but it’s just rather difficult.

Essentially what is being charged for when you buy a CD is the physical CD and the ability and freedom to listen to it whenever you want.

Here’s another similar example:

In the UK, you can join your local library and can read virtually any book you want to, for free. However, you can only keep it for a limited time.

What is being charged for when you buy a book is the physical book (the cost of producing it etc) and the ability to read it whenever you want and keep it for as long as you want.

Films and tv shows are similar, virtually every tv show or film will come on terrestrial tv at some point, but you are paying for the privilege of watching it at the cinema, watching it earlier on Sky/Virgin or on DVD.

I believe that for all these examples, if you are prepared to buy the equipment (e.g. a computer and an internet connection) you should be able to have unlimited access to the actual media for free.

Who pays? Indeed, the authors, creators, writers, singers etc have to be paid or many of them simply wouldn’t do it. When you listen to a song on the radio for free, the station is happy to pay the royalties because they are able to monetise their station significantly to cover the cost of paying the royalties (the BBC in the UK is a unique exception). When you read a book in a library in the UK for free, the British government pays the royalty because they believe that having free libraries is beneficial to the population to the point where the country will prosper as a result (of course this includes more than just libraries).

The main difficulty i see with this outlook is that new forms of revenue generation will have to be introduced to ensure that the creators are still paid for their work. I’d imagine the best way to monetise the actual media would be advertising. I know that i would happily watch a 15 or 30 second advert to download a free song or tv show. I know that i would still go to the cinema even though i could download any movie for free. I know that if i downloaded a great album i would be inclined to tell others, and that i would pay to see the band/artist live. I know that i will also still buy CDs or books even though the related media is freely available because of the benefits associated with them. For example, i have a website running Zen Cart which is open source software so is free, however i was quite happy to pay £25 for a book on how to use it (despite the information being freely available on the internet) because of the way that the book is laid out and the ease of use because of that (i probably still would’ve bought the book if it was available as a free download because i think that some things are easier to have in physical book form that digital).

I definitely don’t have all the answers on how to reorganise these industries, but i’m aware that the current system, based on laws which are hundreds of years old and managed by people who believe that they must fight to keep their industry operating in the same way since it began, is heading for failure. Millions of people illegally download music, films and software because the industries which control them have not adapted to today’s environment, and i don’t see anything likely to stop that trend until the industries adapt. Industry which is not prepared to be progressive and move with the times will ultimately head for disaster.

Seriously though – it has been a tough few weeks. Our new warehouse opened on Monday so all orders are now being shipped from there which is great, although a lot of work to set up. The website also took a considerable amount of work to get where it is…big thank you to Callum for setting it up, setting me up on it and continuing to help throughout the process. Would i really have an internet empire (wow…that sounds cool, though a little geeky!) without him? Thanks to my faithful website testers too!

With these changes, the business direction has changed somewhat and to be able to create a competitive advantage in the market, there must be a focus on inventory management. Keep tuned for more news about that in the near future. Hopefully our new shop, combined with our eBay store, will generate more business to keep the train rolling.

In my opinion, when selling books second hand, Amazon Payments far outweighs eBay as the top marketplace for:

• ease of listing your item
• simplicity
• speed of sale (when compared to 7 or 10 day auctions, and if you have a competitive price).

The downsides are that the cost is around 17.5% of sale price, which is higher than eBay (even including PayPal fees). The other is that you only get the standard Amazon charge for postage (minus their administration fee) which, for books, is £2.75, leaving you £2.38 for postage. Try wrapping and posting a 2kg textbook for £2.38!

However, overall verdict – definitely worth it!

Very little setup required, you just need to know the IP of the machine you’re connecting too, have the server program running on it and boom – you get a window on your desktop of the remote desktop and your keyboard and mouse control that machine.

The screenshot takes a picture of both of my monitors here so you can see me writing this post on the right, my start bar on the left, and the remote desktop in the middle of the screen on the left. Very cool stuff…thanks bro!

I purchased an Orange Contract mobile phone from phones2udirect in September last year, and so far have found them to be a thoroughly unethical and immoral company. When i purchased the phone with £75 cashback, i read the small print which stated that this would be paid to me in 3 instalments after months 6, 9 and 12 of having the contract. I presumed the point being that they were making sure i kept the phone for 12 months and didn’t cancel the contract. What i didn’t do was read the terms and conditions. The T&C state that you must send them the actual invoice you receive from your network provider (Orange), and it must reach them within 21 days of its date and be enclosed with a letter detailing your personal details and your original invoice for the phone purchase. So, Orange have to finalise your month’s invoice, print it, send it to you, you have to write a letter, enclose the invoice, send it back to phones2udirect and it must reach them within 21 days! Oh…and “for your convenience” they don’t send you any vouchers or even contact you at all to let you know when or how you can claim your cashback!

Now…if you know all that, you can have the letter pre-written and literally send the invoice to them when you receive it…however, they may not open it straight away and they may also deny receipt of the letter – best to opt for recorded delivery in this case. They will also default on your claim for any number of reasons, including the letter not containing all the correct details, not having the correct enclosed documents…etc – at which point they will then default on all other subsequent claims made as they base their validity on the success of previous claims made – you mess one up and you can’t get another one!

if you’re in the unlucky position of having not read the T&C’s (like myself) you begin to wonder if there’s even point contacting them as you’ve already missed your month 6′s invoice cut-off date, and they’re unlikely to give you your second instalment without the first!

Anyway…what’s this rant all about? Pure and simple…don’t deal with phones2udirect, they are a highly unethical company…and make sure you check out all the ins and outs of any cashback deals if you ever want to see the cash. Incidentally i’ve read numerous stories of people on internet who have made claims in line with the T&C’s and have never seen a cheque from them!