I had the chance to play with the all new Boxee Remote and I was very impressed. It feels so light (it may or may not have had batteries in it) but solid enough to take some abuse like people sitting on it and being dropped off sofa edges on to stone floors. The top edge with the navigation is very mac like with the basic amount of controls to do most things. But then if you roll over the remote your greeted by a full qwerty keyboard. The keyboard is lower that the edges so even when lying flat the buttons don’t touch. Being all RF is good because the keyboard is very usable when not facing the screen. Although the remote is a good size I do wish it was a little thicker. I’ll be buying one for my xbmc setup as soon as there available.

I also saw TV product placement ban has been lifted in the UK. Commercial broadcasters will soon be allowed to accept payment for promoting branded goods in hit TV shows.

The promotion of alcohol, tobacco, gambling and foods that contain high levels of fat, salt or sugar will still be banned. The BBC will remain banned from promoting any products.

Product placement is already widespread in films, notably James Bond movies, and on American TV shows, including Sex and the City and Simon Cowell’s American Idol.

Both ITV and Channel 4 welcomed the lifting of the ban. An ITV spokesman said: “ITV welcomes the government’s announcement today to permit limited product placement in UK-made TV programmes. While we do not necessarily agree with the restrictions placed on certain categories, it is a step in the right direction as it will deliver additional revenue for investment in original content in the UK.”

Honestly I watch so much American tv that this makes no difference to me and to be fair with a new revenue model available, maybe more of the copyright owners will be less precious about who sees the media.

Finally, See Saw launched which is meant to be the UK Hulu but to be honest it feels very much like iplayer of early 2009. Where’s all the social sharing features which we all use everyday? Wheres the RSS feeds and API? Nowhere to be seen. Somebody please write a XBMC and Boxee plugin for this, so I consume it in a rational way.

The website for more information and to sign up is dvwm.weebly.com

Whats the schedule?

April 9th will see a pre-party get together at a central Manchester venue (TBA)

April 10th will be the first day of the event complete with open sessions to help get you inspired

April 11th will be the day when you can show off your visualisation on stage

This may also help answer your questions?

• It will be a mix of hackday/mashed with a unconference type event, its the same format as we have used for Over the Air 2008
• There will be lots of coding, designing and general hacking.
• We have secured a venue in central Manchester which will allow over night stay, so theres no need to worry about hotels on the Saturday night.
• A small but good amount of food and drink will be available, but if you ever feel hungry for more theres plenty of shops and restaurants in central Manchester.
• The venue isn’t far from Piccadilly station, so getting to and from the South, East and West should be pretty easy.
• Anyone coming into Victoria Station should change on to the tram heading to Piccadilly.
• The event is totally free but requires signup beforehand and confirmation from the organisers.
• Visualisations don’t have to be just virtual, they can be physical too.
• You can use the hashtag or tag – DVWM to find related stuff
• Yes its in Central Manchester not Central London
• Yes we all love open data

Interested designers and developers can find out more and apply for an invitation via the DVWM website.

Got to say I’m pretty impressed, it looks and sounds pretty amazing. Shame we have to wait till Christmas to see it in one of the two 3D formats.

American Gangster – I love this film, its very clever in so many ways. While your somewhat rooting for Frank/Denzil who is super smart, modest and a entrepreneur with the nerve to take on everybody at there game. Your reminded that he is a drug dealer and making a living selling junk to people in his own community. Even the police didn’t believe a black man could be capable of getting to such a position and because of that they would focus there efforts on the Italians and other drug barons.

Strictly Sexually – This movie has pretty much come out of nowhere and has been downloaded tons of times according to different sources. Its very difficult to find on DVD due to its limited shelf life in the states. Anyway the plot centres on 2 woman and 2 men who have a one night stand. The woman so fed up with how complex relationships can be, decide to paying for a couple male escorts for the night (so no feelings involved sex). They meet our 2 guys at the bar and it all goes well but the next day when the woman try to pay the guys for the night, the guys are not best pleased. What follows is a complex relationship of trust and distrust. Its all shot pretty simply but the storyline and characters tend to keep you interested. Worth seeking out.

Legion – This is a new one which I fear will get missed in the push for the big blockbusters like Avatar. Its the end of the world, angels have been sent by god himself to take vengeance out the human race however in a cafe someway out side of LA works a woman with her unborn child. That child will save the world and one of the angels decides to go against god to give the human race a chance of survival. Its quite a simple plot but its visually stunning, interesting in a thrilling way and never stopping.

Ca$h – Sean Bean in this one is creepy as hell. Its all starts with a bank robbery that goes slightly wrong when they (including sean bean) have to ditch the money off a bridge. The money falls on the bonnet of a passing car, when the guy opens the case and sees the money he decides finders keepers. Unfortunately the bank robbers brother also played by sean bean tracks the guy down and demands the money back. The guy and his wife have spent a good lot of it already but return as much as possible to the brother whos now basically moved in with them. However there short about 20,000 dollars which is about 1 or 2% of the whole lot. Rather that count his loses like his locked up brothers begs him, he demands every pence be returned no matter what. As you can imagine what happens next. Another undiscovered hit with punchy dialogue and social compliance at the heart of the film. Its odd having Sean Bean play both brothers but what kills me is how anal someone can be over the money. You will be screaming at the display while watching this one.

Dogging: A love story – English movie with a bold title but not so bold plot. Dogging a love story is really a combination of different peoples lives and scenarios around dogging. Its tied together loosely but does generally work. I actually think if they kept it away from dogging it might have turned out to be a better film but yes it would have lost its shock. So what is the plot? Well a journalist is researching the dogging scene which his flat mate is a part of. Somehow he get mixed up with a lady who is also new and not sure about the whole thing. The lady is amazingly cute and when they first met in a cold car park love is in the air. After that its a swings and round abouts till they finally meet and say what they should have said the first day they met. Yep its a love story with a load of weird twists and stereotyping of people who go dogging. Although I’m quite down on this film, I got to say it is worth watching. The ladies are the type you would love to live next door to and the guys except our romeo character are either total nerds or cocks.

Up in the air – This film could only be made in the 2000’s, there so much in it about everyday life in the 00’s. Theres so many little humorous touches like when the couple have hotel sex and then get there laptops out to work out when they can next get together. The loyalty card stuff is classic stuff and generally air travel stuff for people who travel a lot is great. George Clooney is fantastic in this film and the people around him are certainly pulled into the halo effect. The plot is quite interesting and fits the it could work in the 2000’s theme. George spends most of his time on planes and airports going to companies to help them professionally sack people. This requires flying all over the states and communicating with base for where to go next. Most people hate this but george loves it and loves the road warrior lifestyle. However this is all under threat with a recently joined graduate who decides to make a push for the company to use voip technologies instead. George is then given the chance to get the graduate up to speed by his boss before they move over to voip. In the time the grad and george spend flying places, many things happen and they both get a lesson about the human condition. Its all very warming at the end, but its ok because theres lots of prickly issues through out the film. Don’t miss this one.

Creation – The story of Charles Darwin as he struggles to find a balance between the theories on evolution which he’s discovering and the religious relationship with his wife. To be fair it does drag on a little in places but generally its well worth watching, specially for the parts involving his child where he’s forced to explain to her what a impact his studies could have on the world. Yes its a period drama but with so much more purpose.

Angel-A – This is a weird one, its shot in black and white and is totally french. Its takes place in Paris and is somewhere between drama, comedy, romance and fantasy. André is owes too many people too much money, to top that he’s american and his passport has been stolen so he’s in for a really rough time. So rough, that he decides to jump off a bridge and end it all. However on the exact same bridge is a leggy blonde super model. She jumps and he saves her. So thankful, she agrees to be his side kick and help solve his problems. As you can imagine there is a lot which happens afterwards but I won’t spoil it for you.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt – Yes I know its a remake but if you’ve not seen the original film noir version, then this one might be a lot more accessible. The film starts off as a standard court room drama centered around a murder and before you know it things have twisted and changed right before your eyes. I don’t want to spoil this one either because its really worth watching. Specially now you got a really good line up of stars on board for this excellent remake.

Case 39 – I’m not usually into horror because I find them boring but this was much more leaning towards the thriller section. Theres not much to it, over worked social worker checks out a case where the parents try and kill there child by putting her in the oven. Child is saved and queue the start of a very difficult relationship with the social worker. Thats all I’m going to say… Worth watching on a sunday night with the lights down, it will take you by surprise.

This is the new look Ubuntu or rather the new default theme in Ubuntu 10.04. I’m not totally convinced, I prefer my own sand and jade themes but its good to see the brown theme will go away.

Ubuntu seems to be one step closer to a semantic desktop with the use of Gnome Zeitgeist is Gnome Activity Journal, zeitgeist-filesystem and other bits…

Zeitgeist is a service which logs the users’s activities and events (files opened, websites visites, conversations hold with other people, etc.) and makes relevant information available to other applications. It is able to establish relationships between items based on similarity and usage patterns.

Nice (check out this great video) but can I get the thing working? Well I got the engine running but I can’t get the activity journal working. Luckily it looks like it will make its way into Gnome 3.0 (which we will have to wait for 10.10). If your a KDE user don’t worry there’s also a Semantic desktop strand coming your way.

Me menu is like a idea I had a long time ago. I always wondered why you couldn’t set your status in one application and for the others to also pick that up. So from memory the picture I mocked up was me editing my status in Gwibber and it automatically updated my Skype and Pidgin statuses too. Well now Me menu pretty much does that. Oh and did you see the next generation of Gwibber? Kind of looks like Tweetdeck but not.

Its been a long time since I’ve done a mix worthy of publishing, don’t get me wrong I’ve been playing with the pacemaker quite a bit but they have been quite short and of varity of quality. So this is the big one, almost 2 hours of pure trance, just in time for Spring and the sunshine. Playlist to follow….

1. Lift – Sean Tyas
2. Key of Life (Marlo remix) – Ohmna Featuring Nurlaila
3. The Legacy (alphazone mix) – Saltwater
4. Constellation (john o’callaghan remix) – Thomas Bronzwaer
5. The Labyrinth (part one) – Moogwai
6. Maybe next time – Robert Nickson
7. The Legacy (club mix) – Push
8. Certitude – Thomas Bronzwaer
9. Rewire – Robert Nickson & Daniel Kandi
10. RAMsterdam (Jornvan Deynhoven Remix) – RAM
11. Intuition (Martin Roth Remix) – Marninx Pres Ecco
12. 1999 (Gouryella mix) – Binary Finary
13. Off the World (Large Remix) – Martin Roth and Alex Bartlett
14. What it feel like for a girl (Dj Duane Thamms extended dance video remix) – Madonna
15. Invisible Touch (Ferry Corsten’s Touch) – Bobina
16. Save Me – Airwave
17. Beautiful Thing (Photon project remix) – Andain
18. Shadow World – Thomas Bronzwaer
19. Blinding Truth – Elevation
20. Out of the Blue 2010 – System F
21. Barber Adagio for Strings (Ferry Corsten mix) – William Orbit

Although SWF Verification is principally intended to serve as a barrier to piracy, it also blocks regular users from legitimately viewing content with open source video players. Fans of the popular XBMC media center application have discovered that the application can no longer be used to watch iPlayer content.

Yep I know all about this… But I never factored in this part…

The Totem BBC plugin, which was developed by the BBC itself in collaboration with Canonical and Collabora, is also apparently blocked.

If this is true, I’m frankly embarrassed. I will investigate whats happened on this front.

So to remind everyone, this is my blog and not the view of my employer (the BBC). If you’ve not seen the outbreak about the iplayer stream changes then I can recommend the BBC Backstage post and the internet blog post. You will see they both link to the register piece which highlighted the problems people are having.

Here’s the Register’s summary of the whole thing.

The BBC has quietly updated its hugely popular iPlayer with a verification layer that closes the door on open source implementations of RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) streaming, The Register has learned.

The Beeb applied the update to its online video catch-up service on 18 February, just four days after Adobe Systems penned a corporate blog post about its “content protection offerings”.

The tweak means that free RTMP plugins offered by the likes of the XBMC community – whose code is based on the GNU General Public Licence (sic) v2* – can no longer stream iPlayer content. The latest iteration of XBMC’s plugin was created in May last year and was being used by UK viewers to play TV and radio catch-up content from the BBC’s iPlayer service.

XBMC.org adds to this…

While we understand the BBC’s reasoning for the decision, we surely don’t agree with it. Add to that, a publicly funded media organization has far more obligations than a typical private one.

XBMC could easily be modified in a way that would allow playback of the streams, though it could never be included in the official binaries due to the wretched DMCA.

We hope that news of this change spreads quickly. Feel free to submit this story as well as the one from The Register to your favorite news sites. If anyone from the BBC would like to engage in a public discussion, we would very much welcome it; see our contact page for details. Also, be sure to take their online survey and tell them how you feel. Remember, this change affects far more than an XBMC plugin… all open-source BBC playback implementations are at stake.

*librtmp, the library used to access these streams, uses the lgpl license.

So to be clear, I also understand the reasoning but disagree with the need for this change. This change is easily fixable/hackable/reversed but doing so would break the DMCA or EUCD. So this is a very difficult position to be in because the change is forcing the hand of the developers to do something illegal. Now most of the developers don’t and won’t do it but there are those who don’t give a flying monkey for the law and will easily reverse whatever Adobe creates in the form of DRM. This is why there is such a outrage by most people who understand the situation fully. Verification layer protection is a joke, but a really bad joke which you can’t get rid off by simply shuffling it out the front door. Cory always says…

DRM only affects people who buy media honestly, rather those who nick, borrow or cheat their way to it. In turn that means that the people who ultimately bear the inconvenience, cost and insult of DRM are the paying customers, not the pirates.

And he’s right. The people who are most effected by Verification Layer are those who are the fans watching iplayer streams on their XBMC boxes at home with there friends and family. Worst still they are already license fee payers and early adopters who the BBC really should be spending more time with instead of marking them down as a irrelevant group. This group are very vocal and have the ability to really make the BBC’s future a living hell if its not very careful.

I’ve already seen evidence of a application which strips iplayer of all its content in a slightly questionable way being pushed as a replacement for XBMC’s iplayer script. Its worth noting this application which I won’t link to worked before the change and still works after the change, in actual fact there was no interruption to its service! And if you think thats questionable, I’m sure the usage of BBC content in Bit Torrent, Rapidshare, usenet, etc went flying through the roof as people scrambled back to the dark net to watch there shows. I do wish there was a way to prove this in numbers, just to show how much streaming from the BBC was having an affect on the dark net.

So where do we go from here?

Will the BBC ever turn off Verification layer? Honestly I doubt it and as Adobe creates even more technical hurdles they will also be added. Its a real shame because as we’ve already explored they only effect those who care enough to get there content from the BBC iplayer. Adobe’s measures have no ground in the dark net.

The Trust survey is very important, as that has a massive effect on what the BBC can and cannot do. So its very important that everyone takes part in the survey. Its also worth writing blog entries and telling more people about the issue. This doesn’t only effect xbmc but also all those mobile clients and other media centres. There’s been a lot of comments at the register, iplayer forums, internetblog, backstage forum and backstage blog but not nearly enough posts and twitters.

Finally the BBC needs to talk openly about this stuff, if it was announced this was coming and explained then I honestly I think the BBC wouldn’t get the kickback there getting now. Look at the iplayer forum, who on earth blamed the iplayer RSS terms and conditions for this problem? Yes I’ve been talking to the guys at XBMC and other projects, the BBC needs to build bridges with these communities and at least have a conversation about this stuff. No promises just conversation.

Essentialmixes.net is a website where you can stream, download, view tracklists and rate every Radio 1 essential mix since it began in 1993. Wow, but its not flawless.

There are so many amazing mixes on the site… One which takes me right back is Force & Styles mix from 1997. Just check out the playlist from this sweet mix. The only tune missing is the Eyeopener by Dj Brisk.

1. Force & Styles – “Paradise & Dreams” (Diverse)
2. Force & Styles – “Apollo 13 Pt II” (UK Dance)
3. Bang The Future – “Body Slam” (GBT)
4. Force & Styles – “Cuttin’ Deep” (Diverse Recordings)
5. DJ Quatro – “Musical Mayhem” (HecTec)
6. Sy & Bunter – “Connect Your Step” (GBT)
7. Sy & Demo – “Love & Devotion” (Quosh)
8. DJ Stompy – “Body Rock” (Hectic)
9. JDS – “Higher Love” (Stompin’ Choonz)
10. DJ Eruption – “Don’t You Want Me” (United Dance)
11. Demo
12. Ham & Time – “Here I Am” (Jal Premium)
13. Ramos & Supreme – “Gotta Believe” (Hectic Rewinds)
14. Hixxy & Bananaman – “Together Forever” (Essential Platinum)
15. DJ Eruption – “Let The Music” (United Dance)
16. Force & Styles – “Pretty Green Eyes” (UK Dance)
17. Force & Styles – “Your Love” (Happy Trax)
18. Bang – “Cloudy Daze” (Next Generation)
19. Force & Styles – “Shining Down” (UK Dance)
20. DJ Demo – “Your Mine” (Universal)
21. Slipmatt & Eruption – “Sunshine” (First Recordings)
22. Billy Bunter – “Untitled” (GBT)
23. DJ Eruption – “Reach Out” (United Dance)
24. DJ Vinyl Groover – “It Doesn’t Have To Be” (Hectic Rewinds)
25. DJ Vinyl Groover – “Time After Time” (Obsession)

The site its self is pretty impressive, it really celebrates the dj and the amazing mixes which is good thing. So I went to register and found out, registration actually costs money up front which is a bit cheeky, yes its only 2 pounds 50 but there should be a option to sign up without paying. Then if you want to download, you have to pay. There’s also no clear indication what kind of downloads will be available. I can’t actually tell if the downloads are mp3’s, ogg vorbis or something drm’ed like AAC/WMA?

Reading people tweets, there seems to be a lot of problems downloading mixes, so maybe they should adopt some kind of P2P system like bit torrent to ease the bandwidth problems there having. Something like P2Pnext would be perfect for this setup. Finally, it would be great to have a API or at least RSS feeds.

I’m sure someone is already writing a script/app for this site to go into XBMC/Boxee/other devices, if there not – I might just do it myself.

You got to give it up to Newswipe, its a great show and if you’ve not already seen the How To Report The News piece and let’s go live to, where have you been? Great BBC programme which yes you can watch on iplayer or other places. Charlie Brooker is a genius and I can’t believe the first time I ever heard of him was when he did the Gameswipe during Christmas time.

Interaction design nicely described by Bill Verplank, found via the guys at Tinker.it.

One of the things I never quite understood about Apple’s idea of a massive ipod touch as a ipad, is the interface. Steve Jobs may point the finger at Adobe for being lazy with Flash, but to be honest the ipad interface isn’t exactly cleverly thought out or exciting in anyway. I have already said lovely things about Microsoft’s Phone 7 and even with all the other things it doesn’t do I’m still very impressed. So take the form factor of the ipad (although I prefer the 6 inch screen of my ebook reader) dump out all the Apple crap and load it up with Windows phone7 and you got something much more interesting and the dawn of slate computing. I’m not saying its a perfect match but if it was to happen, I’d much more likely to buy a ipad. Dell and HTC get on it….

Sad moment to see the London Geekdinners are no more. As the Formerly organized of Geek Dinners its wasn’t really a surprise. Cristiano Betta and Melinda Seckington took over the running of the events back over a year and half ago when I left London for Manchester. And last year spoke to me about the possibility of changing the direction of geekdinners into something else.

Its been amazing over the years, some of the guests we’ve had include, Stowe Boyd, Tim Oreilly, Adrian and Dan Hon, Brady Forrest, Jen Pahlka, Jyri Engeström, Julie Howell, Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, Chris Anderson, Kevin Marks, Dave Winer, Betsy Weber, Molly Holzschlag, Robert Scoble, Jeff Keni Pulver, Mozilia Labs, Ben Metcalfe, Marc Carter, Dr Sophie Kain, Jeremy Zawodny Howard Rheingold, Holmes Wilson, Dean Jansen, Moo.com, Paul Boag, Dave Shea, Eric Meyers, Mike Culver, Dave Crossland, BBC iplayer team, Ryan Carson, Paul Jones, Richard Clayton, Becky Hogge, David Terrar, myself and many many more…. (sorry if I didnt remember your name).

Our biggest geekdinner by its self was with Chris Anderson of Wired magazine, although the joint girl geekdinner with Scoble have been huge in the past too. The biggest so called geekdinner was the backstage p. arty/geekdinner/community party which took place in the Cuban Bar back in Christmas of 2006. Over 200 people attended that event and who could forget the massive trustedplaces.com cake. The most dinners we have done for one single person has got to be for Molly Holzschlag who will remain in our hearts as the Geekdinner queen with 3 geekdinners.

Geekdinner.co.uk had a bumpy time. The domain name is still owned by Nick Swan and the original server which the blog use to sit on has never been recovered. So if you go back in time on geekdinner.co.uk (the current server which Cristiano owns) you get to a point where there is no more blog entries. Archive.org has most of the old stuff thankfully. One of the best things which came out of geekdinners has to be the girl geekdinners which was the idea of Sarah Blow (not of my ex-wife, as I once heard recently). Sarah and the girlygeekdom have done a great job growing the event and looking back done exactly what maybe geekdinners should have done ages ago. I guess by the time we should have got serious, we were already on to running barcamps. Its great what Sarah Blow has done and I wish her good luck into the future.

We certainly moved around in venues for geekdinners. We started off in the cellar of a bar (bonds) just on Derring Street near Bond Street tube, tried a few places including the crown and anchor. Settled on the Polar Bear just behind Leicester Square before it got shut down (as we found out one day after BarCampLondon1). Tried a few more places and settled again at a very quiet place (The Bottlescrue) in the Holborn Viaduct area. It was summertime and we use to take over the whole bar including the outside seating for our geekdinners. This was also the bar we used for the biggest geekdinner with Chris Anderson. But it wasn’t to last, the reason why? Well it was in area of the city where people don’t hang around after 6pm. The bar closed its doors for good after a few months. After a little more bar shuffling including to the bear in trendy clerkenwell, we ended up at the Ye Olde Cock Taven which is still open and sits in Fleet street. We had that for quite a while before the owner drove me nuts and we moved elsewhere. This is about the time I left for Manchester and Cristiano took over. The venue he seemed to use the most was Hummus Bros in Holborn.

So as they say in the Matrix Revolutions, everything that has a beginning has an end. Geekdinners have been an amazing part of my life and I kept considering doing something like Geekdinners in Manchester. But its time to move on. I met some amazing geeks over the time of running the dinners. Some of them I’m still good friends with even now. Flicking through some of the photos, has had me thinking wow so many people, such good times. Geeks of London could be a interesting framework for other smaller events which fell in the shadow of geekdinners. Things like Bowling, Karaoke, heck even Roller Coaster riding might be your thing and there’s always usually another 4-10 people (at least) who also would go if theres interest shown. Who knows maybe there will be a geeks of Manchester one day…

Jas Dhaliwal left me a tweet which left a massive smile on my face. After my post moaning about Orange’s lack of decent handsets, it becomes clear that Orange are going to be first with the HTC Desire which is a Android 2.1 handset. He’re the details from the Orange Newsroom.

• Orange to retail the HTC Desire free on selected consumer pay monthly and business price plans from April
• The HTC Desire will feature Qualcommm’s superfast Snapdragon 1GHz processor and Google’s Android 2.1 Operating System
• An Orange Signature device, The HTC Desire is the first of several Android handsets to be unveiled by Orange in 2010

Orange today announced it will be launching the much anticipated HTC Desire, the next Android device to be ranged by Orange in the UK. Available this spring across all Orange consumer retail and business channels, the HTC Desire will be free on selected consumer pay monthly and business price plans.

Offering a rich, intuitive browsing touch interface and premium design, the 3G+ enabled Desire is the latest device to feature Google’s 2.1 Android operating system, allowing users unrestricted access to thousands of amazing tools and applications which can be downloaded straight to the handset.

Although I love the HD2 (4.3inch screen), its unlikely to head to Orange anytime soon and waiting another 6 months for my contract to run out is pointless if Orange will be getting decent Android phones soon. I do like Windows Mobile, specially the look of version 7 but its time to move on. So for the next few months, I’ll use my HD1 as a Android phone (video) then in April be first in line for the Desire.