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Here’s the microslot talk on #fridaymix that I gave last month at Oxford Geek Night 18

James Turnbull – #fridaymix from Torchbox on Vimeo.

The talk went down well, and all the Oxford Geeks were very positive, but I’m most proud of the slides I created.

I started by buying blank tapes, new and shrinkwrapped from eBay, for the amazingly-cheap price of just over £10 for 20 blank tapes. I don’t know how old the tapes really are, but they look like they were manufactured just yesterday.

I then designed simple inlays for the various fridaymix themes, and throughly enjoyed slicing them up just like I did many years ago. I hoped to actually record samples of the fridaymix playlists onto the tapes, but was hampered by a lack of any actual tape recording equipment.

However, I did take the blank tapes along to the event, and managed to persuade at least 5 geeks that a blank 60 minute tape was exactly what they needed that evening.

Many thanks to J-P Stacy and co. for organising Geek Night, Matthew for photographing the tapes, Annika for supplying a tape player and Alex for tidying up the images.

I will again be speaking at Oxford’s local geek event, OGN in a week’s time (21st July).

This time I plan to pimp the #fridaymix concept, and hopefully recuit a few more participants from Oxford’s local tech companies.

I’ve been trying out various accounting software for Mac OS X, and today will be reviewing iBank, which promises my finances “will never look so good”. Rather than covering the softwares features, aesthetics, or value for money, I would like to concentrate on one part of the user interface that I think sums up iBank.

Underneath the list of transactions is this little “Quick Edit” area, that shows full details of the highlighted row. Here you can see I’m editing my purchase of Launchbar (more on that another day) and I would like to add a PDF of the receipt I received via email.

So, I correctly assume that the picture of the Parthenon is where I should be adding my image. There’s no “select…” option, so I try drag-and-dropping the PDF on the box. Nothing happens. I notice that there’s an “Edit” button on the right hand side and click that, to receive this message:

Um, yes? I did just click the Edit button after all.

Confirmation dialogs like this one belong in one place, and that’s destructive task such as “Are you sure you want to delete the pile of crap that is iBank from your computer?”.

Why I even have to switch to “Edit mode” in the first place is beyond me, as there’s no harm in the boxes being editable at all times. But then asking me if I’m sure I want to switch modes is the icing on the big stupid cake.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been slowly rolling out Unfeedr, a new Twitter-based site for cataloguing rubbish RSS feeds that you don’t read anymore.

The story begins with an idle thought about starting another blog which I wouldn’t have time to write, this time focussing on RSS feeds that I’d unsubscribed from and why. I happily subscribe to loads of new RSS feeds, but find it much more effort to later on unsubscribe (“OMG, what If I miss something?”) so it takes a good series of awful posts or annoying behaviour to make me leave. I thought that documenting these reasons might make interesting reading.

Of course, I did nothing about this, until Alex noticed another Tweet from Guardian columnist Jemima Kiss, where she announced her reasons for unsubscribing from a feed with an obvious pang of regret. The public feedback and snappy reasoning cemented the idea that anyone could report on feeds via the medium of Twitter, and all we had to do is aggregate the results.

And so Unfeedr was born. Think of it not as a forum for hating on crappy blogs¹, but as a way of feeding-back to content providers about why you gave them up. It’s your way of saying “I’m sorry, it’s just not working out” to all those blogs clogging up your reader.

The site is still being developed, next on the list is a leader-board for the most unsubscribed feeds, but we’d be delighted if you could send a few feeds over² and give us your feedback.

At the end of last year, the kind folks at Sumo sent us one of their Omni beanbags to try out. Presumably due to the upcoming christmas rush, they could only offer 3 of the 7 available colour options: Day-glo Orange, Tear-inducing Pink or the Why-didn’t-I-choose-that-option White. We opted for the Orange.

Upon the Omni’s speedy arrival, the first thing we noticed is that it’s absolutely massive, much bigger than we expected. It just amount squeezed into the corner of the room but, especially in orange, it still imposed.

Sumo claim there 10 different ways you can sit on it, which are each sort-of demonstrated on the site. However, I’d strongly advise against the “straddle it like a horse” mode, as it managed to very much hurt me in a way only men can get hurt.

In the end, we found the simple “use it as a chair” and “lie on the floor” modes the comfiest, but part of the fun is chucking it around to switch modes. Unfortunately, during this chucking around, we discovered that the Omni had been damaged in transit, and a small tear was leaking beans.

Sumo said this was very rare, and kindly arranged for a replacement beanbag to be sent to review instead. This second bag was the red colour option which, while still far from subtle, is much more pleasing on the eyes.

For proper testing, the replacement has been thrown around which much vigour, and has been very hardy. Due to space constraints it even spent some time as an outside cushion without suffering any noticeable damage. The “wipe clean” material, while not great for extended hours of sitting, does do a good job of repelling mud, tea and baby-puke stains.

All in all the Sumo beanbag is a fun, yet at times quite impractical, addition to the furniture. We’d certainly recommend one if you have lots of empty space in your living room.

Do you have a new product that you’d like reviewed by authors, web developers and top bloggers James and Alex Turnbull? If so, then drop us a line.

Dear sir,

The website you have contacted, Google Sightseeing, is not affiliated with Google. We have no control over which images Google chooses to show on its Street View service.

You should contact Google to request that an image be removed:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68385

On a more personal note however, you should be aware that one of the main benefits of the Street View service is that people wishing to purchase a new house can choose between many more properties. If you choose to remove yourself from the service, your house (and probably your neighbours’ houses) will also be removed, and nobody will ever be able to use the service to inform their purchasing decision, should you decide to sell your home in the future.

Obviously it’s your decision whether you wish to remove your image from the service, but please bear in mind that the press is currently using scaremongering tactics and spouting complete nonsense in an effort to rile people up. Is it really so bad that people can see you standing outside your house? Were you doing anything that you wouldn’t normally do in a public place? Do you want it to look like you have something to hide?

I would like to reiterate that I am completely unaffiliated with Google, and these are my own personal opinions.

Kind regards,

Alex Turnbull