Fashion Contrast

Its finally the kind of weather which we all dream off, and seem to get at funny times, thanks in part to the climate change which is going on all around us. This weekend I had the pleasure of taking a few road trips in the car hire (by the hour if you must know) which me and my better other half use every weekend. We find its cheaper then owning a car, and if booked in advance can be a heck of a lot cheaper then on the day.

When it comes to weekend activities, its fair to say the there are generally a lot of things to do: taking the rubbish out, going to the ‘tip’ ( a place as a child I visited with my father to get rid of all the horrible things from the garden, for years I never was allowed out of the car to go and play in the rubbish but now I am!) and of course just going for drive. It got me thinking however; with a plethora of activities requiring a fairly large car, is it actually worth renting a car or for eases sake.

Its a car yeah.

It could be said that infact my weekend chores could be made a lot easier if we decided to use a van hire firm and essentially killed two birds with one stone.

What do you think?

Recently a few people have been getting fairly vocal or should I say simply been ‘tweeting’ about the Digital Economy Act which looks be little more than a slightly draconian approach to combating illegal music downloads. A large threat comes in how this law can mean your broadband connection can simply be disconnected if you are as brilliant blog Information is Beautiful suggests a ‘persistent pirate‘

Below is a fairly long and perhaps for some slightly non-understandable graphic to show how artists are being paid in this new coined ‘Digital Marketplace‘. What I can determine is that being a proper artist in this time means you almost need to go back to basics and make your own stuff and as long as possible continue to live to an almost “D-I-Y” style when it comes to recording and publishing your work.

I guess many artists are now seeing the potential rewards that a digital download campaign can bring in as an investment for the future of the band they are in. I say play the system for as long as you possible can.

This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of. Some are even secret. Last.Fm’s royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension. (If you can explain it to me, please get in touch)
Note: these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs). The full spreadsheet of data does though. You can see all the numbers and sources here:http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

For more information visit the original post here

When you make a call on your telephone especially whilst at home do you ever think: Could I be doing this for a lot cheaper, or alternatively, could I just send a online text or something similar?

Personally I use a contract SIM phone for when I am on the move, this way I am contactable at any point and can of course send texts when I need to. However, I don’t see any need to pick the mobile phone up when I’m at home. Why? because I’m easily contact on either my Home Telephone number or indeed my E-mail.

I am personally all for Skype Mobile which incorporates basically texting and calling using a simply to use platform. Plus, it works off the back of a normal mobile phone, which means your bill is your bill and the cost is extremely low. This is beneficial in many ways, one way is below.

• Children use mobile phones and generally rack up massive bills. I know I did. I believe a great idea is to with a group of likeminded parents buy (if your kids want/need a mobile phone!) phones which contain Skype Mobile and then it can be used freely at no cost to the parents. This can be useful in teaching the children how to text etc (I feel slightly weird writing this).

Girl on Mobile Phone

If you just want to have a voice chat, and you just want to have it computer to computer, then Skype will work fine for that, but Skype is more of a VoIP voice messenger then it is a VoIP phone providor, even thought it does have VoIP phone features, and you can call cell phones and landlines, you have to do all the talking through a computer microphone, and listen through your computer speakers (or use one of those computer headsets), or you can get one of those third party USB to RJ-11 adapters to connect a phone to, but the directions to set it up are very vague, and they don’t discuss how to connect it to a landline network (though it is as easy as just connecting the adapter to the wall, after disconnecting the NID first), also, it’s not really a reliable phone connection, so calls can drop due to computer problems or internet access problems, also, the computer and Skype must be running all the time in order to make and recieve calls, and the settings on the computer may be difficult to configure.