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Ten awesome ways to find new music online (Download Squad)

May 30th 2010 4:25PM I'm surprised blip.fm isn't listed here. I quite like it, even if it can hog people's Twitter streams!

Also, Spotify is pure awesome. My tip for finding new music is to go to a page for a band you like, and then scroll down to find the compilations they've appeared on. You end up listening to bands you've never heard of but with similar sensibilities... as long as you're a bit of an indie kid I guess.

Tell DLS: What are your top 10 must-have apps? - Linux! (Download Squad)

Oct 16th 2009 5:39PM For those of us who find ourselves needing to co-exist with lesser OSes in a corporate environment, Wine is an essential. For that reason, VirtualBox is a good call too.

GSM Palm Pre spotted with Vodafone SIM card (Engadget)

Feb 16th 2009 8:00AM If Vodafone have got it, the European Pre will be launched with uglified icons. That seems to be Vodafone's favourite thing to do - take nice icons and hit them with an ugly stick until they look like C64 compatible.

The World's Ugliest Gadgets (Switched)

Aug 18th 2008 11:35AM Regarding the Psion:

"The units looked less like PDAs and more like something a police officer might clock your blood alcohol level with."

That's actually not that a million miles from reality - from what I recall these were designed more for data gathering than as a PDA. We were using when I was working in the hospital in the late 90s for stock control - they had barcode readers and were as rugged as the brick they were styled upon, meaning they could be used in warehouses and operated by the least technically literate staff you could possibly put on inventory duty (hence the non-QWERTY keypad). When I left the hospital for more interesting employment they were 12 years old and still going strong.

3 Linux Apps That Make Me Hate Windows (Download Squad)

Aug 8th 2008 11:41AM Ah, but VLC is cross-platform, whereas Synaptic, Compiz Fusion and Amarok aren't. (Well, with a lot of effort you can get Amarok running, you might be able to get Synaptic compiled but it won't download anything, and Compiz Fusion wouldn't achieve anything on a Windows box.)

Dell's "mini-Inspiron" Eee PC killer revealed (Engadget)

May 29th 2008 5:07AM I can't believe no other commentators have noticed this - after making a keyboard for European users that was entirely unsuitable for touch-typing on, they've done it again. Look at your regular Qwerty keyboard, and you'll see that, quite roughly, Z is in line with 2. Now look at this Dell one and you'll see FAIL. Z is directly below A, is directly below Q, is directly below 1. They've made an entirely square keyboard, the likes of which I've not seen since the early 80s also-ran 8-bits.

It's worth pointing out that I can touch-type, and I find it possible to touch-type on my Eee, which is the same form factor as this Dell box. So... why are Dell determined to completely ruin everybody's keyboard experience?

Dell's Vostro 1310 keyboard putting the hurt on UK touch typists? (Engadget)

May 1st 2008 8:18AM This puts the odd position of the right shift and up cursor keys on the Eee PC into perspective. On the Eee it is only occasionally annoying and I've found it easy to train myself out of hitting up instead of shift by pressing further to the right on all keyboards I use. This, on the other hand, is so incredibly wrong that, if there were an alternative dimension where this were right, IT WOULD STILL BE WRONG. That's how wrong it is.

Somebody should email BBC Watchdog about this, and avoid typing VVX Watxhdog while they're at it.

BBC, ITV and Channel 4 team up for on-demand service (Engadget)

Nov 27th 2007 9:35AM The problem is going to be the way they deliver content.

BBC iPlayer uses the abominable Kontiki.
ITV's on demand software is built around the heinous Kontiki.
Channel 4's 4oD is a constructed using the makes-baby-Jesus-cry Kontiki.

I wonder what technology they'll slump towards...

If you've never used a Kontiki app before, be prepared for a background process that runs as a normal process, that periodically churns up 100% of your CPU (on mine - once every 60 seconds, for between 10 and 20 seconds), that has no bandwidth control settings, and that remains running when you close down what you think is the application. And you'll only be able to control it with a bugged Javascript-centric page in an embedded instance of IE.

Welsh village under attack by GPS-blind drivers (Engadget)

Nov 12th 2007 12:56PM I think it's worth pointing out that virtually all of the huge-vehicles-destroying-buildings-due-to-GPS stories, whilst being UK-centric, are actually coming about when lorry drivers from continental Europe are relying on their GPS systems that are programmed to talk to them in Czech or Polish rather than trying to cope with English - and Welsh - signs.

A huge problem is that here in the UK we've not managed to shake off the antiquated and baffling imperial system, and all these drivers are used to metric. Apparently suggesting the we start using a form of units that are logical and actually make sense is paramount to treason to the backward masses of Middle England though... sigh.

So how are you liking Ubuntu 7.10? (Engadget)

Oct 25th 2007 9:20AM I shoved the CD in my Toshiba laptop, adjusted the partition Windows is in so that I could dual boot, and installed it. Wireless networking worked out the box, installing the ATi driver was easy... pretty impressed. The only SNAFU is that the ATi driver doesn't play right with the hibernate/suspend functions which, on a laptop, is a pain in the posterior - but it boots and shuts down faster than XP anyway, so I can make do until it gets patched.

All in all - 8 out of 10. 8.04 will be amazing if this is anything to go by.