Simon Crisp » Personal

Pantomime Horse Grand National, why not?

Simon Crisp — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:31:00 +0000

International Kindle: Okay e-book reader, good e-newspaper reader

Simon Crisp — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:39:26 +0000

It’s been a couple of weeks since an intrigued UPS guy delivered my shiny white Kindle “What are these things?” he asked, “I’ve been delivering loads of them all morning.”

When I told him, he instantly lost interest, “So it’s just for reading books” he muttered as he disappeared down the corridor, carrying another two familiar brown Amazon boxes — I couldn’t tell if he’d recognised this meant he wouldn’t be carrying any more heavy books to these addresses.

Okay so first things first. Yes Amazon should have released it in the UK far earlier. Yes it is beginning to look like dated technology and yes they have crippled the ‘international’ version by removing features like the albeit rather crappy web browser (unless you are addicted reading dubious facts).

It’s also annoying buying everything in dollars, especially when you are as mathematically challenged as me and the pound is doing belly flops off the high-diving board.

If that wasn’t enough Amazon have obviously noticed the little ’sucker’ stickers we Brits have on our foreheads and added 30% onto the price of the books they are willing to sell us. By which I mean the measly selection of the ones US customers get to pick from.

While this can be navigated by a proxy server, downloading to your computer and transferring by USB, you will be hard pushed to do that in the magic 60 seconds a certain Mr Bezos keeps going on about.

You might think you can tell where this review is going… but no, I am loving my Kindle.

While I have only bought one book from Amazon, I uploaded 50 classics I have been meaning to read, (easily downloaded from Feedbooks) and anyway, for me the killer feature is getting newspapers delivered to me each morning.

I love newspapers, but I rarely buy them. For years (while working as news editor at NTI) I had every national sat on my desk when I got to work. Since then I have grown to begrudge handing over cash for a paper filled with content which is free online.

But the idea of getting them on the Kindle kindle appealed to me. Each morning I could have a newspaper sat on my bedside table waiting for me to wake up (add a coffee machine and I could marry it). To an extent this is what I got, though annoyingly the international version means newspapers are stripped of pictures.

Either way I have spent more money on newspapers in the past few week than the past 12 months — and as a hack that can’t be a bad thing.

NewsLite.tv is almost a Guardian Top 100 website

Simon Crisp — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:47:00 +0000

I noticed a trickle of traffic today coming from the Guardian website to newslite.tv, it seems someone suggested it as one of the top 100+ websites of the year.

A couple of weeks ago they published a list on their technology blog of the top 100 sites in categories such a news, blogging, location and off-beat but also asked for readers to suggest their own picks.

Well it appears some kind soul thought NewsLite.tv should have made it onto the list and suggested us, the even kinder souls at the Guardian technology section then included it in the off-beat section of the article “100 top sites weren’t enough for some people.“

In the article it said: “NewsLite.tv covers odd and quirky stories, a welcome antidote to all the doom and gloom in the news at the moment.”

Weird Week is back … and in the iTunes top 20, briefly

Simon Crisp — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:30:00 +0000

After a six month hiatus I have finally been able to bring back the NewsLite.tv video podcast, Weird Week.

The show is now hosted by Steve Folland, a radio DJ with station Heartbeat FM who offers a humourous look at some of the odd news stories featured on the site from the past seven days.

It appears we must be doing something right, Weird Week has already appeared (albeit fleatingly) in the iTunes Top 20 chart for video podcasts in the News and Politics category … when the wind is blowing from the east.

Here is the latest episode, hope you like it, if so please subscribe on iTunes and leave a review. If you don’t like it, keep it to yourself, we don’t like bad reviews.