WebMink

Bush in 30 Seconds

What sort of political advertising would America get if it was scripted, performed and produced by Everyman? MoveOn.org has been running a competition to find out, asking people to contribute a 30 second political advertisement for the US elections. The 15 best are now on display - I like "Gone in 30 Seconds", "Bush's repair Shop" and "In My Country" - which do you think will win the prime-time broadcast slot that's the prize?

posted at 11:51 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Monday, January 5

Joss Stone: A 'Norah Jones' moment

Reading the BBC web site today I stumbled across mention of a soul singer called Joss Stone. A quick look on Amazon found two free downloads from her album 'Soul Sessions' [US|UK|CA] and listening to them was a revelation like the one I felt when I heard Norah Jones' album 'Come Away With Me' for the first time (in pre-ßlog days). What a voice! Expressive, strong, rich, there is hardly a clue that she's English (from Devon), white and 16 years old. I see iTunes has it, very tempting.

posted at 4:40 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

OpenOffice.org file format book downloadable

Just to draw attention again to a fine piece of work, David Eisenberg's forthcoming O'Reilly book 'OpenOffice.org XML Essentials—Using OpenOffice.org’s XML Data Format' is now available as downloadable HTML files as well as being viewable online. The online version also allows readers to enter comments on each chapter, which I think is a great idea. I already know of several high-calibre projects using OpenOffice.org file format and David's book can only help.

posted at 8:53 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Sunday, January 4

Big improvement in NeoOffice/J

My friend Max has a new 17" Powerbook so we spent the afternoon gathering the extra software he wanted to get up to fully productive speed. Among the downloads was NeoOffice/J v0.7.1, Patrick Luby's latest release of his Java-front-ended OpenOffice.org. The new version loads and runs way faster than the previous one and I'd really recommend it to Mac users as its compatibility with MS Office is way better than AppleWorks.

One particularly interesting aspect is that Patrick has been able to significantly improve Java2D drawing performance (200% to 300% in some cases) so that NeoOffice/J is nearly as fast as its X11-based OpenOffice.org 1.0.3 counterpart. NeoOffice/J is all-round excellent - great functionality in a responsive package, and a great demonstration of both the power of the Java environment and the quality of the Java implementation on Mac OS X.

[Also posted to java.net]

posted at 7:46 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Radio on demand

I notice that iTunes Music Store is now selling a range of NPR programmes (such as 'Fresh Air' by Terry Gross). Having good spoken word radio available on demand is wonderful, but I get mine from the BBC - you can listen to any of the week's programmes via the Listen Again page. Try for example the excellent "From Our Own Correspondent", a weekly half-hour of short-feature articles by the BBC's correspondents around the world and an oasis of quality journalism. Or try "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue", which may be a slightly surreal acquired taste but is still to my mind the finest comedy I know.

Update: Both David and Ian add in my comments that I forgot to recommend the most distinguished, venerable and erudite BBC Radio programme of all, 'Letter from America' by Alistair Cooke. I agree with the recommendations from California and New Zealand - it's a must-listen.

posted at 11:13 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |