Always good to take a peek at a brand new radio website, even better when it’s not a direct and unauthorised ripoff of another one.

So, after a considerable amount of months beavering away in Django, it’s great to see a brand new and much less unpleasant Capital Radio website has appeared.

First impressions are favourable: a big (very big) animated carousel on the front, which appears to be de rigeur in many content rich websites these days. Right now, the carousel is promoting something on the radio (as number one); a competition (as number two); and a feature on the site, the London Guide (as number three). I like the arrow motif at the top, which shows what’s coming next; and the ‘related links’ on the right hand side (though it wasn’t immediately obvious that they were related to the big picture).

The advertising is tastefully done. There are three big ads on the front page - one, the MPU, cleverly treated with the same graphical treatment as the other images on the site (a kind of coloured underlining) which is a nice design touch. I’m surprised by the amount of advertising on the front page; but the effect isn’t as unpleasant as you’d think, mainly because the pages are long: the front page itself is four screens long.

In common with most radio websites, ‘listen live’ is the biggest and most prominent link, in a consistent place just below the logo. It’s accompanied by something similar to the livetext that accompanies DAB broadcasts. I first saw the site during a programme, Capital Dance Anthems, that I suspect isn’t played off the playout system; since I got a rather confusing message that they were currently playing Oasis, and they’d just played… Oasis.

In a nice touch, the ‘on-air’ page lists the last four songs; but there’s little information about the current presenter. Clicking the names of the songs leads you not to a music section, but to a direct link to iTunes. The big splash on the front page about Johnny’s breakfast show leads you to a four paragraph story about his programme - it’s only on scrolling down the page, past the pointless social media bookmarks, that you realise there’s more about the programme. And not much more, it ought to be said. Mind, it’s more than the other programmes, which have one page each. For a radio station website, there’s precious little content about the radio station here. It’s always unfair to judge a website’s content on their first few days, but it will be interesting how quickly more content will appear for the radio presenters, and how much character the template is capable of giving.

Mind you - there’s a ton of news (mostly from ITN, but nicely presented); and then, there’s the London Guide. And, all of a sudden, GCap’s purchase of welovelocal.com makes sense. This is a ton of local, relevant, and impressive data. While a search for “pizza” near my house gives me the local Pizza Express but not the two italian restaurants and the takeaway that the area also offers, the “live events” search has pointed me to a venue I was previously unaware of, only three minutes’ walk away. There’s a ton of data, cleverly delivered mostly through a Google Maps mashup. And there’s some fun language used, too - things can be “five minutes away”, “one minute away”, or “a hop, skip and jump away”.

Technically, the URLs appear to be nice and clean; a vast increase from previous Article.asp?id=861883 type website addresses; the site appears to validate as valid HTML (yay); and the JavaScript libraries are minimised and consolidated for quick downloading. This is a quick site to use - again, a tremendous increase from previous incarnations.

The legacy stuff is less impressive. The webcam is the size of a small postage stamp, which for a young station is a little unfortunate; and, running something that’s not Windows, I’m unable to listen live to the radio station - the website refuses to show me the player, though does give me some useful advice to try to listen.

The music section (cleverly called “music and showbiz”) includes some bespoke content, like video interviews, which is a good thing to see (not that I could). I’m surprised that the station hasn’t moved to flash-based streaming - YouTube, et al, has rather forced the rest of the world to move away from proprietary solutions like Windows. But there’s a good amount of content here, mainly authored by the station (and using the benefits of the group, like photographs taken in Cardiff, where sister station Red Dragon lives). The link to the Hit 40 takes me surprisingly away from the main website, which I found a bit of a jarring effect; but it’s good content otherwise.

And it’s also clever to call the news section the “news and travel” section; while it’s difficult to find the travel stuff (it’s not in the main page once you move in, you need to find the link in the left-hand nav). Again, there’s some nice Google mappage going on here.

So - as a London website, it’s pretty good - a ton of news and music, a load of local info, and some really nicely put together content. As a radio station website, however, it’s content-poor. For now.

Occasionally, I do the odd review of a gadget I’ve bought on my blog. Normally, I’ll review them after six months or so of using them, so the niggles have had a chance to surface.

And so it is with my Logitech Harmony 555 Universal Remote Control. I bought it a while ago, because I wanted to control my Sky box, my hifi, and my tv from the one control, instead of having at least two around.

I chose this one after quite a lot of internet research. Important to me were the programmable buttons and sequences (so I can set one button to turn the subtitles on/off, for example, which is about four keypresses on Sky), and a certain degree of future-proofing. I hoped that the Logitech would do the job.

It comes with some natty software, which is quite neat. The software (Mac OS and Windows) is actually nothing more than a container for a mostly web-driven process - which is good, since Logitech holds my remote settings rather than one of my computers. A USB cable updates the remote itself (and its firmware).

The advantages of this tool being web-based are also clear when you buy a new piece of kit. Since the Logitech website appears to be constantly updated, it knows about new radios, like my rather nice new Pure DAB radio. It’s possible, therefore, that I’ll never need to buy another remote control.

The software is really hard to get your head around, though. It takes a good few hours to fiddle around to understand how the system works. Unlike other universal remotes I have, this one’s default is based on “activity”, rather than “device” - so instead of just setting up your TV and your Sky box, for example, you then set an activity, called “Watch Sky”. This, in turn…
1. Checks if the radio is on, and turns it off
2. Turns the telly on, and tunes it into the right input
3. Turns the Sky box on

By and large, this works perfectly once you get your head around it. But I found it really complicated, and I always worry in my splendidly condescending way that if people like me find it difficult, then what about other people… which may or may not be a sensible thing to think.

It’s easy to confuse it. Go over and turn the radio off manually, and the remote will still think it’s still on. So, when you then turn everything off with the remote control, the radio turns itself… back on. It’s not hard to fix, though - important to realise that this is a remote replacement, not an additional remote.

Other neat things I like: the background ‘glow’ illuminating the buttons appears to work off a very sensitive movement sensor. Walk past the remote, and it greets you enthusiastically.

Things I don’t like: some of the keys - the navigational keys for the Sky or DAB EPG, for example - click really very loudly. If you spend a few minutes clicking through the EPG, it quickly gets irritating.

In short, though, if you’re looking for one remote to replace your clutter, and you’re also willing to spend a good few hours getting to grips with the software, then this isn’t a bad purchase. It’s about 60 quid, so rather a luxury thing, but I’d recommend it (and, indeed, have done).

Disclosure: the link to Amazon above will earn me money if you buy from it. I don’t believe it’s changed my view.

Occasionally, once I’ve played with something for long enough to make up my mind about it, I will post the odd review of a product. With that in mind, here are my thoughts about the O2 XDA Mini S which I have been using as my main mobile phone for nearly a month.

This phone is a Windows Mobile 5 device, also known as a ‘Pocket PC‘ device. Kind of. There appears to be two different types of these devices: a version like the Orange SPV c600 which has no touch screen and looks like a phone (but runs Windows Mobile), and this device which is more like an iPAQ, with a touch screen. I think that this is properly called a Pocket PC, but it isn’t very clear, particularly because there’s a shiny badge on the back that says Windows Mobile. And when I get confused about what a product is, and therefore what software to download for it, then - well, I’m hardly the average computer user.

So, a quick rundown: it’s a Pocket PC with a touch-sensitive screen. It has a slidy-outy-keyboard, which puts the screen in landscape mode. It contains GPRS and wifi (no 3G as far as I can tell). The unit is cheap-looking grey/silver plastic, and bristles with buttons- from specific buttons for email and internet, to all manner of others right round the unit.

This review now will descend into a litany of niggles, for which I’d like to apologise for, but you may get the general idea about the phone from this.

The headphone socket is a 2.5mm jack (so won’t take ordinary headphones). Grr.

The mini SD slot at the top of the unit is slightly too small, so the mini SD card slightly overhangs the unit: and it looks a little like a dust magnet. We’ll see. Shame that it is mini SD and not micro SD, because I don’t own a mini SD card.

The activesync software is good, and links into Outlook very well. You can also set it to sync automatically, so you’ve always got the latest email in your pocket. This is good.

The wifi works well, and supports WPA. But, it doesn’t quite have very useful integration with the sync system. Here’s how it should ideally work, to my mind, when it automcatically syncs:
- Switch on wifi. Is there a preferred wifi network around? Use that. Chances are, it’ll be free bandwidth. Then, turn wifi off again. Else, use GPRS.
Here’s how it actually works
- Do I have an active wifi session? Use that. Else, use GPRS
….which in my usage pattern, equates to ‘always use GPRS’, since wifi eats battery power. Sadly, therefore, the wifi gets little use: and it was this that I thought was the cool thing about this device.

Additionally, the activesync appears to download only a small amount of the email: preferring to download a longer portion after you request it. This slightly-too-small amount appears fixed and unable to change, on my work account anyway (which is on an activesync server). This is fine on GPRS, because it saves bandwidth by not downloading large messages automatically: but this behaviour also happens when you use wifi or USB to sync, where bandwidth isn’t an issue. (And getting ‘more’ of a messsage is difficult when you’re in a tube tunnel).

The keyboard isn’t entirely integrated well. The major irritation is the shift keys - there are two different types, and if you press them twice then they lock. Press them twice again, and they unlock. Good so far. But there is absolutely no visual indication of this on the screen, so you frequently find yourself typing great swathes of $7€(8=^47++8@-)8(35&8@ instead of real text. Baffling for the first-time user: particularly knowing what you’ve done so you can switch it off again.

Also baffling is the support for the OS from the keyboard. I’ve a Windows key on the keyboard, so I can summon the omnipresent start menu; I have an ‘OK’ button which does the job of pressing the top-right button on the screen (which variously says OK and X, incidentally, and I’ve yet to understand the difference). However, if I get a dialog box saying something like ‘Is this a bit rubbish? Yes No Cancel’ then I can’t seem to press the ‘yes no cancel’ buttons using any number of keypresses. And the keyboard has no presence within the OS: it’s almost as if the device has no idea that it has a keyboard inside it. While typing this, for example, if I change my mind mid-word and wish to move the cursor up a line, it won’t let me, thinking that I want to go through the word suggestions it’s helpfully putting on the screen. And if I wanted to turn off the double-keypress for the shift key? Nah.

Dialing a number requires fiddling with a stylus - annoyingly, the onscreen phone keyboard has been made too small for finger use. The ring tones are quiet and a bit useless. O2 doesn’t seem to send me voicemail alerts the way that Orange did - I don’t get the spool icon on my screen - so I’ve actually forwarded the voicemail to my desk phone instead. Theoretically, I should be able to download the WAV files it emails me to this device and listen to the messages here. That bit hasn’t worked quite yet, but there again, I’ve not tried too hard. I do hate voicemail.

Battery life is pretty good, but (as a result?) the unit’s pretty underpowered, and I’m seeing the equivalent of the hourglass far too often. It’s too underpowered to run Skype with any degree of certainty - even the new beta - which is another shame. Another plan of mine was to use Skype when roaming abroad, and forward all my calls to that number: it looks unlikely that it’ll cope with voice calls reliably enough for people not to notice.

It’s these small niggles that make this phone irritating. There’s too many rough edges - too little thinking about user-interface and hardware. The two devices it replaced - a Blackberry and an Orange SPV - were really good at their job. This phone, perhaps because I’m wanting more from it, isn’t. It works: I’ve typed this on it moderately painlessly in Word, but it’s underwhelming.

The new Apple iPhone, on the other hand, looks like a very sexy piece of kit indeed…

Disclosure: I have been supplied with the XDA by my employer, and did not purchase it or the airtime. I am responsible for a relationship between O2 and my employer as a content provider for an unrelated project.