Comments on: Things I like

By: Olly

Olly — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:11:37 +0000

I read this and immediately thought… I’m nominating my nine-year old portable minidisc recorder.

We have solid-state recorders at work; but one is faulty and the other one is cheap and records very compressed MP3s. So, as I had to go and do some interviews, I dug out my minidisc recorder from the back of my cupboard. Given I don’t think I’ve even seen it for the last twelve months; and the last time I used it “in anger” was on Making Poverty History radio in July 2005, the battery was three-quarters full and it was ready to go.

I didn’t really appreciate how old it was until the work experience girl confessed she’d never seen one before.

But, it worked, it was good to use… and the guy I was interviewing (an actor) said “you know what, I’ve been through three iPods and my minidisc player is still working.” And I thought, actually I’m on to my third MP3 player (although my first was a *very* early version and free) and my minidisc player, which for several years did entertian me each day on my commute, as well as being used extensively *for* work (and student radio), is still there with no problems.

The only thing I’ve forgotten how to do is manually adjust the record levels… it’s a Sony and I’m sure you press STOP-Record or something. Anybody remember?

By: Tony Moorey

Tony Moorey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:11:44 +0000

Socialthing: If checking all of your different social networks sounds like too much of a faff to you - it does to me - this solves the problem. New services are being added fairly regularly too. Fluid: A single site browser that turns any webpage into its own application. It's Mac only but comes with some clever tricks, like giving you unread counts and new message notifications if you use it as a standalone app for something like, er, Socialthing. Or Google Reader. Or lots of other sites. Mozilla has something similar for non Macintoshers. Evernote: Just opened to the public, the new Evernote allows you to clip and tag text, webpages and photos through your browser or a desktop app. You can then search for clipped text, even if the words happen to be in a photos - like the cover of a great book you spotted and snapped with your cameraphone, so you could order it cheaply on the web when you get home. It would be even better if there was an option to turn photographed words into a text document. My G9: it's lovely.

By: Callum

Callum — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:06:14 +0000

I’m with you on the Google reader. Just discovered it this week. On a brief work-related point, I discovered at about 3 o’clock this morning that I needed some audio that had been broadcast on BBC Radio Norfolk. Oh no, I thought: there’s no-one in Norwich at that time to send it to me; and radio-off-the-internet isn’t great quality. Like I said, I thought.

Anyway I went off to a workshop studio on the off-chance, opened the iplayer on the PC in there, opened the fader, recorded it into VCS, and it was broadcast on various national networks this morning, sounding pretty much perfect quality. So anything that makes online radio sound even better that that is to be applauded!