Detailed Avatar Review (Possible Spoilers)

Courtesy of my father, Jack Inglis:

" I think the effects are very good and the story is, a man gets into a big electronic coffin and wakes up with a tail and cats face.

The End."

Hey! Windows Party (tm)

We're all aware by now that Microsoft have pushed the boat out with an instructional video, designed to allow sad-cases like ourselves to engage in small-talk and nibbles.

An undeniably useful resource for any IT professional who would otherwise routinely fall short of the standard achieved and expected by all you normal folks out there.


Best of luck with your efforts, but don't forget to adhere to your EULA:

MICROSOFT SOCIAL EVENT LICENSE TERMS

MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 LAUNCH PARTY

These license terms are an agreement between Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates) and you. Please read them. They apply to the event named above, which includes any invitation you received and any resultant stains, damage, tearing, traffic cones, makeshift togas or unexpected intercourse. As if any of you sad bastards would get close enough.

By attending this event, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not attend this event. Instead, return to the beginning. You know. When you were 16 and you decided this was interesting. Before the initial thrill of creation was overtaken by a bleak unending round of frustration and social exclusion; when you were young and interested in PEOPLE. When you glanced across at the pretty brown-haired girl with the freckles and she smiled back. Before you started routinely sucking in your gut and trying to hide the soup-stains on your shapeless brown chinos and navy-blue-smart-casual polo shirt. Remember? Oh Jesus Christ. REMEMBER?

You cannot obtain a refund, but feel free to contact Microsoft or the Microsoft affiliate serving your country for information about trying to get one anyway. Our Marketing and Sales Teams can always do with the boost afforded by listening to your sad little problem in your sad little life. Just before they piss off early to that charming beer garden to flirt and laugh in the sunshine.

If you comply with these license terms, you have the "rights" below for each license you acquire.

1. OVERVIEW. These license terms permit organisation and attendance of one event at one location. No events at any other time or location are allowed. Or, let's be honest, expected.

2. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. Before you attend the event under a license, you must assign that license to one pokey bedsit or parents attic room.

3. ADDITIONAL LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND/OR USE RIGHTS.

a. Trial and Conversion. The party is licensed on a trial basis. Your rights to attend the party are limited to the trial period. The length of the trial period is set forth during the activation process, or until 9:30 when no-one has turned up or 10:30 when everyone has gone home.

b. Media Elements and Templates. You may copy and use images, clip art, animations, sounds, music, shapes, video clips and templates provided for the event. If you wish to use these media elements or templates for any other purpose, seek help. Seriously. And what's that smell?

4. SCOPE OF EVENT. The event is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to attend the event, in some very limited ways. Microsoft reserves all other rights.

You may not

· work around any social awkwardness or lack of humanity in the event

· schedule any further event without express permission (No, that's not irony. We mean it.)

5. BACKUP PLANS. You may make one backup plan in the event that your event is a non-event. They're running Buffy from the start again, for instance. Or there's that Summer Glau fan-fic you squirreled behind the skirting board, under the bed.

6. DOCUMENTATION. Eh? What did you plan on writing about this exactly? And who would you tell it to? You don't have any friends and you won't be bearing any progeny. You know it. We know it. So go on, knock yourself out. But if you do, we own it, right?

************************************************************************************

LIMITED WARRANTY

A. LIMITED WARRANTY. If you follow the instructions, the event will perform substantially as described in the Microsoft materials that you receive in or with the event. And, believe it or not, that's the best case scenario

B. TERM OF WARRANTY We'd like to take a bit of time to warn you that you are not covered for hangovers, excessive mirth, lovebites, cat-fights or unwanted pregnancy. Safe ground there we think. You are not covered for despair, loneliness, isolation or the feeling that it could all have been so, so different. We're not idiots.

iPlayer, iPhone, iGiveIn

Short and a bit unfocussed this time, still.

For some time I've resisted buying / upgrading to an iPhone.

Previous resistance to an iPhone is a product of: the unbearable smugness of existing owners; my capacity for ruining anything vaguely stylish with oafish behaviour; a general feeling that I want to support something more open.

Anyway. Capitulation. I've got one.

It's still in perfect working order and, yes, I'm getting smugger ("Haven't you got an electronic compass in the old 3G then? No? Oh, ever so handy.")

Lot to report at some point, but mostly I'm very impressed with the mobile iPlayer / iPhone combination, particularly when it comes to the God of all media, Radio.

Access to listen-again material is superb but live streams aren't yet supported (come on, come on, I'll pay).

However, until that glorious day, everyone should purchase a copy of WunderRadio from the App Store. This allows you to listen to a couple of flavours of live BBC streams as well as thousands of others. Well worth it's paltry £4ish purchase price.


Two other small criticisms as far as the iPlayer is concerned:

1) I've signed up for Labs features, but there didn't seem to be a way to easily detect if what I was looking at was Beta-ish or not. This makes it a bit of a chore to decide whether or not to feedback.

2) Please, please, support playlists of some kind. I can already see what I've recently watched / listened to, but to be honest that isn't much use.

What I really want is a way to quickly add any program that takes my fancy to a queue, and then to be able to work my way through that queue in the iPlaeyer itself. So a button somewhere on a program says "Queue This" and it's added to the end. And playing something from the queue removes it.


That way I don't miss anything I could fancy a look at in passing on my way to something else, and I can probably stop watching late night episodes of "Make Me a Supermodel" and "America's Hardest Pets Do the Funniest Things". Thanks.