Desktop Widgets

I have discovered a great tool made by Yahoo! - the Yahoo! Widget Engine. It seems that Widgets are the next thing on PC / Apple Mac desktops. A Widget is a small tool that can display all sorts of information such as:

• Latest news via RSS or a direct site feed
• Web cam images
• Weather
• Sudoku
  

and more. It's great to have these tools on your desktop, as its the quickest way to get the information that you need, and have it at your fingertips. It's nice to see someone come up with a tool that's great. My desktop currently has 3 widgets - a Stock Widget to display my share prices, a Day Planner overview, which connects to my calendar in Thunderbird, taking the info from the calendars in there, and an RSS feed widget, to display the news I want on my desktop.

I have also created 2 widgets. One displays the latest posts to my blog, and the other the latest entries to the discussion groups I run at Yahoo! Groups (Boney M Discussion List, James Last Discussion List and Goombay Dance Band Discussion List) If you want the widget for this blog, you can download it from my personal website, and the widget for my Yahoo! Groups is available in the files section of each group.

To get the Yahoo! Widget Engine visit http://widget.yahoo.com

Speed Cameras

Finally, the Government is seeing sense - that the motorist doesn't like speed cameras. Supposedly they are there to make roads safer but in my opinion some cameras are only there for the following:

• To make enough money to pay for more cameras, and make the camera partnership loads of money
  
• To enforce a lowered speed limit on a road

Speed Cameras are a good idea, but they should only be used as a last resort, once all other road safety avenues have been explored. The Government is right that the time has come to halt the numbers of speed cameras being put on our roads. I feel that some speed cameras are placed in places designed to make loads of money, for example just before the A3 becomes the M275 in Portsmouth by the ferry port, and the speed limit changes from 40 to 70 there is a Truevelo speed camera, cleverly placed to make money, as it is just before the limit changes, and catches motorists who have speeded up to early. If a speed camera is to be used then there must be a good reason such as a High accident rate where the camera is to be situated, or the need to keep speed at a reasonable level, not just to make money.

It's time that traffic police went out and caught drunk drivers, drug ridden drivers and any driver, or those tailgating / committing road rage, rather than penalising those who might go 3-4 miles per hour over the speed limit!

Bloggin from my mobile

Tis 00:16 and I am testing adding posts to my blog via my mobile. seems to be working well. Stay tuned for another blog update shortly!

More Places to Read Jonzo's Rantings

I am now also publishing this blog at http://my.opera.com In doing so this will give me the chance to upload an entry to my blog via the Opera Mini browser installed on my mobile phone! So even if I am not near to a computer, I can still upload posts to my blog for you to read.

You can view my blog at My Opera using the following web address (entered in to your web browser, or Opera Mini): http://my.opera.com/jonzo247/blog/ When you access this address, not only can you read all my latest entries, but you can also read entries right back from when I started blogging, as Opera had an option to import a blog from Blogger! You can also read my blog at my MSN Space as well at http://spaces.msn.com/members/jonzo247 or in your e-mail by using the subscribe button on my blog, when you read it at my website.

It doesn't matter where you read my blog, all the entries will be the same. I'm simply publishing to several locations in order to get a nice big readership. Enjoy reading my blog, and thanks for visiting it.

More iTunes / Legal Music Downloads

Well having used iTunes for a few weeks, it has opened my mind. I have started listening to new artists, something that a month ago I would not have thought about doing! My music collection now includes songs from: Rachel Stevens, Sugababes & Madonna. I suspect that over the coming weeks my collection will grow with more new artists! Since iTunes has a feature that suggests tracks I should purchase, and has just recommended I get a track called Love Generation by Bob Sinclair feat: Gary Pine, which having heard the 30 sec clip does sound rather catchy.

I think Digital Music Downloads are the way forward, as you can have the music where you want it - on your Mobile Phone, Portable MP3 player on burnt on to a CD. In the future we will probably buy HiFi's with connections for MP3 players to be connected to them so we can hear our favourite music any way we want to!

The only thing now that has to be solved with Digital Downloads is the following:

1. Record labels must ensure that all their artists are available on at least 1 digital music store, ideally on them all, and artists should not be able to say I don't want my music available digitally
2. Artists / Record Labels should promote legal downloading
3. A full back catalogue of an artist should be available where possible, along with rare and hard to find tracks.
   
4. Exclusives should be offered to digital downloaders to encourage them to buy full albums digitally rather than on CD (if I wanted an album by an artist that was available digitally I would still buy it on CD, as I have no incentive to get the digital version, and can rip the files from the CD for use in my PC, MP3 player etc), such as bonus videos with albums, or exclusive mixes, something that iTunes does with some artists.
   
5. Once you have paid for and downloaded a track you should be able to use that track in whatever device you want, as long as you don't share the file.
   

Once those few things have been solved digital downloads will in my opinion be perfect, and the day will come, I think when you can go in to a record store, select the digital tracks you want, and have them burned on CD, thus giving you the tracks you want, and not those you don't.