David Emery Online

La Scala

The Bill: The Rogers Sisters, 1990s and CSS

First on tonight at the Scala in London’s delightful Kings Cross were the ever-lovely Rogers Sisters. They’re always great fun live, and tonight was no exception; the new songs sounded great as did the old. I only wish that more people came early to see them, and that more people had picked up their record – they really deserve to be more widely heard.

GO BUY THEIR RECORD.

Ahem.

I care not for the 1990s – fairly uninspiring indie pop. They weren’t worth sticking around in the main bit for. Yes, it was bar time.

IF YOU STILL HAVEN’T BOUGHT THE ROGERS SISTERS ALBUM.

STOP.

BUY IT NOW.

CONTINUE.

CSS followed and were fantastic – one of the best bands I’ve seen this year without a doubt. Their album is full of catchy pop songs, and live they’re just so fun. Lovefoxxx, the lead singer, is so packed full of energy that just bubbles though her entire performance; dancing, stage diving, audience interaction – you name it.

For a band so young, CSS really know how to perform.

Xmas in London

If you had any doubt that something is going on in the tech scene in London, just check out the list of names signed up for the BBC Backstage London Geek Xmas Party.

Yes, that’s almost 500 people.

They opened it up for registrations on the 10th of November. 3 days ago.

I think 500 people in 3 days is pretty interesting. Possibly more interesting is that it was more like 350 in 24hrs – that’s a huge signup rate for something that was only announced on a couple of blogs. More credit, as always, goes to Ian who’s behind all this (along with a whole load of other helpful people).

I remember back a year and a half ago that getting almost a hundred geeks together was pretty amazing; we’ve certainly come a long way from that though. It’s certainly going to be interesting to see where the scene goes next year; whether it’s already reached it’s natural peak or whether it’s going to keep getting bigger; going from strength to strength.

What’ll be fascinating to see is whether this social activity ends up with interesting business concepts, ideas and partnerships; one of the proposed reasons for a lack of a...

Inversion

Welcome one and all to the 10th redesign of this site! I hope you like it.

The focus on this redesign really was readability; gone is the harsh red background, and gone are the serif fonts. In their place is a continuation of the red theme – but for the text instead – and larger helvetica. I’ve also had a tweak at the line heights and paragraph spacing, and put more margins left and right to reduce the line widths.

You may also notice the return of a bit of branding and logo at the top; I decided that the top bar really needed a bit of sprucing up so there it is. I still don’t think logos and the like are really appropriate for personal websites; nothing wrong with a nice title though.

Let me know your thoughts – there may well be more tweaks soon…

Hint

No time for a proper post today, I’m afraid – everything seems to be kicking off and it’s all gone slightly nuts.

Tomorrow will, however, bring some changes round here.

Tweaks.

Realignment.

That kind of thing.

Microsoft is still Microsoft

Continuing on the Microsoft theme from yesterday comes an announcement that just shows how big and disparate Microsoft really is; it’s amazing how on one hand it can get something so right while simultaneously being the same old Microsoft we love to hate.

They’ve just launched a new version of Virtual Earth that includes detailed 3D imagery and buildings. The amount of ways they’ve tried to balls up this nice feature addition is quite amazing really – only Microsoft are this good at being bad.

Firstly, they’ve included billboard ads in amongst the 3D buildings. I’ve got no problem with this – in fact, I applaud that they’re actually bothering to have a business model for this service; most people these days don’t seem to bother. However, they’re claiming that the ads are there for realism – so that the world is more realistic.

Seriously. That’s what they said.

Secondly, obviously this is a complete rip-off of Google Earth – but then, it’s not like them to do something original. That said, it is technically better then the Google alternative – it features a much better set of 3D models, which have much more detail and full texture mapping. On the flip...

Trouble on TV

If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at Engadget’s hands on with the Xbox Live Video Store.

Apple is in trouble. Big Time.

Out of all the things Microsoft have done, I think the Xbox is the best. Better then Windows. Better then Office. The original Xbox was easily the best console out of the last generation, and is the only one I still play. The Xbox 360 is on a lot shakier ground then its predecessor – while the PS3 has had it’s problems it’s shaping up to be a real winner, and the Wii is in a whole different race all together. If the 360 doesn’t get a real killer app soon, it may have some real problems ahead.

One of the things they really got right for the 360 though was the interface design – it’s simply one of the best interfaces from both a usability perspective and an aesthetics perspective I’ve ever used. There’s a huge amount that could be learnt by analysing the simplicity of the Xbox 360 interface, and game interfaces in general; the purity of purpose and the stripped down nature of the input devices lead to some brilliant interfaces that anybody can...

Saddam Nation

Obviously you will have heard of the forthcoming hanging of Saddam Hussein. You will have no doubt also noticed that it’s the US Midterm elections, and that the timing of the sentencing is widely regarded as no coincidence.

Does anybody really find this turn of events surprising anymore?

The manipulation of the courts is easy for US government in its own country, let alone a third world foreign nation it has systematically destroyed.

Tying in with the other craze of the age (the first being control masquerading as protection) – how on earth are YouTube going to keep the hanging off their servers? I doubt any major western broadcaster will show it, but it is bound to be filmed. Sadly, it will become the most popular video of our times.

Does Saddam deserve this?

If you thinking “yes”, what are you basing that choice on? If you haven’t met him, and personally see him commit these reported acts then how are you so sure he is guilty? Propaganda is a very powerful tool, and is used against us every day. If you think Saddam is worth killing, just think for a second what that means.

You believe a string of letters, written by a journalist –...

Aluminium

The latest site we’ve launched at work is the site for Aluminium, a collection of re-worked White Stripes songs in a classical style.

Alumiiinium.com

This was not my work, however – the use of “nice” flash should be a bit of a give-away. Instead, this is all done by Graeme Swinton – a rather brilliant Flash designer we’ve been working with a lot recently.

The sites he’s built for us – the Scott Walker site is my favourite – are very good demonstrations of how flash can work well for certain problems. Flash can easily be perfectly useable if done correctly, and really adds a lot to certain sites which call out for movement and interactivity.

Having said all that, of course, the power of javascript and the corresponding effects libraries are catching up with certain aspects of what flash is generally used for. For example, the Aluminium site could have been done completely using html, css and javascript for the movement and animation. Sure, there are somethings that javascript can’t do – video and complicated animation being the most notable – but I can see that flash may well end up being used for just these things in the future.

Poppy Appeal

At the risk of alienating my last pair of readers…

I won’t be wearing a poppy this year. I think the Poppy Appeal is wrong.

The poppy – to me at least, and in my understanding – is all about remembrance. Wearing it is a statement saying “Yes. I remember that we went to war twice, and millions lost their lives”.

What I find sad is that I can see a time – not even that far in the future – where people don’t remember the existence of the two world wars in recent history. I’m sure you could find many teenagers today that are completely ignorant about how many died and how much affect it had on modern society.

What are the odds that if you asked them what the worst event in the last 100 years was, that they’d answer 9/11?

The Poppy Appeal doesn’t seem to be about remembrance anymore, though. It’s now seems to simply be yet another charity, trying to raise money for ex-servicemen and women. I have no problem with them using the proceeds raised from the poppy appeal for ex-servicemen – it seems as good a use as any (although as we haven’t seen conscription in...

Private Internet

There’s a growing trend in these parts. You can’t see it, but it happening never the less. There’s a whole new swarth of web sites that have rich and compelling content that you haven’t seen.

You think you’re fairly on top of the latest goings on on the internet? You still haven’t seen any of this stuff.

What am I talking about?

The private internet.

If you haven’t yet, please go and check out Vox – Six Apart’s – the maker of TypePad and LiveJounal – new product. No really; have a look – it’s quite good. I’ll wait.

Done? Good.

One of the key features of Vox is easily being able to limit posts, pictures and other content to be only viewable by your friends and family. Obviously it’s not the first site to do this – Flickr has done the same for ages – but it’s an indicator of a shift towards a more segregated and “closed” internet (but not necessarily in a bad way). This also ties in nicely with the popularity of MySpace and others like it, which really revolve around communication between you and your peers.

The appearance of the private internet – a network of sites that only certain people...