Do It Anyway » Archive
Sunday Night Music: Try Whistling This
Bit of a change in tone this week. If you were to say “Neil Finn”, most people if they knew would probably say, ooh, he’s one of those brothers from that 80′s band Crowded House. Post Crowded House though he did and still has a fairly successful solo career. Released in 1998, his first solo album Try Whistling This is a great listen. It’s acoustic for the most part and less poppy than Crowded House. My stand out tracks are the title track (see below) , Last One Standing and She Will Have Her Way. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Music
Volvo C30 Polestar Concept Car
Last year I was lucky enough to get a blogger invite to the Volvo S60 Naughty Track Day. I’d always known there were fast Volvo’s. Even in my lifetime I’d quietly lusted over the V70 T5 as a result of a Volvo estate being entered in the British touring cars in the 90′s. Of course if you look back further in history, the Volvo P1800 was a rather lovely sports car and it’s the estate version of this that’s widely considered to have inspired the design of the current C30. I wasn’t thinking much of the C30 as I threw the all wheel drive 300bhp S60 T6 round a test track, and I certainly wasn’t thinking of anything above keeping my dinner down when GT driver Tommy Erdos hurled me round the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Other
Business and Twitter interactions
The latest thing in social media marketing seems to be having a corporate twitter account. Often this appears to be staffed by the office junior as an after thought, as in the now infamous Kenneth Cole twitter post (reproduced and stuck to a store window by a prankster). Business has to be careful how it uses twitter though, and it’s not just because of full on cock ups of the level of the KC tweet. Twitter users expect a fast reply. Note the fast bit there; they take it as read that they will get a reply. What sort of faux pas is it to not even reply to an @? A fairly hefty one in my book and I don’t think I’m alone in this. What a lot of companies, both … Read entire article »
Filed under: Technology
Sunday Night Music: The Beta Band
Back in the day I used to buy Q magazine and would often pick at random a five star album by a band I’d never heard of and chance my arm on it. Such a policy introduced me to the Blue Nile, Mazzy Star and of course the Beta Band. The 3EPs is an album I’ve listened to pretty much incessantly for the last ten years. Hypnotic electronic pop music with multi-layered vocal tracks, the 3EPs collects (unsurprisingly) 3 EPs together on one album. I’ve subsequently bought a few other Beta Band albums but this is the one I always come back to. It’ haunting in places, as well as being really catchy. Stand out tracks are Dry the Rain, She’s the One and Dogs Got a Bone. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Music
3 MiFi Review
The 3 MiFi is a funky little device that falls squarely into the didn’t know it existed but now that I do and I’ve bought one I don’t know how I survived without one category. To be more precise, the 3 MiFi E585 (there is an older version that some 3rd party resellers still stock that isn’t as good) completely and utterly makes the humble USB 3G dongle redundant. Okay, it costs a few bob more (the price depends on what contract you take out or whether you buy it on PAYG) but it does a much more flexible job because it lets all sorts of devices hook up via wifi to a 3G+ connection (HSDPA if you love your acronyms) or a 3G one if that’s not available. This means … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reviews