First, a little background.

Geekbrief has a video podcast hosted by Neal’s wife Luria Petrucci (aka Cali Lewis). It comes out roughly three times a week, and it’s a short, fun look at the latest gadget news. It’s well put together, but retains an amateur feel, which is something that appeals to me. Cali is a pretty good host - she knows her stuff, she’s very attractive, and most importantly of all, she never stops smiling.

Geekbrief has been on my subscription list for nearly two years, and I’ve donated money to the show to help out on more than one occasion.

I love my “Shiny, Happy Tech News”, but earlier this year, Cali announced that they were going to buy an RV and spend a year driving around the US, visiting every state.

This immediately didn’t sit quite right with me. My initial reaction was to wonder how they could afford to do this when they were apparently making the show on a shoestring and quite happy to take a few dollars here and there from fans.

Then I saw this video of them looking at RVs:

For this little jaunt, they’re looking at buying a vehicle that costs at least 6 figures - possibly as much as half a million dollars. I started to question not just where my money had gone, but the environmental impact of driving a “house” that does 5-10 miles per gallon around the US for an entire year.

I posted the simple question on a blog post about the trip:

I’m interested to know what you’re doing to offset the carbon emissions from this “trip”.

I had expected a simple response along the lines of “we’re looking into it” - but all I got was Neal’s jokey response “We’re going to eat more cows!”.

After trying to make my views a little clearer, Neal responded with:

The Big Trip is about celebrating American exceptionalism, not about politics. It’s perfectly okay for you not to celebrate with us. Here’s what I think about environmental fascism: http://www.nealcampbell.com/2008/04/20/not-easy-not-being-green/

I don’t know if I’m getting old, but I find the use of the word ‘fascism’ to be a little tasteless. And while Neal didn’t directly call me a fascist personally, he certainly implied that’s how he felt about my views.

I will admit that the phrase “American exceptionalism” did make me laugh though.

But I do want to get one thing straight. I’m in no way a “rabid environmentalist”. But excessive waste does annoy me. And making even the tiniest concession to the environmental impact of driving such a huge vehicle around the country isn’t so much about global warming as it is about cleaning up yourself. Common courtesy.

But there are many other reasons why this “Big Trip” doesn’t sit right with me:

• The fact that they’re happy to take money off viewers on the basis that they have to scrape together the cash to produce Geekbrief. Yet they don’t seem to bat an eyelid at spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a shiny RV.
• The fact that they’re taking donations from fans for the trip, but haven’t said what will be happening to the RV and equipment after they get home. Presumably they’ll be keeping the RV for their own use whenever they want to go away. Nice.
• The fact that it doesn’t seem to have crossed their mind how “insular” it looks to consider your own country to be the be all and end all of technical innovation.
• The fact that the utter extravagance of it all has apparently not occurred to Neal and Cali.

To me, the “Big Trip” sums up everything that’s wrong with America. It refuses to acknowledge the world outside the USA. It’s a display of rampant consumerism that flies in the face of fans who have donated to get this small, amateur tech show off the ground. The lack of any notion of the environmental impact is just the tip of the iceberg.

It seems the whole trip is aimed at fulfilling Neal & Cali’s personal ambitions to drive around their country in total luxury. I don’t know where my personal donations ended up, but it feels like they’re being used to give the show’s producers the holiday of a lifetime. I find that a bit of a slap in the face when I have to scrape together enough money just to pay the rent every month.

I’m not asking them to cancel their trip. All I’m asking is that they be a little more open to the issues.

Google are clearly scared by the very notion of Microsoft being in control of Yahoo! This sentence in particular made me fall off my chair:

“While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”

This, coming from the company that has a total monopoly on web search at the moment and frequently abuses that position. And let’s not forget that all these “open technologies” that Google so thoughtfully invests in are really just more ways to get access to your personal data, so it can show you more ads. Every last one of them.

Sometimes I think that Google has become so self obsessed that it’s losing track of reality.

Having said that…

I can’t think of two worse companies to be involved in right now than Microsoft and Yahoo. MS have failed to make the web work for them time and again, and Yahoo, while having wonderful intentions, have absolutely no sense of direction and just can’t seem to get their act together.

Yahoo constantly launch new products that never quite work with their existing products, yet manage to replicate 50% of the functionality of other parts of their network. They still make a fair amount of money from advertising, but I’m quite sure that’s simply because nobody can ever find what they’re looking for on Yahoo and end up just clicking an ad to get away from all the madness.

If MS and Y! do get together, you can be fairly certain that the result will be chaos. Whether or not the resulting company will survive long enough to take on Google remains to be seen. But I really don’t think Google have anything to worry about for the next couple of years.

Just a quick note that I’m giving away my very own iPod Nano (8Gb, 3rd Gen) in a competition over on Money Blogger.

If you want to enter, all you need to is blog about Money Blogger. The competition ends a week on Friday and full details are available here. Good luck!

As you can see, it looks fantastic. But unfortunately, Apple have seriously compromised on functionality - and more bafflingly, they’ve done it for no apparent reason. The only benefit of the MacBook Air is that it’s a bit thinner than a standard MacBook.

I have a simple question: Why?

For those of us looking for an ultraportable, ‘thinness’ is not one of the requirements that comes high on the list. The other dimensions are far more important! I want to be able to slip a laptop easily into pretty much any bag and go. I don’t care how pretty it looks or that people will say “Ooooh” and “Aaaaah” when I take it out. I just want to get stuff done on the go.

Here’s some more of the MacBook Air’s shortcomings:

• The battery is not user replaceable. But that’s Ok, right? I mean, I’m never likely to want a bit more battery life when I’m on the go, am I? And it’s not as though laptop batteries are have a tendency to explode and need to be recalled? That could never happen….

  This laptop is apparently designed to be ultra portable - i.e. it’s easy to take with you anywhere… like far away from a power socket, for instance. In Apple’s entire range of laptops, this is the one that most needs a replaceable battery. Yet that’s simply not an option, and if something goes wrong, you’ll just have to send it back to Apple.

• That 1.8″ hard drive. Not only is it impossibly slow, but it’s straight out of the iPod, and is known for being fairly unreliable. I can guarantee you that it will die at some point during the lifetime of the computer. And as for the 64Gb solid state drive… $1299 extra? Seriously, Apple…
• Mono speaker (under the keyboard). Yup… all that beautiful design, and it still sounds like crap. Yes, I know you can get stereo through the headphone socket, but it seems to have escaped Apple’s notice that it’s the 21st century, and we’ve had stereo sound for quite a while now.
• 1 USB socket, no firewire. This is going to be the killer for many people. Apple have taken away all that clutter with one hand, yet made it necessary to buy a raft of external accessories with the other.
• The price. $1,799 (£1,199!) is too much. Way too much. Apple have made this laptop smaller by stripping out a huge amount of useful stuff (like the optical drive!). This should be cheaper than a basic MacBook, not the same price as a MacBook Pro!

Unfortunately, the MacBook Air is a case of Apple taking it’s current “form over function” philosophy way too far. It’s over priced, under spec’d and will almost certainly snap in half if you sit on it.

A genuinely small sub-notebook seems to be beyond Apple’s capability right now - despite the fact that they’re already more than half way there with the iPhone. Sigh.

Of course it’s completely true with any technology and particularly true of Apple products. The moment you buy it, it’s out of date. Having said that, MacWorld is coming very soon… and I really could do with a new laptop…

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The Chocolate Anus.

This (apparently real) product could be yours in time for Christmas. But I don’t think we’ll be putting this on our Christmas list.

Luckily, the web site doesn’t say if it has a soft centre. Or if it contains nuts. Because I don’t want to know.

Money Blogger is a year long project to see just how accurate all these “make money from blogging” experts really are.

I’m starting out with a blank sheet - a brand new domain name and a virgin installation of Wordpress, and will share all my experiences, tips - and even failures - with readers. So if you’re interested in making money from your blog, why not join me on my journey by subscribing now.

They are introducing “Chip & PIN” style card readers for customers to use with their online banking service.The reader (which is apparently only used for some transactions) takes your card, your PIN and an authorisation number on screen and generates an authorisation code which must match one on the screen.

Now, NatWest claim this adds an extra level of security to online banking. I disagree. I think it adds an extra headache and a whole lot more hassle to a system which is an actual fact, pretty secure.It also means I have to carry my card reader around if (for instance) I want to do banking from work or a friend/family’s computer. And I can tell you now, I do NOT want to be carrying this thing around with me all the time.

Aside from the hassle of just carrying the thing around with you (and risking losing it), the instructions on the NatWest site are likely to confuse the hell out of most people.

So instead of spending our money on clever looking gadgets that make online banking even more complicated, why don’t they just invest it in a high profile anti-phishing campaign. Because that’s that’s the real problem here - and I’d bet good money that most NatWest customers don’t even know what phishing is.

Still - I can’t help wondering if this thing is hackable…

Two years ago I bought a first generation iPod Nano on the day they came out. I fell in love with the Nano as soon as I saw it, and despite being covered in scratches now, I still love it.

I wasn’t a fan of the second gen Nano though. It looked way too much like the old Mini, and that was a step backwards in my book. It seem to me like Apple had rushed out a brushed aluminium case simply to deal with the scratching issue, and in the process had destroyed the sleek look of the original.

Last week, the third generation Nano was announced, and I immediately fell back in love with it.Having played with one in the Apple Store, I decided it was time to upgrade, and came home with this lovely blue 8Gb number.I’ve had it a couple of days now, so I thought I’d share some of my initial impressions.

Form Factor

The most noticeable change from the old Nanos is the completely new size shape, which has obviously been designed around the enlarged screen. Many people have called it the ‘fatty’, due to it’s shorter, wider form factor, but personally I love the way it looks.It’s not quite as easy to hold as the 1st and 2nd gen Nanos, but you get used to it pretty quickly.At the original Nano launch, Steve Jobs pulled a Nano from the little coin pocket in his jeans, but my old Nano never quite fit in that pocket for me. This third gen Nano is exactly the right size and shape for the small pocket on my Levi’s jeans. The scroll wheel even works through the denim, so when I’m out, I can take my Nano with me without having to worry about it getting scratched. Perfect.

Build Quality

One of the first things I noticed about this new Nano was the build quality. Two years ago, I thought the original Nano was a masterpiece, but this definitely takes it up a level. The brushed aluminium case is gently beveled on the front to give a pleasing feel in the hand, and it just feels solid and well put together.

Apple have gone back to using shiny aluminium for the back of the iPod again, which I do like, but seems to have the ability to attract finger prints just by looking at it. This is a bit of a shame as it’s very noticeable, and Apple don’t seem to have come any closer to solving the problem.

The Screen

The new Nanos all have a 2 inch 320×240 screen, which is a significant improvement over the old screens. In pixel density terms, it’s the highest resolution screen I’ve ever seen.Combined with the new software and the ability to play video, the screen is the real USP of the Nano. It’s bright and beautiful and text is so much easier to read than the old Nanos.

Software

The Nano’s software has improved significantly in the last 2 years, and this version is the best yet. The menus are all familiar and easy to navigate with the scroll wheel - they just have more polish. The menus take up the left half of the screen with cover art, video stills and other useful, contextual information appearing on the right hand side.

The most touted addition to the software was ‘Cover Flow’ - an animated view of all your cover art that will be familiar from iTunes. I personally don’t find this particularly useful, and although the animation is quite smooth, there can be a noticeable delay in loading in new cover art if you scroll quickly.

I’ve also noticed a bug when playing a song that sometimes cover art just doesn’t load at all. Navigating to the next song, then back usually makes it appear, but it can be quite annoying at times. Hopefully this will be fixed with a firmware update.

Video
This is probably the biggest addition to to the Nano and (along with the upgrade to 8Gb storage) was my main reason for upgrading. My video library is quite extensive and I tend to watch a lot of video podcasts, so being able to keep up to date with them wherever I happen to be is a big winner for me.And video looks great on the Nano. The screen may be small, but it’s easily good enough to watch video.

I wouldn’t recommend watching a full length feature film on it (I’ve tried), but that’s mainly because it’s quite difficult to keep the damn thing still for that length of time. It’s not the resolution or the brightness that’s the problem, it’s little movements that mean you have to refocus your eyes constantly.

Games

Games have certainly improved since the first generation Nano. They actually feel like a modern game rather than something written in 1983 and hacked by Apple to use the scroll wheel. I particularly like the ‘iPod Quiz’ which uses your music library as the basis for the questions, but has a real game show feel to it.

The other games are pretty good too and obviously take advantage of the increased screen size and processing power of the Nano. I can definitely see Apple selling a lot more games on the iTunes store from now on.

Overall

What can I say - I love the new Nano. There are a couple of minor firmware bugs, but all in all it’s the nicest - and cutest - personal media player I’ve ever seen.

The only issue for some people will be the storage capacity. At a maximum of 8Gb, it’s just not going to be enough for some people. Personally, I make judicious use of Smart Playlists in iTunes and try to give everything in my library a rating. That way I can make sure I always have my absolute favourite songs along with a good selection of everything else in my library.

Aside from storage capacity, I don’t really know how Apple could improve the Nano in it’s current form. It can’t go much thinner and still incorporate a standard headphone jack, and it can’t really be made any smaller and still incorporate a scroll wheel.I expect we’ll see a touch screen Nano in the next couple of years with a bigger display, but without the scroll wheel. The screen is certainly getting towards the point where Apple’s “Multi Touch” technology would work. But knowing Apple, the next generation of iPods will come up with something even more exciting, and I’ll just have to go out and buy one again…

Learn More: Convert DVD to iPod Nano using PQ DVD to iPod Video Converter. Free to Download The best entertainment software for iPod Nano 3rd Generation. Transfer DVD movies, TV shows, Youtube videos to iPod Nano for your entertainment.

If you don’t already know, ADVFN bought Fotothing.com off me a couple of years ago. They’ve done an OK job of taking the site to over 135,000 users, but they haven’t really developed it further, and there has been a few “disagreements” with users over changes in the site over the last couple of years.

A year ago, I started another photo sharing site, Fotonomy. This is aimed more at people with a serious interest in amateur phtoography. Fotothing is more of a photo blog / photo diary. I don’t run Fotonomy as a business - it’s a small, friendly place, and I use it to develop my programming skills as much as anything. (I checked my contract with ADVFN to make sure this was OK before starting another site.)

Last week, out of the blue, Fotothing started serving Google ads to paying (Pro) members. Many of these members had specifically paid not to see ads, as it was listed as the one of the main benefits.Now, I still love Fotothing and have a lot of friends there. People who really helped out during the initial development. So when I read the discussions on the ads in their forums, I posted my own opinion. People who have paid not to see ads should not see ads. Period.

But I also posted saying people should not leave Fotothing.Anyway. Back to the phone call…”Hi Dom. Long time no see. How are you? I was just calling to give you a final warning.”

Yup, they’re threatening me. Threatening legal action. I have been told in no uncertain terms never to mention Fotonomy on Fotothing again. And to not say anything bad about them in general either.Apparently I’m stealing their users. Yes, my site with 460 users is stealing people from their site with 135,000 users and I’m a threat.

Yes, there are some Fotothing users who have joined Fotonomy, but as far as I’m aware none of them has actually left Fotothing - or wants to. They’re very different sites. And I have never initiated any conversation on the Fotothing forums about Fotonomy. I’m certainly not advertising it.

But for me, the really interesting part of the phone call was the person who called me. He’s a really nice guy and was nice about the whole thing. But as far as I know, he’s not directly involved in the day to day running of Fotothing. I can only assume he was asked to call me because we were friends. If that’s the case, then it’s as unfair on him as it is on me.

Now if senior management (you know who you are) had called me and just asked me politely if I could be a little less outspoken in the forums, I probably would have agreed - and even offered assistance if they needed it. But getting an old friend to do the dirty work (which is how it appears to me - I could be wrong), is a little underhanded.

Of course, this isn’t about me at all. It’s about Fotothing and the users that make the site what it is. What ADVFN don’t seem to realise is that I’m incredibly proud of what I - and they - have achieved with it. And the way to deal with pissed off customers is not to send threats, but to listen to them and address their concerns.

Will I be sued? Will I have my Fotothing account pulled for posting this on my own blog? Who knows. But I will continue to stand up for users. Because without users, nobody in the web development business would have a job.