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So last night was the first ever episode of Top Gear Australia brought to you by the kind folks at SBS (http://www.sbs.com.au/topgearaustralia/) and it was a show that had some very big boots to fill.

Now before I start I must say I am a HUGE fan of the UK version of the show.  As it is I don’t watch it on SBS as they are to far behind and have adds….

So it was with much I admit trepidation that I watch the first episode of Top Gear Australia last night.

So the above show real shows all the slick stuff from the show… but not the show itself.   I guess I’ll spit out my conclusion first which is… “I will watch a few more eps”.  But now the reasoning…

The show is o.k but only o.k.  I never expected it to be great… re watch the first eps of the new format top gear and they are in fact a lot more stilted and forced than what we had last night.  That is the rub.  We are used to a format from a bunch of guys that have done 10 seasons (first season didn’t have Captain Slow) together.

They do seem to have some chemistry on screen and I think the producers have done o.k.  But it felt forced and there are major issues with timing.  Firstly the whole show felt rushed.  Not just a little, but a lot rushed.  The soft-roader challange had no real conclusion and it should have.  At the end of the day Top Gear does still review cars and they could have said Forester was better than X-Trail or the Toyota.

Overcoming Australia’s perceived lamelessness is another issue.  The “track” that was used for the Hot Laps was crap actually…  I didn’t see an overview of it and there are where not aerial shots of it to put it into perspective either.

Of all the presenters I think Charlie Cox was actually the weakest and Warren Brown was the strongest.  Charlie is meant to be the lynch pin that holds the group together and he failed in that. Plus him saying there is an add break now is beyond annoying.  The show is not broadcast live, so drop the pretence the audience is not that stupid.

But the show has potential.  They do need to find their own voice whilst upholding the production values of the orginal.  It could have been a lot worse and it wasn’t.

Tags: General by Me
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Cuckoo Junk Mail

Originally uploaded by wolfcat_aus

Once again I get home to a pile of junk mail. Yes I could put a no junk mail sticker on the box, but hey when you get 99% bills junk mail can make a difference

And even the sticker doesn’t do much to stop the flow anyway. But this, as you can see by the photo, really gets up my nose.

There is not enough room in the mail box for the junk mail, so instead of going… hey it is full… our junk mail does a Cuckoo and pushes out the other junk mail so that it is dominate. And often it is. The stuff that was pushed out today for example was wet and ended up straight in the recycling bin never to be read.

I think the people delivering this junk mail should take a moment, consider what it would be like to be pushed out into the rain because some one else came along. Because if they don’t stop doing it I am going to track them down and push them out into the rain so I can stand in there house nice and dry.

Tags: Annoyances, Photos by Me
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Nokia Photos has hit 1.5 (Beta that is) …. (which is kind of amusing as I didn’t realise there was a 1.  But I digress with my lack of knowledge….)

• Better integration with Share on Ovi
• Maps view and geotagging: your photos and videos on the map
• More supported devices
• Import pictures from also from your digital camera
• Ovi look and feel

“Fully supported: N70, N71, N72, N73, N75, N76, N77, N78, N80, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N90, N91, N91 8GB, N92, N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB, N96

Partially supported: all Nokia S60 devices and most digital cameras (import pictures/videos only).

PC system requirements:

• Operating system: Windows® XP (Home and Professional, Service Pack 2 or later), Windows® Vista”

Important! If you are a Windows XP user, you must first update your computer with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 from here. This update is not necessary if you are using Windows Vista

………

So that is the standard hype… here is what I think…

It does things that lots of other things do for my photos already…  yet for me this is the big and very nice kicker… the maps.

And by using the Navtec maps it means I can zoom in nice and close (unlike Flickr) on street level to see where to place a photo that did not get geotagged correctly.  Once you have opened a photo you can move its geodata as well. The one thing that is missing from the Navtec Maps however is a Satellite view.  So what most people would say… but if you have a photo that is not correctly tag and you took the photo in say a wilderness area that is easy to recongnise from Satellite imagery then you can easily tag it, this you can’t do.  I have actually got quite good at this, but that is mainly due to flickr using yahoo maps for Australia which basically suck big time.

The software is not without it bugs mind you.  I am having trouble navigating between images in map mode for example. Also it says it can intergrate with other hosting sites, but it does default to OVI.

Perhaps, just perhaps I will shift a bit more to OVI for my photos as well.  Yet this is a bit of software I think I am about to become very accustomed to.

But if you want to set up Nokia Photos with flickr (and I do)

here are the instructions… (care of http://europe.nokia.com/support/nokiaphotos)

Settings for Flickr:
Note: Flickr requires Nokia Photos to use a special login that is different from your normal Flickr/Yahoo! login. Get your special Flickr login here.

• Server address: http://www.flickr.com/services/atom/
• Username: get your special username here
• Password: get your special password here

I am going to set it up at home simply to use it as the primary way of accessing my photos at home.  The geotagging and maps feature alone mean that I will want to use this over anything else.  The maps are not another application that has to be launched and then data passed back and forth.  They are a tab.

Now I must go and start geotagging 10 years of digital photos….

Tags: Photos, gps, n95, nokia by Me
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I have entered a Sony-Ericsson competition to win a trip :-)…

So please click the link below…

vote for my photo

to vote for the photo below… (this is one of my favs taken with my N95)…

The global Expert’s Choice winner will receive a trip of a lifetime to one of five destinations worth approximately £10,000/12,500 EUR.

The global People’s Choice winner will receive a trip of a lifetime to one of five destinations worth approximately £5,000/6,250 EUR.

The rules just want a camera phone photo only, taken in 2008….  All the rules are available here- and you can enter the World View photo competition here.

The competition runs from now until the end of October.

Tags: General, Photos, n95 by Me
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Well who would have thought 12 months ago that I would be writing a post about the US Elections and Twitter. (see this post as a primer on what Twitter is all about)

But here I am. A lot has been written about Sarah Palin, the DNC and RNC and the keynote speeches from both of them and what people are thinking at the time.

But now Twitter and MSM(main stream media) to a degree are combining for the next stage. For Australian readers who are familiar with the Worm, twitter is the worm with a thousand voices. What people think and feel is no longer just a turn of a dial, but a short sharp statement of text. Now people can see not only that people agree or disagree with something, but why they think the way they do.

Yeah, yeah all the twitterati know this, but was is new in this.

From Yahoo “Current TV to broadcast `tweets’ during debates”

“During the debates, the network bent on viewer-created content will broadcast Twitter messages — or “tweets” — from viewers. In close to real time, Current will display comments on the screen while Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama face off.”

Now what is interesting also is that the conversation is already happening, but now it will be expanded to those that are not taking part already.  The “in-crowd” of twitter as it were will no longer have the debate to themselves but it will be open for all to see. (all that is in America that have access to Current TV)

For the “in-crowd” and those of us outside the US who can find the debates online (someone is going to stream them aren’t they??? well the comment from Current.com says they will be streaming the debate as well) we will also be able to join in the conversation simply by added #current to any discussions.

So the US Presidential debates will become a global conversation that people can watch listen and interact.  Perhaps even some of us outside the USA might even get to influence a swinging voter or two.

The election will effect us out here in the rest of the world.  We may not get a vote, but now we at least can have a voice.

Tags: General, twitter by Me
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