In Rainbows

OK, so it has been more than a week now since Radiohead released their new album In Rainbows. I have been listening since I downloaded it, and I think it's brilliant.

For an established band, they have taken a huge risk in the way they are distributing the music, as you can download it directly from their website, and you set the price... yes... you can download it for free if you want it.` Just for the record, when I went to download it, I ended up paying £40 for the Discbox version which should be delivered some time before December 3rd.

There are a number of reviews around the place, so I will not rehash them. .. suffice to say that this is a must for any music fans and specially for Radiohead fans.

My favourite track is Faust Arp!

Go and buy it!!!

My new iPod Touch

Ok,so I have had my new iPod Touch for a week now... and no, I didn't need it as I have an "old" 5.5 gen iPod, which is in perfect state, not full, and I'm still using it. Bu I had to get it.

The first thing I have to say is that the pictures on the web, don't do it justice. It is a beautiful piece of engineering.



Once you get over the shock of how it looks, and you turn it on, you get a chance to experience something unique. Out of the box, as soon as I turned it on, it tried to connect to my wireless network. I only had to provide the password, and it was connected. Safari works like a charm, it is unbelievably fast, and for such a small device, it works very well. There are 2 ways you can zoom into a web page, you either double tap with your finger in the centre of the area you want to expand, or you can touch it with 2 fingers and drag the fingers apart to expand the image. And if you tilt the iPod, you can change the orientation from portrait to lanscape, and back again.

The next thing you can do is go to the YouTube applet, and stream the videos... just like that!

The last WiFi applet is the iTunes music store, where you can buy music on line, which can be transferred back to your computer the next time you sync. The interface is pretty clever and works very well with the device.

OK, now I connect it to my Mac, and copy some music, videos and podcasts... because I can't wait to see how coverflow works on it... It is great!!! It is difficult to explain all of the interface, just drop by the apple website to have a look at the video they have of it. Here is a link to it while they keep it there.

iPodTouch Guided Tour Video

In essence, this is like the iPhone without the phone features.

Is it all good? Well, no, I have a couple of gripes.

• Battery life is not great when using WiFi


• It doesn't have a notes applet, or a Google Maps applet


• You don't have an option to display the lyrics for a song, or the comments for a podcast.

Apple promised an SDK in February, and hopefully a few more apllets will come out then that will make this an even more interesting gadget.

I can't wait for the Newton to make its comeback!

The Police - Croke Park

Wow... I do not have words to describe my experience yesterday. The Police Live! A dream come true. Many years ago I saw a TV broadcast from the Synchronicity tour and how I longed to have been there.

I only had to wait 23 years, but yesterday it finally happened. It was a great night, even the weather was with us. After the dismal summer, yesterday was the best night for a rock concert. The crowd played a big part, you could actually see the guys enjoying themselves when the crowd sang the songs with them. According to some of the reports there were 82,000 people there yesterday.

After the opening act, Fictionplane, and a few minutes after 8 o'clock, Stewart Copeland came out to the excitement of everybody there, followed by Andy Summers who immediately started playing Message in a Bottle, only to be joined by Sting a second or two later.

The selection of songs was pretty good, and covered all the 5 albums. Pretty much all songs have been rearranged, but all sounded great. Some of the highlights for me yesterday where:

• Truth hits everybody
• Every little thing she does is magic (Sting said that he had written the song in Galway!)
• So Lonely
• King of pain
• Synchronicity II
  

From the shows in the US, the only song I would have liked to have heard is Murder by numbers.

Overall, it was a great show, with the 3 musicians playing at the top of their game.

See them if you have the chance!