Yaffle's Corner

When I wrote this article I stated at the end that I hoped that Pure had arrangements with all the music publishers.

Since then, there has been a further firmware upgrade to the radio, and the release notes for that upgrade stated that there were "Fundamental Changes. User interface updates for FlowSongs track licensing. ". It pointed us at this page.

Yes, it seems that, despite the fact that you can purchase a CD once and have the right to play it as many times as your little heart desires, as soon as you purchase it and use the "Internet" to store the content for you, certain entities (we don't know whom they are) suddenly get cold feet. I bet its because they know they can't change the format on us any more and require us to re-purchase music we already have.

This author has purchased, at different points in time, the Double Vinyl/Double Cassette/Double CD versions of Jeff Wayne's War of the World's and I think the relevant publisher has had quite enough money. I have purchased the Collector's Edition of same (with 7 CD's and a DVD) and I have dared to place the first 3 CD's on my computer so I can stream them to whereever I like.

Never mind, I found a spare tenner down the back of the bank account, and decided to use that to trial the FlowMusic service instead of enjoying this week's selection of Montezuma's birthday chocolates.

So how well does it work? Well, as I was writing the above paragraph, the station I had chosen to listen to in an attempt to find something I thought I could purchase, the station was playing :

Ian Dury & The Blockheads: Hit me with your rythm stick.

Well, a no brainer wasn't it? So I hit the "flow" soft button. The radio analysed the track, identified the song, offered it for purchase at 79p. I had the choice to buy or not. I elected to buy. The system then asked me to enter my pin. I entered that using the scroll and select option the radio offers, and then selected it.

An email confirming the purchase came in, the radio informed me that the track was available for download. But downloading is not necessary, all I need to do now is select "The Lounge" as the source, choose options and select "My Tracks" and then scroll through already provided menus which allow you to choose by Artist, Album and certain other options.

After selection, it took the radio a while to actually start playing the track, but remember, this service is beta and so we should expect some teething problems. I might not be the only geek with nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon.

So all told, I am a prospective fan of this service - let's hope that certain luddites get a clue.

The Internet already has lots of ways allowing you purchase music tracks legally so that you can enjoy them on whichever bit of technology suits you best, so in one sense it seems odd that another has appeared.

However, I'm sure you've all been in the situation that you're listening to music on the radio and you decide you like the track. Its possible that the broadcaster will give you enough details that you could go off to your favourite store and buy the track. But sometimes you don't get the opportunity to make a note of the details before going off to search for the track, and then, you may forget to go looking for it, or have forgotten the details, so now you can't search for it.

The people behind the Pure Evoke Flow (and other radios which use The Lounge to organise their material) have just released a new firmware upgrade for their radios so that now when you're listening to music, via DAB, FM, or Internet radio one of the "soft" buttons is labelled "Flow". Pressing that will cause the radio to communicate with severs at "The Lounge" and attempt to analyze the music stream currently being listened to. If it succeeds it will offer you a chance to purchase the track. Tracks are normally priced between 79p and £1.29 dependant upon publisher.

Purchased tracks are stored against your The Lounge account, and are available for streaming on any of the radios you have registered with that account. If you should want to download a track to your computer - possibly for streaming on something else - you can.

For the time being, the service is in beta, so expect some problems to start with. However, that means you can currently get a free 90 day subscription to the service, you just need an account on The Lounge. After that, you'll be offered an annual subscription which, at £2.99 hardly breaks the bank.

Sounds like a good idea on Pure's part - let's just hope they have arrangements in place with all the music publishers.

We all use location aware software and services these days. Lots of us use them on our mobile phone so we can tweet our location along with a comment. Thus when you type "I am at a restaurant" you can include a link to (probably) a Google Maps location which shows where you are, and even which restaurant. We do this because we want people to know where to find us.

But what if location awareness could be used to stalk you? Sadly it can. I've read a couple of articles this week about this issue. This one from The Register will allow you to read up on the subject.

As the article makes clear, an attacker does need to rely on a couple of things. First, he needs to be able to trick you into somehow visiting his web site. Next, he needs to rely on your router having either its default password or no password at all, and finally he needs you not to have changed the default ESSID. If you just took your router out of the box, plugged it in and it worked, you are probably at risk. Hopefully, you've put on a non-default, and reasonably secure pasword and changed the ESSID. This makes it harder. But if he gets your router's MAC address, and its been logged by Google, he could use it to turn up at your front door.

So its probably a good job there is a positive item in the tech news. Some research has been done allowing two sites who know the location of the other to exchange data without the hopes of any eaves dropper or man in the middle ever being able to listen in on the communications. This article explains all. Still, a product with this technology in is unlikely for some time, which is a pity because its exactly the sort of thing likely to really wind up over zealous governments.