Bit of a “crisis” knocked me off course for part of the morning, so post count is down a bit today. Might do a bit later on.

Blogging

• UK politician wins party’s blog of the year award

Tech: General

• Destroy the world, or just plug in four USB gadgets, with the Self Destruction USB hub
• LED Alarm Clock made from movable, stackable cubes: not for the easily confused
• Display your old-fashioned shiny discs as wall tiles
• TwinMOS launches miniBooM iPod docking and speaker system with FM and DAB radio
• Mystere launches ia11 and ia21 valve amps
• HANNspree launches XM “Boston” designer monitor

Tech: iPhone

• iPhone UK: What’s the 3G deal?
• iPhone UK: O2’s monthly tariffs
• iPhone to get “TV out” functionality?
• GEAR4 launches iVak case for iPhone
• DIY iPhone repairs for the brave: fix a broken screen
• Phones4U put on brave face regarding UK iPhone
• iPhone coming to Germany and Austria, November 9th, T-Mobile

Tech: Music

• Yamaha intros MODUS H01 stylish, compact digital piano
• Yamaha intros new arranger workstations: PSR-S700, PSR-S900, PSR-OR700

Bit of a “crisis” knocked me off course for part of the morning, so post count is down a bit today. Might do a bit later on.

Blogging

• BlogRush is as good for the blogger as the visitor

Tech: General

• SAGEM launches my150x: thin and stylish mobile phone
• Doro launches NeoBio range of designer home phones
• Evesham unveils OXEGEN gaming PCs: SX1000, SX5000, SX9000
• Artificial Intelligence meets remote-control cars and lasers. Fun-and-a-half
• F456 dual-front design PMP and 1.3 megapixel camera, and lyric sync
• Mobile dating to become $1bn global phenomenon

Tech: High Definition

• High definition disc format war to continue until at least 2011

Tech: iPhone

• UK iPhone announcement today: London, 10am
• Jason Bradbury, Suzi Perry, Barcelona: best iPhone review yet (and trouncing a Nokia N95)
• 3G iPhone coming in 1Q 2008
• 8GB iPhone coming to UK: 9th November with O2
• iPhone UK: How much free Wi-Fi can you get?
• iPhone UK: O2 has Visual Voicemail
• iPhone UK: Just how “unlimited” is the O2 data plan?
• iPhone UK: What Steve and Matthew wouldn’t say

Before you groan at yet another post about BlogRush (which I’m trying out at my Family Relationships blog right now) this post may be a little different.

Though the primary aim of BlogRush is to get your articles displayed on other web sites within your niche, based on how many people visit your own web site, I’ve found that the widget is quite a useful snapshot of other relevant blogs and articles that I don’t already have in my feed reader.

I’ve already found several new web sites, or at least useful articles, as a result of simply clicking through what was displayed on the widget when I visited my home page (I’ll admit I was looking to see if one of my own articles was being shown – it wasn’t).

Fortunately there’s no penalty for clicking through on these links as there would be for something like AdSense. Neither do I keep refreshing my home page for more impressions (I’m sure these would get filtered out to stop people trying to game the system).

Just thought I’d share this little discovery.

Here’s a link list to all the articles I’ve written today. Enjoy.

Tech: Web 2.0

• Yahoo Mash: late to the social network party, mashes up popular services into its own
• Google may be developing offline version of Gmail, challenge to Microsoft?
• iLike now includes UK, Ireland, Australian music concerts

Tech: High Definition

• Big three TV makers to study technology to reduce LCD TV energy consumption
• Warner delay Total HD discs indefinitely
• SIM2 unveils Grand Cinema HT380 1080p projector
• Toshiba: 51GB HD DVD not yet official… quite
• Sky/Virgin Media CEO’s agree against “gifted” HD spectrum

Tech: iPhone

• O2’s UK iPhone deal speculations continue
• New research: iPhone is just precursor to future mobile Internet devices
• Apple preparing another iPhone software update?
• Putting SSH on the iPhone
• Deutsche Telekom reportedly gains rights to sell iPhone in five European countries
• $100 “early adopter” rebate can be used on iTunes

Family

• Daily Mail columnist tirades against environmentally unfriendly mothers
• Baking: the latest craze for kids?
• Toddlers’ TV favourites to feature on new interactive web site for preschoolers

Music

• Korg announces Kaossilator dynamic phrase synthesizer
• NowPlayIt.com: interesting but limited piano tutorials from star musicians
• Third Annual Austin Analog Synthesizer Party: 13 Oct 2007
• Native Instruments announce KOMPLETE software instrument/effect bundles
• Musical listening test study – testing musical perception ability
• Tenori-on exclusively testing in the UK

Personal

• New blogging efficiency and productivity regime started today

I’ve noticed a laziness creeping into my blogging routine over the summer, which has led to frustration, lowered productivity, and longer work hours.

At the same time, I’ve been aware that I needed to ramp up some of my own personal projects, both from a financial point of view as well as to broaden the subject areas that I write about.

I’m a morning person, in as much that, if I can peel myself out of bed and do something useful in the first hour or so, then I’m generally fairly well set up for the rest of the day.

If I don’t, things tend to go wrong no matter how hard I try. That’s not being defeatist; it’s just a fact.

I spent the weekend thinking about how I could change that, and also decided to go and read some of the posts over at StevePavlina.com. I think in a lot of things we’re quite on the same wavelength, and he doesn’t try to obfuscate a lack of knowledge with big, fancy words the way some self-professed “experts” do.

Anyway, I was most interested in articles such as How to Become an Early Riser, How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off, and a lot of his Productivity articles.

Based partly on what I’d read, things I already knew but had let slide, I came up with the following ten points that are most important to me at the moment:

1. Get up early:
   

   Absolutely essential. I’d taken to either waking “naturally” and then drifting, sometimes until around 8am, instead of setting my alarm for 6am and getting up as soon as it went off.

   Consequently, I felt sluggish, was often frustrated with myself for losing time, and started work late and in a bad frame of mind.

   This morning I was bolt upright as soon as the alarm starting beeping, up, dressed, and downstairs by 6.05am. Brilliant!

2. Avoid distractions:
   

   I find that if I am motivated and have purpose in my work, I’m much less easily distracted. I wasn’t put off by noise in the street, the postman, or any similar irritations.

3. Don’t multitask:
   

   I had told myself that multitasking was a fine attribute, and indeed, in certain circumstances (when one task is menial, for example) it can be. However, for brain-intensive and/or creative working, it’s not. This leads on to…

4. Stick with one subject for as long as possible:
   

   I had started to flit backwards and forwards between subjects. This works sometimes, particularly if the next point is to be fulfilled. However, flitting around for the sake of it, when there’s plenty of material on one subject to write about, seems counterproductive.

   Today, I created chunks of time devoted to the different blogs I write for. Only towards the end of the day, when the pressure of other targets had eased, did I relax into alternating the writing of articles for two or three different blogs.

5. Just write:
   

   Research and reading are great, but at the end of the day, I’m a writer.

   I used to find myself spending so long reading articles, going through Google Reader looking for leads, and seeking out press releases, that I’d be exhausted before I’d even written anything.

   Chunking into subjects helped, as it meant that I could focus on research on just one subject (but still able to siphon off related articles for other blogs if they came up) for maybe 30-40 minutes, then write a decent block of articles, with plenty of mental energy.

6. Keep an ideas list:
   

   I’d already created a Google Notepad for ideas for articles. I’m still working on it. I need to remember to write down any ideas — even fragments — as soon as they occur to me, so that I don’t lose potentially valuable information that could be worked into future posts.

7. Banish email, social networking sites, and games:
   

   Don’t talk to me about the curse of email and Facebook!

   Yes, I checked email pretty much every time it went “Bing”, and usually it was something that could have waited.

   It’s not always easy to ignore, as some important things do come in via email, but today the timings worked very well indeed. Let’s hope it continues that way.

   I also put a “Not Available” on Skype, which is not as harsh as “Do Not Disturb” but gets the point across. At least, no-one Skyped me this morning.

8. Drink plenty of water:
   

   Keep forgetting to do it, stupid boy. Today I had the bottle of water sitting right in front of my monitor. It’s definitely helped, particularly as I’ve cut down the caffeine recently, too.

9. Exercise at least once a day:
   

   Our new dog takes care of this for me. Come rain or shine, I’m out every morning walking him in the woods. It’s a great head clearer at the start of the day.

10. Tell others what you’re doing:
    

    As of today, I’m going to be summarising all the posts I’ve written on various blogs. That way, we can all see publicly what sort of day I’ve had. Not that I expect to be beaten up about it, but it’s another incentive to write more than five posts a day!

So there you go. Day One of new regime down, plenty more to go.

These aren’t earth-shattering tips by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re working for me. Sometimes things have to be relearned so we can move forward to bigger and better things.

Generally, lists of “Top x (insert profession here)” are bound to spark controversy – some are purely created as linkbait – so I’m not going to get too riled about NxE’s Fifty Most Influential Bloggers.

It’s not a terrible list.

• I agree with a number of blogger entries on the list.
• I can understand why a number of other bloggers are on the list, based on the “30 second rundown” and “Why He/She Matters” sections

However:

1. It’s horrendously skewed towards technology and US politics
2. It’s skewed towards US bloggers
3. It’s skewed towards male bloggers
4. At least two of the entries are / have been involved in black-hat / dodgy SEO/SEM tactics (I don’t agree with rewarding that)

Let’s take those points in turn:

1. It’s horrendously skewed towards technology and US politics

Unfortunately, it seems that (with the exception of pornography and sex), technology and US politics rule the roost online. At least, they’re the only ones that “are influential beyond the norm” and “are the people to watch and listen to”.

I’m not sure how much specific inspiration a craft, or music, or sports blogger will get from someone talking North American politics.

We need to dig a little deeper and look for the other major audiences, and find inspiration in other niches.

2. It’s skewed towards US bloggers

Granted, the US is way ahead of the curve when it comes to blogging.

There are several notable bloggers from other nations, which is good to see, but perhaps some international bloggers should compile a more world-friendly list.

3. It’s skewed towards male bloggers

Again, many technology geeks are men (though there’s a notable absence of any British female bloggers who’ll give the guys a run for their money).

Perhaps widening the search to other subject areas would have yielded more influential women bloggers.

4. At least two of the entries are / have been involved in black-hat / dodgy SEO/SEM tactics (I don’t agree with rewarding that)

They know who they are, and you probably do as well.

I suppose that doesn’t stop them being influential, though I’d rather not see those encouraged who flagrantly and openly cheat their way up the search engine rankings (at the expense of others, I might add).

Given that “their success stories hold for us a key to and an inspiration for our own success” this is a little perverse.

I also take exception to one of the entries which claims that the blogger “matters most because of a single post he wrote in May 2006″. Not really the mark of a great blogger. One hit wonder, perhaps.

But maybe that’s just me. I wholeheartedly agree with some of the entries. I won’t embarrass them, or the others, by naming them.

I was flicking through the new crop of “plus one” channels on Freeview (the ones that hog bandwidth of Freeview but show nothing new, merely the same material as the main channel but an hour later – has no-one heard of PVRs and video recorders?) when I saw this on ITV2+1:

It reads:

Sorry, for legal reasons we cannot broadcast the programme that was shown earlier on ITV2

Apparently, “Die Another Day” is such an expensive, or otherwise restricted, movie that it can only be shown the once — until the next time they show it, of course.

Movies like “Scary Movie” seem to be exempt, though, so it appears just to be the Bond stuff.

Fortunately, I can’t stand James Bond films, so it’s no problem to me. I just thought it a little odd. Anyone know what these “legal reasons” are?

Does anyone have any decent information on terminating an application in Mac OS X when it refuses to quit by any known method?

I’m talking about EyeTV, which every so often hangs during playback (spinning beach ball), but refuses to quit.

Here’s what I’ve tried, all to no avail:

1. “Force Quit” icon on dock
2. Run "kill -9 $pid" from the Terminal command line (where process ID is found using ps aux | grep EyeTV

When using the second method, I get this kind of output:

andy 576 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? E Mon10PM 0:00.00 (EyeTV)

The “E” status means that the application is in the process of ending.

Only it never does. The only way I can quit or relaunch it is to restart (or log out), which is really annoying if I’ve got a lot of other applications open.

EyeTV is the only application that does this. I’ve done all the usual housekeeping stuff I can think of (repairing permissions, etc).

Does anyone have any ideas? It’s a real pain.

I read the following comment over at the Full Or Partial RSS Feeds – The Great Feed Debate (yes, people are still debating it).

I always end up unsubscribing from partial feeds. It breaks me feed reading flow.

I do still read LifeHacker by visiting the web site, but to be honest that’s the *only* site I do that with. Every other site has lost me as a reader.

I’m a very active commenter, and user of delicious, stumbleupon, reddit and digg so if I’m not reading your site because of partial feeds then you’re missing out on more than just 1 reader. You’re also missing out on access to my word of mouth network.

And that’s true for every potential RSS subscriber out there.

Wow, how arrogant is that?

Not only is the guy saying that he will remove his oh so powerful favour from any web site which dares to publish partial RSS feeds (so self-important is he), but he’s also telling everyone else that’s the way they think too.

Sorry, but that isn’t true for every potential RSS subscriber, because I’m an RSS subscriber and will happily read partial feeds from sources that have valuable information.

We all have our own ways of consuming news and information from blogs and other sites, so please don’t pigeonhole us all in the same box as you.

If you – like Scoble – are so set in the mentality that partial RSS feeds are evil and you won’t deign to read the sites that indulge in them, well fine. Spite your face by cutting off your nose, but don’t assume everyone else feels the same.

PS I do publish full RSS feeds, by the way, but not to satisfy the likes of that attitude.