Dave Thorp's Blog

Given the rarity of posts to this blog recently, something needs to be done. So time to resurrect monthly feature where we take a look at our 5 aims for the blog each month, and resident mystic Nostradamus makes some frighteningly accurate predictions for the month ahead. A feature that is in no way a rip off of two features that were on the programme affectionately known as TMWRNJ during the late 90s

So here are our aims for February/March

Aim One

Aim one is to utilise Gordon Brown’s new interest in fisticuffs by settling the UK general election battle between him and David Cameron in the only way possible………. FIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHT!!!

Aim Two

Aim two is to transfer strangely popular (even though its crap but so crap it’s good) gameshow Take Me Out to channel 5 changing the format of the show so each week it features an annoying celebrity who is then “taken out” by members of the public using a vast array of semi-automatic weaponry

Aim Three

Aim three is to take photo’s of all the snow Britain has had this year, post them to anyone going on about how burning fuels creates greenhouse gases and global warming with a caption saying “look how wrong you are”.

Aim Four

Aim four is to punish Ashley Cole for once again making the frankly ludicrous decision to cheat on his wife when his wife is as hot as Cheryl Cole, oddly enough since she is Cheryl Cole, by inviting him to take part in the C5 version of “Take Me Out”, whilst leading him to believe it’s actually the ITV version

Aim Five

Aim five is to solve the big freeze by recycling. Simply take any of the photographs from aim 3 that are left over and then set fire to them providing warmth, and much needed greenhouse gases if the global warming activists are to be believed

He’s been hibernating for the winter but he’s back with his stunningly accurate predictions all in the name of netting him the very special prize should he manage to get two out of three right…. his very own barbecue. So here are his predictions for February/March

Prediction One

Alexander Thorp will receive an invisible card and present from a certain member of his family for his birthday for the third year running

Prediction Two

Ashley Cole will be executed for his crime of cheating on the “nation’s sweetheart”

Prediction Three

Rian from ITV’s “Take Me Out” will be given her own diet series

I’ve just started a campaign to try and get the proper version of REM’s Everybody Hurts to chart higher than the charity single released next Sunday. Now before anyone starts on me I am aware of the following

1. This has been done before – Yes I’m aware that Tracy and Jon Morter did exactly this at Christmas. However their campaign raised £100k for the homeless which is a very good cause

2. It’s wrong to take on a charity single – If the RATM4XMAS campaign taught us anything it’s that the single the campaign was opposing still sold and it still sold well. Furthermore as a donations page has been set up by me for this campaign, providing it takes off, more money will be raised for charity than if this campaign didn’t exist. I will also hopefully as long as it doesn’t violate the terms of any affiliate programmes I am on be posting a number of affiliate links to download the song and donating the revenue to the cause.

3. You have no hope of succeeding – probably not, whilst RATM4XMAS did succeed, that had weeks to prepare. We have days! But even if the campaign becomes even a fraction as successful as the last one it will still help a good cause

The facebook group can be found HERE and the just giving page for donations HERE

So yesterday saw Steve Job, CEO of Apple announce a new product which turned out to be the widely expected tablet device. Like many others, I was hoping for at least an update to the iPhone OS also if not a new iPhone to be announced and normally these speeches tend to cover one or two products and then have a little surprise at the end. In this case the surprise at the end was that they managed to spend an hour and a half talking about just one product.

So onto the product itself, dubbed by Apple as a revolutionary and magical device, named the iPad (and opening up to a large number of iTampon jokes that actually managed to trend on twitter above anything actually to do with the device or Apple). Ok I haven’t had one in my hands yet but to me it seems that what Apple have done isn’t revolutionary or magical. Indeed this device has been around for nearly three years already and is called the iPod Touch. Because what Apple have done is taken their existing iPod Touch, blown it up to 4 times the size, put a faster chip in it and created some word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software for it.

A lot of people are slating the device because it cant multitask, much like the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Personally, I cant see the appeal of multitasking on a device like this. On my PC currently which can support multitasking, I have the following open

1. Thunderbird – as the mail app on iPad can be set to poll automatically or even push if supported, there is no need to keep mail open on the iPad
2. iTunes – the iPhone will continue playing music even if you exit the iPod app. As the iPad is based on the same OS as the iPhone/Ipod Touch there is no reason this wont still be the case. And I have iTunes open but aren’t even listening to music so no idea why its open
3. Firefox with 12 tabs open – Safari supports multiple tabs on the iPhone so presumably will on the iPad. Of the 12 tabs open half of them don’t need to be, I just haven’t bothered closing them yet
4. Sticky Notes – Fair enough the iPad wont support notes on the desktop BUT of the sticky notes I have the majority of them serve no purpose anyway and there’s no reason they cant be hidden away in an app

The price of the device whilst looking reasonable is unlikely to translate well to the UK as is the normal case with Apple devices. For example based on the US price, the iPod Touch 64GB retails for $399. This should translate to a UK price of £246 but it actually costs £60 more than that.

Based on the US prices, the UK prices of the iPad should be

We’ll see how well that translates over into UK apple money. As for if I’ll be buying one, I can see this device replacing my netbook which as Steve Jobs pointed out is slow and not better than anything BUT that will depend on if

1. The price translates over to the UK well
2. If the Wifi only model will support tethering to the iPhone, something which strangely never got mentioned at the keynote last night

The iPad, whilst being a large iPod touch, probably isn’t too bad a device. I’m just disappointed there was nothing else announced like a new iPhone (though this could be because I was hoping for new iPhone as I have an upgrade due next month)

Oh and anyone buying this as an ebook reader who doesn’t live in the US may want to check the small print at the bottom of THIS PAGE