The Rocketbelt Caper is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. You can order it here and be reading it on your Kindle in less than a minute. Which is considerably less time than it took to get the book listed as a Kindle download…

Anyway, it’s up now, so Kindle people can go and do their Whispernet thing. The price will vary according to which country you’re in, and to be honest I can’t work it out, so just go take a look.

If you don’t have a Kindle, you can get a non-Kindle ebook here. And, of course, if you’re still living in 2008 or something you can get a version of the book made of cellulose pulp, derived mainly from wood, rags and certain grasses, processed into flexible sheets or rolls by deposit from an aqueous suspension. That’s a paperback to you and me.

The Rocketbelt Caper is the non-bestselling true story of three men who build a jetpack, fall out, hit each other over the head with baseball bats, and other unspeakable things. It is most definitely NOT the source material for straight-to-video rocketbelt caper movie Pretty Bird.

[UPDATE 21/05/10] Having investigated further, the Kindle version costs $2.99 in the US – the lowest price it was possible for me to list an ebook on the service. Amazon keep 65% of that, and then pay me the remainder via a US dollar cheque, on which I have to pay a fee to cash into my UK bank account. So I’m not making any money on this. I’m simply making the book available on Kindle to get it in front of as many readers as possible.

However, in the UK, Amazon hikes the price to $5.86 – almost twice the price paid by US readers. The official reason given by Amazon for this is ‘taxes and operating costs’. Hmm. UK VAT might account for an extra 17.5%, but is there really an extra operating cost associated with sending an item that does not physically exist across the Atlantic? A rum deal, but if you don’t want to pay Amazon’s premium feel free to buy direct from this website instead.

[ANOTHER UPDATE 25/06/10] The UK price has now been reduced to $3.51 for no fathomable reason, but is now only $0.52 more than the US price.

Books, Technology Kindle, The Rocketbelt Caper

This post originally appeared on Spotiguide.

A couple of weeks ago, Spotify launched its iPhone app v0.4, and after a couple of teething troubles, during which it was quickly upgraded to v0.4.1, it now looks stable enough to offer a quick review.

First up, for those who are new to Spotify for iPhone, here’s a run-down of what it does – which is basically pretty much everything the desktop client does. You’ve got instant streaming of the full catalogue over Wi-Fi and 3G, the ability to store 3,333 tracks in offline playlists, and fast syncing between mobile and desktop. Essentially, Spotify for mobile puts the entire Spotify catalogue into your pocket, making it instantly available in very high quality. So what does v0.4.1 add?

New features include the much-requested Last.fm scrobbling – a long-standing feature on the desktop client, and a refreshed look. A major addition is iPod integration, which uses tracks already stored in the iPhone’s iPod in Spotify playlists, saving memory and sync time. Also new is the ability to stream at low bandwidth (98kbs) when without a Wi-Fi signal. The new Starred feature allows you to star and save favourite albums and tracks.

The are also other small tweaks, such as the fact that the volume slider has been replaced by the iPhone’s master volume control, a restore feature that means the app restarts where it left off, and the ability to share tracks and open Spotify links direct from the browser and other apps.

Unfortunately, v0.4 was buggy, in some cases causing the app to hang or crash. To Spotify’s credit, they were quick to release v0.4.1, which fixes some of the problems. Some users are apparently still having problems with the iPod integration feature causing crashes. v0.4.1 allows this feature to be turned off until the bug can be properly fixed. I’ve not experienced this bug, but I have found a couple of other annoyances.

A major gripe is that, presumably due to the iPod integration, after updating you lose all of your offline content, and need to sync it all again. Depending on how many offline playlists you have this can take many hours. It was most likely necessary to accommodate the new features, but there should probably have been a warning issued before installation.

Secondly, it is still annoyingly difficult to add albums or tracks into new playlists. (For the record, you need to go to Playlists, click Edit, click ‘+’, create a new playlist, then search for the album or track to add.) It’s much easier to do this on the Symbian Spotify app.

Thirdly, the app seems slightly slower to respond. This could be because it seems to be constantly syncing offline content, but I’ll keep an eye on it and report back.

Another much-requested feature was the ability to listen to Spotify in the background while using other iPhone functions. Unfortunately Apple still don’t allow third party apps to do this, so v0.4.1 doesn’t offer a change. However, the word is that Apple’s forthcoming 4.0 iPhone OS will allow multitasking, and hopefully Spotify will be quick to update the app as a result.

Overall, although slightly flawed, Spotify for iPhone v0.4.1 remains an essential application, effectively rendering the iPod (and iTunes) obsolete. It’s free to download from the App Store, but you’ll need a Spotify Premium account to use it, which costs £9.99 a month.

Technology iPhone, Spotify

This post originally appeared on Spotiguide.

Spotify, the much talked-about music streaming service, has today launched a new feature aimed at filtering out bad music for discerning listeners. The feature, called ‘Airplay Floods’, uses a revolutionary musical genome identifier to weed out bad records from albums and playlists in the Spotify catalogue. It has already been nicknamed the ‘crap filter’.

Spotiguide was the first media outlet to see the new feature. In tests, turning on the Airplay Floods function removed tracks such as The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum) by The Cheeky Girls and Candle in the Wind 1997 by Elton John from the Spotify catalogue. Spotify programmers refused to reveal exactly how the patented method to identify the ‘DNA’ of bad music works. However, despite repeated attempts, Spotiguide was unable to play Everything I Do (I Do It For You) by Bryan Adams or Believe by Cher while the crap filter was active.

‘Airplay Floods is a game-changing feature,’ said Orla Filop, a spokeswoman for the Stockholm-based company. ‘Spotify has already revolutionised the way people listen to music. Now it will revolutionise the type of music they listen to, greatly reducing the amount of rubbish their ears are subjected to.’

Although welcomed by many Spotify users, the new feature has already been criticised by anti-censorship groups who claim that the company should not remove listeners’ rights to listen to bad music.

‘The Airplay Floods feature is an attack against freedom of choice,’ read a statement from anti-censorship group ADF. ‘Tastes vary, and one man’s Beethoven is another man’s B*Witched. If people want to listen to Black Lace or Billie Ray Cyrus, then they should be allowed to do so in peace without fear of censorship of mockery.’

Some Spotify users have also reacted angrily. An early comment on the Spotify blog from user Flair Pool read, ‘hey IDIOTS coz i LIKE sexbomb by tom jones n listen 2 it every day n u have RUINED spotify cos now I cannot listen to sex bomb by tom jone you IDIOTS (sic).’

The feature is permanently activated for Spotify Free users, meaning that they will no longer be able to listen to tracks such as Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby or Anyone Can Fall In Love by Anita Dobson. Spotify Premium users can toggle the Airplay Floods feature on and off using the F9 key.

What do you think of the new Airplay Floods feature? Post a comment and let us know.

Music, Technology Spotify