The awards are being hosted by afront at The Pansentient League, who also maintains the Spotify Resources page at Spotify.com. You can vote for Spotiguide, or any other Spotify community website, at The Pansentient League’s Spotties page.

And by voting you could win yourself a free subscription to Spotify Premium. Spotify Ltd are offering three 3-month Spotify Premium subscription vouchers, which will be awarded at random to three lucky Spotties voters. Voting closes at the end of March. Good luck!

Vote for Spotiguide here!

William P Suitor was an original test pilot for the Bell Rocketbelt, and also flew the Tyler Rocketbelt and the Rocketbelt 2000. He has clocked up more rocketbelt airtime than anyone else, and flew two of the most famous rocketbelt flights of all time – as one of the stunt pilots on the James Bond movie Thunderball, and in front of a worldwide audience of billions at the LA Olympics opening ceremony in 1984.

He was the test pilot on the RB-2000, but thankfully got out before the project spiralled towards its murderous conclusion. Bill supplied a lot of information for my book, and you can read more about his involvement in the caper here.

Sadly, Bill’s book doesn’t feature the foreword he wanted from the first Bell rocketbelt pilot Hal Graham. As previously posted, Hal died in October, aged 75. According to the Nashville Scene, Hal replied to Bill’s request with a message saying, “I probably won’t be around after tomorrow. Catch it in the papers.” The following afternoon, Hal drove to the local headquarters of the Federal Aviation Authority, which had revoked his pilot’s license two weeks earlier. Hal entered the building, saying nothing, took out a handgun, and shot himself in the head. You can read more about the tragic end to a high-flying life in the article Hero pilot Hal Graham’s hard fall to earth by Brantley Hargrove.

Bill Suitor’s tale has a happier ending, and he is currently attending book signings to talk about his remarkable rocketbelt career. You can get his Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual here.

I saw the Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience presentation at the brand new Odeon Metrocentre cinema in Gateshead, the only digital IMAX theatre outside of London, and opened in the week of the movie’s release. Screenings were fully-booked days in advance, and we struggled to get tickets for a couple of weeks.

When we did eventually get to see it, we were sat at the front right corner – not great seats for the £12.50 ticket price. The screening was preceded by a brief introduction from a man in a suit who reminded us to return our hefty 3D specs for sterilisation after the movie, and warned us that the immersive nature of the experience might cause illness. But there was no warning of physical injury. Looking up and left at the huge screen for 162 minutes required a painful twisting of the neck and back that left me in pain for a few days afterwards. Injured by a 3D movie! Pah!

The 3D effect certainly works, although the final image appears to be made up of several flat layers, almost like a paper diorama, and so is not particularly realistic. The end result is a little like leafing through a child’s pop-up book. Amusing, and worth a look, but hardly the holy grail of cinema. It seems to me a technology that will be better suited to video games rather than movies. And the sum effect of Avatar is a bit like watching someone play a video game for the best part of three hours.

The movie itself – well, it’s Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure on a bigger budget, isn’t it? To be fair to Cameron, he has obviously tried hard to ensure that the 3D doesn’t get in the way of the story. For example, there are noticeably few arrows and pointy sticks flying out of the screen. But the overall experience still detracts from the movie’s content. Moviegoers around me were constantly removing their glasses to see how the effect worked, and looking around the cinema to see how it was affecting others. Hardly the immersive experience Cameron was trying to create.

And that’s the problem with 3D. Unlike sound and colour, 3D doesn’t represent an advancement in cinema technology. In many ways it’s a backward step. Rather than immerse the cinemagoer in the movie, 3D is an unwelcome distraction. Using 3D for the odd novelty slasher movie is fine, but surely no one want to see it become the standard for every blockbuster movie?

Unfortunately, the amount of money invested in 3D suggests that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it. Better get used to those specs.

O2 is currently offering a limited number of “reconditioned” iPhones to customers. In this scenario, “reconditioned” means phones returned by customers under their 14-day no quibble arrangement, and so crucially they are not repairs. They are essentially brand new, and come with the standard 12-month warranty. O2 have been offering the 8GB 3G, the 16GB 3GS and the 32GB 3GS, although stock levels fluctuate. (Yesterday, for example, they had no reconditioned 16GB models in stock.)

The reconditioned iPhones are being offered primarily to customers through retention and upgrades. Offers vary by customer (and, apparently, by O2 advisor) according to account status. For example, customers with higher monthly spends who threaten to leave O2 are likely to be offered a better deal. However, some customers on O2’s lowest-value Simplicity tariff have also been offered free iPhones.

The best deals centre around the O2 iPhone 35 tariff, which includes 600 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited internet for £35 per month. Some of the deals offered over the last few days include:

*18-month contract at £35 per month with iPhone 32GB 3GS free.
*18-month contract at discounted £29 per month with iPhone 32GB 3GS costing £179.
*24-month contract at discounted £29 per month with iPhone 32GB 3GS costing £96.

You can check reconditioned iPhone availability and order upgrades online here (select “Upgrade Online”).

The best way to secure a good deal is to call O2’s retention department, although that’s only possible if you’re approaching the end of your O2 contract.

However, it is possible to sign up to O2’s cheapest and shortest contract and get a retention or upgrade deal almost straight away. O2’s one-month Simplicity contract costs from just £10, and because it is renewed every month you can choose to leave or upgrade whenever you like. You can sign up for Simplicity here (select “Sim-only Simplicity”).

A reminder that reconditioned stock levels fluctuate, and that offers will vary. But the above offers were all offered to customers on the lowest Simplicity tariff over the last few days. So be prepared to haggle. Say you’ll leave O2 unless you get a good deal. If you have O2 broadband say you’ll cancel that too. There are great iPhone deals out there if you are prepared to dig for them.

O2 Mobile Phone and Broadband Deals
www.o2.co.uk Mobile phone, tariff, SIM only, broadband and laptop deals from O2.

So far Voddler has attracted at least £10 million of investment, and has signed deals with Disney and Paramount. It’s been labelled as a Spotify for movies, but can it live up to the hype?

Voddler beta is currently only (officially) available by invitation in Sweden, but I’ve had the opportunity to try it here in the UK. (It’s possible to register for an invitation at www.voddler.com, and on receipt sign up using a Swedish zip code – thanks Andy.)

The initial impressions of the Voddler client are poor. Navigation is via the keyboard arrow keys, with no mouse or QWERTY use, and username and password entry is incredibly laborious. Setting up the screen resolution size is a similarly annoying process. It seems to have been optimised for wide screens – great for TVs, but not so good when viewing on most computer monitors.

Once logged in, you’re presented with a very underwhelming menu screen – essentially a load of movie poster thumbnails that can be sorted into recommended, free, premium and genre categories. Highlighting a thumbnail brings up (very) brief details, such as director, runtime, and year of release. Again, navigation is annoyingly slow. But what’s available?

The free-to-view movies include the likes of Chinatown, Crash, Chopper, Bridge To Terabithia, The Italian Job, Lucky Number Slevin, and Saws I-IV. So there’s plenty to keep you occupied, although perhaps nothing to really excite.

Premium movies, costing around 24 to 37 Swedish Krona (£2 to £3.25) each, include titles such as Angels and Demons, The Proposal, The Wrestler, Watchmen, Hanna Montana, and Saw V.

The TV show category is home to a forgettable selection of cheap documentaries of the type that play on unwatched Sky channels.

The actual viewing experience is more impressive. After a brief period of buffering, your chosen movie is preceded by a couple of (Swedish) ads, and a trailer. Movie playback is very good, certainly comparable with the BBC iPlayer, although again the clunky controls let Voddler down.

Overall, Voddler seems to have the under-the-hood technology in place, but needs to work on its user interface. One of the real joys of Spotify was how instantly and easily it worked. Voddler, in contrast, is slow and difficult to use. The movie selection isn’t great, but this will no doubt expand as it moves out of beta and into other territories.

For the time being there is enough here to make it worth installing on your laptop for long train journeys, but, unlike Spotify, Voddler is far from essential.

Got an HD Ready TV? Get Sky+HD!
www.sky.com Free Sky box plus free £50 M&S voucher and more online deals.

12 months on, most of my writing is for the business market. I’m still writing books, and the occasional newspaper or magazine article, but the focus of this blog needs to change.

I’ll continue to post news about my books and articles as and when there is any, and I’ll probably still post random movie reviews and football rants as and when my creative juices dictate.

But the focus of this blog is going to shift towards music and music technology, and particularly something that featured a lot on this blog in 2009 – Spotify.

One problem I’ve found with Spotify is that having so much music available can be too much, and it can be difficult to decide what to listen to.

This blog will aim to keep you up to date with Spotify and related technology news, and provide reviews and links to new and catalogue music worth listening to.

The blog will head off in its new direction in the first week of January 2010. You will be most welcome to come along.

Spotify Mobile allows users to stream a huge catalogue of music over WiFi or 3G and, crucially, to store 3,333 tracks in offline playlists. The Spotify Mobile app is free to download, but you’ll need a Spotify Premium account to use it, which costs £9.99 a month.

Downloading and installing is a breeze. Just access m.spotify.com on your mobile browser, and you’ll automatically get the appropriate version. Once installed, just enter your Spotify username and password and the playlists from your desktop version of Spotify appear.

Various Symbian phones look to have different onscreen layouts – neccessary, of course, as the various phones have different sized screens.

On the N78, the app’s main screen offers four options: Playlists, to view your playlists; Search, to search the entire Spotify catalogue; Home, to view the latest releases on Spotify; and More, with options for connection mode and syncing.

You can search the catalogue by track, album or artist, and enjoy instant playback, just as you would via the desktop version. If you find a track or album you like, you can easily add it to an existing playlist, or create a new one.

The Now Playing screen offers a big cover image, with the usual pause, skip, and rewind/fast forward options. Holding forward or back makes a large time elapsed display appear over the cover image, so you can easily find your favourite bit of a particular track.

Sound quality is fantastic, streaming at 320 kbps, which is twice the quality of many MP3 files, and higher than iTunes’ highest quality Plus downloads, which are 256 kbps. I listened with a set of Bose earbuds plugged into the phone’s jack, and also connected the phone to my HiFi, and was very impressed. There was a big improvement over MP3s played through Nokia’s music player, and a noticeable absence of any background noise. And, of course, with a Premium subscription there are absolutely no adverts.

For many, the killer feature of Spotify Mobile will be the offline mode. And I’m here to tell you it works a treat. Just select which playlists you’d like to make available offline, and syncing will begin. I set my app to sync when connected to WiFi, which is obviously the fastest option. It took between 5 and 10 minutes to download each album, so the initial sync takes a while. But it’s worth it. Once synced, those tracks are there for you to enjoy whenever you like with or without an online connection.

By my reckoning each track takes up around 6MB of storage space, so storing 3,333 tracks will require the best part of 20GB of memory cardage. This highlights a slight problem, as the biggest MicroSD card currently available for the N78 is 16GB, although Sandisk are set to release a 32GB card in the near future.

I also had a quick play with the iPhone Spotify app to compare. Features-wise, it was very similar, although I found it difficult to add new playlists on the iPhone, and overall preferred the Nokia app’s onscreen layout. Also, in a big win for the Nokia app, Spotify can be minimised and play in the background while you use the phone for other tasks. On the iPhone, because of Apple’s restrictions, Spotify can’t be minimised, and must be shut down to take a call or read a text.

Overall, Spotify Mobile is a must have for any Nokia Smartphone or Symbian phone user, genuinely putting a world of music in your pocket.

More Spotify posts

Harold ‘Hal’ Graham was a 27-year-old science graduate from Buffalo who had been working for the Bell Aircraft Company as a test engineer for just over a year when he was selected to be the first man to pilot the rocketbelt – the iconic flying jetpack created by engineer Wendell Moore.

It would be Graham’s first taste of flying. He was not a registered pilot, and the only machine he had previous experience of driving was a car. He was, however, a rocketbelt fan, having grown up with Buck Rogers comics and Commando Cody serials. When Bell began to ask around for a volunteer to fly the rocketbelt he had no hesitation in applying for the job.

Graham’s first tethered flight took place in March 1961. These flights took place in a large aircraft hangar. The rocketbelt was suspended from the ceiling, and small amounts of thrust were used to generate moderate lift. 36 tethered flights later, it was time for the safety ropes to come off.

The very first untethered rocketbelt flight took place at seven in the morning on 20 April 1961. A 20-man Bell crew gathered at an empty clearing near the Bell plant on Buffalo’s Niagara Falls Boulevard and opposite the Niagara Falls Municipal Airport, which had been specially closed for 30 minutes. The crew ran through a detailed checklist in preparation for the flight.

Then Graham, wearing a black rubber suit, white helmet, work boots, and goggles, released the throttle in a short burst to check the propulsion. All seemed fine. Again he released the throttle, this time successfully lifting the belt around 18 inches from the ground in a thick cloud of steam, and piloted it in a straight line at a speed of around ten miles per hour.

The noise was incredible – an explosive roar of gas as loud as a pneumatic drill. And visibility was poor – almost zero according to Graham – due to condensation created by the rocket exhaust.

On the first free rocketbelt flight Hal Graham flew for 13 seconds and covered a distance of 112 feet – eight feet less than the Wright Brothers had covered in their inaugural flight. It was nevertheless a thoroughly triumphant debut.

Following the success of the test flight, Bell executives were keen to unveil the remarkable device to the public. After 28 test flights, Wendell Moore was satisfied enough to agree to a public demonstration.

The first public rocketbelt flight took place at Fort Eustis, Virginia, on 8 June 1961 at a demonstration of new technologies. Light bulbs flashed and film reels rolled as Graham piloted the rocketbelt into the air, legs swinging below him. Against a backdrop of Air Force planes, Graham maneuvered the rocketbelt over a truck, and higher into the sky. He flew to around 15 feet, and then descended, bouncing slightly as he landed on his feet. Graham then offered a salute.

After removing his fire suit, Graham was mobbed by the press. Microphones were thrust into his face, and pencils jotted down every word he said. Bell officials handed out press releases which began, ‘Harold M Graham is believed to be the first man to fly with back-carried rocket equipment.’

The story made the front pages across the US. The New York Times headline read, ‘Portable army rocket propels man 150 feet in 11-second test flight.’ Life magazine said, ‘Graham was strapped to a hydrogen peroxide-fuelled rocket. The Army hopes it will someday make all foot soldiers look like Buck Rogers.’

One week later, Graham demonstrated the rocketbelt on the front lawn of the Pentagon in Washington DC in front of a huge crowd of military personnel.

Then, in October 1961, Graham, Moore and the Bell crew travelled to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to participate in another military demonstration, this time as part of a display of combat readiness. The demonstration was performed in front of a notable guest of honor – President John F Kennedy.

Graham, wearing a US Army uniform, took off from an amphibious landing vehicle, flew across a pond in a spray of water, and landed 14 seconds later on a sand embankment in front of JFK. Graham remembered to salute but forgot to depressurize the belt in the excitement of the moment, although he managed to remain on the ground. ‘Mr Kennedy was described by an Army Officer sitting near him as “wide eyed and open mouthed, just like a kid”,’ reported the Buffalo Evening News.

The public interest and publicity surrounding Graham and the rocketbelt generated much correspondence. Letters requesting public appearances began to flood the Bell offices. One man wrote to Bell requesting the use of the rocketbelt in order to claim a $1 million treasure trove that, he claimed, he could only reach with the use of the belt. Suspicious Bell executives turned the request down.

Although Hal Graham could now proficiently fly the rocketbelt, he was still not a registered airplane pilot. In November 1961 he decided to do something about that. He began to take flying lessons, and qualified for his pilot’s license in July 1962. That year also saw the debut of the B-Series rocketbelt. The new belt was engineered to reduce weight, and, as rocketbelt pilot, Graham was kitted out in a brand new bright yellow flight suit.

But Hal Graham’s short career as a rocketbelt pilot was coming to an end. During an ill-fated demonstration at Cape Canaveral, Graham fell 22 feet, landed on his head, and was knocked unconscious. He survived the crash, but decided to get out of the rocketbelt business. Graham made 83 untethered rocketbelt flights during his time at Bell, but he left the company in 1962 to pursue his new love of flying traditional aircraft. He set up his own one-man, one-plane charter flight company in Crossville, Tennessee.

Hal Graham died in Nashville on 22 October 2009, aged 75.

Watch Hal Graham fly the rocketbelt (YouTube)
Visit Hal Graham’s rocketbelt website

The Rocketbelt Caper was selected as one of ShortList magazine’s 25 greatest summer reads for men, alongside books by Antony Beevor, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and Malcolm Gladwell. “What happens when you mix three men, a crushing ambition to build a Buck Rogers-style jet pack, murder and a $10 million lawsuit?” asks the mag. “The sound of Hollywood falling over itself to snap up the film rights to this bizarre story.” If only…

Russ Routledge got to see his friend Muhammad Ali on the Champ’s final visit to the UK. He showed Ali his photos, and handed out copies of my Ali feature, but was saddened by his hero’s declining health. My account of Russ’s friendship with Ali is here.

Spotify is now available on the iPhone (and Android, and soon on S60). As expected, it features an offline mode that allows users to store 3,333 tracks on your phone. The iPhone app has just been updated, and Spotify have also added an offline mode to the PC version. You’ll need to be a premium user, but £9.99 a month for virtually unlimited music seems a small price to pay.

Lots more content has been added to the TV Ad Music website, including this interview with Slow Moving Millie, who provides the music to the Virgin Media backlot advert, and an explanation of why the track on the Land Rover advert is NOT by Noah and the Whale. See the latest ads here.

I’ve yet to receive my free copy of Free, the book by Chris Anderson. Almost 3 months on it doesn’t look like I’ll be reviewing it any time soon on these pages.

In related news, the Rocketbelt Caper free ebook download offer will be ending in the near future, and if you haven’t yet downloaded it for free you can do so here.

I say “new”, but most of it is the very definition of old rope. Alongside the admittedly very shiny and apparently very good Beatles Rock Band video game, is a glut of “remastered” albums released on a long-forgotten format known as “CD”. So we have one cutting edge 2009 release, and several very old fashioned releases that would have seemed cutting edge circa 1982.

The remastered CDs will sell of course, thanks to millions of pounds worth of marketing and blanket media coverage, although not as many as Dame Vera Lynn, who pipped the Fab Four to this week’s number one in the UK album charts. But do we really need them?

There’s no denying they’re a great pop band – maybe the best pop band of all time – and I’m a big Beatles fan (despite that rubbish pun of a name, the often tiresome psychedelic nonsense, and the inescapable fact that John Lennon was a right tit…). They recorded some of my favourite songs of all time – Blackbird, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Eleanor Rigby… Most probably if I had an XBox I’d buy The Beatles Rock Band game. But the remastered albums have precisely zero appeal.

The Beatles albums have already been released as they were meant to be heard – on vinyl (most of them in mono). The subsequent original CD releases are apparently of ropey quality. If that is the case then I’d be delighted to return my CDs to Apple/EMI to be replaced at their cost with satisfactory ones. But I don’t see why I should be expected to fork out for “remastered” CDs.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this whole thing is that Apple and EMI have yet to release the Beatles’ music digitally for download. This is due to a long-running disagreement (yes – over money) with the unhappy consequence of making the Beatles virtually irrelevant to an entire generation of music fans. I wrote about the online “Beatles Gap” in the Guardian.

Now that the music has been remastered, and with Rock Band pricking the interest of the internet generation, why not release the Beatles catalogue for digital download, rather than on hoary old CD? (And if CD, why not cassette or mini-disc?)

The answer, I’m certain, is greed. Digital downloads will eventually be released, probably in 12 months time when fans have had a chance to empty their wallets purchasing the CDs. They’ll then be expected to buy the downloads as well. Anything to wring more cash from the Beatles’ legacy. Money, that’s what they want.

The whole farrago reflects poorly on Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (and of course the other players involved in the Beatles’ estate). Nether surviving Beatle can be accurately described as being short of funds, and Ringo in particular has seemed to become particularly irritating in recent years.

First there was the Liverpool 8 debacle, then his regrettable rant at those autograph-seeking fans who have so generously contributed to his fortune. Then there is the frankly dim-witted Aviva name change advert in which Ringo asks, “Would any of this have happened to me if I’d still been Richard Starkey?” No, a common name like Richard would never have worked, you’d have needed an unusual name like John, Paul or George…

So ignore the money-grabbing tactics, but continue, like me, to love the Beatles’ music. Listen to the vinyl (or the old CDs), convert it to mp3, maybe hold out for the digital download release. But you don’t need the remastered CDs, and The Beatles don’t need your money. Money can’t buy them love.