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.

Spotiguide is a brand new website that helps you get more from Spotify with the latest music, news, technology, tips and tools.

The aim is to make Spotify even better, with a hand-picked selection of the best new and classic music to help you navigate Spotify’s huge catalogue, and regular beginners and advanced tools and tips to make Spotify even easier to use.

Spotiguide will also bring you the latest Spotify news, and reviews of Spotify-related technology, such as Spotify-compatible phones.

Check it out at www.spotiguide.com.

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.

In music, the big news of 2009 was the UK launch of Spotify, the streaming music service that has already changed the way millions of us listen to music, just as the iPod did at the beginning of the decade. Most of the music picks below are linked to Spotify for your listening pleasure. (The other links point to Amazon.co.uk.)

In terms of actual music, 2009 wasn’t a vintage year. There were enjoyable albums by A Camp, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Noah and the Whale, but the only couple I really had on repeat play were Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons and the odd but fantastic indie-prog opera that was The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists.

Great movies were equally difficult to find in 2009. I wasn’t as blown away as the Oscar voters by Slumdog “Milliner”. Much better were Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, The Hangover, Swedish kiddie-vampire flick Let The Right One In, and JJ Abrams’ surprisingly entertaining re-imagining of Star Trek.

No 2009 movie was as good as the best of 2009’s TV. Season two of Mad Men was a joy, with Don Draper developing into one of TV’s most intriguing characters. The Thick of It was the best British offering, with Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker spinning fantastically out of control. And any Seinfeld fan will have loved the reunion storyline that ran through the hilarious final(?) season of Curb Your Enthusiam.

Books? Maybe it was weariness in my first year away from book publishing, but I’m not sure I found a single 5-star book in 2009.

But what about the noughties as a whole? It was a great decade for music, and I’m struggling to whittle my selection of faves down to less than ten. So I’m going for Gold by Ryan Adams, Josh Rouse’s Nashville, The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake, Glory Hope Mountain by The Acorn, O by Damien Rice, Come On Feel The Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens, The Crane Wife by The Decemberists, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, Funeral by Arcade Fire, and Give Up by The Postal Service. (Annoyingly, my two top picks aren’t available on Spotify, so the service is by no means perfect.)

The best movies of the noughties? They’ve got to include The Lives of Others, The Royal Tennenbaums, Donnie Darko, and Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s incredible There Will Be Blood.

The noughties was quite possibly the decade in which TV came of age, thanks in no small part to HBO. The Sopranos ran through until 2007, and the intelligent, multi-layered mob drama, with every episode better than most movies, probably deserves to be called the greatest TV show ever made. Perhaps only David Simon’s intricate, addictive onscreen novel The Wire can challenge for that accolade. HBO also brought us Curb Your Enthusiam, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and Band of Brothers, all brilliant in different ways. Elsewhere in US TV, the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica was approximately one zillion times better than any reimagining of a really quite rubbish 70s sci-fi soap had any right to be. From US network TV, Arrested Development was a brilliant and much-missed sitcom, and The Shield was a brutally gripping cop drama that literally pulled no punches.

As for books, my favourites of the decade include Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, The Damned United by David Peace, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers meddled brilliantly with the formula of how books are supposed to be written. And The Road by Cormac McCarthy was quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read.

So that was the noughties. What will the next decade bring? Will the album format survive? Will the CD become obsolete? Will Voddler do for movies what Spotify did for music? Will electronic books take off?

As for that catchy name for the years 2010 to 2019, anyone for “tennies”?

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

On my very first day the station director told me I would never have a chance in national radio because of my regional accent. I went home listening to some bloke called Mark Radcliffe presenting Out On Blue Six on my pocket radio and wondered how his Mancunian accent had slipped through the BBC Radio 1 net. I liked Mark, particularly the way he never talked over the records. I was all about the music. Which was why me and hospital radio didn’t work out.

I began as a “tech op”, editing tapes for news broadcasts, and then had a go at reading the news. Then, after a few months, I was given a chance to present the station’s regular “Dedication Line” show. The format had a couple of problems, not least of which was the fact that the station never ever received a single dedication. So, we were despatched to the wards to cajole patients and visitors into offering requests. Now the last thing you want if you’re an inpatient in a hospital is to be badgered by some charlie from a tinpot radio station, especially one you’ve never heard of and will never listen to.

Because on those visits one truth became crystal clear: No-one – not one single, solitary person outside the confines of our tiny studio – ever listened to the station. This fact was as soul-destroying as the narrow catalogue of easy listening tunes we were allowed to play. It seemed that every show would feature a made-up request from Doris on ward 9 for Nessun Dorma. And although you could occasionally throw in a Wichita Lineman or a bit of classic Motown, it was very difficult to remain enthusiastic. There is only so much Howard Keel a pair of lugs can take. I packed in hospital radio, and my dream of becoming a DJ ended.

Fifteen years later, radio has changed massively, both in content and in the way it’s delivered. For a start, digital has opened the airwaves to hundreds of new stations, not many of which are any good. Like the digital TV “revolution”, increased quantity has led to decreased quality. Regional accents are everywhere, and that’s a good thing, although it seems there are still too many Fearne Cottons being handed radio shows based on their profiles rather than their talent.

Mark Radcliffe is still around, on the “nations’s favourite” Radio 2 (having survived his ill-fated foray onto Radio 1), now co-presenting the excellent Radcliffe and Maconie show. It’s a show in which the music – not the presenter’s ego – is king, and its mostly hand-picked selection is refreshingly free of the dreaded and predictable programmer’s playlist which dogs much of the station’s daytime output.

Over on 5 Live, the BBC has the nation’s best talk radio station, although it’s about to get a major shake-up. Simon Mayo, probably the best broadcaster in the country, is moving to Radio 2, ahead of 5 Live’s relocation to Manchester (although thankfully Mayo’s always-entertaining Friday afternoon movie chat with Mark Kermode will remain, presumably being broadcast from London). Danny Baker, another top-class radio broadcaster is also likely to leave 5 Live when it relocates. Most likely I’ll stop listening to 5 Live too.

My radio listening has decreased since the arrival of Spotify. But the big problem with Spotify, despite it’s undeniable greatness, is that there is so much music available it can sometimes be difficult to choose what to listen to.

When I do listen to radio shows it tends to be on demand via the iPlayer. Podcasts also eat into my radio listening, with Collings and Herrin and The Word being current favourites.

Much of the rest of the time I listen to Last.fm, a personal radio station that probably best represents what the future of radio is going to sound like. Last.fm builds up personal playlists based on what you listen to, and the results, once you’ve built up a decent profile, are remarkably satisfying.

So what does the future hold? Personalised stations with personalised presenters? Your favourite tracks and new recommendations introduced by a virtual John Peel? There still has to be a place for the radio presenter, as a guide or an entertainer, as company as you trawl through the megahertz.

Like other forms of media, radio is going to continue to evolve in the 2010s. For the time being I’m still going to listen to Radcliffe and Maconie, albeit on the iPlayer, streamed wirelessly via my laptop. There will always be a place for the radio presenter, some say DJ, wherever technology takes us.

The temporary rebranding follows an announcement from the chavwear company’s owner Mike Ashley that the website’s naming rights would be offered in an attempt to raise funds. Ashley has already rebranded the 130-year-old stadium of his once-famous soccer team Newcastle United.

“We will showcase the fact that we are Cluelesswankers until the end of the season,” said company yes man Delboy Lluverley. “We already have tens of thousands of right-minded football fans up and down the country referring to us as Cluelesswankers, so it made sense to apply that branding to our website.”

“We wanted to include the ‘@’ symbol to show how relevant and up-to-date Sports Direct is, and to bring the company in line with scores of now-failed internet cafes that opened circa 1992.”

Sports Direct is currently on course to reduce its net debt to below £400m, and the Serious Fraud Office is yet to bring any charges against Ashley for criminal price-fixing, fraud, and financially crippling Iceland. The country, not the supermarket.

***

Five ways to hit Mike Ashley where it hurts

All proper football fans should be appalled by Mike Ashley’s treatment of Newcastle United, its stadium, and its fans. If this can happen to Newcastle United, it can happen to any club in the country. It’s time to hit Ashley in the only place it will hurt – his pocket.

Here are five ways football fans can metaphorically bloody the bastard’s nose:

1. Don’t shop at Sports Direct. If you desperately need a pair of cheap trackie bottoms, get them from Ashley’s rivals JJB Sports, or M and M Direct.

2. And don’t shop at JD Sports (which Ashley owns 19% of), or Lilywhites, Gilesports, Blacks, Millets or Mambo. And don’t buy anything branded by Umbro, Donnay, Slazenger, Dunlop, Karrimor or Lonsdale. He owns, or part-owns, all of them.

3. Don’t buy anything from the NUFC club shop. That banana away kit is bloody awful, anyway. If you need a football souvenir, visit the nearby Back Page.

4. Don’t buy an NUFC match programme unless you really, really need a Marlon Harewood poster and an exclusive insight into Ryan Taylor’s favourite sandwich filling. Buy a fanzine instead, like The Mag or True Faith.

5. Get your pre-match pint from one of the city’s 100-plus boozers, and get your match pie from Greggs. And Shearer’s Bar is owned by Mike Ashley, not Alan Shearer. Avoid.

More Newcastle United posts.

“When this painting appeared for sale on the internet, some who saw it wept in terror. Then it was linked to poltergeists and two mysterious deaths. Now its seller has disappeared…”

It’s a fun feature, and would have made a timely post if I’d put it up last week in the run-up to Halloween…

Anyhow, you can read it as a PDF, which includes a full-page image of the painting, here: Haunted Painting (PDF)