The company has already received a lot of media attention, with the first shop to receive the Shopjacket treatment, a rundown former Select store in Whitley Bay that now looks like a thriving delicatessen, featured everywhere from the Telegraph and Mail to Radio Four and Sky News.

You can read more about Shopjacket and see some of the press coverage here.

Budweiser
Budweiser Budvar
Carling
Corona Extra
Efes
John Smith’s Original Bitter
Kaliber
Lynx Premium
Miller Genuine Draft
Newcastle Brown Ale
Skol

If you like the taste of that, you can get The Non-Beardy Beer Book here.

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.

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.