Two new Android Apps..

I have finally published my first two mobile apps to the Android market.

You cannot actually search the market officialy online, as Google only permit it via an Android mobile device, but you can find them here

Its been a long time coming, but there is another one on its way shortly.

Power Laces.. Alright! (and 5 years early!)

Awesome news has come in from over on the Engadget website - having already seen that the hoverboard has been created (see my post here), Nike have now submitted a patent to create self-lacing shoes!

It's all coming together now..

The God Delusion (for people who don't read much)

Last night on UK channel "More Four" was the first episode of a documentary "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins; his book by the same name made a bit of a stir 3 or 4 years when it came out, upsetting believers across the country.

As it happens, I was skimming his book in Waterstones just before going on holiday recently (settled on the accidental billionaires instead) so when I saw this was one I was quite interested to watch.

On the whole, I was quite disappointed, it was two hours so i could waffle on for ages, but here were my two main gripes..

1. Despite being called the "God Delusion", he didn't really go after God at all, but rather religion and the stupidity of people (maybe it should have been called the "Religion Delusion", or just "Some People are Stupid").
   The majority of the film saw Dawkins talking with extreme examples of different faiths and highlighting the errors of their ways. He talked about the opression of people (homosexuals, abortion), murder and wars (middle east Israel problems) and the restriction of freedom of thought put on people in these extreme groups (private Jewish communities in north London, extreme american evangelists, etc).
   But despite at one point even comparing an American pastor's sermon to a Nuremburg rally, he failed to raise the fairly self-evident truth, that in fact, these acts are people's failings, not God's, and you only have to look to Hitler and the Nuremburg rallies to see examples of all of the above withot God being in the mix.  Like I said, it just seemed to be saying that sometimes people get it wrong.
   
   
   
2. Throughout the film Dawkins referred a lot to people not being enlightend, about how people were turning to religion and not science, and the importance of science in schools. This considered, I would have like to have seen a more scientific grounding for the film. A particular lowpoint was his comparison of natural design and evolution, I will para-phrase below, but you can check it out online (it was in the firs 30mins or so i think)
   
   
   
   [Richard Dawkins stands at the foot of a steep face of a mountain]
   Dawkins: Lets call this "Mountain Improbable", believing in natural design is liking jumping one big jump up this huge cliff face to the top of the mountain in one go.
   
   [Richard Dawkins now walks up gentle incline]
   Dawkins: Evolution however, is like climbing this mountain one step at a time, a lot easier (and i guess somehow therefore more probable?) than natural design.
   
   
   That was it. I would say that would pretty much be an all time low for any self respecting scientist. The fact that him talking about mountains really does mean nothing to anyone aside, he also very quickly skimmed over the fact that some of those small, easy steps up evolutions path were also pretty massive leaps up the mountain (oh jeez, hes got me using his crazy analogy now!), ignoring the big, challenging questions that face either camp.
   

The second installment is on next week, and despite my qualms, I will prob atill make the effort to watch in the hope it gets better.  You can also watch the first episode again on the 4oD video here

Google announce phone calls from Gmail

Google have recently announced via their blog that they are going to start allowing phone calls from a gmail account to regular phones. Apparently calls to US/Canada will be free for the remainder of the year and all the other rates will be "competitive".

Further more, if you have already registered with GoogleVoice then the caller ID will be registered as your nuber.

The feature is going be rolled out in the next couple of days, more info at http://gmail.com/call

Samsung launch tablet computing teaser

Samsung have just released a video teaser of their forthcoming Galaxy Tab (due to be fully announced in Germany in September)

You can check the 19second video below,



You have to be quick, and rewatch the video several times to catch all the features they seem to be boasting but the most notable include Android 2.2, Flash support, HD video playback and an e-reader.

So we jsut need to wait untill September to see the full details..

Favourite Samples Part 1

For a long time now I have been wanting to do a post on my favourite hip hop samples ever. I always love a bit of crate-digging and love to hear samples that other people have dug up.


A lot of these lists you wil see on the web focus on classic breaks, and thats all good and well, but no-one really wants to hear me banging on the importance and influence of Lynne Collins' Think break, Orange Krush's Action or the Amen. So this list is of the more melodic nature. Hopefully you will enjoy listening to these pieces of music as much as I do...



1. Wendy Rene - After Laughter Comes Tears
A beautiful soul tune from the ever reliable Stax camp that formed the basis for Wu Tangs 90's classic Tearz




2. Honey Cone - Innocent Untill Proven Guilty
Not normally a fan of Kanye's work, but his use of this track for Common's Testify from his album Be. Worth listening to some of the other tunes from this all girl soul group




3. Quincy Jones - Summer in the City
We can't really ignore Quincy's contribution to samplers everywhere, but this one is just too classic, sampled so many times, but most notably the intro sampled for hip hop classic Passin me By (Pharcyde)




4. Enoch Light - Hi Jack
It took me a long, long time to track this vinyl down, but after much hunting i managed to get hold of it from the US, listen close or you will miss the sample, but if you don't, you will recognise it in an instant.. Beatnuts Watch Out Now




5. Arthur Verocai - Na Boca Do Sol
Possibly my favourite sampled artist, this south American jazz artists finest piece of work.. (sampled by MF Doom and 9th Wonder). No clean video on youtube for this one, but you can head to his Myspace and listen there

Na Bca do Sol by Arthur Verocai


6. Irene Reid - Didn't We
Classic female soul interlude, done with real class. Taken from her The World Needs What I Need. The whole album was sampled heavily in Kanye's early work (if you check some of his early mixtapes)





7. The Moments - To You With Love
Absolute classic soul cut, that needs nothing doing, but Dilla managed it.. Last Donut of the Night (from Donuts) - had to include Dilla's version as well..








8.  Ann Peebles - Trouble,  Heartaches and Sadness
Another big soul tune (again worth checking here other work here) used for GZA's ShadowBoxing




9. The Mohawks - Champ
Had to include this one on the list on account of it being the basis of one of my favourite hip hop tunes ever.. KRS One - Step in to a world (the live version was also sampled by Prodigy for "Charly" incidentally)





10. Incredible Bongo Band - In A Gadda Da Vidda
Not the tune you expected huh? real nice vibe to this track, which was pretty much just lifted straight for Nas' recent "Hip Hop Is Dead"



hope you all enjoyed them! I will probably do another installment soon..

Fire It Up - MOBO Song of the week

Ok, Ok, so this is the last "Fire It Up" post, I promise.. probably

But Kof ft. Wiley and Chelcee Grimes - Fire It Up has been selected as the current song of the week over at the MOBO site.. lets hope its signs of things to come!

Check out the article here

Travie Mccoy - Billionaire

Another real nice tune as we approach the Bank Holiday. This one is Travie Mccoy and is Billionaire, of the Billionaire EP.



This is already available on iTunes and recommended..

Cee-Lo-Green - F*** You

The new video for Cee-Lo's new single has been doing the rounds on the web recently and is a real nice tune. Definetly worth checking out, although as the title suggests it is NSFW.



The song is off his forthcoming "The LadyKiller" lp due to drop 4th October (apparently)

Fire It Up Released!

Fire It Up Release... the countdown begins!

Kof's Fire It Up is being released tomorow (or as of midnight tonight if your that keen!)


You can buy teh mp3 from Amazon here...

The Complete Single (remixes & B-side):



Just "Fire It Up":



The Remix:

Last Exit To Nowhere

I thought it was about time i posted a link to mostly the coolest t-shirt company ever... mostly.

Last Exit To Nowhere make some really awesome film insired t-shirts, but not like the more blatant efforts you might find on an average high st. LETN build their designs around subtle people, events, corporations etc in classic films.. basically, it would take a real geek to spot the reference. Check the store out here, and I have also embedded their FlickR stream below as well to give you a taster:


I should also post some of my favourites:

Nakatomi Corporation, the company running Nakatomi Plaza, the setting for "Die Hard"


"Han's Tournament" from Enter the Dragon

Kof - Fire It Up - MTV Exclusive Video

The official music video for Kof's Fire It Up has hit the MTV site, check it out! or just watch below..

Kof ft Wiley & Chelcee Grimes - 'Fire It Up' from MTV - The Wrap Up on Vimeo.

(p.s. this is not the same as the video posted last month).



Also, its available to pre-order on amazon now..

Steve Jobs in '95

A little while ago, there was a post on kottke featuring a selection of Steve Jobs interviews; one from '95 (back at Apple and Pixar but pre-Toy Story), a year later and then the 2007 interview with Bill Gates.

Some of the transcripts are quite long but they are definitely worth reading.. its particularly seeing what he was saying back in 1995, and also has some very interesting ideas on education, which I think would be really interesting..

What does the State of California spent per pupil per year in a public school? About forty-four hundred dollars ... I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you'd see a lot of new schools starting. I've suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School ...You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they'd start a school

read the 1995 interview here.

or read the next one here

Google Mobile Announcements

Google arranged a press conference tonight to make two big announcements for their Android mobile platform.

First of the announcements was about their Voice actions, they have enhance the Voice control for their mobile platform from more than just voice search to enabling the use and control of a range of applications by voice actions.

The second was Chrome to Phone - which is a continuous client application that allows any website you browse to push the site to an Android device, giving better control and experiences of other Google products like youTube, maps, etc.

Note to self..

There are some fairly entertaining memos that have been found from the late 70s from the "Tiger Oil" company, based in Houston USA over on http://www.lettersofnote.com/

The CEO seems thoroughly angry and generally unpleasant, so makes for a great read - particular favourites are where he threatens to ban coffee in the office (like he had already done for food) and where he asks for no member of staff to speak to him...



Full list and transcript can be found here

Continuous Deployment and the Lean Startup

For anyone interested in the "Lean Startup" (or in entrepreneurship on the whole - if this is new to you and you are interested in tech startups then it is very interesting - one of the main guys is Eric Reis and has a very interesting blog here) I read a recent guest post on Eric Reis' blog about Continuous Deployment by one of the head guys at kaChing (online/e payment startup).

Most of us are probably pretty up to speed with what continuous integration is, but the idea of continuous deployment, and the changes to the traditional design-build-test-fix cycle to a much shorter time frames (we're talking averaging 20 deploys to a Live environment a day!) really makes you think.

I'm not sure it would suit larger, or more traditional corporate environments, but its really interesting to see it put in to life over at kaChing.

You can find the blog here, and there is also a lecture video about the topic here along with the slides to accompany it here

Fire It Up - DJ Mag review

Just a quick update on Kof's Fire It Up single (see earlier post for video) - i have just read the review of the tune in DJ mag, it got 4.5 out of 5, which is real nice!

The full review is here


Edit: The tune is being released the 23rd August on iTunes - although i will probably post an update closer to the date

Holiday Reading

Whilst I was on holiday i managed to read two books. Firstly, I read "The Accidental Billionaires", which is a semi-fictional, semi-biographical account of the founding of Facebook. It was not a particularly well written book, and it tries to stay as true to life as possible as most of the research was based on accounts/articles from the time, so the author tries not to speculate or imagine too much of the finer details. That said it is still a fascinating read, and its nice to hear some details from the founding of Facebook, so i did enjoy it, if only for the insight.


The second book was "The Code Book" by Simon Singh. I have had the book on my shelf for a couple of years, but i never had a chance to get around to reading it, but i am thoroughly glad i got around to it.



The book is a history of encryption and secret codes from the start of time, and a long with it includes a lot of historical stories and details about the usage of code (ranging from stories of Xerces from Herodotus, to Mary Queen of Scots, Enigma Machine from WW2) and it is excellent. The stories, a long with the plainly written technical details of encryption make for a great read and is very educational.

2001: A Space Oddysey (remix)

Read an amusing re-writing of the most famous scene of the famous kubrick film 2001: A Space Oddysey.

(snippet below, as Dave is about to start dismantling HAL)

Hal: Those are my memory cards.

Bowman: These? So they are.

Hal: You put my memory back right now, motherfucker. You hear me? You want a card on your birthday? Because I don't think I will remember to send you one if I do not have my memory cards. As that is what memory cards are for. Are you listening to me?

Its only short, and worth the read. Check it here

holiday snaps

As mentioned, i have just returned from Zakynthos on holiday and whilst there i went for a stroll taking some photos of the real parts of the island.

my mother always complains whenever i show her my holiday photos, as they are always random photos of buildings or signposts and never of me and my wife and things we did, and this is true to form (there are normal photos, but, im not going ot put those up here..)

back from holidays, and some people dancing

I have been off on holiday for the last week, and have had a great time relaxing in the sun by the sea/pool, just eating, sleeping and swimming.

As a result I have loads of thoughts and ideas, so there may be an influx of blogs coming this way soon, but in the meantime, here is an awesome video of some guys "turf dancing" (from kottke.org - and as kottke says, its basically breakdancing 2.0)