Finally.. a Talent Show with Real Talent ‘Goldie’s Band: By Royal Appointment’

Posted by Gary in Entertainment, Music

Goldie strikes gold with a UK talent show that features some real talent with a capital T.

After years of talent shows where you get the impression every performer is just a puppet on a string, where phone in polls and advertising revenue is the be all and end all; along comes Goldie, his team of mentors, and the BBC to breath new life into music TV.

Filmed as a 3 part documentary it is still, at it’s heart, a talent show. It starts with Goldie, famous as a UK drum and bass pioneer, declaring the mission statement of the show. To search the UK for young people who have strong musical abilities but have also overcome difficult circumstances.

Helping him in this task are his team of mentors, a strong group of high flyers themselves. There is Guy Chambers, one of the UK’s most successful songwriters and well known for his collaborations with Robbie Williams. You see his face light up when he is jamming with some of the musicians that they uncover, he seems to get as much from the programme as the youngsters they help.

Singer, songwriter and rapper Ms. Dynamite is also on board. She seemed to win every award going for her debut album, ‘A Little Deeper’ in 2002 and knows a thing or two about putting your life into a song.

These two had the privilege of hearing, the very talented Natalie Duncan, go through the repertoire of songs that she had written in the front room of her house as she auditioned of the project.

The other mentors were the Jazz artist Soweto Kinch, singer & songwriter Cerys Matthews and music manager & producer Steve Abbott. An esteemed bunch to be sure.

In the first episode we see the teams travelling around the UK to audition individuals after being tipped off by local musical groups about the hottest talent in town.

In the second episode the lucky ones who were chosen to be in the band come together for a workshop held by Goldie and the mentors. It is a great insight into what it takes to write a song and some writing methods and processes that anyone watching could also take up. Not often do you get a chance to see how the pro’s take on the songwriting process.

In the final episode you get to see the result, a concert in front of Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace no less.

If you can access the series and have any kind of interest in music I strongly suggest you check it out. Details below.

You can watch the entire series for a limited time if you have access to the BBC’s iPlayer here

Google Search Goes Social with Google +1 Button

Posted by Gary in Google, Technology

Google search goes social with the Google +1 Button in a bid to evolve their search engine, improve their results algorithms and engage their audience.

Facebook showed the way with their ‘Like’ button and their 500 million user base, suddenly Google had a major competitor in the search arena from a totally unexpected quarter.

As a nod to the benefits of such a human driven system, and as an attempt to catch up with the social goliaths such as Facebook, Google have launched their own version of the Like button called the +1 button.

If you have a Google account you will be able to vote using the +1 button, voting up the sites that you find useful and voteworthy. Any of your connected friends will be able to see these votes and, I presume, the votes will likely have an impact of everyone’s Google results listings as it would be an obvious addition to their main search algorithm.

Matt Cutts, Google’s main spokesman for all things search related said, “When someone recommends something, that’s a pretty good indicator of quality.”

They have also decided to add the +1 button to Adwords ads where testing has shown an increase in clicks when this functionality was added.

Webmasters will also be able to add a +1 button to their web properties, it is likely that you will see it soon at doubletimemedia.com, don’t forget to vote!

India Beat Sri Lanka to Win The Cricket World Cup

Posted by Gary in Cricket, Sports

India have beaten Sri Lanka in a dramatic final to win the 2011 Cricket World Cup in Mumbai, with 10 balls to spare and by 6 wickets.

MS Dhoni led the Indian team home with a unbeaten 91, signing off with a magnificent 6. This from a player who had struggled for any kind of consistent form. His previous high score at this tournament had been 34, yet here he stepped up to the mark as captain, promoted himself up the batting order and produced the goods when it was needed most.

Sri Lanka for their part, amassed a decent total of 274-6 with Jayawardene clocking a outstanding 103, he became the first player to hit a century in a final and still be on the losing side.

It was a sad end also to the career of one of the best bowlers in history, Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan, who now retires from international cricket. After a career which includes taking 800 test wickets, he failed to take a single wicket today.

India’s Tendulkar also failed to live up to high expectations in the final, he was looking to score his 100th international century in his hometown, but was dismissed for 18. Stunned silence was the reaction of the huge numbers of Indian supporters in the stadium.

Indeed, they had initially produced so much noise in the stadium that the coin toss to start the match had to be re-taken as the umpire couldn’t hear the call from Sangakkara.

However, destiny always seemed to be with India on their home turf and Guatam Gambhir led the fightback just failing short of a century himself, frustratingly dismissed for 97.

So it was to be India’s day, perhaps it was fated in their home country, one only has to think of the semi-final against Pakistan where Tendulkar was dropped 4 times. Whenever a country plays a world cup, in any sport, on their own turf it seems that there is some extra force at play.

India now join that select group which includes just Australia and the West Indies in winning the Cricket World Cup more than once. The party will no doubt go on long after the game has finished.

Astronauts Wanted – Richard Branson Explains his Vision of Space Travel

Posted by Gary in Travel

Astronauts wanted as Richard Branson sets out his vision for the Virgin Galactic program, aiming to democratise space travel (if you have a spare $200,000 that is).

For the lucky few, it starts with 2 days of flight preparation, then hitching a lift on the custom designed WhiteKnight aircraft and a climb up to 50,000 feet.

Then silence as the VMS Enterprise gets released from it’s mothership. The silence doesn’t last long before they hear the roar of the rocket they are strapped into pushes them hard into their seats as they accelerate towards 3000 mph and zero gravity space.

Around 2 hours later they will touch back down on earth having been on the ride of their lives. Fewer than 500 people have so far made it into space. Richard Branson is aiming to change that predicting 500 people in the first year taking a space flight and 50,000 people within 10 years.

Now… where did I put that lottery ticket?

BBC Web Properties Go Down

Posted by Gary in Internet, Technology

The BBC website went offline tonight, including the iPlayer and other web properties.

Twitter has been all a buzz this evening with people shocked that the BBC’s web properties have become inaccessible all around the world.

There has been comment from the BBC’s various twitter users but nothing that indicates a reason, just comment that it has. Although the BBC also runs 24/7 TV news channels there has, at the time of writing, been no mention there either. In fact they are still heavily advertising the BBC website and email addresses.

The fact that such a large, important and stable web property is suffering downtime is leading many tweets to suggest that the end of the world must be close, that something is not quite right in the world.

It is going to be interesting to discover the cause, could it be a hack that some are suggesting or is there a more innocent reason?

I remember working for a company that suffered an outage in a similar vein and the reason?….. The cleaner had unplugged the equipment to plug in a vacuum cleaner.

[ UPDATE: BBC Website is back & accessible again. According to Richard Cooper, controller of the BBC's digital distribution, the infrastructure suffered multiple failures.

"This was a failure in the systems that perform two functions. The first is the aggregation of network traffic from the BBC's hosting centres to the internet. The second is the announcement of 'routes' onto the internet that allows BBC Online to be 'found.' With both of these having failed, we really were down!

We'll be taking a very hard look at what we need to do to make sure that this doesn't happen again." ]

McLaren’s Button and Hamilton Set the Pace in Australian GP Practice

Posted by Gary in Formula 1, Sports

McLaren’s two British drivers, Jenson Button & Lewis Hamilton, have set the fastest times during the latest practice session for this weekend’s opening Grand Prix in Australia.

McLaren are setting the pace so far in Australia and putting problems they have had in winter testing behind them. Jenson Button has set the fastest time so far on the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne with a time of 1m 25.85sec.

They decided to implement some major changes to the car because of the problems they have had in pre-season testing and it has obviously showing signs of paying off for them. They have added a new front wing and a new exhaust system which has not only markedly improved speed but it also looks like reliability will be impacted in a positive way.

Hamilton mentioned that the grip was much improved over just a few weeks ago and Button was equally optimistic.

As mentioned in our article here ‘Bahrain Grand Prix Cancelled’, the opening Grand Prix of the season was supposed to be Bahrain but political strife in the country meant it was cancelled.

Photo: FlightReal

US F-15 Eagle Warplane Crashes in Libya

Posted by Gary in Politics

A US warplane, an F-15 Eagle, has crashed in a field about an hours drive outside Benghazi following a third night of bombardment. At the moment the US defence department says that the plane suffered ‘mechanical problems’.

The plane is a two seater and both the pilot and navigator ejected safely, landing in territory now held by the rebels.

The US defence department says that at the moment there is no evidence that the plane was brought down by any enemy action but that it suffered a mechanical problem.

The F-15 Eagle entered service in 1976 and is considered one of the most successful combat aircraft having taken part in over 100 engagements without suffering a loss due to enemy action.

Meanwhile in the rest of Libya, Col. Gaddafi called for another ceasefire last night but it appears from reports coming out of the country that the ceasefire has not been observed by Gaddafi’s troops on the ground.

It appears that the only rebel held city in the west of Libya, Misrata, was under heavy attack by Gaddafi’s artillary and it was unclear wheter they had already entered the city or not.

Libyan state TV has broadcast supporters of Gaddafi camping outside his compounds in order to protect them from attack. They have also broadcast pictures of people in hospital that they say are civilian casualties of the UN action although it is impossible to verify any of these claims.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that coalition forces were “going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties”.

Photo: expertinfantry

Japan Stuggles to Contain It’s Nuclear ‘Incident’

Posted by Gary in Health

Concern is growing around the world that Japan is losing the battle to get control of it’s nuclear problems in Fukushima.

Engineers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant have been struggling to cool down the fuel after power generators failed during last week’s earthquake and tsunami.

They have, over the last few days, resorted to dropping buckets of water from helicopters flying at a safe height from the radiation (already leaking from the plant in the steam created from the water being pumped in order to cool the nuclear fuel).

Many outside, and tellingly inside Japan, believe that the Japanese government is underplaying the risks involved. Other countries have been telling their citizens to leave an area at least twice the size suggested by the Japanese government.

However, tonight there appears to be some good news coming out from the plant with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) telling us that a power cable has been successfully connected to a reactor.

If this is correct it should enable the engineers to restart the cooling pumps which previously lost power during the crisis. The pumps can then send coolant around the reactors cooling the fuel down.

For resources todo with the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami, including donations and people finder, goto http://www.google.co.jp/intl/en/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

Photo: daveeza

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Launched Worldwide

Posted by Gary in Microsoft, Technology

The latest version of Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer 9 has been officially released to the public.

Microsoft say that with the latest release they have focused on speed and security, they believe they have positioned themselves as more than a match for the other browsers that are currently biting huge chunks out of Internet Explorers once dominant market share.

• Speed - Microsoft say that a combination of a new Javascript engine called Chakra, and the ability to utilise your computers graphics hardware, means that performance will be class leading.

• Security – The big feature here is the ability to stop the ability of some advertisers to track your movements across the web. This has been a successful tactic used by advertisers in order to get you to see the same or similar adverts across multiple sites. The reason being that repetition leads to more sales.

• Look and Feel – The interface has been spruced up with a cleaner design and quick access to your favourite sites and suggestions on other sites that you might like. Popups are delivered via a toolbar rather than via a big box interrupt to make for a calmer browsing experience.

We haven’t had time to really play with it for very long here at doubletimemedia.com but will feed back our experiences. However, talking with experience in these matters, our advice would be to wait for a while before making the shift. Usually there a few bugs, niggles and holes that need to be patched when a big update is pushed out and so it is usually common sense to wait a while for them to be found and fixed before making the leap.