Audio is a passion of mine, whether it be the quality with which I encode my music or the equipment I use to listen to it. In fact I take it to a level most would consider extreme… probably a little sad. The sad thing is the majority of people take it to the other extreme: low quality music on cheap devices listened to through cheap earbuds. Why sad? Because it poses a genuine threat to your hearing, something I investigated for Wired UK. Here is an extract from this piece, if you enjoy it please READ ON.

How 3D printing and lasers are helping fight a European ‘deafness pandemic’

For Wired UK by Gordon Kelly |19 October 2010

In October 2008 the European Union announced findings that should have caused uproar. Its Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) reported five to 10 percent of personal music player owners risk permanent hearing loss “should they listen to music at a high volume setting for more than one hour per day for at least five years”.

Does this sound like anyone you know, or everyone you know?

At the time EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva expressed her shock at the report saying: “I am concerned that so many young people, in particular, who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing irrevocably.” She stressed the need to “react rapidly”, look at the controls in place and “most importantly… raise consumer awareness”.

In the two years that have now passed, you only need to sit on public transport or wait in a queue to realise the EU failed miserably. So who is going to clean up this mess? Well it may just be a small company in Banbury… READ ON

(Horribly mis-) Cast of the new A-Team movie.

Comingsoon.net has managed to grab the first on set photo from the new A-Team film and it looks like yet another of our fondest childhood memories is going to be put through the mincer. Directed by Joe Carnahan, it stars Liam Neeson as John “Hannibal” Smith, Bradley Cooper as Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck, Sharlto Copley as Captain “Howling Mad” Murdock and Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson as Sergeant “B.A.” Baracus.

So the obvious question to all: why does Hannibal look like Steve Martin, Howling Mad Murdock look like Face and Face & B.A. look like no-one?! Ho and indeed hum.

via Comingsoon.net

My blog has not been running long enough to know exactly who my readership are. I suspect many are UK journalists and PRs (probably due to all the Twitter links I post) while no doubt a number of TrustedReviews’ more avid readers have tracked me down. Hopefully some of you arrived here completely by chance – I’d like to think that’s the power of the World Wide Web. Whatever your make up however I suspect you may have heard something about what I’m about to discuss…

Here are the facts: on Friday 13 March I managed to scoop a fairly large story about the secretive mass recall of faulty Sky+HD digiboxes. It wasn’t life changing but as it affected 90,000 subscribers (approximately 10% of Sky’s entire HD user base) relevant nonetheless. The story was popular with our readers and two or three rival sites popped up articles kindly sourcing back to me. In short come Friday evening the Google News aggregator page looked like this:

In truth I had probably expected more sites to pick up the story but I suspect given it was late on a Friday before a large majority of the tech world jetted off to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona meant – understandably – their focus was elsewhere. Fast forward four whole days however and as MWC news began to dry up the sniffing around began again and guess what tasty little story they found? Yep, by February 17th the Google News UK aggregator page looked like this:

I was rather flattered. I presumed something additional must have been dug up for such a media frenzy. I was wrong it was just what I had reported four days earlier. Furthermore, on flicking through a few of the more major sites (broadsheets, BBC, etc) to my horror I discovered not a single, solitary credit back to TrustedReviews for my industry. This wouldn’t be so bad if a number hadn’t directly ripped off the quotes posted on our comments section by an appreciably hackled Sky+HD Team. Co-incidence? In some publications without the quotes – quite likely, in orders absolutely not it was word for word.

Of course no one is perfect. Bemoaning the problem on Twitter I was rather sternly reminded of my own shortcomings by my friend Ian Morris, the Television, DVD and PVR editor at CNet. He pointed out that 2 years ago I had posted a story and failed to credit him for the discovery. I had fallen victim to the ‘via curse’ which afflicts much web based journalism. This is where a story is written linking to the site where the author found the information without tracking down the original source. Following them all back can sometimes work, but not always. That said, it was my fault, I should have dug deeper and a few quick words (I’ll not repeat the exact colourful phraseology) sorted it. The difference is it wasn’t intentional and I ultimately held my hands up.

Funnily enough I pretty much took Ian’s head off for pointing this out during a rather undignified public battle. I was still rather raw so Ian – if you’re reading this – apologies.

Before I get too far off topic however let me conclude with this: I expected better. I expected better of myself when I failed to spot Ian’s original article 2 years ago and I expect better of the high profile national press who knowingly rip off the hard work of others. Now I’m sure I’m overreacting. My editor said I should ‘suck it up’ and he’s right, after I vent this Riyad I will. But the worst aspect in what essentially amounts to theft is it isn’t even unusual, for many it is common business practice. I’ve heard numerous horror stories far worse than my own example since this occurred and they all left an impression. Each is locked in tight – as is the tarnished image of my profession.

…Ok, Riyad. I’ve Sucked Up.

Quick one this since it seems to be doing the rounds – including on the Ranieri Blog…

It's behind you...

Yes, I was a guest at the paparazzi free-for-all also known as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone launch (the Finns’ affordable iPhone rival). Yes there were celebrities and yes, Paris Hilton was one of them and yes, I really – like really, really – dislike Paris Hilton and everything her pseudo-fame represents.

What I didn’t realise was she spent a fair portion of time standing right behind me as I expressed these demands. Embarrassing? No, empowering and retrospectively satisfying. Of course I didn’t know my good friend Paul Monckton would catch it all on camera with me blissfully unaware mid-rant.

Apparently the socialplite was further away at this point, but you get the gist…

Despite this a great evening was had by all in the fine company of the CNet posse of Nate, Rory, Kate and Pene, the aforementioned Mr Monckton and the legendary Rob Kerr.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic itself? Too early to tell I’m afraid, but I understand the regrettable decision of employing a resistive touchscreen instead of a capacitive one was taken so I’ve already got one bullet point for my next Just the Bad Points (JtBP) review…

Right, now I’ve squeezed this heinous post out the chamber let’s hope for the sake of December’s #1 UK Tech Journalist (!?!) the good stuff comes flowing through…

Update: Yep, that worked. Here we go.