Interesting Facts

At Christmas ever popular on Santa's wish list are electronic gadgets. Even for children. According to a survey conducted by the Gadget Show live, the first gadget a child gets is probably a games console, by the age of seven years and seven months. (The last they receive is likely to be a mobile – with which they will be texting their friends by the time they are nine years and three months. In between, they will get their first digital camera at eight years six months, a TV in their bedroom two months later and an MP3 player at eight years and nine months. They’ll flip open their first laptop at eight years and ten months. At an even younger age we give them toy replicas of these gadgets, even working examples, aimed at children.  The future is going to be very interesting as our digital age generation comes of age.)

According to figures from the British Phonographic Industry, digital music sales now exceed sales of CDs and records. (Digital sales have risen to £86.5 million/year, whilst revenue from physical formats, such as CD and vinyl, slumped by 15%, and now represents just £69.3 million. BTW - for the younger generation, CDs are small, round, flat shiny things that play music, and records (aka vinyl) are large, round, flat, black things that play music too.)

According to the record industry, global music sales fell by more than 8% in 2008. (The sale of CDs and vinyl actually fell by 15% globally (31% in the US). Sales of digital music rose by 24%, but didn't take up the shortfall. Maybe we'll see musicians going back to being wandering minstrels.)

According to an EU study, if you listen to music at high volume for more than one hour a day over five years risk permanent harm to your hearing. (Seemingly one in 10 people with a personal MP3 or CD player could suffer permanent hearing loss because they play their music too loud.)

Radiohead has decided to release their new album, Rainbows, on the web. Nothing new there, but you can download it from their official website and they will let you decide what to pay for the 10 mp3 files - that's right, you can decide to pay anything, from nothing to £100. (A survey of music fans who downloaded Radiohead's new album found that 29% paid either nothing or just 1p. More than half gave up to £10.)

Invalid File Odeo. Seems to be the message. Along with - Application error (Rails)??? I have recorded the sound files and uploaded them to Odeo for podcasting, but I keep getting a raspberry message "Invalid File". :( I don't know what's going on! (Are my files invalids or just invalid?) I've given up for now and contacted Odeo to find out what's going on (if anyone knows please let me know). In the meantime enjoy the previous files (they are still working and there are lots of them). Sigh. I still haven't had any reply to my email and their forum isn't working either. There is a workround, uploading your file to the net and then building a player in Odeo using "Link to Audio". But it still doesn't tell me what's wrong with the Upload feature. I hope to resume normal services as soon as possible. In the meantime you can listen by clicking the Listen Here link at the bottom of any post marked Podcast - this will open an mp3 file, kind...