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At last a decent blog for blokes - Brandish

Brandish, Shiny Media's new site dedicated to The Coolest Stuff in the World for blokes is now live and kicking. It'll feature must-have gadgets, fashion that won't make you look like a metrosexual arsehead, illegally fast cars, fine Cuban cigars, that sort of thing.

Only the best stuff gets in – Brandish is like an exclusive gentlemen's club, but without the high-backed, red leather chairs, smug ex-Eton schoolboys and extortionate membership fees.

It is edited by Ollie Irish, top pie-eater and freelance gadget-a-soarus.

Bugged bins to monitor your rubbish

  Councils in the UK are about to trial microchips in wheelie bins, which could lead to councils charging for the weight of rubbish collected within a couple of years. It's hoped the monitoring and weighing rubbish could boost the UK's recycling rate, which is currently one of the worst in Europe.

The RFID-based chips are being hidden under the lip of bins used for non-recycled waste. Transponders fitted on rubbish trucks read the chip's serial number when household waste is collected. As bins are lifted, another device on the trucks weighs them. This data is then attached to the chip numbers to create a record of the quantity of waste each household creates.

According to newspaper reports, around 500,000 of the devices have already been deployed in Peterborough, South Norfolk, and parts of Cheshire, Surrey, and Wiltshire - often without the householder's knowledge. If the trials are successful, we could be looking at taxation for excessive rubbish or fines for those who fail to recycle.

What do you think? A sensible idea to improve recycling or the road to increased fly tipping of household rubbish? Let us know below.

Via The Register

Manchester City FC introduces mobile ticketing

Manchester City are expanding their trial of using fans' mobile phones as tickets when they play Arsenal this weekend.

A select group of top customers have been supplied with modified near-field communication Nokia phones fitted with RF chips that enable the user to purchase electronic tickets and then operate turnstiles at the ground using special readers.

The system can also be used for targeted advertising and promotions, such as offering discounts to fans who arrive early, and providing wallpaper, ringtones and club merchandise.

The scheme will then be rolled out from Christmas, though it will only work with the modified phones supplied by Man City.

It will be interesting to see if this is something that can be extended to other clubs, and if some kind of standard emerges. It would be a tad inconvenient needing a different phone for each ground.

Nokia started trailing other forms of mobile ticketing several months ago.

Nearly half of UK homes without Internet access. What do they do all day?

The Office of National Statistics has surprised me today - and that doesn't happen very often.

It's come up with a statistic (that's not the surprise): 43% of UK households don't have any access to the Internet.

Of these:

• About a quarter said they didn't need the Net (who doesn't need the Net?)
• 24% said they lacked the skills to use the Internet.
• 11% said access costs were too high.
• 14% said equipment costs were too high.

The 57% with Net access included people with mobile phones able to access online services. Interestingly the ONS said that mobiles were seen as a cheaper way to get online. I suppose with the increase in mobile Net services and the relatively low cost of equipment (even if ongoing charges aren't lower) this could be true.

Of the 57%, three-quarters connect via broadband, compared to around half in June 2005.

And not surprisingly, age also played a factor. Only 10% of 16-24s had never used the Net, compared to 82% of the over 65s. Mind you, that'll probably shift as the younger techie generations get older.

PayPal freezes account of 'near match' terror suspect

The Register reports that PayPal have been getting rather zealous in scanning the US Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals List, and have come up with a 'near match' on UK Government worker Mohammed Hassan with Tunisian Mohamed Hassan. See the similarity? Kinda like John Smith and, err, Jon Smith.

He received an email telling him that access to his account had been frozen and that he was required to provide copious amounts of documentation to prove his identity. On principle, he's refused, so in around a month's time his Paypal account will be closed - unless PP realise they've made a mistake (which after some of my dealings with them - and no my name's not on that list - is rather unlikely).

I'm not an expert on Arabic names (perhaps someone with more knowledge can help me out here) but my hunch is that "Mohammed Hassan" (and variants of its spelling) is a reasonably commonplace name - and we're talking globally here.

"is it because my name is Arabic? Or is it because PayPal are just plain stupid?", said Mr Hassan to the The Register. Well...

YouTube seeks record companies' music video content deals

We reported yesterday that YouTube was said to be in negotiation with various record companies to get their music video content legitimately onto the service.

The Interactive Investor has reported that both US labels Warner Music and Universal Music, and the UK's EMI music, are all in some kind of discussion with the network. Details are very sketchy at present, and it will be interesting to see how YouTube deals with the issues of copyright and content ownership which the record companies will undoubtedly raise.

It seems that this is a new trend towards getting legitimate music video content from major labels onto video-sharing sites. Whether it will enhance the experience or detract from the home-grown, user-led feel of YouTube remains to be seen.

What do you think? Legitimate music videos on YouTube a good idea?

UK online shopping to grow 70% by 2010

Another day, another survey and prediction about the continually rising popularity of online shopping.

This time it's PayPal, who presumably hope they have a lot to gain from people buying online (maybe with their new credit card). They're predicting that by 2010, annual spend online will be £39bn, with nearly twenty-five million of us lured away from real shops to the virtual malls.

We'll be even more time-poor (and possibly lazy) because the biggest online spend by 2010 will be food and groceries, accounting for £6.24bn spend, up 235% on 2005. Most of the big supermarkets are already well up on the game, as testified by the number of delivery vans seen around town.

Next up will be clothes and footwear, up 160% to £2.27bn, and a continued growth in electrical goods, up 136% to £4.6bn.

PayPal have issued a warning to smaller businesses that it feels could miss out on this new buying behaviour - of course the solution is to sign up with PayPal...

Free giveaways blamed for 'cheapening' DVDs

A new survey has revealed that British newspapers give away as many DVDs as are being purchased in stores, and this is being blamed for a cheapening of the format in consumers' eyes.

Though films given away are often older and may have reached the end of their saleable shelf life, this isn't always the case, and the problem is repeated across Europe.

In the first quarter of this year, about 54 million DVDs were given away free with newspapers. That compares to 130m in the whole of the last year, when shop sales were at 211m.

"It's clear that that kind of quantity of free discs circulating in the market cannot help but have a dampening effect on the purchase of DVDs," said Helen Davis Jayalath, Screen Digest's senior home entertainment analyst.

DVD sales are slowing down significantly across Europe. Most of the large Hollywood studios oppose these giveaways, but smaller local distributors can often do quite lucrative short-term deals with publishers.

I'm not convinced this is the only reason that DVD sales are stagnating at present. I am sure someone else will come along and blame the Internet and film piracy as well.

What do you think?

DSG to stop selling analogue radios

They were one of the first UK retailers to stop selling video recorders, and now DSG (who own Currys and Dixons, amongst others) have announced that they will no longer sell analogue radios at Dixons online.

Dixons have said that sales of digital radios outnumber analogue by 30 to 1. I'm not sure if this is just for standalone radios, as I would think a number of hi-fi combos would still contain an analogue radio. Though this is just an online move at present, it probably won't be long before Currys.digital stores stop selling them as well.

PC Advisor suggests that Dixons may even go further and give the CD player the chop due to the rising popularity of iPods and other digital music players. I'm not sure this makes total sense - after all, people may still want to play the original CDs away from their computers (which they'll need to use to rip them, anyway). Maybe they think that everyone has a CD player now and won't want a new one.

The speed of obsolescence does seem to be increasing, though (thank goodness) Dixons isn't the be-all-and-end-all of consumer shopping.

What do you think? Is it time analogue radio faded away, or is DAB still too new?