Unless you have been living under a rock, you may have seen an internet campaign here in the UK to stop this years X-Factor winner from making the Christmas No.1.

This years X-Factor Karaoke winner would normally be guaranteed to be at the top of the charts at Christmas but it has come under, what now appears to be, a serious threat.  A Facebook group started by Tracy and Jon Morter to encourage people to buy a copy of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in The Name” as a protest against Simon Cowell’s efforts now has well over 800,000 members and climbing.  This has already caused Killing in the Name to be no.1 on iTunes, Amazon digital and many more on-line music sites in the midweek charts.  If everyone who joins this group actually buys a copy of the 1992 Rage track (and many people are buying multiple copies from all the different music vendors), it actually stands a serious chance of becoming the UK’s Christmas no.1.  Thanks to other social networking sites like Twitter, this group is going from strength to strength, to the point that the group owners have had to create a backup group because the main group keeps buckling under the pressure of the massive amount of supporters posting.

Now this is all a bit of fun really but it also has a serious side. The movement has also raised over £41,000 for the charitable cause Shelter. People buying the track are also encouraged to make a small donation to help the cause at http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas/

Unfortunately, the X-Factor has the upper hand with physical CD sales in the high street shops, but as digital download sales are also used to make up the charts, the battle is not lost just yet.  The Facebook group has already made it to the news on TV, the newspapers and of course, across the internet and it looks as though it could really upset the Christmas apple cart for Mr Cowell.

Technirvana is always up for some anarchy and is fully supporting this group.  If you want to get involved (and why wouldn’t you?), here are the links… http://bit.ly/inthename & http://bit.ly/thexfactor

If you’re on Twitter, make sure you are keeping your eye on #ratm4xmas

Now, go and buy that track, don’t go mad but buy a couple of copies from each vendor if you can and remember, you can gift the track to your friends etc on most sites. If you’re broke, buy it from Amazon.co.uk, it is only 29p!

DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT 6 OR 7 TIMES…IT WILL JUST GET ANNULLED IN THE CHART.

7DIGITAL – £1.19P – track #2
http://bit.ly/ratm-7digital

AMAZON – 29p – yes it will count
htpp://http://bit.ly/rage-amazon

TUNETRIBE – 49P – track #2 – LIVE version (yes it counts)
http://bit.ly/ratm-tunetribe

TESCO DIGITAL – 67p – track #2
http://bit.ly/ratm-tesco

HMV.COM – 79p (careful – this is track #1)
http://hmv.com/hmvweb
http://bit.ly/ratm-hmv

PLAY.COM – 70p – it’s the only track on the page
http://bit.ly/ratm-play

WE7 – £1.07p – track #2
http://bit.ly/ratm-we7

iTUNES – 99p – track #2
http://bit.ly/ratm-itunes

And don’t forget to donate to Shelter so they can help even more disadvantaged people this Christmas http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas/

You pay for everyone else’s Internet

Yes, the government has announced that it wishes to introduce a broadband tax to everyone in the UK.  This will involve charging every person with a land line £6 per year to pay for infrastructure to get every single person in the UK 2Mb/S broadband.  To me, this is an outrage and I will explain why..

I currently pay Virgin Media £45 per month for my 50Mb/S connection, why?  Because I want the fastest I can get, I live in a city and it is available here, so I got it.  Why the hell should I be paying for someone who lives in an expensive house out in the countryside to have broadband?  There are other options if they want broadband like 3G dongles etc, either way, it is not like water, you can live without the Internet.  I cannot afford a car, so does that mean everyone else should pay an extra tax on theirs to pay for me to have one?  I think not.  This is yet another example of a clueless government trying to jump on the “digital bandwagon”.. guess what Gordon, your 15 years too late!  I have been online since 1995, the Internet has been around longer, and your only just getting involved.

This is complete arse and I think we should all rebel against  this bullshit.  If they are only going to tax land lines, I will be calling Virgin and telling them I no longer want mine, even if I don’t save much cash doing it, there is a principle at stake here, and as my broadband is not suplied through the phone line, I don’t need it.  Most people use mobile phones these days and only have a land line for their Internet connection, again, why should they pay for everyone else.  If the government wants everyone in the country to have broadband, then why don’t they pay for it (out of their own pockets, not tax payers money).

Life with an HTC Magic

HTC Magic

After spending the last few years with Nokia phones (E and N series), I decided it was time for change.  I was fortunate enough to break free from my contract with 3 so then decided to shop around, I knew one thing though, I did not want an iPhone.  Well, that is a lie, I wanted one but there was no way I am prepared to pay hundreds of pounds for a contract phone then have a really shitty contract (£30 per month for 75 mins is shit, no other word for it).  This is where the HTC Magic comes in.  It is a great little touch screen phone powered by Googles Android.  Well, the phone arrived and I excitedly opened up the box (whilst taking photos just in case I decided to blog about it).  Inside you get the phone, a battery, a charger, a pouch to keep it in and the worst pair of headphones I have ever had the misfortune to put in my ears since my Saisho personal cassette player (for those who don’t know, Saisho was Dixons own brand and VERY cheap n nasty).  The phone also came with a 2Gb Micro SD card which really isn’t big enough but 8Gb cards are cheap enough now and at least you can upgrade the memory (and change the battery) unlike the iPhone.

Headphones aside, the phone is pretty cool, when you first power up, you need to sign into your Google account (or set one up) and it will then

HTC Magic out of the box

sync with you Gmail account (address book, calender etc) and your ready to go.  Like the iPhone, Google has its Android Market Place where you go for software.  I was surprised with just how many free apps/games available and some pretty good too (Solitaire rocks).  Some programmes are not free but pretty cheap, I paid for Dog Catcher as I listen to a lot of podcasts and there was no free catcher (there is now, Google Listen – shit name but seems to work, kind of).

This was around 3 months ago, so how do I feel about the phone now?  Well, I still love the phone, there are things I don’t like but all in all, I’m glad I went for this unit.  The things I like are the fact you can make calls to other people on it, you can send and receive text messages and do all kinds of other cool things.  The way it works with Googles services is awesome, Gmail was already my email of choice, but I am now using the callender much more and Youtube works great.  Don’t get me wrong, this is no iPhone, but it’s damn close and a lot cheaper!  There are tons of apps and games in the market place and the screen is bright and although not as large as the iPhone, it is big enough and the phone as a whole is smaller and feels a better size than the Apple phone.   I like the fact that it takes a standard mini USB cable and can be charged from a PC etc.  My biggest complaint is the lack of 3,5mm socket for headphones so I had to buy an adaptor to use my Sennheisers (I was never going to use the shit that came with the phone).  After coming from a Nokia N95, I was disappointed with the lack of Podcasting apps for free, Google Listen has come out since my purchase but still is not match for Nokias podcasting app, even Dogcatcher (which I had to pay for) isn’t as good.  Some of the apps can be a bit buggy but updates seems to happen a lot to sort this out, what you have to remember is Google is a lot more open than Apple and as such, anyone can write apps for Android.

All this aside, if your looking for a great touch screen smart phone and don’t want to be ripped off by O2/Apple, this should be on your list of hopefuls.

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