Logitech Harmony 1000

We all know of the clutter on the coffee table and we have also all heard about the universal remote.

I am tempted to say that B&o pioneered the universal remote some 30 years ago however only supporting their own products in the same range.

More successful were those remotes that you could teach the signal of your old remotes.

For a long period of time, I have been using one of the latter from Cambridge with anice touch screen and everything. It has however always been a problem that the icons were fixed and not everything was available for all devices.

I believe Logitech's new device, the 1000, will cater for this.

The remote comes with a 3.5" touch sensitive color screen as on the picture. You can modify it with a USB connection to the PC but the best part is that most modern devices have already been coded.

Should you want to control devices in the cupboard or in another room, this can also be done by the optional radio transmitter, you then place in the neigbouring room.

This beauty obviously comes at a price. Around GBP 220,00 is the current price for it.....

Free mobile and landline telephony!

There is no doubt that internet telephony is the way forward. Many ideas are revealed these years. Not to forget Skype that was sold to eBay for around USD 3.5 BN.

This new service from jajah.com deserves a mention - and an incouragement for all friend and family to sign up.

The charge to call a non registered user is reasonable but the real benefit comes when both parties are registered, as the call from landline to landline (or from mobile to mobile) is then completely free .

How it works is basically that the caller logs into jajah.com and makes a selection of whom to call (address book or dial-pad) and from which phone he/she wishes to call from. The callers phone will ring and then shortly after the recipient is called.

Initially before subscription, you get 5 minutes of free talktime, which I used on a quality test of the service by calling my Dad. He was busy cutting down the apple-tree in the garden!!!

The quality from UK landline to DK landline is top notch.

Even when you subscribe you get around GBP 1.88 (presumably the equivalent of USD 3.00) to enable you start talking.

So please subscribe and lets enjoy free communication as long as it will last...

Visit to Paris

After an early start to the day and a long days work did I manage to get to
enjoy Paris.

This morning I managed to sort out a biometric passport to France,
P.E.G.A.S.E
This consist of a chipcard which is associated with your fingerprints. When
you enter the contry you enter a secure box and apply your fingerprints. No
need to queue for passport control anymore.

Legitimate music download

At the time of our wedding, I was looking into downloading some important Danish tracks that could be played at the wedding.

There are a number of Danish providers, such as TDC Musik and Bilka Musik where you can find the Danish artists that you can't find abroad. They both accept international creditcards as long as they have been issued in Denmark!? so what is the point?

This negative experience put me off music download for a time and only here the other day did I decide to give it another try.

I decided to give the English equivalent of Bilka Musik a try, Tesco, Britains largest supermarket chain. All went well and at GBP 0.79 per track it seemed reasonable. I chose 5 popular songs and entered my credit card details for the charge, GBP 3.95.

I managed to download the WMA formatted files. As the HiFi in the lounge is connected via the KiSS DVD player to the PC, I got my self ready for a blast. I managed to find the tracks and pressed PLAY... Error - the files are subject to Digital Rights Management....

If you consider an average CD to contain 13 tracks and cost 12.99, I would think that by paying GBP 4 for 1/3 of the number of tracks, it would be fair to asume I can play my music in the car, on the DVD player in the lounge, on the PC etc. etc.

Nothing has changed SONY and Billy Bob Gates have got it as they want it. You are guilty as sin of trying to copy music and that is it. Theoretically they should take legal actions against anybody downloading legal music, because that is at the end of the day what is happening... It is the same as restricting a Renault Clio to drive faster than 30 Mph because it is a car designed for driving in towns and do shopping and you can't have genuine intentions by taking it on the motorway...

The world is controlled by a bunch of short sighted fat cats. Just remember how the national mail companies where complaining about danger of collapse when the email was invented. No one was to send a letter anymore. At the end of the day their roles have changed because people are buying box after box of goods on the internet which is then sent by mail and thus they are still making great revenue. (The fact that the fat cats aren't cost-contentious and thus making losses because of bureaucracy is not the stamp buyers fault).

Same scenario is now happening with the music industry; only that the music industry is retaining their profitability as people are so buzy filling up their prestigious MP3 players with rights managed music such that they don't have time to dispute the fact that they lock themselves down. The last 2 years Apple's iPod has been the thing. Nokia is now launching their new N91 and in essence that means that all the gadget addicts that has to have this one instead now have to purchase their music all over again...

It is great however to see how Gnarls Barclay's Crazy song is stirring up some sheit by reaching number one without releasing a CD..