youtube

Unblogged June

by

May’s update was short, as I was mostly recovering, whereas this month I have been able to do a little more, including returning to my standard blogging pattern of every other day. Still, here’s a few things that didn’t result in a blog post of their own:

Tom Scott’s creator advice

Tom Scott got asked by Wired Magazine to answer questions from content creators, and it’s well worth watching (video embedded above and linked here). In particular, I agree with his suggestion of always having a ‘buffer’ – i.e. content that is ready to go live and scheduled. Tom notes that, at one point, he had several months of videos ready – until lockdown happened in 2020. That reduced his ‘buffer’ down to a few weeks.

I almost always write posts in advance – indeed, I’m writing this specific section a couple of weeks in advance, although I expect I’ll be adding the sections below later. That meant that I still had a few posts go live when I was in hospital last month, and meant that there was only a relatively brief break in my regular blogging schedule. Normally I have a buffer of at least three posts, but if I know I have some busy weekends coming up, I may write posts up to three weeks in advance.

Incidentally, one of my friends went to university with Tom, and I’ve met him before – we both went to the launch event for a new gallery at the National Science & Media Museum in Bradford in 2012. He’s back releasing weekly YouTube videos again, and he now does a weekly newsletter on Mondays. A particular highlight is his visit to Cragside, which we visited ourselves in 2024.

Car insurance renewal

Well this ended up being a right old rigmarole this year. My renewal quote came out at 67% more expensive than last year, at over £700. And, unfortunately, I found it difficult to find any other quotes that were meaningfully cheaper with the same or better cover. Ultimately, we ended up remaining with our existing insurer but with some slight tweaks to the policy, including a higher excess, to bring the quote down a bit.

I assume the reason for the higher prices was because our car is electric, which insurers still seem wary of. The various reminder emails from the comparison web sites I used last year, for our previous diesel car, were quite a bit lower. Still, our electric car passed its MOT this month with no work needed, and it’s proving to be much cheaper to run. And in any case, it’ll only be Christine driving it this year, although I remain the car’s registered keeper.

Thankful for air conditioning

It got rather warm last week. Whilst we were outside of the amber and (rare) red extreme heat warnings, I’m glad that we bought our portable air conditioning unit last year. Unsurprisingly, my review has also been one of the most popular blog posts on here in recent weeks, picking up quite a few hits from search engines.

As that model isn’t in stock in Amazon, it hasn’t resulted in me getting lots of commission payments, which is a shame. Though it’s a noisy unit, getting our bedroom cooled down before we go to sleep at night has made a big difference to our sleep quality.

More films on Letterboxd

When I wrote about Letterboxd earlier this month, I had managed to tick off 378 films. That’s now up to the pleasing number of 444.

Some of those are films that I have watched this month, but most are because I’ve remembered watching a film or found it whilst searching through old emails or tweets. Even more pleasingly, 187 of those films are in my diary, meaning that I’ve recorded the date when I’ve watched it too. So far, 24 of those 187 films are from this year.

I’m sure there are yet more films that I’ve watched but forgotten about, but I’ve logged the vast majority.

Disney Minus

by
A screenshot of our Disney + account setting showing it cancelled.

Last week, we cancelled Disney+. Our annual subscription was due to renew, and at over £100 for the year, we could no longer justify it.

We’ve had a subscription ever since Disney+ launched in the UK, in the early days of lockdown in 2020. In fact, before then we had a subscription to DisneyLife, which was Disney’s UK-only streaming service for video and music, and used to cost £5 per month. Over time, Disney+ has got better, especially now that content from 20th Century Fox is on there.

But we just don’t watch enough of it. When we signed up to Disney+, there was only one price tier at £7.99 per month or £79 per year. Whilst that was more expensive than DisneyLife, there was more content available so it was worth it. Now there are three price tiers, and the most expensive is £10.99 per month, or £109 per year. That’s more than double what we were paying just five years ago. Whilst there is once again a £5 per month tier, it’s with adverts, and we don’t want those.

Like many kids, our eight-year-old seems to just want to watch YouTube Kids now. It’s something we’ve tried to resist for years, but apparently watching home-made videos and Minecraft walk-throughs is far more interesting than the professionally-produced content that we were paying for. We’ll keep paying for Netflix, as you can download content onto an iPad to watch offline. We tend to clip our eight-year-old’s iPad into a stand fixed to the back of the front passenger seat for long car journeys.

We’ve had Amazon Prime in the past, shared using Amazon Household with another family member, but we don’t have this now. Again, it’s getting more expensive, and we’d rather avoid the adverts. And whilst we’ve had free trials of Apple TV+ and Now TV, we’ve never paid for these beyond the trial period. We also don’t pay for a TV package, and just have Freeview and Freesat for live television.

I guess we’ll just re-subscribe to these from time-to-time when there’s something we actually want to watch.

I do find it odd comparing streaming video with streaming music. There’s a handful of music streaming services – Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and so forth – and for the most part, they all have the same music. Yet with streaming video services, most shows are on one or two at best, and many or exclusive to one service.

Transitioning away from Google

by
Screenshot of google.com in April 2013

In light of Google’s decision to shut down Google Reader – and yes, I’m still bitter – it’s fair to say that I’ve been re-assessing how much I rely on Google’s services. If Reader can be shut down, then what about their other products?

An article by Ben Brooks called You Can’t Quit, I Dare You, throws down the gauntlet, although it is also inspired by ‘Your favourite Thursday sandwich’ by Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, and this article by Om Malik. Not long after announcing the closure of Reader, Google announced a new note storage service called ‘Google Keep’, and Om’s argument is that he won’t sign up because he doesn’t trust Google to, erm, ‘keep’ the product running long into the future.

I’m starting to agree, even if I dismissed boycotting Google on purely ethical grounds last year. Is it worth looking at alternatives to Google’s products now, just in case Google kills off products that I rely on?

Google Search

Search was Google’s first product, and is still their most used. In February 2013, its market share was just shy of 90% and I am sure that there are many out there that think that Google is the internet, or at least its only gateway.

Geeky types like me know that it isn’t though, and there are alternatives. Yahoo! Search is still pretty ropey by all accounts, even if I can collect Nectar points from using it. Bing is better, and I actually used it for the research for this blog post rather than Google Search. I could probably live with Bing if I decided to kick Google into touch. I can’t see Google ever giving up on search but Bing seems like a good alternative if needed.

Gmail

Gmail launched nine years ago yesterday, and at the time offering 1 gigabyte of storage was so revolutionary that many thought that its April 1st 2004 launch was actually an April Fools joke – at the time Hotmail offered a mere 2 megabytes, or 500 times less.

Now Gmail is not my primary email account, and never has been. I was already using an email address attached to my domain name and that situation remains the same today. That way I can keep my address even when changing hosts.

But I do use Gmail. After all, I need some way of emailing my host when my web site is down. Again, Microsoft would be my main go-to here for an alternative, in the form of Outlook.com which recently replaced Hotmail. As well as offering quite a nice, simple interface, as an early adopter of Outlook.com I was able to blag quite a nice new email address, and have the embarrassing hotmail.com email address I chose aged 16 forward to it. The only annoyance is that Outlook.com doesn’t support IMAP, and only works over Exchange on mobile devices. On my Mac, I have to use POP3 which is a bit rubbish.

Google Chrome

I mentioned that some people think that Google is the internet and I think this is part of the reason why Google Chrome has recently overtaken Mozilla Firefox as the world’s second most popular web browser. That, and it’s fast, extensible and also tends to be bundled with many other programs.

Like Gmail, Chrome is my backup browser on the desktop. I’m still a Firefox user first and foremost but occasionally my over-zealous blocking of adverts, tracking scripts and insistence on using HTTPS as far as possible breaks web sites, so Chrome is my fallback. But, that could easily be replaced with another browser; Safari, Opera, or even Internet Explorer in its more recent incarnations.

On my iPhone, again I use Chrome as my main browser instead of Safari, but could easily go back, or try a different third-party web browser.

Google Calendar

My personal calendars are synchronised via Google, so I would need to find an alternative here. This would probably be Apple’s iCloud, which supports the open CalDAV standard (Google are actually moving away from CalDAV to their own proprietary protocol) and already integrates with my Mac and iPhone. Getting to work with Mozilla Thunderbird, through the Lightning extension, shouldn’t take much more.

The only major loss would be Sunrise, a third-party iOS calendar app that I use which, at present, only supports Google Calendar and Facebook. Until it supports either iCloud or the calendars stored locally on my iPhone, I’d have to go back to using the built-in Calendar app.

Google Contacts

To keep my contacts in sync between home, work and my phone, I use Google Contacts, which also makes them available in Gmail. My Mac and my iPhone both support Google Contact sync out of the box, and there are a couple of extensions – Zindus and Google Contacts – for Thunderbird.

Like with my calendar, iCloud would be the obvious choice here, as it supports the open CardDAV standard. Alas, whilst my Mac and iPhone are catered for, Thunderbird doesn’t support CardDAV. The SoGo Connector extension should enable this, although I’ve had problems with it in the past.

Google Drive

I experimented with Google Drive, mainly to compare it to SkyDrive and Dropbox, but have since stopped using it and have uninstalled the desktop clients. Dropbox suits my needs far better.

Google+

I rarely use Google+, mainly because nothing interesting seems to happen there. The friends that matter to me are all on Facebook and Twitter, and I doubt the 152 people who have circled me will miss me if I delete my account. It’s not like I post there much.

Google Talk

I’d almost forgotten that Google Talk exists. This XMPP-based instant messaging network integrates with Google+ and Gmail to allow you to chat with friends. But I rarely use it. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are better ways of getting hold of me and for voice chat I prefer Skype.

Picasa

Last year I stopped using Picasa and switched to iPhoto – and compared the two. I maybe over-exaggerated Picasa’s potential death in that article as the desktop program has recently had some updates, although these have been primarily bug fixes. Picasa Web Albums is under-used compared to Flickr, which has a recently re-invigorated community.

Google Maps

I do like Google Maps, and I installed Google’s third party Maps app on my iPhone as soon as it came out. That said, I’ve generally found Apple’s Maps on iOS 6 to be okay. Its point of interest database leaves something to be desired (probably because not many people use Yelp in the UK) but its street coverage seems reasonably complete and the address lookup works okay. I also find its vector-based maps a bit faster and smoother than Google’s,

On the desktop Google Maps is currently my favourite choice, but there are also Bing Maps (the successor to Multimap) which includes support for the detailed Ordnance Survey maps, and OpenStreetMap.

Google Earth and Street View

There aren’t really many alternatives here. I don’t really use Google Earth on the desktop though. As for Street View, Google is one of the few companies with the resources to go out and photograph every street in the world. But it’s not something I’d use every day.

YouTube

Here’s where I’d really struggle. Of course I could delete my YouTube account and the two essentially worthless videos that are on my channel, but I wouldn’t be able to stop visiting. Barely a day goes by when I don’t watch at least one YouTube video. I doubt that will change.

Google Reader

I already mentioned that I’m looking into Feedly as my Google Reader alternative. As much as I’d hoped for a reprieve from Google, I doubt that Reader will be still going in July.

Google Authenticator

I use the Google Authenticator app on my iPhone quite a bit to enable two-factor authentication, not just on my Google account, but on Dropbox, app.net and also this blog. I’m not sure what alternatives exist, and this Quora question on the subject is awaiting an answer.

Google Adsense

I don’t pay Google any money for any of the services I’ve listed above. But the inverse is true here, and Google does pay me for the privilege of showing its advertising on my site. That being said, it’s not as much as I used to get so maybe it’s high time for a change, and a quick Bing search found a list of 10 alternatives. I shall have to look into these.

Google Webmaster Tools

If you have a web site, you need to sign up to Google Webmaster Tools. For as long as Google dominates the search engine market, you will need to make sure that it is indexing your site correctly. And its reports showing 404 errors is very useful for diagnosing site problems. Bing Webmaster Tools exists, but it’s not quite as good.

So can I give up Google?

I think that these are all of the Google services I use – and no, I hadn’t realised just how many there were. In all cases there is an alternative, and I may have to investigate some of them. Unfortunately, some are better than others and in a few cases what Google offers is clearly better than elsewhere.

Of course, by moving away from Google I’m mostly taking my data to Microsoft and Apple – from one big corporation to another, and each one isn’t averse to killing off products. Apple discontinued MobileMe last year, and although some features survive in iCloud, others, like iDisk and Keychain Sync were switched off without replacements. And iCloud is known for reliability problems, although the problems cited in that article are in the APIs that third-party developers use and not in its Calendar and Contact sync services. Microsoft also ‘sunsetted’ several of its Windows Live products recently – Windows Live Messenger being the most famous of these.

I am going to try giving up some Google services though (as did this ex-Microsoft blogger). I’ve removed the Google apps from my Mac and iPhone and switched my default search engine to Bing. I’ll share how I get over the next few weeks.

Knock-off Nigel

by

When you watch a British DVD, usually before the film starts, you’ll have to watch this:

But now on TV, we have this:

The message it’s trying to spread is that people who download films or buy counterfeit DVDs are sad, corner-cutting lowlifers – no ‘cool’ person would want to be like Nigel. While I like the less confrontational stance, I somehow doubt the effectiveness of the new ads.

Of course, the best one is the parody by the IT crowd:

Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise noted, the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.