Skins gets Dis:connected

I've been a fan of Skins and it's whole philosophy since before the first episode was even shown. Now I've discovered a new teen show that could rival it.

The second series of Skins is drawing to a close and each episode seems to have become more bizarre and depressing. The first series was fun and frivolous but in the second series the characters have spent most of their time dealing with some pretty heavy problems. There was something vaguely nightmarish about the most recent episode in which Chris died and Cassie suddenly found herself in New York.

In contrast, the BBC recently piloted a drama about teenagers, called Dis:connected. It was clearly following in the Skins tradition - characters each with their own story to tell, brightly coloured fashions, touches of comedy and an overall sense of style. For me, it felt much more realistic and engaging than Skins has become. I hope the BBC makes more of it.

Your Facebook legacy

Yesterday I got to thinking. It was the news story about the British student who was murdered in Italy that started it all off.

If you were to die suddenly, your Facebook profile would live on after you. It would be the most concrete reminder of you that was left behind.

Not only that, but if you were to die in a news-worthy way, photos from your Facebook profile would end up in the papers. That's what happened to the girl who was murdered in Italy.

And you don't just have to be dead for your Facebook photos to make their way to the press. The flatmate of the murdered girl, who is apparently prime suspect, had some fairly embarrassing photos of herself splashed accross the Daily Mail yesterday under the headline 'Foxy Knoxy'.

So, just in case you happen to do something news-worthy like get murdered, kill someone, or anything else, think about the photos of you that may end up in print. Can you trust everyone on your friends list not to sell an incriminating photo to the Daily Mail?

And have a think about the Facebook legacy you're leaving behind, just in case your profile out-lives you.

Facebook. It's bigger than us all. We've lost control!

Why the extra click, Hotmail?

I log in to Hotmail every day and I've noticed that they've recently decided to add an extra click to this process, for no reason at all. That means at least 365 extra clicks per year. My mouse-hand is already over-worked.

The Hotmail sign-in screen presents you with your username ready-typed in the username box and then makes you click to bring up the password box. What was wrong with having the username and password boxes displayed together, straight away, like they always have been?

What Facebook doesn't tell you

Well, I've done a fair amount of talking about Facebook on this blog and I decided it was about time I created something out of all these opinions.

One of the best things about Facebook is the way it strikes the perfect balance of keeping some actions hidden and putting some on display. We want to know what our friends are up to, but we don't want our friends to know EVERYTHING we've been doing on Facebook. We made a new friend or we uploaded photos - nothing to be ashamed of there. But ignoring a friend request or repeatedly looking at a certain person's photos - those are the kinds of things we'd prefer to keep hidden.

Just imagine if the mini-feed on our profiles looked like this...
www.sarahbromley.co.uk/facebook

What if Facebook put all these guilty secrets on display? Of course, people would turn away from the site immediately. It's Facebook's ability to aid clandestine snooping and stalking that was its initial attraction for me. And although I'd love to know more about exactly what my friends are doing on there, I certainly wouldn't want them to know exactly what I get up to.

Spanish on the web

This week I finished my Masters in web publishing. I’d been working on a dissertation project about how language learners can use the internet to get access to authentic foreign-language material and native-speakers. The product of the whole dissertation was a website (http://www.ineedpractice.com/) that Spanish learners can use to access audio, videos, articles, etc in Spanish.

I’m pleased to see it already ranks number 7 in a Google search for “free Spanish audio”. What great SEO skills I have!

I’m going to continue working on the website and I really hope it becomes popular because I think it’ll be a great way for people to practice their Spanish.

I just want your extra time and your kiss

This post isn’t really in-keeping with the rest of the blog theme (which appears to have developed into complaining about Facebook) but it’s a post I have to make because it refers to Prince, whose song Rasberry Beret gives this blog its title.

I went to see Prince last night at the O2 Arena. When my friend and I bought our tickets a few months back we thought this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Prince, we didn’t realise he was actually playing 21 dates at the damn place. When I found this out I was worried he may be getting bored of this mammoth residency which is about to end. I was hoping to see him perform with energy and enthusiasm… and that is exactly what I got!

The stage was in the shape of the Prince symbol and he had two amazing twin backing dancers. He can still dance, he can still sing and I still definitely would.

Most amazingly of all, he did two encores. The second happened after the lights had gone up and some of the crowd had already left. I had a feeling it may happen because his last words before he left the stage was to tell us take out time leaving and I also spied a roadie hoist a keyboard onto the stage when the lights went down at the end of the first encore. Prince was transported back to the stage in a box and proceeded to play a random collection of hits on the keyboard.

I was also impressed at how he also chatted to the crowd in such a comical way. He is so obviously a born performer. He wasn’t at all the pretentious superstar I may have expected.

You had a pocket full of horses,
Trojan and some of them used.
But it was Saturday night,
I guess that makes it all right.
And you say what have I got to lose?

My TV is feeling neglected

I have not turned on my television for over two weeks. It's not broken but I've been busy and the little time I have spent watching anything has been TV and videos online or DVDs on my laptop. It's not that I've been making a special effort to boycott TV, but I find that what I can find online satisfies me so much better!

A website such as http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ lets you watch just about any great TV show from the last few years. It feels so efficient to be able to pick exactly the show you want, instead of being restricted to the TV schedule. I also like 4OD from Channel 4, the closest thing to real TV, in my opinion. I've tried Joost as well, although wasn't as impressed with the content and found the colourful, snazzy graphics a little unnecessary and distracting. Then of course there's YouTube, which is great for a quick fix.

Unfortunately TV Links, my favourite, seems to only stream content which exists illegally. I look forward to a time, hopefully soon, when lots of quality, well-known TV and video content is available online legally. I wouldn't mind paying a little bit to watch it, although I do kind of feel that everything online should be free.

I predict that in five years, or probably less, traditional television as we know it won't exist. All TV will be on-demand and online which, in my opinion, will be an exciting change for the better.