Amazon announced today that their e-reader type device, the Kindle, is available in the UK. There’s been a lot of fuss about it over in the US, and for some it’s become a much loved gadget. It can hold up to 1,500 books, and download new material over a free mobile connection.

Well, it’s kind of available in the UK. At the moment you have to buy it from Amazon.com, who will ship it to you in the UK. When you add on taxes and import duty, you’ll end up paying around £200 for it.  There’s also no Kindle material store on Amazon.co.uk at the moment, so you’ll have to buy your ebooks from Amazon.com.

It ships to the UK with a US plug and a USB cable for charging, and the experimental web browser and blog reader won’t apparently work in the UK either.

All in all, it seems like a bit of a very weird shopping experience for Kindle users in the UK. Not something you’d expect from Amazon. I love reading books, but don’t quite see the point in splashing out so much money on what is basically an electronic replacement for books. It’s kind of too specific. I think I’ll wait and see if Apple brings out their tablet next year as are the rumours – hopefully it’ll be more of a netbook than just a book reader.

So I finally gave up humming and haw-wing and bought a Wii Fit when I was in London the other week (well Bluewater with my sis and her niece to be exact).

I’d been thinking about getting one for a while, but really kept thinking well I swim a lot, is it really going to make any difference, and is it worth the £69.99. Keep reading for my thoughts!

What kind of got rid of my post-purchase isn’t-this-an-expensive-gimmick guilt was when I put the Wii Fit in the car in the Bluewater car park. An old man (and we’re talking late 60s here) saw it, and came up to me and said that it was the best thing he’d ever bought, and that he used to weigh 19 stones, and his new svelte self was all down to Wii Fit. I’m 5′8″ and just under 10½ stone, so I don’t think I need to lose any weight, but I do need to firm up so I was eager to see what Wii Fit ccould do for me.

Getting Started

Getting it all set up with your Wii is really easy, also you don’t need much room in your living room or wherever you’re going to use it. That was a bit of a concern of mine, as I have a small living room, but it’s totally fine.

When you get on the Wii Fit and start it up, the first thing it’ll do for you is a body test. Tell it your height and the weight of your clothing, and it’ll do a BMI test for you, weigh you and do a centre of gravity type test, and give you your Wii Fit age. Weight and BMI are the things I’m most interested in – posture and your centre of gravity seem to be a big thing on Wii Fit, but I’m not sure about that, it is a bit annoying that emphasis sometimes.

Do your body test every time you use Wii Fit, and you’ll be able to see how you are progressing in terms of losing weight, your BMI and your centre of gravity.

Exercising

Once you’ve done your body test, you are left to your own devices to pick what exercises you want to do. And that’s one of the main down-falls of Wii Fit. I thought you might be able to tell the software what you want to get from it, and it would build you a routine, but it can’t and won’t do that. You pick and choose whatever exercises you want, although you can set yourself goals such as losing X amount of weight or lowering your BMI. In addition, it is completely up to you how many reps / how long you exercise for each time you use Wii Fit. So for example, say you’ve been doing 6 press-ups a day in one of the exercises for 10 weeks, you can still keep carrying on doing that – additional amounts of reps are unlocked after you get good at doing exercises, but it’s up to you to motivate yourself to move up to the next limit of reps.

There are three types of main exercises built into Wii Fit:

• Yoga (above)  – here, a trainer shows you how to do different yoga poses and actions. They’re easy to follow, but be warned, you will definitely feel the effects of this in a few days if you’re not used to it! There are a wide range of different routines here, focussing on different parts of the body, such as your waist, thighs etc. Your performance here will be measured by how well you keep in your “centre of gravity” – shown by a yellow area on screen. You’re represented by a red dot, and your aim is whilst doing the exercise to stay inside the yellow area. It’s definitely harder than it looks, but this does seem to help ensure you do the exercises properly and aren’t straining your body. The trainer will also give you encouragement and tell you when you’re going too fast.
• Muscle Workouts – again, you select the workouts you want to do, and the trainer from the Yoga section shows you how to do them. These include exercises such as jacknives (press-ups, but where your feet rest on the balance board and then you form a V shape) and press ups (where you place your hands on the Wii Fit). These were the two exercises I was probably most reluctant (and therefore most needworthy of doing) about, so I was pleased they were on the Wii Fit. These workouts all seem to work as well, given the aches and pains I’m experiencing at the moment!
• Aerobic Exercises – these are a number of different games almost which aim to get you sweating and burning fat. Probably the most famous one is the hula hoop twists routine, shown below

• This looks deceptively easy. It’s not. Think about swivelling your hips constantly for 6 minutes, (the most I’ve got to so far is 700 hip twirls in that time) and you can imagine it’s easy to get a sweat on with that. Other exercises in this section include jogging – where a little character runs in front of you and with the Wiimote in your pocket (and without using the balance board) you both jog around a scenic park. What’s nice is that you have a couple of Miis set up on your Wii, you can see them jog past you (or fall over in front of you as my little sis did yesterday). Two other exercises in this section are Step Routines and Rhythm Boxing. Once you’ve got pretty good at them, again the time you can spend doing them increases, but you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to (not a good thing if you’re easily led!)
• Finally there are some novelty balance games, like slalom-skiing and being dressed as a penguin and trying to catch fish – by leaning over one way or the other. These are just fun little additions, so I kind of use them to reward myself after using a workout.

So is it worth it?

One thing’s for sure – Wii Fit isn’t going to get you fit unless you work at it. It’s too early to say if it’s worked in terms of firming me up, as I’ve only had it two weeks, but it feels like something is being firmed!

You will need to dedicate probably about half an hour a day to using it, and you will need to motivate yourself to move up to the higher number of reps / longer times at aerobic exercises.

+ves -   you don’t need any special equipment apart from what comes with Wii Fit.

you can do it in your (even relatively small living room)

the exercises are not just novelties – they could work provided you put the effort in

it’s cheaper than a gym membership

-ves -   it won’t build a routine for you

it won’t tell you what exercises to do based on your needs

you will need to get into the habit of using it regularly – it’s an expensive piece of furniture just to have lying around

My conclusion is that it’s money not bad spent for £70, particularly if you don’t want to join a gym. That is if you can get your hands on one (I got mine in an HMV, Amazon only ever seem to have stock through third parties). Although I’m a member of one, I use it just for going swimming, and I can’t be bothered going to the gym just before or after I go swimming, but I can be bothered doing more exercise by the time I get home before I cook dinner. If you want to get fit, it’s a good, fun way to do it, and more fitness titles will be coming out later this year for the Wii which will make use of the balance board. Built it into part of your daily routine, and hopefully you’ll see some benefits!

Mac users have been able to stream video from the BBC’s iPlayer service for a while now – nearly a year I think, but now you can download video as well, and keep it for 30 days before it expires. The BBC has launched a new version of the iPlayer desktop manager, which you can get here.

I’ve downloaded it out of curiosity, but will probably stick to using the iPlayer most on my TV through my Virgin Media box. It does drive me insane though that it takes about two minutes for the box to respond after pressing a button on my remote.

Download to your heart’s content!

Post updated at the end!

I have Tivo – if you’re not familiar with it, it was an early version of a Sky+ box which launched in the UK about five or six years ago. The main difference between Tivo and a Sky+ box is that Tivo learns over time what kind of programmes you like and will record suggestions according to your tastes.

That to me has been brilliant – even though the hard drive is only 40GB, it’s kept me using Tivo as boxes like Sky+ and Virgin Media’s V+ box have come out. If I’d watched all the programmes I’d series linked or selected to record, I’d just go through the selections until I found something I wanted to watch.

Tivo pulled out of the UK about a year or so after launch, as it seemed like the idea was just too ahead of its time for UK consumers. They’ve continued to supply EPGs to Tivo boxes though, so they’ve still been functioning 100%. Until recently.

In August, my Tivo stopped recording suggested programmes. That was fine, as I’d been on holiday and had loads of stuff to catch up on anyway, but this week I was ready to start viewing suggested programmes again. (Erm usually stuff like The FBI Files, Cold Case Files, Judge Judy – you get my drift). But suggestions have never returned.

And, it appears they never will. An update with programme IDs means they now have 14 numbers, which UK Tivo boxes can’t understand, so they now can’t record suggestions. And they’re not going to fix it for UK boxes (or can’t). This sucks big time. And no, you can’t buy a Tivo box in the US and bring it back here either, as it won’t work. Even though they have super duper versions that can be controlled over the Internet, connect to YouTube etc.

So I’m stuck paying £10 a month now for what is basically just a hard disk recorder with no added Tivo benefits. I’m not sure what I’ll do now – but I really miss my suggestions. What I really want as well is a brand new Tivo box with all the US features, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to launch again anytime here soon (although they have recently launched in Australia).

Update: Well thank goodness, some people did a lot of hard work and suggestions are now working again. Hooray! Now all we need is a new Tivo box that can handle HD! But this’ll do great in the meantime, I’m glad my suggestions are back!

After a bit of a crazy Thursday morning, hanging out at Buckingham Palace, I had a bit of a crazy Thursday night. I went out with my mate Christine and a couple of other people to a Japanese restaurant in Soho called Inamo. I really love Japanese food, so was looking forward to it anyway, but Inamo is a restaurant with a difference.

Basically, there are no physical menus. You order by expanding symbols on the table using your fingers, and after a picture preview of your meal comes up on your tablecloth, you hit the order button, and the food arrives pretty promptly. That’s also how you order your drinks and you can even use your table to order a taxi home! It’s pretty neat. The food was nice too.

After Inamo, we went on to Lucky Voice, which is someplace I’ve always fancied visiting after reading about it a couple of years ago. Basically, again it’s in Soho (but with branches elsewhere), and has a load of private karaoke booths. So we all slotted into one and sang the night away. I did feel a bit sorry for the poor waitress though having to deal with everyone in the booths who are probably as hammered as I was.

Anyway, a Japanese inspired evening if ever there was one, and it was really cool, I had a good time. Although I was not feeling very good the next day. In fact at one point I thought I was actually dying.

Ok I’m a bit behind with this, but basically if you are in the habit of sending drunk e-mails that you later regret, and are a Gmail user, fear no more, with the introduction of Mail Goggles from Google.

It asks you to perform some sums before you can send your e-mail, hence avoiding the crushing feeling I’m all too familiar with after waking up the next morning after a night out. 

Now I’m not in the habit of sending drunken e-mails, but if I could find something like this to avoid tipsy texting and facebook messaging, I reckon I’d have found nirvana (or something like that anyway.)

Via Neatorama

If you’re like me, you’ll use an image editing application quite a lot – from removing red-eye from party photographs to cropping an image, rotating it or putting a border on it for your blog and so on.

It’s sometimes frustrating though, say if you’re at work and need to alter an image quickly or away from home without a laptop or your own computer. No more! Although there are other online imaging editors out there, Photoshop Express which launched last week seems to do a pretty good job, and has a thorough (though basic) feature set. It also looks pretty good.

It’s meant to be currently available in the US only though I had no problems setting up an account. You get 2GB storage free for your images as well.

Remember the mixtape? Hours spent crafting a cassette with tunes from the radio for a mate or girlfriend back in the days? Well new technology means the mixtape ain’t necessarily dead.

There’s the USB version – pictured above – which is pretty neat, and which allows you to hand a cassette-shaped mix over to someone you want to hear that perfect playlist of angst ridden songs (well I guess that last bit depends on who you’re handing it to).

Or there’s the online version – Muxtape.com – which allows you to upload one playlist worth of songs and listen to others’. That’s pretty neat too.

Not sure either of those are as good as the original version, but at least the USB version allows you to scribble notes on the outside.

Here is a list of things which have me peeved of late….

• my iPhone is dead. Whilst in Austin, I left it on the bed beside a bottle of this sweet sickly sugary sh*t they were giving away free, the bottle cap wasn’t on properly, and I turned round 5 minutes later to find my iPhone floating in a puddle of juice. It is costing me £166 to get repaired, and I feel like my arm has been cut off. Or something.
• my tonsilitis is back with a vengeance
• i haven’t been swimming for like three weeks now (pool closed here / no pool in Austin / too busy doing stupid 10 hour days at work) and feel unfit and like I am the size of a house
• i send a text asking someone if they got anything nice on Valentine’s Day – get a response, and then text back confessing… no response back

All these things have me pissed off really….. anyway, in other news….

….we all went out for Leah and Dave’s birthday on Saturday night. Annoyingly, the bars closed at 12 because of Easter Sunday, so there’s something else for me to moan about while I’m in a moaning mood.