#“Monty Python: The Holy Book of Days - Just buy the damned thing, it’s wonderful”

I’m not quite sure how to explain this.

If you (like me) have all Three Volumes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus, All the Words” then I think you may have to buy yourself an iPad just for this.

It’s an interactive day-by-day guide to the creation of The Holy Grail. Which makes it sound like some Philips CD-i thing from 1988. But it’s much much worse (i.e. better).

Every little possible titbit is included and a huge amount of it has never been made public before. There is a very funny intro from John Cleese on how it has taken him decades to forget the horror of making the movie and now it’s all come flooding back.

There is some syncronisation thingy to internet-enabled Blu-Ray players which means I’m going to have to buy the bloody Blue-Ray now too.

Only a fiver. If they make one for Life of Brian, I’ll pay whatever they ask for.

Any chance we can have on Android too?

#“The bin is all it’s good for now”

#“Quick Google+, Now’s Your Chance, Facebook is Down”

Ah blast, it’s not 2007 and this isn’t Jaiku vs Twitter.

Or maybe Apple bought them and they are re-branding to iFacebook for today’s iPad Quad-Cam Turbo launch.

Blogpost coming soon on how LinkedIn is the one most in danger from Google+. I’m seeing tons of business activity there. More on this later.

#“Fiiiiinnnnnally, the first proper leaked pictures of the iPad 3”

Next up, “Top Ten Ways You Can Use That Steaming Pile of Garbage iPad 2 as a Food Tray”

#“This is how to sell products - DollarShaveClub.com”

Spotted this on PandoDaily (great piece by Sarah). Love this video for Dollar Shave Club.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI

My version of that, over this side of the pond, is to use King of Shaves blades and razors.

#“MIT App Inventor Open Beta Preview”

For the past two months, we have been conducting a closed test of the system for an increasing number of testers, and weve currently scaled to 5000 testers. Today, were taking the next step, and opening the MIT App Inventor service to everyone. All you will need is a Google ID for log-in (for example, a Gmail account).

Really happy for the MIT team, they’ve done a great job getting App Inventor moved whilst nailing a bunch of annoying bugs. It now works on Internet Explorer too, which was a major pain point for us in our kids’ school.

If you want a gentle introduction to programming and mobile Apps, whether you are an adult or kid, I can’t recommend App Inventor highly enough.

#“BBC iPlayer Global on iPad - Nice App if you need it”

I was contacted recently by a Social Media Agency working on the BBC iPlayer Global project. They were interested in my thoughts on the iPlayer and very kindly gave me a month free on the iPad.

As regular readers know, I seem to spend more time trying to create the perfect TV viewing setup than actually watching the telly, so of course I was interested in trying it out.

iPlayer Global is the BBC’s very welcome move to make their programming available online globally. As with many of these services, it has free shows and a premium version with monthly 6.99 sub.

One thing I didn’t realise initially is that it is iPad only. Whilst I totally understand that, it really needs to get on as many platforms as possible quickly. The issue isn’t the lack of iPad users, it’s that even those who own one don’t necessarily always want to watch TV on one. (I see it is actually now available for iPhone too. Same comment applies tho).

iPlayer need to be like Netflix and be available on everything. I’m very close to buying a $49 Roku box which would be perfect for it.

Over the few weeks I used the App several times and was highly impressed with the technical delivery of the product. The UI is very slick and it was easy to find and play shows. Social Sharing is a smidge unintuitive but that’s just nit-picking. I also had very few streaming problems unlike that steaming pile of crap that is the Sky iPad App.

However its killer feature is the fact that you can download for playback later. This makes it perfect for travelling. It isimpossibleto stream anything on train journeys inIrelandso this is a godsend.

Having said that, I don’t think Ireland is a particularly appropriate market. We can all get all of the BBC channels on Freesat, Sky and even on Freeview in the border counties. We can PVR them and sideload them onto mobile devices. Many of the popular shows are re-broadcast by RTE etc. I would be very surprised if more than a tiny percentage of people here sign up for it. Maybe those who travel a lot?

Thinking outside of Ireland, I can imagine a huge audience of people who either love individual BBC shows or have strong ties to the UK e.g. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. Obviously the strength of BBC America means it’ll be a big hit over there.

Of course it suffers from the same annoyance as Netflix where you can get only certain shows or older seasons of certain shows. All to keep the BBC’s existing distribution partners happy everywhere.Will we ever see a time where every show is available to everyone globally simultaneously based on how much they are willing to pay? Let’s keep fighting to make that happen.

Overall, iPlayer Global is a winner. Will I sign up for a sub in West Cork? No, but if I move to Half Moon Bay, I’ll sign up right away.

#“Poll - Do you have an LCD/Plasma TV with HDMI?”

Just to be sure I’m not living in a middle-class fantasyland, it’d be great to get as many people from as many backgrounds as possible to answer this poll. I know I know, if you are on Facebook/Twitter, it’s already skewing it badly, but let’s give it a go.

Basically I want to confirm that Raspberry Pi with its HDMI video output is inclusive for the majority of people in UK/Ireland. Yes, it has Composite-out too but you’d go blind trying to use that for anything except watching videos.

Interesting sidenote - Radionics now showing an ad on Google for it when you search for Raspberry Pi. Nice one.

[polldaddy poll=“6001996”]

#“Lego should partner with Raspberry Pi and App Inventor”

I’ve written before about how Lego Mindstorms is ridiculously overpriced. Whilst the intent was probably good, it is so far from the brilliance of cheap educational plastic blocks that they need to start again.

I love the idea of building robotics kits and teaching kids about basic programming in the process. In theory I’m also a big fan of MIT App Inventor having Mindstorms integration but the problem is price. The kids who could benefit most from the opportunities presented by these learning tools are the ones least likely to be able to afford them.

But now we have Raspberry Pi. Something most people, even in a recession, can afford.

Raspberry Pi + Mindstorms Control Logic + App Inventor for 50. Change education forever. Do it.

#“My Sexy New iPad Bag”

I pondered Prada or Targus, but in the end, I went with this beauty. All the better for the stickers on the back too. 100% guaranteed not to get stolen.