Steve Litchfield

So YouTube has set up revenue sharing for approved contributors. Great. And they've got a whole heap of understandable restrictions to do with copyright, to make absolutely sure that you're not profiting from someone else's work. So you upload a video (such as my Smartphones Show ) and apply for it to be approved for revenue sharing. So far so good. But then they find some tiny piece of your video that might, possibly, potentially be a copyright problem. Does YouTube: a) Deny the request, email you to tell you what the problem was (in case you wanted to cut the offending word/section out) and invite you to reapply later on? OR b) Deny the request, delete the entire video from YouTube and put blocks in place to stop you re-uploading it for normal viewing? Yep, you guessed it, b) Which sucks, big time. I don't mind the powers that be getting picky over copyright and saying that I can't earn a few cents from it, but deleting the video so that people can't watch it ...

Staggering to watch my daughter and her friend playing for a morning. With two laptops, broadband and mobile phones, they were all set and had enormous fun. But what on earth did the previous generation do? I'm guessing books and Barbie dolls and scooters. Hmm... must get all those out, especially over the summer, else my daughter will turn into a prize geek like me 8-)

So I'm mid-40s and in dire need of getting fitter, if I'm to be mobile into my 50s and 60s.... Enter Nokia Sports Tracker , which runs on any S60 smartphone. On my E90, with built-in GPS, I just activate it when leaving the house for a fast walk and leave it going. When I get back to the house, I've got every stat imaginable (I'm walking at 9 minutes per km - is that good?) and a nice KML file to import directly into Google Earth. And Sports Tracker continues to log my progress over the weeks and months. Recommended. As to whether I'll keep it up - ask me again in 2 months!

OK, so I gave in to my daughter and bought a Nintendo Wii. And then discovered that it's not a games console. Well, it is, but it's also a full web browser, including YouTube video (on your TV!), Internet radio, etc. Plus it's a good way of getting exercise - you just try the boxing game that comes with it! More on this theme over at my new Nintendo Power Tips page.

Carbon what? Yes, I know it sounds strange. But fear not, go and download Tear Fund's excellent leaflet: http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/Churches/Carbon%20Fast.pdf (aimed at families). Judging from the careless attitude of my own daughter to energy, I can't emphasise teaching green principles to the upcoming generation enough. Make sure your kids read though the leaflet and implement as much as you can etc.

A couple of years back we (our family) had annual passes for Legoland Windsor . A great time was had by all for the year, but then Legoland got taken over by Merlin and the prices got hijacked. Thankfully sanity's been restored now and annual pass prices are back to 'visit twice and you break even' levels. Recommended!

I was always terrified of Outlook - it seemed a monstrosity of a program to carry out the functions it did - far too many settings and functions and they often got in the way. I used it because it was the only thing to reliably sync to my phones. But then I started to sync to 'the cloud' (GooSync/Google) and I've been migrating my working environment online ever since. As a result, I only fire up Outlook every once in a while, to check on some old data. But get this - even after 'File > Exit'ing Outlook, part of it still hangs around, auto-checking for new emails and grabbing them for itself! "I'VE CLOSED YOU DOWN, YOU STUPID PROGRAM" I shout, to no avail. I end up having to reboot in order to stop the auto-check behaviour. Application? Seems more like a virus to me.... mutter, mutter....

Wow. A reported $44 BILLION ?? How on earth do companies a) come up with these valuations and b) afford the price in the first place. I knew Microsoft were rich, but this sort of price is insane. And for what? Surely they already have everything that Yahoo has got in their tech-bank, and more? Well, maybe not Flickr, surely the best purchase Yahoo! ever made.... But even so.... This won't get them level with Google, it will simply cheese off existing Yahoo! users, who will then defect to Google and make the situation even worse for Microsoft. My advice: don't do it. Don't even think about it.

Ah, I just found out about Apple's new 'How to' videos. As a PC die-hard (by history, not necessarily by choice), I've often wondered just how one is supposed to 'use' a Mac. I've tried a few times in PC World and got into trouble. But credit to Apple for videos like this - I think a little light just went on in the back of my head....

Now this is taking a hobby to the extreme - though if I were a space agency then I'd be knocking on this kid's door to sign him up. Click through to see details of the Halo 2 project , in which for a few hundred dollars a young man launches a balloon to outer space and back, taking pictures and videos along the way.

Ah yes, if you hadn't already realised, I'm also in a 'mid life crisis' / 'forty-somethings' rock band. Shed Music 's the name, here's a clip of us live, playing a Neil Young cover version this week, at Reading's 3Bs venue:

Aha! I'd been putting off putting many of my own documents online in Google Documents, not because the software wasn't up to the job of editing them, but because I couldn't bear the hassle of uploading them one by one. A Google developer has now put up a sample application demoing the Documents API - DocList Uploader , that does exactly what I needed. Just drag and drop all my bits into the window and bang, they're all on Google. Very, very cool, and hopefully just the start of more Documents functionality.

Alright, a slightly sensationalist headline, but I thought I'd share my experience of the Legoland theme parks and my own family... When my daughter was 4, we went for the first time and she absolutely loved it. So much so that we plumped up for an annual pass for all of us and we then went about 10 times in the year (hey, we live only 15 miles from a park!) in which she went from 5 to 6 years old. Again she loved it, but the novelty was starting to wear a little thin by the end. Since then, we haven't been and she doesn't miss it very much. The thing is, Legoland suits all different age ranges but in specific striations, if I'm allowed to use that word. Or perhaps 'niches'. For the 4 to 6 year old girl, there's plenty to keep them amused that doesn't require huge queueing. For the 12 to 20 year old teenage girl, the more sensational rides will be more attractive and they'll have the patience to queue for them. Yet for boys, Legoland works from 4 to...

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble (and Facebook's valuation) but despite the great idea of a social network with no glitzy graphics or annoying soundtracks or immense animated gifs (MySpace, Bebo, etc.) Facebook has itself succumbed to 'utter rubbish'. I've no interest whatsoever in knowing the minutae and trivia of 100s of my contacts who I normally only speak to once in a blue moon, let alone be poked, or invited to meaningless online gift exchanges or games. If I were Facebook's founders, I'd have sold the site last summer at Facebook's peak. It's only going to plummet from here....