Archive for August 15th, 2012

15
Aug
12

Matthew Mole WIns The Get Out Of The Garage Competition

matthew-mole-photo-get-out-of-the-garageLadies and Gentlemen, the Converse “Get Out Of The Garage Competition” has officially come to an end and the winner, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, is Matthew Mole!

Matthew will play at London’s 100 Club on Oxford Street, which has seen some EPIC acts take to the stage in the 70 years it’s been open.

I have to be completely frank at this point and say that though there’s no denying Matthew has a lot of talent and heart and is a great song-writer, he wasn’t my first choice to win it.

Still though, congrats to the guy. He blew everyone out of the water with his track “You And Your Crown” which goes a little something.

Like this:

 

 

I think it’s a pretty rad little ditty, but it’s no secret that my favourites to win this were The Kiffness.

I mean Matthew is cool and all, but does he have a track that can stand up to “Ra Ba Do Ba Day”?

 

 

Exactly. I rest my case.

Just try get that song out of your mind. Impossible.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get my greasy mitts on a few songs from Matthew’s set when he plays next month to share with you crazy cats.

Until then, well done Matthew, go kick some ass over there and come back with a fat recording contract and some belter groupies.

Atta boy Winking smile

-ST

15
Aug
12

Nokia Lumia 900 First Impressions

nokia-lumia-900A couple of months ago I wrote a series of reviews about the Nokia 800 which, if you want to kill a good 20 mins, you can read here, here, here and here.

I quickly became inhumanly attached to the Lumia 800 and at the end of the review period, I felt like I was losing a limb when I had to return it.

So when the kind folks at Nokia contacted me about reviewing the Lumia 900, I jumped at the opportunity to sink my teeth into this new addition to the Nokia Windows Phone family.

This review is just going to touch on my first impressions setting up and using the phone, I’ll get into more detail over the next few weeks.

The first thing that struck me about the Lumia 900 is how impressively huge it is.

 

 

If you compare the phone size wise to the Lumia 800, the Lumia 900 is 127.8 x 68.5mm where as the Lumia 800 is 116.5 x 61.2mm. So the Lumia 900 is basically a centimetre taller and half a centimetre wider than its predecessor.

Doesn’t sound like much, but have a look at the two in a side-by-side comparison and the difference is massive.

 

 

It’s a far cry from a Galaxy Note, but I must admit when I first saw how much bigger it is compared to the Lumia 800, I thought they may have taken things a bit far.

However, after a couple of days of use I quickly got used to the increased screen size and found that it makes things like browsing (which was an issue with me on the Lumia 800) and basic menu and app navigation pretty slick.

Also, viewing pictures and videos is a whole other experience with this phone. The 480 x 800 pixel screen means images are crisp and clear and the few experiments I’ve done so far with streaming video from YouTube have produced some impressive results thanks to the device’s download speeds which are nearly 2x faster than the Lumia 800.

 

 

There are a shiteload of similarities between the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 900 though so a lot of the stuff I covered in my Lumia 800 review will apply to the Lumia 900, but the longer I use this phone, the more subtle differences I pick up.

At this stage, I’d say that the Lumia 900 is more suited for people who want a smart phone that browses like a demon, handles multimedia content with ease and streamlines all your email and social media accounts so that communicating with your contacts as easy as falling off a piece of cake.

I’ll post more thoughts on this phone next week, but needless to say my initial impression has been very positive, but let’s see how the Lumia 900 holds up once I start seeing what this bad boy is really capable of.

-ST