Amazon Vine

Twisty, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Completely out of the blue yesterday I got an invite to join the Amazon Vine programme. With Vine, Amazon will ship me three pre-order items a month to review. As long as I keep reviewing I keep getting free stuff to review. I assume it will be books, CDs and DVDs as those were the questions I had to fill in on my invitation form.

Amazon's web site says:

Amazon Vine™ is a program that enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews. Amazon provides Amazon Vine™ members with free copies of products that have been submitted to the program by vendors. Amazon does not influence the opinions of Amazon Vine™ members, nor do we modify or edit their reviews.

I assume that I got an invite because I preorder stuff and am a Top 500 reviewer on the UK site.

I must admit that I have not reviewed anything for over 2 years because it ended up being too hard. I would spend 20 minutes writing a review and then if you were lucky they posted it. If you were unlucky then they would not. You can chase them but they just send back a form email saying that the review did not meet the guidelines, of which there are many! Because the review was filled in on a web form then you did not get a copy of what you wrote. I therefore started writing the reviews in Word and then pasted them into the form. At least then I got spell checking!

Hopefully they have improved the process now, or maybe there will be a Vine forum that I can post my issues to. Maybe because of the last part of the Amazon statement ("nor do we modify or edit their reviews") they just allow reviews through without approval (unlikely!).

I'll keep you posted.

My search is over...

My search is over..., originally uploaded by xrrr.

Nine days after being let down by Amazon.co.uk I managed to pick up the last but one iPod Touch today from the Regent Street Apple Store in London.

I called at about 14.30 (after being on hold for 20 mins) and they said they had "a few" left and could not reserve one for me. I had to play a game of "Play Your Cards Right" with the guy on the phone because he would not give me an exact number.

Anyway, my last meeting over ran so at about 17:00 I rushed over to Regent Street in a taxi and managed to get the penultimate 16GB model.

It is still synching with iTunes but will post some images when it has finished...

*Edit*
Here are some pics

iPod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

iPod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

iPod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

iPod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

ipod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

ipod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

ipod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

ipod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

ipod Touch, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Pictobrowser

I just found this great picture viewer linked to on FlickrBits.com. I have set it up to look at my "20 most interesting" Flickr Set.

To get it yourself click the "info" button in the bottom right and follow the instructions.

The SAS Experience

Copenhagen, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Just come back from a short work trip to Copenhagen. Nice place, would like to go again for a weekend as I only managed a few hours walk around town with everything closed.

I flew with SAS, very pleasant experience - took literally 90 seconds to check in and drop my bag off at Heathrow (compared to 60 minute queue on my last trip to the US). Even security was fast. So I was sat in the departure lounge 15 minutes after stepping out of the taxi and that included queuing at the currency exchange place.

I had chosen a seat the night before via the SAS website so had managed to snaffle an exit row. I got chatting to the woman next to me who turned out to be a pro golfer who flies around Europe every Tuesday and plays golf Weds-Sat pretty much every week. Sounds a bit like hard work to me!

SAS have a great feature that showed the view from the cockpit on the LCD panels throughout the plane so you can see the runway. It then switches to a looking down shot once you take off. Very good.

To keep up the SAS Experience I stayed at the Radisson SAS Scandanavia hotel. Free broadband! What a fresh of breath air!

God Bless Free Internet, originally uploaded by xrrr.

I had time to have a few hours walking round town. I did not see much as it was about 20 mins to the city centre and everything was closed or closing. The Danish like to cycle. Apparently the Danish will cycle on average 3km every day of their life. That is a lot of peddling.

Copenhagen Parking, originally uploaded by xrrr.

I could not find a restaurant that appealed (McDonalds, Hard Rock Cafe, 'English Pub' were my options). I think that is because my American colleague had suggested where I look for food rather than Copenhagen is a chain store nightmare. So I ate back at the hotel. With nothing else to do I explored some of the features of my camera, took a few long exposures with the camera rather delicately balanced out of my 23rd floor window (it opened wide enough to get the camera out) it slipped off the window ledge a few times so it was a good job I had the strap securely wrapped round my neck!

I ended up with a few I liked:

Copenhagen by Night, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Copenhagen by Night, originally uploaded by xrrr.

I had an early start and a 90 minute customer presentation to do the next morning so I was gutted that I did not have time to visit the Copenhagen Casino that was in the basement of my hotel. Maybe next time :-)

If you visit Copenhagen, make sure you buy a pipe. I would have but would not have had much use for it :-)

Copenhagen, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Rocketship Journey

Reach for the Stars, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Whilst trying to get the Google Earth flight sim working (which I didn't) I got distracted (as I often do) and ended up making this short, art house cinema worthy short film of my rocket trip from my back garden into the stars...