Everyone is going to love these: push ringers. MobileTechNews - Emotive announces "Push Ringer" It means you get to choose the sound your phone makes when you ring someone, instead of the old-fashioned way of choosing the sound your phone makes when they ring you. Want them urgently? Send a screaming ring. Want to charm them? Send something from your iTunes.

How brilliantly, brilliantly anti-social. Wish I thought of it. Unfortunately, the press release looks like typical tech sector hype around something that doesn't really exist and won't work. How is everyone's phone going to be compatible with the push technology?

Meanwhile, in other new product news, a wine company hits on the idea of putting a picture on the label of the food that goes with the wine.

Gasp. You're meant to have food with wine? Who knew?

This concept plays on the insecurity people have about wine snobbery. It's true some flavours go together sensationally. But the wine industry should really be highlighting the way you can have whatever you like - anything can go with anything you want! The rest is just wine snobbery, and wine snobbery exists so that people can express their social identification through their drinking habits. When you think about it, it's a very queer way to make a statement about yourself.

I am going to experiment with this, by sampling a range of wines for the sole purpose, of course, of proving my point.

This thing is gorgeous.



Imagine getting one of those under you and riding with the wind in your hair...

Yeah baby, don't tell yo mama, you know you want to.

Okay so I've already filled the house with things that make noise. But this looks edible.

The sound is like a piece of crystal just after it's been taken from the dishwasher and polished - clear, warm and rich. As you turn it, it glints. Dimensions and experiences you haven't seen are caught in its highlights.

Josie gave me a set of irhythm ipod speakers for my birthday. They're small and the unit is a bit smaller than your standard issue radio/cassette boombox. The way its little speakers can fill a room with sound though, that's a treasure. It reminds me of a crisp Sansui box I used to own, which had a hopeless burned out amp and cheap wiring, but it came with the most amazing set of crisp cherry wood woofers. I made a mistake when I got rid of the speakers, even though they were black.

It's hard to describe warm, vibrant sound. There is a resonant, warm and complete feeling that makes the experience different to regular sound - but you don't get it until you listen to one along side the other. Otherwise it's like trying to explain continental cold to someone from Brisbane.

Anyway, the irhythm rocks. It even plays Josie's ipod shuffle so it's hard to believe that little ciggie lighter-sized case can belt out so much depth of quality.

Beautiful as the rich sound of the irhythm is, it left with me a dilemma because i still don't have decent computer speakers. The speakers on the imac just don't cut it for movies and music. One possibility was to move my gorgeous Harmon Kardon sound sticks from the living area to my computer.

But they produce definitively the best sound I've ever made on an amateur system. That sub woofer is a breakthrough. It produces a bass wave like a jello that floats up and slides down into your ears - into your blood! - as the complete note that left the fingertips of the composer.

So they stay and the irhythm becomes my portable. That called for new computer speakers. I had my eye on some beautiful Bose speakers but they turned out to be not released here yet and they are hideously expensive.

Then I found some wild Klipsch speakers.



Check out those puppies.

I never heard of Klipsch speakers but I read reviews saying the Klipsch has sound in the ball park of Bose and Onkyo so there was my birthday present for myself right there.

They are not hugely powerful - something like 10 watts out of each -- but the subwoofer is big enough to shake the stone walls. There are some small cars in Paris and I reckon some of the tinier models could use the subwoofer for a parking garage.

The little speakers are built with retro forties styling like the engine of a spitfire. It's a contrast - a groovy one - to the clean minimalist seventies glistening white of my imac.

They pump out a signal that is so clear unfortunately it collects every flaw in the source material. I downloaded Carmina Burana from the iTunes store - a pre-1972 production and sadly there is tape hiss all over it that isn't there on the modern recordings. So I tried Carla Bruni, whose fabric voice slid down my neck like a tongue as sharp as a knife. It's a sound that makes you want to wake someone up in the middle of the night with a phone call. The sound of a cottage by the sea on a summers day. Ah well.

The subwoofer has so much boom that it munges the music unless it's turned way down. It's possible the Klipsch is in the top end of speakers - it's won enough awards it turns out -- but my source gear and listening environment are nowhere near the standard where I could find out.

So this was a birthday for my ears. This stuff is filling every room.

Of the world's ten most expensive cars, why is it that all but one - the Mercedes SLR McLaren - got smacked with the ugly stick?

They're each like a motorised Princess Anne. They're Hillary Clinton on wheels. They fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

The Pagani Zonda maybe is not the worst, but it's no Boticelli is it? It's no Bentley GT convertible nor Italian at all.

Some of these are brilliant. Some aren't. A few are just ewww.

(Via we can't all be perfect).

Anawhata beach, Auckland, mid-winter, where we swam in the nick because there was no else on the beach. Cost to spend a day: $0.


Rimini, Italy, where my grandfather left nearly a hundred and twenty years ago. The view from our hotel room:

You can't quite make out the oil rigs just off the beach. Cost to spend a day: €15.

I wonder why the old fella left?

I was writing to a friend tonight and Martha Davis and the Motels were on the itunes and I was just thinking that song may be almost as close to perfect as any.

It reminded me I saw this documentary on MTV a little while back. It was part of a series where they put bands back together, and this one I saw featured the Motels. Martha Davis and the Motels. Josie swore she had never heard Total Control. So I played it and I got weepy and she still hadn't heard it.

Martha Davis now is old and big, a bit dinged up. But unbelievably charismatic. That song was forever associated for me with sixth form and now it is forever associated with walking along rue Vernier. I have work to do on 'forever'.

Were Daniel Barnes not an all-round good guy, he would deserve a good spanking for putting it in a Subaru ad, even if the ad is for the smartest car you can buy.

Remind me again, the coldest month in Wellington is...August, isn't it?

If you need to get hold of us at all, we'll be here:



Except for when we're in Florence or Rome.

The Mille Miglia Coupè Concept.



Not sure about the grille - pix at eurocar.

When Josie went to Finland last year she found these mega-hip, ultra-retro Soviet realist mini posters.



More here.

Ferrari.

Invest in these:


Ah, yes.

How beautiful is this?

Alfa Romeo 8C. Put me down for one.