Sunday, May 31, 2009

Connections From Ibiza

The last few days we spent time with a good friend David Currey in his and his partner Gary Hodge’s wonderful villa on the lively island of Ibiza. Hence the lack of recent posts!

What stuck us was how a villa half way up an island in the middle of the Mediterranean was better connected than we are in London and how global telecommunications are.

For instance we spoke about the success of the BBC iPlayer and then watched last week’s Apprentice that we missed. How can you connect to iPlayer outside the UK? The mobile reception was patchy but we then made a call back to the UK to a friend over his land line at UK rates using a UK number. All day Dave was receiving UK calls ordering Gary’s paintings and the other parties thought they were ringing a UK number. We could watch TV from around the world and Hulu from the US, even though its restricted to the US today! Of course he now is converted to Spotify. For business and personal reasons they also have multi currency accounts so can even pay many ways and the list goes on.

So before people tell you that territorial restrictions can be enforced we can reliably tell you how easy it is to break them.

Thanks for a great break Dave and if you want to see Gary’s wildlife and award winning art

1 comment:

Nick Clayton said...

Hi Martyn

I'm another example of how the connected world works. We met you in Ibiza with Dave at the Basement Jaxx gig on Friday. This blog showed up in my email on Monday morning as I have 'Ibiza' running as a Google alert.

I am at least partly responsible for Dave and Gary being so connected, having recommended Vonage for their phone with a UK number and showing them how to circumvent the regional restrictions on iPlayer. (I've been writing about technology for years including a spell as technology editor for The Scotsman.)

The funny thing is that the technology that's got me most excited in recent years is e-ink. That was even before I moved to Ibiza, but here it could be the perfect technology.

We might be well-connected here, but the postal service is slow, particularly in the summer when the population more than trebles. So I can order a book instantly then wait two weeks for it to come. It's not exactly instant gratification.

The other thing is I'm now writing in a darkened room which is a waste of Ibiza sunshine. But I can't read my screen outside. What I always thought I wanted was an e-reader with a tablet PC form factor so I could type and annotate text as well as read it. That was before I saw your posting about the dual-nature displays. I hadn't even thought...

Anyway I'm supposed to finish writing a lengthy article this morning so I'd better get on. Great to meet and keep in touch.