Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jan 29, 2012, 7:35 am
The 18th series of Top Gear starts on Sunday 29 January with a trip to Italy and a look at three supercars. But this series will also see the boys create a car chase, mobility scooter and visit China – a lot to cram into 7 episodes. 2012: What can we expect from Top Gear? (topgearbox.com) Top Ge...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jan 19, 2012, 3:01 am
Siri is a very useful tool if what you want to do is get to leave your phone in your pocket on a cold day and still call or text your wife. In the USA it is actually more useful in that it can search for local businesses – so you can tell Siri I’m hungry and it will find that you somewhere to e...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Nov 2, 2011, 7:42 pm
As a journalist working on everything from political stories to cat stuck up a tree stories I generally get about 20-40 minutes to spend on each. That includes research time, interview time and the time it actually takes to write it and get it subbed. Over the past two days I had a pleasure of wor...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Nov 2, 2011, 4:16 am
I know I’m not really what you would call a typical Internet user, but I might be reflective of what one might be in a few years. I am married with three children. I have an iMac, my wife has a MacBook and we both each have an iPod touch and an iPad. And we share an Apple TV, Playstation 3and Nin...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Oct 31, 2011, 7:20 pm
The BBC has been on a beta kick of late, giving the great British public a chance to have a look around a new look site before launching it. This is normally accompanied by at least one blog post, or in the case of the new homepage – two. One in the form of a technical post on the BBC Internet Bl...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Oct 8, 2011, 6:36 pm
Image via Wikipedia We are all used to using television guides, they are a fairly standard fair with a fairly standard interface that has also been translated to the web. You either get a list of channels across the top or down the side and a hour or half hour interval time list going in the other...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Oct 5, 2011, 6:02 pm
Jersey has been picked by a group of international artists as the subject for their latest “virtual paintout”. The painting project is run by American artist, Bill Guffey, who invites artists to use Google Street View as a source for inspiration. Mr Guffey sets a different location each month ...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Aug 3, 2011, 3:01 pm
I am married with three children, between us we have 17″ PC laptop, a 15″ MacBook, two iPad 2′s, a pair of samsung netbooks and a few other bits of computer tech including a ps3. Oh and we have a desktop PC. Until very recently we had always had a big desk in the corner of the living room wi...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jul 25, 2011, 5:46 pm
I started using Google+ a couple of weeks ago thanks to an invite from +Robin Morley and my first reaction was “this looks like a brilliant cross between Facebook and Twitter”. Two weeks on from that initially reaction and my feelings are still pretty much the same, however, initially where I f...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jul 7, 2011, 1:01 pm
We all like a good #tag, it is a great way of following a particular topic or joining a conversation using Twitter. The grammar of social media is a wonderful thing, Question Time became considerably more interesting when the #bbcqt meme started and Eurovision wouldn’t be Eurovision without #euro...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 17, 2011, 10:56 am
I’ve been writing blog posts on a number of topics of interest to Jersey, but also possibly of wider interest, for a while. The BBC Jersey blog is being shut down so I’m going to post some of my favourites here. St Helier is a mish-mash of building styles and ages – from the modernist front t...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - May 27, 2011, 10:52 am
Picture the scene, wife sat on the sofa watching some soap from a month ago she has recorded on Sky+. Youngest child on my iPod Touch playing games so wife can watch the soap and not that same Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs DVD – AGAIN! Older children in bedroom and kitchen doing their h...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - May 3, 2011, 1:59 pm
We’ve all had them, those long winded, wound up and bad days. If you are anything like me you will vent your frustrations in the form of a series of angry rants. In the past you’d have to keep your pointless ramblings to yourself, or annoy all the people around you – but now, thanks to socia...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Apr 27, 2011, 6:10 pm
For the last few years I’ve been interviewing bands, DJs and singers at a range of levels of success. From brilliant new local bands like The Valentines or Quick and the Dead to more established acts like Paul Weller or Biffy Clyro. I have all the interviews saved on my hard drive, some audio an...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Apr 27, 2011, 5:13 am
I havent blogged regularly for a while but I guess now that I am trying to rebuild the habit I should try to conform a litle bit. One of the modern staples of a geek blog seems to be the ‘app list’, usually for iPhone buy could be for any platform. So here is my top five apps (I can’t promis...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Apr 26, 2011, 5:36 pm
This morning I went in to my opticians because my glasses were making a creaking sound when I moved the arms. In the past I have been in because my glasses have felt odd on my face and because the nose pad has moved. I can do this because I paid an extra £30 when I brought my glasses in insurance...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Mar 11, 2011, 4:38 pm
The BBC has just started making its internal staff magazine, Ariel, available to anyone who wants it – at least the web version. It basically reports on what’s happening with the BBC – although the only page most people read is the letters page. One of the semi-regular features is My Media �...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Mar 10, 2011, 12:06 pm
We all know people who don’t see the point in “all that social media nonsense”, there is an great wine writer in my office who dismisses social media at every turn. Convincing that person to give it a try would be a pretty fruitless task – so you don’t try. But people will do anything fo...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Feb 20, 2011, 6:39 pm
Listen Mr low fare airline owner – Here is a little truth you might not have realised, but I’m sure you have – because of extra charges your airline really isn’t that low fare anymore. So how about we agree to just cut the crap, charge a reasonable fare with everything included and you stop...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Feb 18, 2011, 5:15 pm
I’m a patient guy, I can put up with a lot of crap before I get so wound up I have to say something. This comes in part from my natural British reserve and in part because I can’t be bothered to deal with arguing my case. As an example, I once went to a restaurant for a meal and sat waiting fo...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jan 6, 2011, 3:41 pm
I’ve been a smart phone user for a while now, albeit a smart phone user at the lower end of the smartphone market – HTC Tattoo right now and before that a HTC ‘insert name’ Windows Mobile phone. This was over the period of about five years. When I got the Windows Mobile phone it was a case...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Nov 12, 2010, 7:16 pm
The idea of having a large group of people create features on a range of subjects to form a ‘collective’ knowledge base is nothing new – but it is something Wikipedia made ‘mainstream’. However, before Wikipedia was a small site launched by the late great Douglas Adams, the Hitchikers Gui...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Nov 1, 2010, 6:23 pm
At work we have recently started engaging with social media more actively, but one thing this new task has brought up is the issue of grammar. Social media has a grammar all of its own but the challenge was around how much you hold the hand of the average fifty something listener. In an idea world...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Oct 5, 2010, 12:23 pm
Every day I start my working day by going through my ‘newspapers’ bookmark folder and reading what’s happening in the world. Every day there is at least one story in one of the newspapers talking about the BBC and increasingly that’s taking a negative tone. Now I’m the first to admit the...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Sep 20, 2010, 5:25 pm
I fly a few times a year from Jersey to the UK – usually with either FlyBe or BA. These are regular scheduled flights, they go from point A to point B and sometimes go via point 1 on the way. I always described them as a sort of bus service, but in reality they’re more like a coach service goi...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Sep 20, 2010, 10:49 am
OK that headline might not seem completely acurate on the surface, especially when you see several stories a day talking about something the BBC has ‘done wrong’. Just in the last day or so there has been a story about complaints from people about the new look BBC iPlayer site – which basical...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Aug 14, 2010, 4:48 pm
What do you get when you take one of the worlds greatest content creators and mix it up with best url shortener? You get bbc.in that’s what – If you head over to Bit.ly, or even through Twitter herself (got to be a women with all that gossip and bieber love in the trending topics) you’ll get ...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Aug 12, 2010, 2:19 pm
As well as my personal blog at Up Your Ego I also write a blog about Jersey Life for the BBC. When there is a cross over I’ll share those posts on here. This one is relevant – it’s an entry about covering an eco music festival and the problems you get trying to ask opinions. Cov...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jul 13, 2010, 3:58 pm
I’ve been using Android for about three months now after getting my HTC Tattoo and for the first two and a half months it basically involved trying to make it do what I want. It isn’t the greatest mobile phone in the world but it is small and has all the functionality I need from a phon...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jul 6, 2010, 4:53 pm
Even the smallest of changes to a high profile website can be a big deal, especially when that website is owned by the BBC – then any change can lead to high praise and rabbid hatred – often within the same comment thread. When the site you’re changing is the BBC News website, one...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jul 6, 2010, 10:41 am
Coming back to Jersey from England last week I came to the conclusion that flying is not exactly the most dignified mode of transport any more. In its heydey – the era of Alan Whicker and the jet set – flying was all champagne at your seat and comfort first. Even as a child I found fly...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 29, 2010, 5:10 pm
I’ve been blogging for years, in one form or another it’s probably approaching a decade since I first started writing what could be described as a blog. However, although I’ve put finger to keyboard and keyboard to blog post for nearly a decade – I have gone weeks and someti...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 24, 2010, 4:40 pm
Waiting for an upgrade to my Android phone and the delay is down to a couple of extra buttons. OK that isn’t completely true. I’ve got a HTC Tattoo and it currently runs Android 1.6. The Tattoo is a low end Android phone with a smaller screen. It’s been rumoured, somewhat surpris...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 24, 2010, 7:29 am
The first thing I did when I got my new HTC Tattoo earlier this year was open the browser and visit the BBC iPlayer site – it was great – I could watch iPlayer videos without a problem. Then I discovered BeebPlayer which made the whole process easier and much more user friendly than try...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 22, 2010, 2:30 pm
When Rupert Murdoch first announced he was putting The Times and Sunday Times behind a paywall I thought it was a rather silly idea. I was determined I would never pay for it, after all when news is available everywhere else on the web for free (or at least ad-funded) what was the point in paying. ...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 21, 2010, 6:03 am
On the run up to a new series of Top Gear the more hardcore fans loitering on the Final Gear forums start to get a little bit strange, suffering from withdrawal and desperation. OK we’re not THAT bad, we do know it’s only a TV show but there are also only so many times you can watch the...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 18, 2010, 12:44 pm
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of SeeSaw. All opinions are 100% mine. I would not take a sponsorship opportunity unless I genuinely believe in the product and have written about it before without sponsorship. Where can you find South Park, Only Fools and Horses, The IT Crowd, The ...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 18, 2010, 7:07 am
Not long ago in my first Top Gear series 15 preview post I included a video of some very embarrassing parents shouting about Top Gear as they passed the presenter in their car on the motorway. The Top Gear presenters were driving cars turned into caravans – something we’ll see in the ne...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 17, 2010, 7:32 am
I’ve had ‘the middle’ iPod in one form or another since the first iPod Mini was released in 2004. And ever since, from the very beginning of my iPod ownership life, music and speech have been fighting for dominance of the limited space. It’s always been about 70% music and ...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 15, 2010, 2:26 pm
I’ve got a bet with my wife – she doesn’t think I’ll be able to lose two stone by our anniversary at the end of August and I’m adamant I can. When I was at school I was always a bit chubby, then when I left school and started working I lost weight bery quickly, possi...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 14, 2010, 10:56 am
It’s that time of year again, the time when everyone at work gets completely bored with me and when I spend every Sunday evening talking about TV on a message board. It’s been officially announced by Top Gear Magazine and the BBC Press Office that everyone’s favourite entertainmen...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 14, 2010, 10:26 am
Every year  the BBC relaunches its website for one of the major festivals it covers or, in the case of the Big Weekend – hosts. The latest site to get this treatment is the Glastonbury festival, normally I wouldn’t blog about this but, unlike the others there are a number of things of ...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Jun 10, 2010, 7:41 am
Google have announced the launch of a new feature for its homepage – a Bing like feature that allows users to customise the background. And to mark the launch they decided, on Thursday 10 June, to change the homepage for everybody – cycling between photos from world famous photographers...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - May 18, 2010, 4:34 pm
It stars some of the biggest names of British television including Warren Clarke, Stephen Fry, Richard Griffiths, Rik Mayall, richard Willson, John Bird, John Sessions and more and is based on a novel by Mark Tavener that later became a radio series before making its way to television. In the Red i...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Apr 12, 2010, 12:03 pm
My most recent gadget acquisition is a HTC Tattoo, the low end small screen Android based handset from the Taiwanese-based manufacturer. This is a great little phone, it’s easy to hold, fits in my top pocket with my iPod, feels great to hold and is actually pretty quick. It also has access t...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Apr 6, 2010, 10:12 am
There may be a couple of spoilers for Doctor Who: Eleventh Hour starring Matt Smith in this blog post – if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled don’t read on. Like many of the posts I’ve been writing recently, this one started life in another form – i...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Apr 2, 2010, 4:36 pm
I’m not a particularly big fan of the whole 3D cinema nonsense, I just don’t see the point in paying extra to go and see a film where you have to wear stupid glasses for a couple of hours just because a few things fly about it a bit. I’ve seen a few films in 3D, normally when I...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Mar 29, 2010, 5:35 pm
The BBC is a big site, there are pages within pages within pages and even deeper than that, there are large sections with multiple sub-sections that have their own top level related sections. But equally there are certain shows with their own top level site (Eastenders) and others sitting under the...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Mar 25, 2010, 3:57 pm
I’m going to be honest with you here, I don’t really care that much about my carbon footprint, I don’t go out of my way to keep it low or do anything special to ’save the earth’. However, purely accidentally I have a normally very low footprint – partly through h...
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Ryan Morrison posted an article on Up Your Ego - Mar 10, 2010, 7:12 pm
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