Bored of the iTunes/Napster/eMusic hemegony and want to find some legal independent music to download? Well, here's a list of a few small online MP3 retailers that I have come across and can recommend:

• CDBaby
• Blues Matters!
• Foot Stompin' Celtic Music
• Ashiki - (of course!)

I guess there is still room for the small guys. It's like going to the little record shop down a side street rather than a high street megastore. 

I've been offered a free upgrade to a Blackberry Pearl 8110 with 12 months sat nav subscription on my Vodafone contract, so I thought I'd check out the whole "Crackberry" thing.

The first thing that annoyed me is the way that the word "Blackberry" has developed into a generic term for any email capable smart phone. It's the "Oh, I like your iPod", "It's not AN IPOD!" thing all over again. Then I was surprised to discover that Blackberries don't connect directly to the Internet, they use "Blackberry Internet Service" or "Blackberry Enterprise Service", whatever they are, which you need to pay extra for, over and above your usual handset Internet access. So that's an extra £5 a month to Vodafone. Then my Exchange hosting company want an extra £6 per month for the privilege of "enabling" a Blackberry. Oh, and basic things like flagging an email for follow up on a Blackberry. No sorry, not supported. HTML email? No sorry, not supported. DRM, so I can use Napster? No sorry, not supported. 3G? No way.

Anyway, still curious, I ventured into a store to try one out. The "trackball" that the Blackberry Pearl uses and that is supposed to make it so user friendly drove me mad within seconds. I spent several frustrating minutes trying to navigate the menus by manipulating this plastic nipple "trackball". "Let's see what the calendar looks like, no calendar, err.. no try again, where's it gone now?". Aaaah!

All in all a pity, as it looks like a great deal on paper and I'd still recommend Vodafone by the way. Great coverage, good prices and customer support. Just don't get a Blackberry...

Travis Collins has uploaded the details of his 2008 UK tour to his site. I'm playing keyboards and backing vocals on the tour. Travis came over to the UK last year and we had a blast, so I'm looking forward to it all. He's a very talented guy. I'm hoping to get time to add lots more details, venues, photos, blog posts etc about the tour in the near future. Watch this space...

Well, I finally got my Live Mesh invitation! I signed up to the waiting list a couple of weeks ago, so it's not been that long actually. After reading several articles and blog posts about Live Mesh, it's cool to be able to try it out. I must say that, so far, it's very impressive. The installation and set up, on a Vista Ultimate laptop, went without a hitch and I'm already happily synchronising away. The integration with Vista is so seamless that I've found myself looking at a meshed up folder and haven't been able to work out if I'm looking at the online version or the local version – they look identical until you look at the file path.

So it's goodbye to Groove 2007, which I'd been using to synchronise files between machines. I always felt that Groove was a bit of overkill for what I needed anyway and the fact that there is no 64 bit support really was the final nail in the coffin.

Also, I must admit that I still haven't got my head around all the stuff that Live Mesh can do. I do know that the folder synchronisation and the online storage is really just an example of what the platform is capable of. I can't wait until the mobile version comes out. I know a lot of people knock Microsoft, but you've got to hand it to them, they keep on churning out great software at a staggering rate.