I don't, but the publisher is an old friend of mine, so I don't think it'll be hard to trace - I'll get on to it, monday.

This thread reminded me of the following, and I was in a particularly dull briefing after lunch, so I wrote it down, I promise you, every word is true:

Whiz-Kid in lift: “Like yer ‘anbag!”

Ageing Executive & Boxer owner: “It’s not a handbag, it’s an in-car MP3 player”

WK: “What do they look like, is it like a mini-disc”

AE & BO*: “It doesn’t look like anything, it’s a type of PC file”

WK: Quizzical look?

AE & BO: “This is really just like a lap top computer in the shape of a car radio, instead of storing words like the ones in the office, it stores sound…mainly 2-300 hours of music”

WK: “ Wicked, got you, they’re those things that Eminem got prosecuted for sending over the internet”

AE & BO “ No, that’s Napster and it wasn’t Eminem”

WK “ See ya”



I think that the Napster/Geek perception is the common one, I guess the whole MP3 industry needs a body to promote its concept to the general public, other than on the internet, now it’s moving from portable, to car, to home with the speed of summer lightning – maybe it does have one, I’m an outsider, I don’t know. Otherwise it may well always struggle as a minority tool for the initiated.

At the dawn of the DVD era, one of the electrics/electronics, I don’t recall which, magazines did a survey and ( I don’t precisely remember the percentages) 80 something % of VCR owners didn’t know what Nicam was – and a very substantial proportion of the sample owned one, but didn’t know that stereo is what it did (i.e. it was just another sticker on the set, that they hadn’t looked into). I reckon that, as we stand, MP3 would produce a horrifying similar statistic.

*Nothing to do with Body Odour, Bang & Olufsen or Baltimore & Ohio.