Can The Web Kill The Pub Quiz?

It's a familiar sight up and down the country - people huddled round tables with scraps of paper, desperately fumbling around for a pen or pencil as bit of feedback crackles over the sound system. Whispers of "Shut up!" echo around as the first conundrum is burbled through what sounds like a microphone covered in cotton wool. The pub quiz. Teams gather in hope of having a good spread of knowledge - sports guy, film guy, history guy, geography guy, general brain-box guy. A sure fire winner of the cash/sweeties/free drinks, no?

Not any longer as I put it to you they can be beaten by one single person - mobile internet guy. This is something that occurred to be a while back whilst doing a pub quiz I attended semi-regularly at The Pear Tree in Edinburgh (anyone in Edinburgh should go along, good quiz). When I briefly formed a team consisting of friends and flatmates, we had 3 smartphones amongst our number and agreed not to use them as that would be cheating. More and more people though are getting smartphones. Of my rough age group, about half the people I know own, or are considering, an iPhone; another quarter own, or are considering, a Blackberry. The number of people owning such devices is only set to increase. Even my old Sony Ericsson could access Wikipedia and Google, albeit quite slowly. Text services such as AQA, text a question to 63336 in the UK, offer answers to your questions at a price.

All of this is simply an evolution of that moment when you realise your absent friend would definitely know the answer to that question. One cheeky text message later and you have your answer. A host of information is right at your fingertips now, not just the knowledge of those in your phonebook. Short of getting everyone to forcibly turn off their phones, the answer to any question is a few fingerswipes away. Not even the music round is safe from the all-knowing power of the internet, you could even stream the song to check the answer given. I've used my phone to settle various non-quiz pub disputes over the time since I got it. What colour is a polar bear's skin? What the hell is a kelpie? How tall is Nicolas Sarkozy? Can dogs look up? How long is a piece of string? No question is safe.

My role tended to be 'film guy' or 'sports guy'. Name all the films Tim Burton directed beginning with 'B'? Batman, Batman Begins Batman Returns (Edit: Cheers, Jay. Stupid error - d'oh!), Beetlejuice, Big Bish. Bam! Four points please. But knowing you could achieve the same thing, possibly quicker, by Googling Tim Burton's filmography lessens the satisfaction somewhat. There's plenty of incentive for some folk to do this too, there are often some valuable prizes on offer at a pub quiz. With the ubiquity of such devices it will become harder to police (short of building a pub in a Faraday cage).

Obviously the pub quiz is not going anywhere soon but with more and more people having access to on-the-go internet I can't help but think the questions are soon going to have be wonderfully creative if it's not to become an endangered species.

Music On-the-Go...all of it

Well not all of it, but a hell of a lot. I blogged about music service Spotify a while ago and generally how superb it was. Well - it just got better. Today the iPhone application hit the iTunes store (and Google's Android store as well I believe).

When the history of music in the digital era is reflected on years from now this will be a watershed. Although my technology predictions are generally a bit dodgy*, I genuinely believe 2009 will be regarded as a landmark period. When Spotify finally gets a release in the United States it will just explode.

Spotify in its desktop form was an excellent and well-executed service, but I always had that niggling thought in my head - "I can't listen to these on my MP3 player, iPod or whatever - shame, really". No longer, I now have access to over 6 million tracks in my pocket, accessible through my phone. Just think about that for a second - 6 million. Through a phone. I like to keep up to date with consumer technology and, as a result, little that comes out on a day-to-day basis makes me go "Wow", but this has kind of blown me away. I'm still surprised Apple allowed it, as it poses a massive threat to iTunes long term. Naturally, you won't always have a signal good enough to stream music over which is why you can store anything up to about 3,000 songs (assuming you have the hard-disk space on your phone) for listening offline. The playlists you set up at home on your computer seem to automatically synchronise to your phone as well. Add on the collaborative playlists already available on Spotify (where your friends can add tracks as well) and the genius grows.

This isn't all a fairytale dreamworld, however; the mobile versions are only available to those paying £9.99 a month for the advert-free version of Spotify. I coughed up as there was no minimum term and I could axe it after a month if I wasn't satisfied. So far I am (although it did cut out a couple of times this afternoon) and will be keeping it on. In the last post on Spotify I did worry about the longevity of the service in terms of it becoming a money-making venture. this will certainly help. I wasn't a fan of subscription based models for music but if they can get me to sign up then something is obviously going according to plan. The only true problem is the inability to run the application in the background and check e-mail, text messages and such while the music is playing but this is more the fault of Apple than Spotify and it won't affect those running it on an Android based phone.

Once again, anyone who hasn't tried Spotify should. Even in its free (advert-based) form it is worth seeing. To that end, I have a spare invite going as a result of me signing up for premium so if anyone is after one then let me know.

*I effectively said Google Chrome web browser would flop. Whilst hardly the new standard, it's now my default browser on every system and I've been turning family and friends over to it. I have been proven to be talking out my rear end. D'oh!