Over the past couple of years my household has become more and more invested in the Google ecosystem. It hasn't always been this way, it's simply because products came along that were the best solutions to my tech desires. Android, Shield TV, Google Photos, and Chromecast audios. Unlike on phones, Voice at home is genuinely useful, so I could hardly pass up it finally being adopted by the 'big guys'. But I did not take the plunge with Amazon's Alexa because my educated bet is that Google is naturally inclined to have the better solution - for two reasons:

In this article I will explain how to set up a multi-room audio streaming system based on Apple iDevices, cheap Raspberry Pi players and any computer (either Linux, Windows or Mac). You will be able to do the following:

1. Send sound from any app on your iPhone or iPad to any speaker in your home.
2. Use your iPhone or iPad to control synchronised multi-room music - without your mobile device needing to stay connected.
3. Play music from your PC/server on your iPhone or iPad.

Since receiving this TV a couple of months back I have experienced a number of issues with the Android OS. Going by the discussion on various forums, it seems I am not the only one...

There are missing features - features promised to be here by now and no sign of yet. There are also lots of software defects, some minor and some major. Some are intermittent, some persistent. I thought I should compile a list as a useful reference, and tick them off as and when they are fixed. So, here we go.

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The other day I managed to find stock of (yet another) electronic gizmo to add to my growing pile of gaming accessories: the Logitech Driving Force GT wheel controller for the PS3.

I cross-compiled the interceptty tool for the AR.Drone 2.0 for messing around with a GPS receiver, here's the binary:

http://www.redsilico.com/sites/default/files/interceptty

I was testing the improved taxonomy features of Drupal 7, and put together a list of the tracks available in the Guitar Hero music games. I have only input GH3 and GH5 so far (I plan to add the rest, including Rock Band titles, later). You can explore the tracks: By Artist By Game:

• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
• Guitar Hero 5

A while back I cross-compiled the ffmpeg and mkvtoolnix packages for my ReadyNas Duo. I have the v1 version, which is a SPARC architecture NAS device running Linux. The details of this are here. Since I was asked for the binaries, I have uploaded them here (tar.gz, 9.8 MB).

To extract:

tar -xzf readynas-ffmpeg-mkvtoolnix.tar.gz

Following the announcement of YouView, it now appears that Sky have changed their minds somewhat of the project. It looks like NowTV, Sky's soon-to-be-launched Catchup TV service, will be among the first "non partner" content producers. Presumably, NowTV will use the same content delivery platform, initially launching with movies and later expanding to sports and entertainment.

Finally, the official announcement of YouView: the new website has gone live today.