1. My dear friend (and idea-sparring partner), Sarah, pointed me in the direction of this wonderful collection of music that is Hype Machine’s Zeitgeist. I’ve been listening to Hypem since, I dunno, maybe around 2006, but I always catch myself forgetting about it.
2. Joe tweeted this, earlier this week and my oh my, dese choons are so good yeah –
Things of note for the week ending November 9th, 2012
1.Heard of Vlad Rodriguez?
Up until earlier this past week, I hadn’t heard the name before either. But loving a bit of pop-culture/movie-driven art as I do, I found him over at So Bad So Good and his work is incredible. The Bladerunner one above is a fave, but his takes on both The Shining and Fight Club have to be worth a look too.
2. Bat for Lashes, covering Rhianna ‘We Found Love’
Blissful.
3. The Girl Who Would Be King
I’ve been following the progress of this book (and Kickstarter project) ever since I first discovered the first part back in June (see item 5) and I must’ve taken my off the ball a little bit because the whole thing is now available for just a few quid over on Amazon.
Blurb:
‘A novel about two teenage girls with superpowers and radically different agendas, destined for a collision that will rock the world:
Separated by thousands of miles, two young women are about to realize their extraordinary powers which will bind their lives together in ways they can’t begin to understand.
Protecting others. Maintaining order. Being good. These are all important things for Bonnie Braverman, even if she doesn’t understand why. Confined to a group home since she survived the car accident that killed both her parents, Bonnie has lived her life until now in self-imposed isolation and silence; but when an opportunity presents itself to help another girl in need, Bonnie has to decide whether to actually use the power she has long suspected she has. Power that frightens her.
Across the country, Lola LeFever is inheriting her own power by sending her mother over a cliff…literally. For Lola the only thing that matters is power; getting it, taking it, and eliminating anyone who would get in the way of her pursuit of it. With her mother dead and nothing to hold her back from the world any longer, Lola sets off to test her own powers on anyone unfortunate enough to cross her. And Lola’s not afraid of anything.
One girl driven to rescue, save, and heal; the other driven to punish, destroy, and kill.
And now they’re about to meet.’
My copy is sat on my Kindle waiting for me as I type.
I’d recommend you go take a look too.
4. Music + Social
I’ve read a couple of really good music posts this week. This first this one from Songkick talks about how they worked with Hot Chip using their ‘Detour‘ product to help book some new (and off-the-beaten-track) destinations for their upcoming tour –
We picked 3 towns they hadn’t headlined before and created a Detour where each of those cities had a chance to create a show on that spare night. We emailed all of the Songkick users in those cities tracking Hot Chip and things started to take off. We wanted to raise 200 pledges to be confident of demand and rapidly all 3 started to get momentum. What happened next though was incredibly exciting. A bunch of superfans in Folkestone decided that they were going to make it happen. As one fan said, “Most bands don’t come to this part of Kent, they tend to stop at London.†They got super proactive and started to email all their friends and even petitioned the local radio station and newspaper. It exploded and went completely viral in a matter of hours through fan to fan word of mouth marketing, Hot Chip sold out.
The post has more (as well as a pretty awesome chart comparing the fans in Folkestone to the rest of the competition) and is well worth a read. It’s a great case study on how activating fans can yield phenomenal results too.
This second post, this time picked up from the guys over at Fresh Networks, talks about how Lady Gaga’s team use the listening data from Spotify to help choose her music set in each different country that she plays.
Things of note for the week ending October 5th, 2012
1. The Penis Blouse
That’s a penis, on a blouse. Brought to you by those lovely people at ASOS. Spotted it a couple of days ago and within 24 hours it was all over the place. ASOS are clearly onto a winner; everyone loves a penis blouse.
2. Statigram
Statigram is a web interface for Instagram. Given that Instagram is mobile-only, this is actually quite a useful tool. What’s really useful however is the super-cool stats (see what they did there) it pulls out of your Instagram activity.
I bought one of these for Robbie last week (it was his birthday, we don’t just buy each other gifts for no reason – well, we do but that’s not for now), AND THEY ARE AMAZING.
4. 4G Networks
At long last, 4G is scheduled to launch here in the UK on October 30th. Well I say networks I mean network (singular, not plural) this is because of a whole bunch of reasons most of which are covered off in this rather informative article on The Register as well as this week’s episode of The Voicemail (I may have had a rant).
In summary: 4G is coming from network this year, but from everyone else in 2013. Rubbish.
Bonuses this week: FIFA have somewhat incredibly re-badged and relaunched FIFA 12 as FIFA 13; this article about how Nokia keeps its maps up to date by using UPS and Fedex van delivery data is quite the eye-opener; and finally, Snoop Dogg is voting for Obama. Wanna know why?
Things of note for the week ending August 31st, 2012
1. Dub the Dew
This isn’t that new but I just found another write up on it and well, I realised I just had to share. Mountain Dew decided that they’d ask the internet to help them name their latest apple-flavoured beverage.
The internet, responded.
This was – I KID YOU NOT – the Top 10 right before, some 48hrs after launch, PepsiCo [unsurprisingly] took it down –
Hitler Did Nothing Wrong
Gushing Granny
Fapple
Gushin’ Granny
Diabeetus
Grannies Squirt
Gushing Grannies
Gooshing Granny
Fapulous Apple
Gushing Green Granny
Brilliant.
You could blame the internet. Or you could blame 4Chan. Really, you should blame a naively conceived competition by a brand that should’ve known better.
2. Verified Twitter Accounts Ever wondered how they work? Lance Ulanoff just had his Twitter account verified and was kind enough to blog the entire process. I thought it was interesting.
Five things of note for the week ending Friday May 4th, 2012
1. Jack White
First, this fairly-lengthy [but totally worth reading] profile piece from The New York Times ‘Jack outside of the box‘ was a great read at the start of the week. They really do mean it when they say ‘Jack White is the coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time’.
If anything, just read it purely for the comedy Tom Jones anecdote midway through…
Second, White’s first solo album, Blunderbuss, launched this week and debuted at number oneon the Billboard 100. Nicely done. The album is pretty damn good – listen to the album [Spotify link] now, or just give the first track, Missing Pieces, a go below –
2. Marvel Movie Universe Infographic
It struck me last weekend, after seeing the quite frankly awesome Avengers Assemble, that what the world really needed was some kind of visual timeline of how all the movies overlaid on each other and affected each others’ respective stories.
After all, it was revealed a couple of years ago that Iron Man 2 would set before the events of The Incredible Hulk (what, you didn’t know?).
Back to the point – my brain figured that someone had probably made this thing already and hey, a quick Google later, it turned out they had!
Huzzah! The image above clicks through to the monster version but Slash Film has a clearer, listed description, for the more discerning viewer.
3. Switch Off
No, not another attempt from me to tell you all how important it is to unplug from time to time. Instead, a huge mural reminding us (well, me at least) to do the same.
Part of the Polish Katowice Street Art Festival, I think this is quite magnificent. There’s a whole other set of photos to be viewed over on My Modern Met. Great stuff.
Companies that are not Olympic sponsors cannot link themselves with the Olympics. For example, Company X cannot tweet: “Good luck to Jane and John at the Olympic Games!â€, because it links their brand with the Olympics and Olympic athletes.
Alright, this is only slightly difficult to monitor BUT, am I the only one who smells snake oil around the potential / opportunistic Lawyer + Social Listening partnership? It will be an interesting few months over the Olympic period, especially when it comes to social.
5. Today
Is a big day for someone very dear to me. It’s not been an easy road but, at last, we’re at a turning point. As we head into the weekend, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Five things of note for the week ending Friday April 27th.
1. Iron Man
This art work (from Mondo) is superb. I like, a lot. Speaking of which…
2. Avengers Assemble!
It’s out this week. I’ve seen it. It’s awesome. You should see it too.
(and yes, of course I’m going to review it – at some point)
3. New Music
Two tracks of note (from the week before in fact, that I didn’t get time to blog this week) are X-Factor reject, Aiden Grimshaw’s first single – ‘Is this love?‘
And this awesome Gonzo 70’s-style remix of Adele vs Liquid Gold – ‘Rollin’ in the Deep‘
Five things of note for the week ending Friday, April 6th 2012
1. Paper by Fifty Three
I’ve already blogged about discovering this app, but if you haven’t taken a look yet (it’s for the iPad) then I recommend you do. I love it and have been sketching away like there’s no tomorrow since installing… Unsurprisingly, there’s a theme.
3. Comic book stuff
I’ve been reading Project Rooftop for some time now, and it is an ace source of fantastic artwork on some my favourite characters. Their remit is to highlight and drive the craft of redesigning comic book characters that you know and love and generally showcase some gorgeous work.
This past week has been no different, but these two redesigns, Ninja Turtles and X-Men respectively, stood out particularly.
Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo all getting the redesign treatment. Given the myriad of interpretations the Turtles have been through over the years, giving them a fresh take is no easy task. But this effort is actually brilliant. I want to see more… And guess what, you can! Full set available here
This one stands out for two reasons. First, it’s the original X-Men (who are still one of the best teams to date) and two, the version of Ice-Man is sweet. I’ve not seen an ice-as-armour version before and well, no pun intended, it’s just too damn cool for words. You can check out the full set over on P:R. It’s worth a look, definitely.
What do you think?
4. The Lumia 900 The Nokia Lumia 900 launches this week and, while it is only really a bigger version of the Lumia 800 (which I’ve been rocking and enjoying since late last year), it’s intriguing to me as it’s the big N’s first serious play in the USA since, well – since forever really. To say it’s make or break time might be an understatement, but I think they might actually have winner on their hands. Only time will time.
“There have been rumors that Nokia is paying AT&T to make sure that every rep uses the Lumia 900 as a personal device. The idea is that consumers trust sales reps to steer them in the right direction. Even as an advanced early adopter and mobile technology reporter, I often trust sales reps to tell me what the best device is and what is coming out (sometimes I quiz them to see how much they actually know about the ecosystem because I am that type of jerk).”
Heh, you’re not on your own there chap…Â
I’d like to have a play with the Lumia 900 at some point (honestly, I haven’t played with one yet!) and I’m sure it’d be great, but what interests me more is what’s coming next. We all know the Lumia range is merely a proof-of-concept device (and a very nice range it is too) but I want to see what the tech-heads in Finland are going to do next. Now they’ve proven they can design gorgeous Windows phones, let’s see some of that innovation that they’re also famous for. Exciting times ahead, both for Nokia itself as well as the industry as a whole.
Bonuses: Dan Goodall got his blog back online,go read it; Fish: a tap essay is one of the best things I’ve come across for a long time and finally, I’ve been looking at the image below nearly every day – it’s just beautiful.Â
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whatleydude.com 