Radiohead in HD...in Japan

Make sure you click on HD...head here to download the torrent.

Image of the Day

Snazzy Ray-Ban Viral

Naoto Fukasawa

This crazy Japanese designer has made fruit juice containers which look and feel like the fruit that has produced the juice...as it were. Check out the exhibition they were from; it's called Haptic.

Scott Mills Prank Calls

Thanks to Mike for these...

iGizmo

Although I was initially apprehensive of yet another item prefixed with an 'i', I've been impressed with iGizmo, which is an online technology magazine that is completely free. It is delivered to your inbox every month and as you view it online it has all sorts of clever interactive bits and bobs scattered throughout. Subscribe here.

Newswipe

Charlie Brooker has started doing his own satirical news-mock programme...it's pretty funny. You can watch the first episode here until the next one is broadcast on Thursday, on BBC4.

Dirty Projectors

Went to Clwb Ifor Bach yesterday to see Polar Bear, but was actually more impressed by the support act, Dirty Projectors. The female vocalists were slamming. Turns out they are signed to Domino and will be releasing a new album, entitled Bitte Orca, on the 8th June. In the meantime, you can buy Rise Above, here (it's a pound cheaper than iTunes, though you may need to install Amazon mp3 downloader, which is always fun). They also have a few UK tour dates left, which you should go to if you're about.

31st March - Komedia, Brighton
1st April - Mint Lounge, Manchester
2nd April - Scala, London
3rd April - Arnolfini, Bristol

I went to look for a video of then on YouTube, but instead came across a guy called Vincent Moon who directs videos with 'La Blogotheque'. Here is what they say about themselves on their site;

"The Take away shows are la Blogotheque’s first video podcasts. Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole session. Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly. Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless, instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword."

So, here is Dirty Projectors doing just that in New York.

The Periodic Table of Controllers

Ghost In The Machine and Miniatur Wunderland

Been pretty ill this week...boo hoo. This artists flickr album is pretty impressive...I've posted my favourite images. Also check out this AMAZING model railway in Germany...

Zelda Mashups

Doovey showed me something that's nearly as cool as this Zelda Wii...TWO entire albums of Zelda hip-hop!!! Head here and here to download the albums, they're banging. My favourite is the former though.

iPhone 3.0

Had a SMASHING St. Patrick's day in Dublin...however I missed the announcement of new iPhone software...THE HORROR THE HORROR! To summarise, when updated this Summer, the iPhone will include these 'new' features;

MMS - You will now finally be able to send picture messages - what breakthrough from Cupertino.

Voice Memo - You will also be able to record voice memos with a new app going under the same name; you can then send these as you would an MMS.

COPY AND PASTE - You will finally be able to copy and paste text and images, as well as pasting into different applications. This should have been included since launch.

3G tethering - Plug your iPhone into a laptop and use it as a 3G modem for mobile internet on the big screen. Useful if you have a netbook, but O2 are yet to announce the inevitable extra charges.

Spotlight - As in Mac OSX, you will be able to search through your entire iPhone, including e-mail, texts, music, photos etc. by clicking on the magnifying glass in the bottom right corner.

Stereo Bluetooth - Pretty self-explanatory...see picture.

Arguably most of these pictures are not revolutionary; head here for a more in-depth list. Also check the video below to see the changes in action.

Music

Looks like even Superman has been affected by the credit crunch! Here's a couple of tunes I've been digging at the moment.

Metronomy - A Thing For Me



Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart



Hall & Oates - I Can't Go For That

Radiohead

Apparently Ed O'Brien has confirmed to the BBC that Radiohead will be doing some touring this Summer, which is likely to include performances of new material...check the story here.

Twitter

Hypocritically signed up to Twitter yesterday, despite slagging it off as being just a simplified Facebook status update. It's actually not too bad for keeping up with news and finding out what Stephen Fry is doing....twitter.com/joebycro. I guess it's quite nice that people currently seem to be obsessed about finding out how everyone is doing...or everyone is so nosey that they need to know what you're up to 24/7. I think that maybe it might suffice to just print the above image onto a t-shirt...

The Macbook Wheel

Following the decision to remove buttons from the iPod Shuffle, check out this parody by Onion of what Steve Jobs might do next...


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Image of the Day

This is what our house would look like if Chris had his way...

This picture is in fact by Mr. Bingo; head here to see more of his work. I should also mention that one of the best adverts of all time celebrated it's 10th anniversary this week; see it below.



NB. Image of the Day will not be posted everyday....

33⅓

I've recently been getting into the 33⅓ book series. They are fairly short books which delve into the anatomy of some of the most prolific albums of our time. So far, I've only read Dai Griffiths take on OK Computer and Eliot Wilder's interviews with Josh Davis regarding Endtroducing. The books are not formulaic in their approach; the latter book is based around interviews as well as offering a short history of how DJ Shadow got into djing, whilst the Radiohead book is more academic, including an explanation as to why songs tend to be around 3 minutes long - apparently we have Elvis to thank for that. You can find out more about the series by checking their blog - below is a list of albums covered by the series thus far. You'll notice there's a fair few notable exceptions...I'm not seeing much Jazz!

#	Album	Artist	Year album released	Author of book
1	Dusty in Memphis	Dusty Springfield	1969	Warren Zanes
2	Forever Changes	Love	1967	Andrew Hultkrans
3	Harvest	Neil Young	1972	Sam Inglis
4	The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society	The Kinks	1968	Andy Miller
5	Meat Is Murder	The Smiths	1985	Joe Pernice
6	The Piper at the Gates of Dawn	Pink Floyd	1967	John Cavanagh
7	ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits	ABBA	1992	Elisabeth Vincentelli
8	Electric Ladyland	The Jimi Hendrix Experience	1968	John Perry
9	Unknown Pleasures	Joy Division	1979	Chris Ott
10	Sign “☮” the Times	Prince	1987	Michaelangelo Matos
11	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground	1967	Joe Harvard
12	Let It Be	The Beatles	1970	Steve Matteo
13	Live at the Apollo	James Brown	1963	Douglas Wolk
14	Aqualung	Jethro Tull	1971	Allan Moore
15	OK Computer	Radiohead	1997	Dai Griffiths
16	Let It Be	The Replacements	1984	Colin Meloy
17	Led Zeppelin IV	Led Zeppelin	1971	Erik Davis
18	Exile on Main St.	The Rolling Stones	1972	Bill Janovitz
19	Pet Sounds	The Beach Boys	1966	Jim Fusilli
20	Ramones	Ramones	1976	Nicholas Rombes
21	Armed Forces	Elvis Costello	1979	Franklin Bruno
22	Murmur	R.E.M.	1983	J. Niimi
23	Grace	Jeff Buckley	1994	Daphne Brooks
24	Endtroducing.....	DJ Shadow	1996	Eliot Wilder
25	Kick Out the Jams	MC5	1969	Don McLeese
26	Low	David Bowie	1977	Hugo Wilcken
27	Born in the U.S.A.	Bruce Springsteen	1984	Geoffrey Himes
28	Music from Big Pink	The Band	1968	John Niven
29	In the Aeroplane over the Sea	Neutral Milk Hotel	1998	Kim Cooper
30	Paul's Boutique	Beastie Boys	1989	Dan Le Roy
31	Doolittle	Pixies	1989	Ben Sisario
32	There's a Riot Goin' On	Sly and the Family Stone	1971	Miles Marshall Lewis
33	The Stone Roses	The Stone Roses	1989	Alex Green
34	In Utero	Nirvana	1993	Gillian G. Gaar
35	Highway 61 Revisited	Bob Dylan	1965	Mark Polizzotti
36	Loveless	My Bloody Valentine	1991	Mike McGonigal
37	The Who Sell Out	The Who	1967	John Dougan
38	Bee Thousand	Guided by Voices	1994	Marc Woodworth
39	Daydream Nation	Sonic Youth	1988	Matthew Stearns
40	Court and Spark	Joni Mitchell	1974	Sean Nelson
41	Use Your Illusion I and II	Guns N' Roses	1991	Eric Weisbard
42	Songs in the Key of Life	Stevie Wonder	1976	Zeth Lundy
43	The Notorious Byrd Brothers	The Byrds	1968	Ric Menck
44	Trout Mask Replica	Captain Beefheart	1969	Kevin Courrier
45	Double Nickels on the Dime	Minutemen	1984	Michael T. Fornier
46	Aja	Steely Dan	1977	Dan Breithaupt
47	People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm	A Tribe Called Quest	1990	Shawn Taylor
48	Rid of Me	PJ Harvey	1993	Kate Schatz
49	Achtung Baby	U2	1991	Stephen Catanzarite
50	If You're Feeling Sinister	Belle & Sebastian	1996	Scott Plagenhoef
51	Pink Moon	Nick Drake	1972	Amanda Petrusich
52	Let's Talk About Love	Celine Dion	1997	Carl Wilson
69*	69 Love Songs	The Magnetic Fields	1999	LD Beghtol
53	Swordfishtrombones	Tom Waits	1983	David Smay
54	20 Jazz Funk Greats	Throbbing Gristle	1979	Drew Daniel
55	Horses	Patti Smith	1975	Philip Shaw
56	Master of Reality	Black Sabbath	1971	John Darnielle
57	Reign in Blood	Slayer	1986	D.X. Ferris
58	Shoot Out the Lights	Richard and Linda Thompson	1982	Hayden Childs
59	Gentlemen	The Afghan Whigs	1993	Bob Gendron
60	Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash	The Pogues	1985	Jeffery T. Roesgen
61	The Gilded Palace of Sin	The Flying Burrito Brothers	1969	Bob Proehl
62	Pink Flag	Wire	1977	Wilson Neate
63	Radio City	Big Star	1974	Bruce Eaton

New iPod Shuffle

Apple have quietly released a new iPod Shuffle today, which controversially moves the main controls to the headphone cord. This obviously restricts you to using the supplied earphones, which famously provide shabby sound quality. Furthermore, iPod Shuffles are traditionally used for sporting activities - the new design will undoubtedly result in ululate cries from runners around the world. However, the new clip is noticeably bigger which should mean it's more secure and any serious runner would be using a Nano or iPod Touch together with Nike Plus. The new Shuffle also sees the introduction of 'VoiceOver' technology; with the press of a button, the iPod will tell you the name of the song you are listening too as well as the artist...check the video here.

Also worth noting is that Spotify may soon be coming to the iPhone in the form of a mobile app. It has not been confirmed whether Apple will give it the go ahead due to the obvious consequences it could have for iTunes sales. Check the video below to see it in action.

Star Wars Fix

Everyone loves Star Wars. And everyone loves Lego...here is the Millennium Falcon.


Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Freeware

If the newly elected President Obama required a social phenomena to represent the stupendously exciting new world of change he depicted during his campaign, nothing would be more apt than FREEWARE.

MIRO

Head here to download the excellent video organiser that is Miro. It provides an interface from which you can search YouTube, Daily Motion, etc. as well as allowing to filter HD content. It will also let you save these files to your hard drive for watching later and is compatible with RSS feeds and vidcasts...check the video below for details. You could then convert any files you wish to watch later on your iPod, or other device, by using Handbrake...head here to grab that.



Spotify

One of the most rapidly growing freeware apps on the web, it's rising popularity was confirmed this week by a security breach by hackers - a surefire indicator that a website is going places. Once you've installed the program, you are presented with an iTunes-esque interface that allows you to stream pretty much any song you please. Head here to download it.

iPod Disk

Since owning a Mac, I've had a bit of trouble finding a program that takes music from iPods onto my hard-drive...the answer is to download iPod Disk here. Not much explanation needed really...does exactly what it says on the tin.

SixtyForce
If you fancy reliving the past by running some N64 emulators on your Mac, SixtyForce is the way to go. You can use it for free if you can put up without full-screen and a small watermark in the bottom-right hand corner, or you can cough up $16 for the full version. Then, simply plug in a PS2 controller using a USB adapter available on eBay or at your local Game and download the ROMs for you favourite games...for this to be legal, you must own the original cart of any games you download. A good place to find ROMs is here.

Finally, I've had this short montage from La Haine in my head for AGES. If anyone knows what the initial song is, let me know ASAP...

Safari 4.0

Apple recently released Safari 4.0 to combat Google Chrome and renewed offerings from Firefox. Amongst other things, if offers;

- A new Javascript engine that's 4.2x faster that Safari 3.
- The rather striking Top Sites page shown above (in Windows).
- Cover-Flow to navigate between favourites, as is used throughout the rest of Leopard.
- Tabs are now on top aka Google Chrome...which is not to everyones taste. To revert back to the old tab system, check the video below.



To be honest the Beta version isn't that stable at the moment - I'm back onto Firefox. However, if you want to try it for yourself, head here for the download.

2009

It seems I have neglected alphabeticgadgets for far too long; I haven't written here since 2008!! Although you've probably resigned the blog to your recycle bin by now, I'm going to make it a belated New Years resolution to update more frequently.