The media-lords of sense have ruled that BBC’s apps for the iPad and iPhone devices are to be released in the UK. This follows a period of consultation – no doubt ridiculously expensive – over whether the app would ruin things for UK’s legion of commerical newspapers. BBC’s apps have apparently been downloaded more than a million times overseas.
BBC Allowed To Release Mobile Apps In UK (Image via paidContent:UK)
Soundway Records shared this wonderful story about a rare interview with legendary Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti turning up on some reel-to-reel tapes bought by the label’s manager at a local ‘Help The Aged’ charity shop. Incredibly, the track played during the interview is a version of ‘Who’re You’, the lead track from Soundway’s latest album, ‘Nigeria Afrobeat Special’.
From Duncan Ballantyne, Label Manager, Soundway Records:
“Having recently picked up some old reel to reel tapes at a Help the Aged shop round the corner from my house I was pretty astonished to hear this recording of Fela being interviewed in London just before he went on this major tour with Ginger Baker. Recognise the song in the background? That is the lead track on Soundway’s latest album, although a (different) version. We’re particularly fond of the delivery from the presenter but not so keen on his lack of English decorum when it comes to his opinions on Fela’s vocals”.
Musician and vocalist Fiona Soe Paing teamed up with animator Zennor Alexander to create ‘No Man’s Land’, a multlingual, audio-visual collaboration, which has wowed audiences from Italy to New Zealand. Fiona also creates excellent music as ‘Colliderscope‘.
Eighteen year old Hugh Davies, a Facebook user, has compiled an epic list of things which the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail claim will give you cancer. The 100-plus items on the list – each of which are backed up by URLs to articles on the Mail’s website – range from the inane to the absurd. Examples include chillis, climate change, mouthwash, age and soup.
Whoever said the tabloids were fearmongers? You can stick that with your carcinogenic cereal.
The Daily Mail list of ‘Things that give you cancer’
UPDATE— Comedy music duo Spandex Ballet have recorded a musical version of the Daily Mail cancer list, and it’s hilarious without even trying. Youtube link.
This has been posted quite a bit around the way but it’s good enough for re-post here.
Anyone who is familiar with the BBC’s style of televised news reports will get a crack out of this satirical spoof by comedian Charlie Brooker, taken from the latest episode of his show, Newswipe. Also check out his Guardian column for more laughs.
London-based designer David Pearson specialises in book design and branding, and besides his work for clients like White’s Books and Ridley Scott Associates among others, his reimagining of a series of Penguin classics are great examples of minimalism and vision which suit the product at hand perfectly.
For further examples visit davidpearsondesign.com. (via Laughing Squid)
The guys at HurtYouBad spotted a bit of good old-fashioned billboard jamming (presumably in London?) on billboard adverts for this year’s general election in the UK.
“For our non UK readers – there will be an election this year and this smug, right wing, never-done-an-honest-days-work-in-his-life bastard is looking like the next leader of the country…thankfully he has been kind enough to put up billboards with blank white spaces on so we can tell him exactly how thrilled we are at the prospect…”
Now I love Spotify as much as anyone so I’m not here to diss their overall music-streaming service which is great (I’ve been using the premium version for about three months now). But I do have a bone to pick with the crazily-restrictive, and just plain crazy, terms of their End User License Agreement, which is a prerequisite agreement for buying MP3s through the software.
Here are some of the worst bits, in which you agree to surrender personal control over the product you’re about to buy. I’d like to see a record store owner try and pass that crap off when I’m buying a CD, so why should it be the case with digital music? Like I said, I’m a big fan of Spotify, but I won’t be buying music from them anytime soon.
(ii) You are authorised to use the Content on up to five authorised devices at any time. 7digital reserves the right to limit the number of authorised devices further and the number of authorised downloads to comply with the requirements of its licensors.
(iii) You may not use Content as a musical “ringer” in connection with mobile phone calls.
What do you think? Do user agreements like this one go a step too far? Let us know in the comment thread.
Happy new year everyone! Please excuse the messiness of the site at the moment. It’s undergoing some severe transformation. Here is a t-shirt designed by James Callahan – a comic-book artist – for Beautiful/Decay’s excellent online emporium.
I’m wowing at the beauty of these animated short films.
The first (which can be viewed above) is called ‘Trichrome Blue’, and was produced by Lois van Baarle as a project for the Utrecht School of the Arts.
Trichrome Blue on Vimeo. (via Delicious Design League)
The second is called ‘Alma’, and is a fantastical short film by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas, which has been posted online for a limited amount of time this Christmas only.
I highly reccommend you watch it using the video embed below, or by heading over to almashortfilm.com while you can.
Wanna reach us? Hit up ideas(at)spraff.net with your feedback, links, etc.
Follow us on Twitter @spraffnet
Get Spraff in your inbox:
Copyright © 2010 Spraff.net under a Creative Commons license. Some Rights Reserved. 
Original logo design by Mathias Forbach.
Recent Comments