British Bands Are Number 1 and 2 in America
For the first time since May 1992, British bands occupy the number 1 and 2 spots on the Billboard 200 (via Hollywood Reporter). Muse might have hit number 1 in the UK recently, but they only managed to make it to the second position in the USA this week. Mumford & Sons hold the number 1 spot for the second week in a row, selling 169,000 copies to Muse’s 101,000 albums.
The last British bands to be number 1 and 2 were Def Leppard with Adrenalize at number 1, with the Cure’s Wish at No. 2. You’ve come a long way, Britain!
CSI: NY to Feature Green Day (AS MURDERERS!)
Okay, maybe Green Day won’t be murderers on CSI: NY, but their music will feature in an episode of the crime show (via NME). The music for the show will actually be pieces from all three new albums – ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tre!. The songs used will be Stop When The Red Lights Flash, Amy, Night Life, The Forgotten, and Kill The DJ. I’m guessing these will be during torture sessions of the accused?
In a typically generic statement about their music being used, the band said, “We were stoked when we found out CSI: NY wanted to use our music instead of dialogue to narrate the first few acts of the episode. It’s the first time something like this has been done on the series, and we are blown away with what we’ve seen.”
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Tag Archives: Kickstarter
Friday Afternoon Funnies: Model Bar Refaeli Tries Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a pretty good way to get the public to fund your possibly brilliant ideas. PHM has showcased many products on this site, such as the 21st Century Polaroid, the Instacube pitcure frame, and the flowerpot speaker, Bloombox. We even showed a parody of Kickstarter in a past Friday Afternoon Funnies segment, showing how Kickstarter is a scam (it’s not though, right?).
Today, we have supermodel Bar Refaeli tries to sell something using Kickstarter. What could she want funded? Oh, it’s just a sex tape of her. THIS IS NOT REAL, so don’t hurt yourself running for your wallet (or dropping your pants at lightning speed). This is a parody, courtesy of College Humor.
Full marks to Bar for playing along, and hopefully someone on the production team was able to convince her to go through with this in real life. Since that is unlikely, you’ll have to settle for Bar being modest, wondering who would want to pay to get her sex tape. Check it out in our Friday Afternoon Funnies.
Morning Music Notes – The British Are Coming!
British Bands Are Number 1 and 2 in America
For the first time since May 1992, British bands occupy the number 1 and 2 spots on the Billboard 200 (via Hollywood Reporter). Muse might have hit number 1 in the UK recently, but they only managed to make it to the second position in the USA this week. Mumford & Sons hold the number 1 spot for the second week in a row, selling 169,000 copies to Muse’s 101,000 albums.
The last British bands to be number 1 and 2 were Def Leppard with Adrenalize at number 1, with the Cure’s Wish at No. 2. You’ve come a long way, Britain!
CSI: NY to Feature Green Day (AS MURDERERS!)
Okay, maybe Green Day won’t be murderers on CSI: NY, but their music will feature in an episode of the crime show (via NME). The music for the show will actually be pieces from all three new albums – ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tre!. The songs used will be Stop When The Red Lights Flash, Amy, Night Life, The Forgotten, and Kill The DJ. I’m guessing these will be during torture sessions of the accused?
In a typically generic statement about their music being used, the band said, “We were stoked when we found out CSI: NY wanted to use our music instead of dialogue to narrate the first few acts of the episode. It’s the first time something like this has been done on the series, and we are blown away with what we’ve seen.”
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Seems Practical: An Intelligent, Dancing Robotic iPod Speaker Dock
As part of Tech Crunch’s ongoing Disrupt conference, some pretty cool ideas are being presented. Once such idea is Tovbot, which is a dancing, robotic iPod speaker dock. Don’t I look dumb for having one of those stationary speakers! Tovbot is also a Kickstarter project, trying to raise money for production through crowd funding. Right now it’s around the $20,000 mark and it needs $80,000 more with 26 days to go.
But Tovbot goes that extra mile and provides something truly futuristic and captivating – it can respond to sounds in its surrounding. If you clap out the beat to Love Me Do by the Beatles, Tovbot will try and find a matching song and play it. This is probably best done not around me, and not when I’m hungover. You won’t like me when I’m hungover.
The dock even has a name – Shimi (get it? Shimmy….groan!). Even cooler – Shimi has face recognition software, and will point the speakers towards you wherever you are in the room. So if you like to listen to music while you vacuum (whatever that is) instead of lying down, Shimi will attempt to follow you.
But don’t believe me – check out a video of the magic in action below, including some rocking out to Muse. Johnny 5 is alive!
Put Your Instagram Pictures into Instacube, an Instagram-Styled Picture Frame
Instagram’s popularity makes it ripe for accessories and related products. Not only can you sell Instagram pics and try and make money, but you can check out an Instagram-esque digital camera (which isn’t real).
The latest idea is a digital photo frame called Instacube (via Crave). This Kickstarter project is pretty close to receiving it’s $250,000 pledge goal on the crowd funding site, and still with 28 days to go. What Instacube does is it streams your Instagram photo feed straight to the digital frame.
Instacube has touch screen display, 4 GB of flash memory, is Wi-Fi enabled, and even has a rechargeable battery. Another great thing about it is that multiple people can push their pictures to the digital Instacube frame, so you can get a real time feed of the people you follow straight onto your Instacube. This could be a disaster for pranksters like me, taking pictures of their ass which will now grace your living room. Bachelor parties, do NOT put any pictures on Instacube if you value your upcoming marriage.
If you pledge $149, you can get one if and when the product gets made (i.e.: if it hits its funding goal). Check out a video of all of the details below.
Plants, iPods and Speakers – Together at Last, in the Bloombox
Bonus points to the inventors of Bloombox for a clever name that doesn’t feel like a terrible pun forced down our throats. There’s a new Kickstarter project that combines the rarely combined world of plants, speakers, and music. The idea behind the Bloombox is that there’s an iPod dock on top of the whole cube, and a planter at the bottom for your, well, plants (via iPhone in Canada).
Snoop Dogg plays his songs AND grows pot with Bloombox
Each Bloombox is made from one piece of ceramic, then completed with a light matte glaze in black or white, and with limited colour editions, too. Perhaps each Bloombox should come with a recommended playlist of plant-related songs, or songs that are scientifically proven to help plants grow. Or even better – Disney should combine it’s plant music device, Botanicus Interactus, with this Bloombox and have a complete circle of music. Check out a promo video below, and help fund it on Kickstarter if you want one.
Friday Afternoon Funnies: Kickstarter is a Scam
Kickstarter is one of those web ideas that I love, I blog about a lot, but perhaps deep down, I think it’s crap. I never have and likely never will donate to it. I don’t care about the useless items I’ll get for my varying degrees of money spent. I do enjoy seeing the crazy ideas (mixed in with a lot of garbage ideas), but to me it’s almost like a fantasy world, where ideas go to die. And who better to spoof a fantasy world than the Onion?
Satire pros, the Onion, have done an exposé on the “scam” behind Kickstarter. They point out that the “FBI estimates 94% of Kickstarter Projects Complete Shit” and undertake a full study in their video below. So while I’ll continue to blog about the innovative gems I come across on Kickstarter, a small part of me will think of the truths in this video, which I present as part of
it deserves a better name sometime before you dieyour Friday Afternoon Funnies.Obsessed Much? Use the Cookoo Watch to Ensure You Don’t Miss Notifications on Your Phone
Here’s another Kickstarter project for you – the cookoo watch. It helps you stay connected to your phone – perhaps a little too connected. The cookoo watch uses Bluetooth to keep your watch in the loop with what is happening with your smartphone. If your phone is in the other room, and you’re wearing your watch (which you presumably are doing), the watch will notify you when you get a text, email, Facebook message, reminders, etc. “Reminder: don’t check email this vacation.” You must REALLY like to be connected if this is the case, but the idea is pretty sound.
Can you tell me when my ex-girlfriend is lurking around the corner?
The Kickstarter campaign is trying to get $150,000 and has just rolled over the $100,000 mark, with 39 days to go. You can also use the watch to locate your phone – a pretty handy function (for drunken idiots like me). The watch also tells you when your cell phone battery is low, in case your ability to look at the phone is impaired by the beers you’ve been drinking. My only complaint? It’s a bit bulky and unfashionable. But being connected is the ultimate in fashion, right? Um, no. Check out a promo video of the Kickstarter campaign for cookoo below.
Morning Music Notes – Using Twitter to Bet on Facebook
Facebook Will Make Bono the World’s Richest Living Musician
The headline is a sentence that pretty much no one would’ve believed 5 years ago. Paul McCartney was famously the world’s first rock billionaire. But the Beatle is going to be surpassed by U2 singer, Bono, because of his 2.3% investment in Facebook from 2009 (via Spinner). Bono’s $90 million investment in something that could’ve gone belly up, like MySpace, might have raised a few eyebrows. Now, with Facebook valued at over $100 billion, Bono is looking at around a cool $2.0 billion (depending on opening price). Fuck me!
But just how high will the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Facebook go? People like to guess (and if you’re me – gamble) on such things. Well, now you can on FacebookIPODayClosingPrice.com site! If you have a Twitter account, you can log in and place your guess (read: bet). The average closing price guess, as of time of me typing these letters, is $54. The graph shows a lovely bell curve, meaning that the bell curve isn’t something the Illuminati made up. Join in the fun and win…nothing.
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Morning Music Notes – LOLcats and Fleet Foxes, Together at Last
Yes, This is True: Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold to Write Soundtrack for LOLcats Movie
The phenomenon known as LOLcats will be hitting the big screens – that’s the first weird part of this story. The movie, supposedly titled The Internet – A Blog Cats WTF Universe, will tell the tale of a crisis “experienced by “one of the best LOLCat caption writers in the world” (via Consequence of Sound).
The second weird thing is that fundraising is coming by a Kickstarter campaign. This in itself isn’t weird, but it’s a big website and part of a big network of websites – surely they can find some pocket change. Also noted on the Kickstarter page is ” It is mainly a live-action film but there are going to be animations that explore some of the themes and dialogue in the movie, as well as an epic animated God creature that really needs the love of a talented 3d animator. Sean’s brother and frequent collaborator Robin is on board to score the film, and we would love to be able to pay him for his time and talent.”
This leads to the third weird thing. The aforementioned Sean is Sean Pecknold, and his brother Robin is Robin Pecknold, lead singer of Fleet Foxes. This means that LOLcats is getting a score done by big indie band, Fleet Foxes (well, just their singer). I’m not sure how deep his lyrics and songs will be, but check out the promo video below to see how the film might look, and listen to what is presumably some snippets of Robin playing the guitar.
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Afraid of Germs? Have a Phone? Check out the PhoneSoap Charger
Germs are a fact of life, so rather than fight them, I just cohabitate with them without worries – cleaning is for suckers. However, if you’re afraid of germs and are trying to eliminate them in as many aspects of your life as possible, you’ll like this new Kickstarter project. Called PhoneSoap, it is not a special soap bar for your phone, but it is a box that shoots UV-C rays at your phone (via Crave).
UV-C light can kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses on your germ-laden phone, and will only switch on for 3-5 minutes at once, so as not to generate heat. So what exactly are you placing your phone in? It’s a box made of aircraft-grade aluminum (sounds reasonable). The internal is a special UV-transparent plastic. But it’s not just your phone that you can clean. Anything that fits inside the 6 inch x 4 inch x 1.2 inch box can be blasted, so cancel your weekend plans and get blasting!
As this is a Kickstarter fundraising project, the team needs to get $18,000 worth of pledges. You can help them get PhoneSoap made, and net one for yourself, with a donation of $39 USD, while $75 will bring you two. Check out a video of the magic at work.