Darren Straight’s Blog

It’s been confirmed by NME (however still no word from mean fiddler) that+44 have cancelled their appearance slot at the Carling Weekend: Reading And Leeds Festivals.

The band are also cancelling their upcoming European tour dates to focus on the follow up to their 2006 debut album ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’.

In a statement the band said: “We want to start writing new songs and we are really excited about the direction we have planned.”

“So we’re going into the studio instead of playing these few dates. We hope our fans will forgive us for the cancellation; in the end, this will make for an even better live show when we come back.”

The band were also due to play London, Wolverhampton, Bristol and Leeds ahead of their festival appearances, however that too has been canceled…

Got to love this Second Life Parody from DRAFTFCB.

Windows Live Spaces has teamed up with Xbox! So you can customise the look and feel of your Windows Live Space with two all-new Halo 3 and Xbox themes. Show your true gaming spirit and pimp your Live Space with either one of these fantastic backgrounds.

Simply click on the link below and your profile will be updated. If you don’t already have a Live Space, check out the Windows Live Spaces homepage http://spaces.live.com/ and start building out your page now!

Click to View Xbox Theme

Click to View Halo 3 Theme

Paint.NET v3.10 Beta 2 is now available. Check it out at http://www.getpaint.net

Changes include:

• Changed: Increased max brush size to 500, as per forum members request
• Fixed: Some layout issues with the Save Configuration dialog and the DDS configuration control
• Fixed: In some cases, undoing an action that removed a layer would result in the un-removed layer not showing up until you resized the Layers window (“ghost layers”)
• Fixed: Pressing F1 from the main window would launch the online help in two browser tabs
• Fixed: Adding a new layer now adds it above the currently active layer instead of at the very top of the layer list
• Fixed: Merge Down now activates the merged layer instead of the one above it
• Fixed: Put the ‘x’ close button back in the Layer Properties window (managed to fix the bug w/o necessitating removal of the ‘x’)
• Fixed: In Vista, clicking on a URL link from the installer will no longer launch the web browser with inherited, elevated privileges

Soft-core porn site Perfect 10 is suing Microsoft, claiming that their MSN search engine is providing links and images to sites that are illegally hosting its content.

But Microsoft isn’t the company’s first target, as it recently lost similar cases against Google, Amazon and A9 search, all of which it is appealing.

The suit was filed on Tuesday in a California district court and alleges that the MSN image search engine creates unauthorised thumbnails of Perfect 10’s premium content, as well as including links to see full-size versions of the images for free.

The complaint also claims that the search engine is finding passwords to its paid-for content on other sites, thereby allowing it to access Perfect 10’s pay-only material, and that Microsoft is receiving money through advertising from websites that are illegally hosting the images.

Via: Vnunet

It’s no secret that there’s a leaked beta of the Windows Vista SP1 (service pack 1) floating around, but no-one has of yet has really taken the time to analyse it in detail to find out what it really does.

So James Bannan from APCMag has made it his mission to trawl through the registry and file changes in SP1 to find out as best as he could exactly what SP1 does.

You can check out the full article here.

MSN India, Worldspace Satellite Radio, and music maestro A R Rahman, have announced the launch of 5 Worldspace stations on MSN India.

With this, music lovers will have 24×7 access to the five Worldspace stations, including Farishta (Hindi film classics), Gandharv (Hindustani classical), Sparsha (Kannada), Spandana (Telugu), and Shruti (Carnatic music) at http://www.in.msn.com/worldspace for a monthly fee of $9.9 (Rs 400 approx).

Users can play any/all of the five channels basis their choice, and receive weekly and monthly program guides along with RJ profiles for particular channels. All they need is bandwidth in the region of 64 kbps.

According to Worldspace and MSN, the monthly fees are on the higher side because this is the only ‘legal’ online streaming channel where moneys go to the concerned artistes, and copyright fees end-up getting paid.

“We believe that with this initiative, we will help bridge the needs of Indians across the globe to be closely connected with their roots and Indian culture, and provide them a platform to savor songs online even when they don’t have access to Worldspace Satellite Radio,” said Velu Shankar, senior advisor - content and programming, Worldspace India.

“This association is part of our commitment to our users in bringing the best of entertainment online. Users now can listen to their favourite music online,” said Jaspreet Bindra, country manager India - online service group, Microsoft.

“While music on the net is gaining popularity today, users in India do not have many radio stations online to listen to the music they love. Now, users in India can log on to MSN India and listen to music that is relevant to them,” said Krishna Prasad, executive producer of MSN India.

While the offline service is reasonably popular, the association with MSN India is an exercise in increasing the reach of Worldspace through the online medium. For MSN too, it’s as much about increasing reach, as it is about giving consumers something unique and exclusive vis-a-vis competitors in the online space.

Following the successful launch of the six free Talking Mobile Phrase Books for Nokia and Sony Ericsson cell phones in May earlier this year, software developers Coolgorilla have today announced an all-in-one version of the talking phrase books for Apples new iPhone.

Sponsored by online travel and leisure retailer lastminue.com the iPhone Translator is a completely free service providing travellers with both text and audio translations in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German with a Greek version to follow shortly. Simply select your required language and phrase and the iPhone translator will display a written translation on screen along with a native audio translation provided by a professional voice-over artist.

As the first product of it’s kind for the iPhone it is also a pioneering move from lastminute.com to use the device as a way of engaging customers through value added advertising.

Easy to use, the iPhone translator requires the user to select the required target language and then provides a structured menu system much like a standard phrase book. Simply find your required phrase, press select the iPhone then “speaks” the phrase using the recordings of real, native voice-over artists and also supplies a text translation on screen.

Quicker and easier than a standard phrasebook, the added functionality of audio translations means you can be sure of your pronunciation before attempting to speak the lingo or should you wish, just play the recipient the translation through the phones’ speaker

Mark McCulloch, Head of Brand Development of lastminute.com said, “lastminute.com are dedicated to providing travellers with additional products that will enhance their holiday experience. Our range of translators & phrase books are fun to use and will keep you in favour with the locals!”

Roy Forsdick, Managing Director of iDev Entertainment AKA Coolgorilla added, “As part of our ongoing mission to provide free quality translation tools to the increasing number of mobile surfers, developing an iPhone version was a must.”

Sonific LLC, a leading provider of music widgets for social media sites, have recently announced the availability of playlists for its SongSpots music widgets. Following this release, a www.Sonific.com user can build and share fully customizable playlists with up to 25 full-length tracks containing any of the over 200.000 songs provided by Sonific, on-demand and in any order, without any restrictions, free of charge.

Sonific’s SongSpots music widgets can simply be copied and pasted into personal web spaces on over 40 platforms and many Web2.0 applications, including iGoogle, Myspace, eBay, Facebook, Friendster, Yahoo360, Blogger, Xanga, Vox, Wordpress, Typepad, Netvibes, LiveJournal, AIM Pages, Smugmug, FreeWebs, Multiply, Slideroll, Windows Live, and Ning, instantly adding a fully personalized music experience to web-sites, user profiles and online communities.

Unlike most online radio services that are operating based on compulsory web-casting licensing schemes that govern the blanket use of master recordings, Sonific licenses all recordings directly from each participating artist or record label. Therefore, Sonific’s service is not hampered by the often quite stringent licensing restrictions that prohibit some of the most user-appreciated features such as fully interactive playlists and the on-demand play of individual songs.

I myself have been a Sonific user since around this time last year when it went into beta, so it’s great to see how far Sonific’s SongSpots music widgets have come. If you havent tried creating your’e own yet why not head over to http://sonific.com and sign up. If you would like to see some sites/blogs etc which host them then why not check out http://sonific.com/home/examples. This list is much bigger now than what it used to be when I was one of the few on it and I’m guessing the list isn’t updated as much anymore as there’s so many people using Sonific now.

Something’s missing on Mister-Wong.com and the Mister Wong Team need your help to fill that gap. So, they are holding The Wong and Only Logo Contest - an international crowdsourcing contest in search for their new logo. And they’re giving away $12,000 to find one!

Starting now, till September 8, 2007 all international web designers, graphic artists, and artistically creative people are being called upon on all of our international portals to design a new Mister Wong logo with matching favicon.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to create the new Mister Wong logo, then why not head over to their contest page for all details and to submit your email address.

All submitted designs will later be voted on by Mister Wong users. Every user gets 12 votes. This way everyone gets a say on which design will win – the true web 2.0 democratic way!

Mister Wong users worldwide will choose the Top 12. The top 12 designs will then be voted on by our jury to find the top three. From the top three, the Mister Wong Team will choose the winner, who will receive $6,000 and the two runners up will each receive $3,000.

Edit: on a side note this is post 1337!