Dr. Feelgood have often been called ‘the greatest local band’. Canvey Island is peculiar and strange little island at the end of the Thames Estuary. I’ve always been embarrassed by my ‘hometown’ but have always been proud of Dr. Feelgood. Lee Brilleaux – the Feelgood’s frontman – and my father were great friends and I used to recieve The Big Figure’s –the Feelgood’s drummer – spare drum sticks and drum skins. I ‘escaped‘ from ‘The Island’, moving to London to work in a design agency, when I was 18. Appropriately my very first ever piece of commercial design was for the Dr. Feelgood sister band The Canvey Island Allstars and their album Escape From Oil City. I too escaped. The CIA’s single, Werewolves of London, was the soundtrack to Paul Newman’s Hustler sequel, The Color of Money.

Did You Know 4.0?” has now been created for the Economist’s Media Convergence forum in October:

The original ‘Shift Happens‘ presentation by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman was turned into a video and uploaded to YouTube in June 2007. The video was then remixed and became a serious YouTube hit called ‘Did You Know?‘ and attracted over 6.5m views.

Fat Princess: The beautifully art directed multi-player game from Santa Monica’s Titan Studios sparked a flair of controversy when it was announced. Cake retention? Nevertheless, Sony has finally released the game here in the UK. Fat Princess is priced at £11.99 on the PSN.

The premise of the game is ludicrously simple. The curvaceous royalty in question is the “flag” in a an elaborate take on the ‘Capture the Flag’ game mechanic.

Fat Princess is beautifully presented in a fairy tale style. Level designs are elaborate and detailed and the character design –with quirky upgrades and power hats– are beautifully rendered.

Windosil is a beautifully conceived, constructed and executed Flash puzzle game. The implementation of simple real world mechanics – within a strange, surreal and beguiling graphical world – makes for a a surprisingly tactile digital experience. The sound design is simple but effective. Windosill is designed, programmed and animated by Patrick Smith, of Vector Park. The objective of the game is to solve the puzzle: how to find the cube to open the door. Simpe eh? No. Tickling a giant bird in a distorted – and elasticated – spherical metal bird house, and rolling a wooden train, have never felt so satisfying… play it.

The album, Graham’s finest yet, features musical contributions from Robyn Hitchcock and Danny Thompson amongst others.

Graham Coxon releases his brand new album The Spinning Top on Transgressive Records on May 11.

The album was recorded in London in Spring 2008 and features musical contributions from Robyn Hitchcock and Danny Thompson, amongst others. It was produced by Stephen Street.

The single Sorrow’s Army will follow a week after the album, on May 18;  a limited edition single In the Morning, available on etched 10″ vinyl as part of ‘Record Store Day’. will precede the album on April 18.

Graham will be performing at the Transgressive showcase at South by Southwest, as well as at selected other events within the festival. He also plays with Peter Doherty on his tour later in March. Graham will preview his album with several low key shows in May, with a full solo tour to follow in the  autumn.

The Spinning Top features 15 brand new tracks and marks something of a departure in sound and feel from previous Graham Coxon solo work. It is also unusual in that the songs follow a narrative – nothing less than the story of a man from birth to death!

Graham says:

“The album is mainly an acoustic journey although there is, of course, some explosive electric guitar action. I wanted to show how exciting acoustic instruments can be, how dynamic and rich and heart-thumpingly raw they can sound at a time when acoustic music seems either too cute or too soppy. Obvious influences here are the amazing Martin Carthy, the late, great Davey Graham and the late, great John Martyn”.

“There are some guests too! Robyn Hitchcock supplies some counter-attack guitar, Jas Singh plays dilruba and jori with his friends Gurjit Sembhi on taus and Jaskase Singh on esraj. Danny Thompson plays the legendary Victoria, Graham Fox gives plenty of swing on the drums and sizzle cymbals and Louis Vause tinkles the ivories”.

“My friend Lucy supplies the voice of the wife and Natasha marsh channels the voice of the Medea-like enchantress”.

Although they have created small working prototypes in the lab, and before your head explodes in excitement, this video only showcases the concept and the projects desired outcome. The potential for visualising ideas and the overall creative process could be limitless. It is on the Killerpoke wishlist – see you in the year 2050.

Starting with a raft of digital marketing, web-build and film work for Graham Coxon, the time is nigh to launch a company: head, heart and feet first – curled up foetal position – into the crunch. We Are Humans.

The “Give a Laptop, Get a Laptop” scheme on European Amazon outlets has made the XO model available at a £268 cost. Buy one and receive one – the other will be donated to a school child in a developing nation.

When it was launched the XO originally cost $188, but 650,000 have now been sold, OLPC claims. Children in Peru, Mongolia, Rwanda, Haiti, Afghanistan,  Cambodia, Ethiopia and Iraq are already using them.

According to The Telegraph:

“OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte revealed the plan to extend the scheme, run in America last November and December, in a speech to the World of Health IT Conference in Copenhagen. The company will be hoping to sell more than the 190,000 units it sold then, because its deal with Amazon should make the units more visible to consumers who might already for shopping for similar ‘netbook’ style machines.”

The project has become mired in controversy and sold fewer machines than it initially anticipated. Unfortunately rival companies and changing technology trends have also made the company’s core XO model less unique than it was when first mooted. It is a brave and visionary idea. I really feel the European Goverments should be more proactive with initiatives like this – a much worthier cause than The Millennium Dome…

As inspiring and enthusiastic as always Jeff Han talks to Wired Magazine about improving the Perceptive Pixel engine and the industries approach to slowly incorporating MultiTouch interactions.

Macabre, twisted and inspired. The Halo Corpse Alphabet comes complete with numbers and punctuation.