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A Gentle Reminder: Shaboi

As you embark on your weekend, please remember that if you haven't procured the new release from Shaboi - Curse Walk - you really need to do so now. It will get the gears properly turning for the forthcoming pagan celebration of Halloween.

Shaboi - Curse Walk

I love Halloween music. Be it spooky sound effects, amusing songs about the season or a random song that reminds me of Halloween; I consider myself a big fan. So, with that in mind, I am extremely pleased to present my fourth release for yk records - Curse Walk by Shaboi.

The album is a quick listen but it spans a wealth of styles in that time. He manages to cover hip-hop, instrumental electronic, country ballads, traditional pop and even a nod to 1920's Radio Drama. Typically I'd think this was a bit too eclectic for it's own good but the thematic umbrella of Halloween holds it all together perfectly.

Long story short, Shaboi has created a great album of Halloween songs that every single person that encounters these words will find something enjoyable on. As always, it's a free download or a purchasable limited edition CD with artwork courtesy of Amir Raissian.

• Download Curse Walk - completely free, no strings attached. Just promise to enjoy it and pass it along.
• Buy Curse Walk - limited edition compact disc, hand printed and decorated uniquely for each purchase.

Wanna Hld Yr Handheld

I've been reading about this compilation of 8-Bit artists all doing Beatles songs called I Wanna Hld Yr Handheld and it looks like the album is now fully compiled and ready for streaming. No download or physical version available yet but at least you can hear everything in its entirety for free!

Doing a Beatles song in 8-Bit style is odd enough as it is but these artists don't do straight interpretations either; so it's a nice base of familiarity with a lot of new on top of it.

Uncle Skeleton - REMIX

Awhile back Ross and I decided it would be fun to see if we could get some people to remix songs off of Pancho Chumley and, assuming the results were good, put out a free EP of their labors. After many months of actually getting everything together we are happy to present said EP - simply known as REMIX.

Overall it's a fairly interesting blend of styles - several heavily beat driven takes on the songs mixed along with some more atmospheric indulgences. The Jensen Sportag remix blows my mind that they took the original so far off into a new direction. The Justin Kase mix is a dance jam right off the bat but it's great to hear where he takes the song after it's been building.

I could gush about the great work that every single person contributed to the compilation but I will let you form your own opinions. It's an entirely free download so if you like it - just spread the word and get it heard by more people.

Nerd Tools

Some code related goodies you may enjoy perusing:

• jQuery TOOLS - from the people that developed the FlowPlayer comes a host of jQuery plugins for making development quicker / easier. The expose demo is particularly nice but there are tons of things there worth considering.
• iUI: iPhone User Interface - a framework for making web apps feel like native iPhone apps. It's based on work from Joe Hewitt - the guy that made Firebug and developed Facebook for the iPhone. Those credentials should give you pause enough to check it out.

Sexy Curls

The Sexy Curls jQuery Plugin makes adding that little upper right hand corner 'page' effect to any site 10x easier. While I understand if you have no use for such things I think it's worth noting how far alot of these plugins have come in making many "standard" practices of the past few years so much simpler to implement.

Via Keegan.

Carrot Creative

Jamie had me check out the portfolio of Carrot Creative and I must say, I enjoyed the experience. They are using a lot of out of the box jquery plugins for their design problems and it's a great solution for presenting a lot of information in a fixed height area AND impressing the end user. I particularly enjoyed the Services page.

More of the Misc

I enjoy a good unordered list, I hope you do as well.

• Metal LOLcats - "Enter Sandman" broken down, line by line, with LOLcats. The meme may be tired but this is pretty entertaining.
• 20 Best Wordpress Plugins - loads of these lists exist but I'm happy to see so many AJAX powered plugins so Wordpress can catch up a little bit on the technology front. Via CISNKY.
• Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web - a TED talk that I need to watch.

Tech Talk

• Outpost App - Basecamp for the iPhone. Coming "August 2008." Hopefully soon.
• Four Firefox Plugins You Must Have - from a developer point of view at least. Two I am familiar with, two I am not. Via CISNKY.
• OpenTape - miss Muxtape? Set up your own with OpenTape!

Entrepreneurial Websites

IFC is running a new series of web panels discussing music, the music industry and whatever range of topics they care to bring to the table. The latest topic is Entrepreneurial Websites and they've got Justin Ouellette from the somewhat defunct Muxtape, Jakob Lodwick from Vimeo and Normative Music and Maura Johnston from Idolator.

A lot of good points are made about the web and its involvement with the music industry but it's interesting that copyright law, bands being paid for number of plays and accountability are pretty much sidestepped entirely (it's discussed a little but not a lot). If you find this interesting I say read this - a nice mini-conversation that ends in one very intriguing, concise, notion.