Rock Band For Playstation and Xbox 360 (and possibly the Wii)

www.rockbandgame.co.uk provides information the UK Rock Band fans

Harmonix, along with MTV and other people have expanded on the Guitar Hero them and taken it to its logical conclusion, Rock Band. No longer do you restrict yourself to the fingertip shredding world of the guitarist, now you can ache your wrists and ankle bashing away at the drums too (although bashing the slightly too flimsy Rock Band drums is not recommended according to most owners comments).

But the big rub for us is that, although Rock Band is out in the US, we in the UK have to wait until March 2008, 3 or 4 months after our American cousins. This only serves to give them much more time to practice and beat us at any online games. Hopefully, it also gives Harmonix time to sort out any teething problems with the game and the hardware so our thrashing won't lead to queuing at the post office to return large parcels containing faulty kit.

This got me searching for somewhere to keep up to date with the UK Rock Band game and I found www.rockbandgame.co.uk. They are listing the different sites that are taking pre-orders and they are providing a forum to let people talk about the UK release. They've got me signed up and I want to know about the best prices for this game as soon as possible. Rock Band Game can't come soon enough.

www.rockbandgame.co.uk

Website of the day - Swapshop.co.uk

Here's a great idea for a website that has been done loads of times before but this looks like it is finally getting the concept right - http://www.swapshop.co.uk.


Swap DVDs, Swap CDs, Swap Video Games and Swap Books. It's been tried so many times on the internet but I don't think ever as simply and cleanly as this site.



It has two things that make it stand out for me.

1. It's free to swap. It is, really, completely free to list the items you want to get rid of and to request items you want. There are no charges. I spent a day or two checking this out and having used and tested the system, there are no charges.

2. You don't have to find a matching swap when you want to swap something. You don't offer to swap a Harry Potter DVD for an X-Men DVD. You just list your Harry Potter DVD and when someone requests it, you get Swap Points. You can then use these swap points to request anything else you want from the SwapShop site.

These two things are what make the difference. There are other advantages too and I'll speak about them below but a really good site that does what it says and is free is very refreshing, hence this post to tell you about it.

Some of the other stuff that makes the site work is:

• It's really easy to list your items. They concentrate on DVDs, CDs, Video Games and Books, and they have a database of all the barcodes, so, you just tap in the barcode of the back of the item you want to swap and the system has all of its details already. It shows you a copy of the packshot so you can see it's got the right item and you hit the "Offer As A Swap" button. Easy.
  
  
• They suggest the number of points you should list your item for based on what the item is available for at other online retailers. As you are getting rid of your used DVDs and you used CDs, books and Video Games, it suggests a swap point value just less than it can be easily bought for new. If you item is particularly damaged or worn, you can reduce the swap point value accordingly. I compared these guys to hitflip who also do online swapping but HitFlip force the point value so you cannot change it and they charge you 79p every time you swap something.
  
  
• They have a referral scheme that earns you points if you refer friends. Now, I know that this makes it sound all commercial, but, the more people that are looking for items on the SwapShop site, the more requests you are going to receive. More people on the site also means more products to choose from when you spend the Swap Points you have received, so, referrals seem absolutely necessary. They already seem to have over 14,000 people swapping and something like 30,000 items listed for swapping on the site.
  
  
• You can buy points. I think this is a great bonus to the site. It makes the site two sites in one, a site for swapping items but also a site for buying used items and if you've got a games console then you'll know that used games are a great way to get new different games for the kids, or for yourself. Each SwapShop Swap Point is worth £1 and there are PS2 and XBox games listed for only a couple of points in some cases. If you can't wait to collect points by swapping, or if you just want to pick up cheap used games, you can buy Swap Points using PayPal and request the items straight away.
  
  
• They have a Trading Guarantee that states they will sort out any problems that you have swapping on the site and applies if you are sent an item that is not what you requested, is counterfeit or is not reasonably fit for purpose. That sounds like it will cover pretty much everything I might worry about if I'm using the site for swapping.
  

I've used the site many times now and it works great if you list a good selection of items to get requests that generate points. Then I dip in and browse until I spot movies I would like to see or Video Games that the kids will play. As soon as I've watched the movie, I list it again and in this way SwapShop.co.uk works like a rental service. They even sent me three free jiffy bags recently to use when I post out SwapShop items.

Has anyone else used them? Has anyone used a similar site and have a comparison? Let me know in the comments.

How many new ways of doing things are there?

Is it really true that Mozart wrote all the world's music?

It's a credit to our resourcefulness that we can we can find new ways of doing things that have been done before, but some new things are far more amazing than others. I have two examples that I can't help but shout about and having bored all of my family and friends by showing them once and then showing them again after forgetting that I had shown them earlier, I resort to showing you. I have to. You have to know.

Etch-a-sketch. What could be new about that? Well, George Vlosich III has created a whole new world of Pop Art and he has put in hours of patient effort to do so.

He had the time and the patience to do more than play with his Etch-A-Sketch and the rewards for his efforts are outstanding. Not, perhpas, because the sketches created are superb images (an Etch-A-Sketch is limited to straight lines in black on grey) but because we all know the Etch-A-Sketch and we all immediately understand what must have gone into producing the images on these screens.

It also makes what he produces amazingly popular and it looks like he is doing a roaring trade in sketches for celebrities, sports teams and fans and ex-presidents. I'm sure they all, like us, remember being convinced that we'll create a decent picture on the Etch-A-Sketch in front of us, but ended up with another picture of a very square house with a front door and four windows that were attached to the walls with an unnecessary line.


And then we get on to a really time consuming creation, painting with light!



Yes, these guys really sat in the dark with torches and a camera and drew each frame again and again and again, not knowing what the last frame looked like because it was drawn in the air.

But with patience and practice they have put together leaping dolphins, walking deer, flying pigs and growing flowers.

So, some time ago, Mozart invented drawing (or am I getting confused) and over time he drew every shape of line that could be drawn. But even though we've played every chord and drawn line, there are people always coming up with new ways of putting it together. What are they gooing to come up with next time.

Snape, Snape, Severus Snape. DUMBLEDORE!

Harry Potter mania has produced many things but none as fine as 'Potter Puppet Pals in "The Mysterious Ticking Noise'. You can't stop yourself from watching it more than once and you can't stop yourself from muttering the words in your head while you sit on a packed underground, secretely shouting DUMBLEDORE to yourself in high pitched voice in your own head.




Created be Neil Cicierega and Emmy Cicierega, it makes you wonder, one, how they came up with the idea, two, when they decided to film it and, three, at what point did they decide to polish it and film it again as a near perfect short presentation!


They have also dragged in their friends Alora Lanzillota and Julie Becker and curiously none of the voices sound like they are coming from teenagers. It's not true that the internet is populated by school age wannabe's that flood the internet with mediocre repetition of what has been seen before, there are some adults out there putting in the effort to keep the standards up.