Top 20 Best Tracks of 2008

Hot on the heels of my round up of 2008's best long plays, below is a run down of the top twenty tracks which have most tickled my musical fancy over the past 12 months, including a couple of shameless pop confections (stand up Katy Perry and The Ting Tings). As always, let me know what epic choons I've overlooked...

1. One Day Like This - Elbow



2. Colette - Langhorne Slim



3. I Stand Corrected - Vampire Weekend



4. Kids - MGMT



5. Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon



6. You Don't Know Me - Ben Folds feat. Regina Spektor



7. That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings



8. I Kissed a Girl - Katy Perry



9. Skinny Love - Bon Iver



10. Modern Guilt - Beck



11. Hey Ma - James



12. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes



13. Butterflies And Hurricanes - Muse



14. A&E - Goldfrapp



15. Pork And Beans - Weezer



16. Dig, Lararus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds



17. Dr. Yang - Ben Folds



18. M79 - Vampire Weekend



19. Time To Pretend - MGMT



20. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived - Weezer



Related posts:
Best Albums of 2008
Top 20 singles of the year (2006)

Best Albums of 2008

Yes, it's that time of year again; when Dan makes lists. First up, my top albums of the past 12 months; a list which seems to get shorter every year (25 in 2006, 20 in 2007, 15 this year). Not sure if I'm getting more discerning, more narrow-minded or just don't find enough time to listen to new music anymore. Whatever, there have been some cracking releases from a mix of old and new artists (ok, mostly old). Interested to hear what you think's missing...

		The Seldom Seen Kid Elbow Standout tracks: One Day Like This, The Fix
		Only By The Night Kings Of Leon Standout tracks: Sex On Fire, Use Somebody
		Langhorne Slim Langhorne Slim Standout tracks: Collette, Worries
		Way To Normal Ben Folds Standout tracks: You Don't Know Me, Dr. Yang
		Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Standout tracks: White Winter Hymnal, Your Protector
		Oracular Spectacular MGMT Standout tracks: Kids, Time To Pretend
		Haarp Muse Standout tracks: Butterflies And Hurricanes, Knights of Cydonia
		For Emma, Forever Ago Bon Iver Standout tracks: Skinny Love, Flume
		Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend Standout tracks: I Stand Corrected, Oxford Comma
		Modern Guilt Beck Standout tracks: Modern Guilt, Walls
		Dear Science TV On The Radio Standout tracks: Halfway Home, Golden Age
		Hey Ma James Standout tracks: Hey Ma, Waterfall
		Seventh Tree Goldfrapp Standout tracks: A&E, Some People
		Weezer (Red Album) Weezer Standout tracks: Pork And Beans, The Greatest Man That Ever Lived
		Accelerate R.E.M. Standout tracks: Supernatural Superserious, Man-Sized Wreath

Related posts:
My Top 20 Albums of 2007
My Top 25 Albums of 2006
My Top 25 Albums of 2005

Top Ten Best iPhone Apps (updated)

When I wrote my original list of top ten best iPhone Apps back in July, the Apps Store was only three days old and boasted under 700 apps. Fast forward four months and there are now over 8,000 apps available for download.

So, which of the 8,000 are most worthy of your attention? Well, I can't claim to have tried them all, but of those I have, these are the ten which I find most valuable.

(NB. I've only considered apps which can be downloaded from the Apps Store eligible, hence no Hahlo or BBC iPlayer - see also: Round-up of best made-for-iPhone web sites/apps).

1.) Last.fm The web's best music app in your pocket with an interface Apple would be proud off; what's not to like? Offering access to the main profile elements (Top Artists, Albums, Tracks, Recently Played, Events and Friends) and streamed radio stations based on your library, recommendations or an artist of your choice. The Information button, including tour dates overlayed on an Apple-esque calendar, are particularly invaluable and give it the edge over other iPhone music apps such as finetune. Best for: Music geeks

2.) Google Earth Not an app I use on a daily basis but Google Earth earns it's spot in the top ten by virtue of being so fricking cool. Fire it up and you're greeted with a distant view of our blue planet. Tap the geo-locate button and the globe starts to spin and in you zoom, until you're looking at a birds-eye view of the roof of your house. Factor in the app's use of the touch screen to zoom in and out / rotate the view and the accelerometer to tilt towards the horizon and you've got one of the most sophisticated and intuitive users of the iPhone's many virtues to date. Best for: Globetrotters

3.) NetShare Sadly no longer available for download from the App Store after a couple of brief periods of availability, NetShare let's you share your iPhone's 3G/Edge connection with your laptop - super useful when you're without Wi-Fi coverage but need the software and/or bigger screen that your laptop affords. Best for: Mactards

4.) midomi Whilst Shazam remains the app of choice for algorithmically identifying recorded music, midomi has an additional feature which makes me more likely to load it up at a party; the ability (at least in theory) to identify songs when sung or hummed. The fact that it's very rarely on the money (which, come to think of it, may be more of a comment on my friends' singing) simply adds to the fun as you wait to see what your butchered version of Dancing Queen will be identified as and, on the rare occasions when it does correctly identify a warbled tune, its extra satisfying. Best for: Parties

5.) Stanza Whilst clearly not the ideal device for reading an eBook on (screen size and contrast obviously compare unfavourably with dedicated eBook readers), the iPhone is the first mobile phone where it's not a wholly unbearable experience. Stanza brings an impressive 40,000 books and periodicals to the party and enough customisation options for the users to find a configuration that works for them. Best for: Literary travellers

6.) Tube Status Simple, single-function apps are great and they don't come much simpler than TubeStatus which provides an at-a-glance view of the current status of the various London Underground lines. Will be even more useful once there's ubiquitous Wi-Fi or mobile phone coverage on the tube. Best for: London commuters

7.) Wikipanion A simple but effective reversioning of the main Wikipedia site in an iPhone friendly format. Perfect for settling arguments / cheating in pub quizzes. Best for: Pedants

8.) eBay Like the Nintendo Wii, the eBay iPhone app is a textbook lesson in less-is-more design. The home screen has a search box and eight boxes telling you the status of the items you are watching/buying/selling. Best for: My Dad

9.) Facebook Whilst the genius of Twitter, the removal of Scrabulous and one too many crap applications have all conspired to keep me away from Facebook, I still log-in occasionally and when I do, it's usually on the iPhone where the clutter-free implementation (and absence of Werewolves/Zombies/Funwalls) makes it not such a painful experience. Best for: Nosy-parkers

10.) PhotoSwop Brilliant and scary in equal measure, PhotoSwap does exactly what it says on the tin; you take a photo using the iPhone's integrated camera and then swap it, randomly, with another PhotoSwap user's photo taken at roughly the same moment, with limited accompanying metadata (including geo-location data if they've opted to share it). Most of the time you get back a blurry image of the corner of a room or someone's thumb (at least, you hope it's their thumb...); nevertheless, the instantaneous global serendipity of it all is curiously compelling. Once sent, there is no way of recovering your photo, although you do have the option of responding to a photo with another photo of your own. Best for: Stalkers

Top 12 best ever songs used as samples

I had my first ever up-close-and-personal experience of karaoke on Friday night at K-Box off Leicester Square. And which song did I lose my karaoke virginity to, I hear you ask? Why, it was 'Islands in the Stream' by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton of course (although I really hit my stride with 'Suspicious Minds'...) Anyway, as a song whose melody I knew primarily from Pras Michel's 1998 hit single 'Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)', it got me thinking about the best songs which have been sampled for contemporary hits. Thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, my top twelve are embedded below (NB. it's the quality of the original hook that I'm ranking here, not the track which makes use of it - hence two entries by the decidedly uncool Coolio...) Let me know what I've missed using the comments form below or over on Twitter.

1. 'Stand By Me' - Ben E. King (1961) sampled by 'Beautiful Girls' - Sean Kingston (2007)



2. 'Islands in the Stream' - Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (1983) sampled by 'Ghetto Superstar (That Is What You Are)' - Pras Michel featuring Mýa & Ol' Dirty Bastard (1998)



3. 'The Way It Is' - Bruce Hornby and the Range (1986) sampled by 'Changes' - 2Pac (1998)



4. 'Every Breath You Take' - The Police (1983) sampled by 'I'll Be Missing You' - Puff Daddy and Faith Evans (1997)



5. 'Walk on The Wild Side' - Lou Reed (1972) sampled by 'Can I Kick It?' - A Tribe Called Quest (1991)



6. 'Under Pressure' - Queen (1981) sampled by 'Ice Ice Baby' - Vanilla Ice (1990)



7. 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' - Gary Numan/Tubeway Army (1979) sampled by 'Freak Like Me' - Sugababes (2002)



8. 'Parce Que Tu Crois' - Charles Aznavour (1966) sampled by 'Breathe' - Blu Cantrell ft. Sean Paul (2003)



9. 'Super Freak' - Rick James (1981) sampled by 'U Can't Touch This' - MC Hammer (1990)



10. 'The Last Time' - The Andrew Oldham Orchestra (1966) sampled by 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' - The Verve (1997)



11. 'Pastime Paradise' - Stevie Wonder (1976) sampled by 'Gangsta's Paradise' - Coolio (1995)



12. 'Canon in D major' - Pachelbel (1680) sampled by 'C U When U Get There' - Coolio (1997)

US Election punditry: 47 out of 50 ain't bad

Whilst I waited nervously for the US election results to start coming in on Tuesday night I decided to have a crack at predicting the state-by-state outcome using the CNN Electoral Map Calculator. Once completed, I took a screengrab, uploaded it to TwitPic and then tweeted a link to it (timestamp: 11:53 PM). Fast-forward a few hours (although it has to be said, they didn't go particularly fast) and 47 of the 50 states had gone the way I'd predicted (I got Montana and Indiana wrong whilst Missouri was too close to call). Does a glittering career in US political punditry await or was it, despite all the noise, actually quite an easy election to call? Either way, my faith in the American electorate has been restored, Barack Obama is on his way to the White House and, praise be, they had to update this website rather than this one.

Crowdsourcing my next holiday

Life is short. The economy/climate/world is going to hell in a handbasket. What's to be done? I think a vacation is in order...

Unfortunately my borderline OCD means that I normally spend more time researching my holiday options than I do actually on holiday. Therefore, building on the success of my attempts to crowdsource my reading and choice of mobile phone, I am asking you, dear reader, to choose where I go on my next trip. You will have to weigh up the damage a long-haul destination will do to the environment (and my wallet) versus the comedy value of sending me to Kazakhstan.

Since blogs are so over I'm going to ask for suggestions via Twitter - just reply to @fabricoffolly and/or mark your suggestion with the hashtag #dansbigadventure.

I will then total up the votes and (finances permitting) book a trip to the most popular destination. Photographic evidence will then be posted on Flickr.

David, it's over to you...

BBC Vision website launches

As previously posted, my job requires me to have an overview of the whole of BBC Vision's online portfolio. Until recently, my record of new site launches comprised a TextEdit document on my laptop (edited on a daily basis) and an Excel spreadsheet on a shared drive (updated, er, less frequently). A couple of weeks back I decided that a far better tool for maintaining and sharing this information would be a simple blog.

As well as being naturally geared towards the chronological presentation of information (with posting dates corresponding to approximate site launch dates), a blog also enabled the easy addition of screenshots (captured using the super-useful WebShot) and tags to enable filtering by various metadata facets (e.g. commissioning genre, associated broadcast channel). Crucially, it also enabled me, in keeping with the renewed spirit of openness, to open up data which had no reason to reside within the confines of the BBC's firewall. I haven't had time to tart up the design yet although it feels like less of a priority in the age of feeds (here's the FeedBurner feed).

For a less Vision-centric view of recent BBC website launches check out Ryan 'Up Your Ego' Morrison's post on Wide BBC pages.

Ben Folds 2.0

I wrote last year about the progressive approach of Ben Folds and his record label (Epic) to utilising the web as a platform both for participation and for distribution, referencing his 'create your own Bitches Ain't Shit video' YouTube group, his forays into Second Life, his live-by-request MySpace webcast (featuring a "guitorchestra" - see below video) and his iTunes/Rhapsody Originals downloads.



It's fair to say he's not been resting on his laurels since then, having launched (deep breath) Ben Folds TV (full screen video channel hopping with user comments running along the bottom of the screen), a Front to Back MySpace concert (rebroadcasting Ben Folds Five's one-off live performance of their final studio album together) and a YouTube covers contest which has now morphed into a planned album of a cappella covers (check out the awesome video embedded below).



He's also recorded and leaked fake album tracks and partnered with iTunes for a live music download series called 'The Sounds of Last Night... This Morning', described in his email newsletter thus: "At select shows on his Fall Tour, Ben Folds will pick a live song from that show and make it available to fans exclusively via the iTunes store by the following morning" (which I'm guessing would have got more press if Radiohead had done it).

Of course, no 2008 web offer would be complete without widgets and there are a couple of choose from - an audio jukebox and, for those of a more visual bent, a video/slideshow player (both embedded below).





And just to prove no-one can always get it right on the web, there's the recently relaunched Official Ben Folds Site, which is a complete navigational car crash, with different navigation on the homepage and sub-pages (where it takes up the whole page above the fold) and spread across multiple domains (benfolds.com, benfoldswebstore.com, thepfoj.com). Hey, nobody's perfect :)

BBC Search relaunched

In case you missed it, the BBC's internal search engine relaunched today.

Apart from a lick of Barlesque paint, the main changes are:

- the addition of a 'TV and Radio programmes' module returning results from both /programmes and iPlayer
- 'BBC Best Links' are no longer badged as such (apparently people thought they were sponsored links and ignored them) - they just appear as the first results
- where one area of bbc.co.uk has multiple page matches for a search query, the second result is indented (a la Google) with a link to More results from "name of site">> (which stops the page getting swamped by results from just one area)
- the phasing out of the wider web search (although a module for results from 'Elsewhere on the Web' remains, bottom right)

Some nice example searches:

Big Cat Live
Merlin
Ian Hislop
Barack Obama
Fashion
Climate Change

This is the first in a number of incremental improvements to BBC Search over the coming months. I think it's a small but significant step forward that will help users find what they're looking for (esp. programmes) more easily and more quickly. I also think it starts to show how our search, topic and genre index pages are all part of the same continuum. Looking forward to reading the Martin Belam verdict.

Read more about the relaunch from Matt McDonnell on the BBC Internet blog.

Trends in gaming

As promised a while back, below is a pull together of what seem to me to be some of the most significant trends in gaming at the moment. Let me know what I've missed.

1. New input devices / interfaces
The last few years have seen an explosion in the number of innovative new gaming input devices; dance mats, the EyeToy, the DS touchscreen and stylus, Buzz!, the Wiimote and Balance Board, Guitar Hero/Rock Band and the iPhone. Next up: the Neural Impulse Actuator (no really). See earlier post: A visual history of the evolution of video game controllers.

2. Digital distribution
It's been talked about for years but the digital distribution of video games is finally becoming mainstream thanks to the online stores of the 7th generation consoles (PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, Wii Shop Channel), the growth of Steam (not being bought by Google after all) and, perhaps most unexpectedly of all, the launch of the iTunes Apps Store (100 million downloads and counting, many of them games). Digitial distribution is also enabling the little guys to get their games out there (check out the wonderful Ben There, Dan That! from the two-man Zombie Cow Studios).

3. Social networking
Gaming and social networking are coming together in a variety of different ways; via casual games / social objects in existing social networks (e.g. Facebook applications such as Scrabulous, Texas HoldEm Poker and the supremely annoying Vampires/Zombies); via games which work across networks (e.g. Mytopia, Come2Play); via social networks dedicated to gaming (e.g. Raptr, Character Planet); via casual gaming sites with integrated social networking functionality (e.g. Cafe.com, MuZui, doof, i'm in like with you) and via browser based games with a social dimension (e.g. PMOG, WebWars: EVE).

4. User-created games
Once the province of the bedroom-coder, it's getting easier and easier for non-technical users to create their own games thanks to sites such as The Sims Carnival and PlayCrafter. The visual richness and complexity of what it's possible to produce is also increasing with the advent of more sophisticated 3D engines like Atmosphir. Sites such as Kongregate and YoYo Games enable amateur developers to get their games out to a wide audience. Creating elements within games is also becoming increasingly commonplace with games such as Spore and LittleBigPlanet taking the creativity offered by The Sims to the next level.

5. Free-to-play games
It looks like Chris Anderson might be right (again) - the shift towards free is gradually starting to permeate the games industry. Whilst freeware has been around for years it's only relatively recently that it's started looking like a viable option for bigger games companies as ad supported gaming and alternative revenue streams (e.g. clothing for avatars) become increasingly commonplace.

6. Personalised avatars
The days of choosing between Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are long gone. Fully customised 3D avatars are increasingly becoming the norm in gaming environments. Online virtual worlds and MMOGs such as Second Life, MTV's virtual worlds, EVE Online and City of Heroes set a new benchmark of avatar personalisation which is now starting to percolate through to console titles. WeeWorld and Nintendo also helped shift expectations with their respective WeeMees / Wii Miis.

7. Real-world gaming
The number of gaming experiences tempting joystick junkies beyond their front doors has been on the increase over the last couple of years; from ARG's like I Love Bees and Perplex City to geo-location games like PacManhatten, Crossroads, Conqwest and Plundr. Whether these games transition from the geek-elite to the mainstream remains to be seen, although Akoha (which bills itself as "the world’s first social reality game") looks interesting, as does Zyked (think Nike + on steroids).

8. Episodic gaming
A logistical nightmare when shipping physical product, episodic games becomes achievable when delivered over IP. Telltale Games is at the forefront of episodic gaming having published three separate series: Bone, Sam & Max and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (with Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures coming soon). Other high profile episodic games include GameTap's American McGee's Grimm, SCE's Siren: Blood Curse and Kuma's controversial Kuma\War. BioWare provided additional downloadable episodes for Mass Effect and Warner Bros. Interactive are reportedly planning to release the Watchmen video game episodically. A somewhat lower profile example is Channel 4/LittleLoud's Bow Street Runner (see earlier post).

9. Casual games
The casual games market has gone through the roof in the last few years. Uber portals such as Pogo, Miniclip and AddictingGames attract millions of visitors a month whilst series such as Virtual Villagers and Mystery Case Files have been downloaded many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of times. There's also the occasional David amongst the casual gaming Goliaths, with individual titles like Line Rider and TypeRacer capturing the public's imagination and spreading virally.

10. Into the mainstream
Extensively documented elsewhere, there's little doubt that the Wii, Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, Brain Training and Nicole Kidman have all done their bit in helping move gaming beyond the hardcore to members of the family whom previous gaming eras couldn't reach. Will be interesting to see how much further gaming can diversify in order to reach new audiences or whether that particular market strategy has now been exhausted.

Photo: Matt Watts. Used under license.

Googling for brands: Is BBC weather really more popular than porn?

Interested by the recent Experian / Hitwise release which reports that 88% of UK Internet searches in May 2008 were for branded search terms (up from 65% in 2005) with ‘facebook’ topping the list (accounting for 1 in every 72 searches).

So, why should this be the case? Robin Goad (co-author of the report) is clearly right in saying that "much of this branded search is navigational in nature – people type a brand name into a search engine or browser toolbar with the clear intention of navigating to a particular site", but why? Do most UK internet users genuinely not know the difference between their browser address bar and search box (perhaps a forgivable mistake in light of recent developments) or are we just tired of playing URL roulette when Google can confirm our desired destination in a fraction of a second? Most likely a mixture of the two.

Another reason is the sample size; absent from the headline but present in the main body of the release is the fact that this percentage was drawn from an analysis of the top 2,000 UK search terms. In other words, the long tail is missing; a long tail which I suspect contains a higher percentage of non-branded search terms.

Another potential omission is adult search terms which invariably get filtered from these sorts of rankings (if you want to see the frightening reality of what people are searching for in real-time, check out Dogpile SearchSpy). Google Trends (Google having an 87% market share of UK search) certainly suggests that 'porn' is a much more common UK search term than 'bbc weather' (see chart). It also places 'google' above most of the search terms in the Hitwise Top 10 (see chart), although I'm not entirely sure what that tells us.

So, what are the takeaways from this report? Brand searches certainly appear to be becoming more prevalent, at least at the head of the curve. One possible response is to actively target your competitors keywords through sponsored links, as Sky are currently doing for some key BBC brands like EastEnders, to try and take advantage of the 8.7% of searches for one of the top 100 online brands in the UK which result in a visit to a website owned by someone other than the brand owner (something Hitwise charmingly refers to as "brand leakage").

Another option is to try and harness these popular search terms via optimisation for natural search. Whilst you'd need to have a hell of a lot of googlejuice in the bank to come anywhere near page one of the results for these terms in isolation, when coupled with one or more other keywords, you could be in the money (one of the most consistently viewed posts on this blog is my Top 10 best Facebook applications, despite being over a year old).

A couple of other takeaways:
- Don't assume users will dutifully type in the URL you've spent thousands of pounds marketing - they'll probably just Google your brand.
- Try to take account of possible misspellings, colloquialisms and phonetic interpretations of your brand in your SEO strategy (note 'youtube' and 'you tube' at numbers 4 and 5 in the below table and the cautionary tale of Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment).