I bet they wish it didn't go viral!

Last week Coldplay's new album went straight to No 1with sales in excess of 300,000 copies. This is some achievment in just three days, but on top of that they also sold out a string of concerts and had huge iTunes coverage. In short, things were going fairly swimmingly.

Swimmingly didn't last long though. Just as suddenly as Viva La Vida soared, the band were hit with potentially crashing news. A small band called the Creaky Boards has launched a plagiarism suit against the band for their title track,which the boards claim has elements stolen from a track of theirs entitled 'The Songs I Didn't Write'.

Andrew Hoepfner, the Creaky Boards' singer and songwriter, has posted a video on YouTube, comparing the two tracks, which do have very similar sounds. Unfortunately the claims made by Hoepfner, that Chris Martin attended a Creaky Boards concert in New York last year have been completely refuited the band's spokesman Murray Chalmers.

"First, on the night in October when the band say Chris Martin was watching them, he was actually working at the Air Studio in London, and we can prove that. Second, even if he had been at the gig, "Viva la Vida" was written and demoed seven months before the night in question, so it couldn't possibly have been copied." . "We were flattered when we thought we saw Chris Martin in the crowd," said Mr Hoepfner. "He seemed pretty into it... Maybe TOO into it?"

Unfortunately Hoepfner's clip rapidly went viral and has already attracted nearly 430,000 views!, and although Coldplay have said they will not persue legal action against the Boards, this bad press could potentially cause serious damage to the bands reputation.

Neighbourhood Rock Gods

If you caught my GH4 post you'll already know how much I love filthy 80's rock. The guitar is awesome. Unfortunately it's only ever you and one mate. Sure there's Rock Band but I've never really felt the draw. This has changed!

Two important things have completely changed my mind about Rock Band - 1. I found out you can use the GH guitars (awesome!), and 2. this:

Google Fashion

It seems Google are poised to take over the..... fashion world?

Well perhaps not, but oogle FashionSatya Paul an Indian fashion designer has created this original Google saree. Trademark issues I hear you call! Well to avoid any trademark issue with Google Satya has just put an O there instead of G.

Clever dude.

Top of Mobile Search

Google currently holds 68 percent of web search share in the US and 87 percent in the UK. This isn't really news though - everyone knows the dominance of Google. What is surprising, imho, is that Google has already firmly grabbed the reins of the Mobile Search game, already holding 61 percent of mobile search (Nielsen Mobile from InformationWeek).

It really does beg the question, is there anything they can't be top of the game at?

Digital Visualisation

I was recently asked if i could lend a hand to a report by analysing the data flow involved. It wasn't a task I particularly wanted to do (sorry Roisin) but promises were made and so forth. The analysis wasn't difficult but I found myself slightly stumped as to how I should best represent the information as a graphic. All I could think of was an early post of my own on social network visualisation, and an article by Faris and Noah written for Contagious.

Neither fitted the bill, but with a little research I found this reference piece by Sarah Perez. This is a great list to keep to hand, and demonstrates the vast number of methods out there to visualise digital information. Excellent stuff!

Peer2Peer Money Lending?

You're a modern, digitally integrated student; your phone is web enabled, you regularly use three or four social networks, and you understand terms like Twitter, Plurk, Poke and Tag. Unfortunately times are hard and you need a loan. Who do you go to? Your bank? A building society?

Of course not! In this day in age you turn to..... a social network?

As strange as it sounds, this is what the modern student will do. Sites like Prosper.com and Lending Club, offer students a low-interest way to get student loans through peer to peer communities.

Certainly this take social networking to a new level. These sites are exactly what social networking was created for, but was as yet unrealised. The social networking platform is finally being used as it was meant to be: to connect people in need. It’s not just a way to communicate, get viral, and spread content.

Having said all this, and while I commend both companies for attempting to break the mould, I think both will end up in failure. Financial institutions won't let the business go, and surely some computer smart college student will find a way to cheat the system!

Mobile Instant Messaging

The last two phones I've had have featured MIM (Mobile Instant Messaging) software as part of their standard set up. Unfortunately this is not a feature supported by my network but it did always intrigue me as to how well such a service would work. Both phones were/are 3G phones so I didn't doubt that the speed could be quite fast but I was always weary about the cross platform communication between the phone software and the internet based IM network.

I was reminded of MIM over the weekend when I read a review of the new 3G iPhone, which will feature a new app called loopt. Essentially this is a mobile social networking tool with messaging and location built in. With a renewed interest in MIM I did a little digging and came up with two very interesting things:

1) A recent report by the Gartner group indicated that mobile instant messaging (MIM) is poised for massive global growth and could eventually replace SMS as the primary peer to peer tool of choice on mobile.

2) This fantastic video by Paul Barrett of One Degree