Some interest here at news that London-based rocker Noush Skaugen is to perform live at Twitter’s San Fran HQ tomorrow (Friday).

Noush Skaugen has the distinction of being Twitter’s number one unsigned artist with 1.2 million followers (Stephen Fry has 1.3 million followers).

Skaugen’s performance will streamed live at www.noushskaugen.com/live at 5.30pm PST which is 1.30am GMT – the first unsigned act to be given this opportunity.

Described by Maxim as “One of Britain’s upcoming gems”, the classically trained London rocker has made strategic use of social media, through such things as crowd-sourcing poster designs from fans, and tweeting pictures of last-minute changes to hand-written set lists seconds before going on stage.

Noush’s Twitter gig kicks off a series of dates prior to the May release of her new single Run Baby Run. She has already won acclaim as Alternative Pop Artist of the Year at the 17th Annual LA Music Awards, and National Independent Rock EP of the Year at The Hollywood Music Awards.

There’s a lot of focus on Apple’s iTunes LP format today, so trust Damon Albarn, EMI and the Gorillaz to take it up a notch with announcement of all manner of new album-related goodliness being made available exclusively from today via iTunes – as the much-anticipated ‘Plastic Beach’ album ships today in the U.S. on EMI’s Virgin Records.

The iTunes LP version of Plastic Beach includes the record-breaking “Stylo” video and a Making of “Stylo”  documentary;  a video collection of Gorillaz animations, Plastic Beach trailers and six exclusive films set to album tracks; a still gallery featuring original Gorillaz art and images exclusive to iTunes; a Gorillaz interactive game; and an Online Extras section providing  access to Gorillaz live concert performances and additional exclusives.

The iTunes deluxe edition of the record also features the bonus tracks “Pirate’s Progress: and “Three Hearts, Seven Seas, Twelve Moons.”

The physical “Experience Edition” of Plastic Beach includes such bonuses as a Making of Plastic Beach DVD, ability to stream live Gorillaz performances, and a special access card unlocking a world of exclusive and interactive online content to be revealed over time.

Having already been hailed with a 4-star Rolling Stone review and an Entertainment Weekly “Must List” plug, Plastic Beach’s first single, “Stylo,” was unveiled in its video incarnation Tuesday March 2 on YouTube. The “Stylo” world premiere instantly became the most successful official music video premiere in YouTube Music Tuesday history, generating over 900,000 views in its first 24 hours, since breezing past the million view mark and surpassing previous record holders U2 and Weezer. The “Stylo” video can also be seen on VH1, MTV, MTV2, MTVU, Logo, and Fuse.

Elsewhere, the NPR Music Exclusive First Listen for Plastic Beach was the #1 most popular story on NPR.org in its first 24 hours.

Plastic Beach is the first Gorillaz album produced entirely by Damon Albarn and features a roster of guest stars including Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Lou Reed, The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, The National Orchestra for Arabic Music and many more. Gorillaz a/k/a Murdoc Niccals, 2D, Noodle and Russel Hobbs were co-created by Albarn and visual artist Jamie Hewlett over ten years ago, and unleashed on the world with their self-titled 2001 debut album, which has sold nearly two million copies in the U.S. The band’s 2005 follow up, Demon Days, featured the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocal Grammy-winner “Feel Good Inc.” and sold in excess of two million copies in America.

Gorillaz will headline the April 18 final day of this year’s Coachella festival in Indio CA, which will be the first live Gorillaz experience in the States since the Demon Days Live sold out five-night run that took place in April 2006 at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

For further developments in the ongoing Gorillaz saga, check back hourly at the all new http://gorillaz.com/, follow the band’s own Murdoc Niccals at www.twitter.com/murdocgorillaz, or check out the Gorillaz YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/gorillaz.

Two conflicting iTunes reports this morning take a look at the fortunes – or, arguable, lack of them, of Apple’s iTunes Plus format (soon to be upgraded, at least according to one industry exec).

Report one is the usual fire and brimstone and doom and gloom affair, in which Salon takes a look at the first six months of the format’s existence, and observing it has thus far failed to fully grab consumer or industry support.

“Like an enhanced CD or a DVD packaged with a physical album, iTunes LP’s bonus materials may interest super-fans, but they aren’t generating much buzz among mainstream consumers, and don’t appear to be stimulating LP sales at all. “It’s something most people will look at once,” is how one person put it.”

There’s only 29 iTunes LP releases for sale in the US via iTunes, almost half of which were among the first dozen to be introduced, and which were developed in collaboration with Apple.

An interview with Rhino Entertainment’s David Dorn shows a slightly different humour to the iTunes LP flatline.

“The initial launch was very successful. We sold thousands and were very happy,” he tells Paid Content. The problem is the way iTunes works – the extended LPs don’t always make it to the store before the standard versions.

“Rhino has talked about the situation with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and it sounds like a fix is in the works. Dorn added, “I think that the LP is a really important next step in digital product packaging.””

In other words, like every rev.1 Apple product, don’t throw the iToys out the iPram and take the iGround straight away. Though if anyone were to ask me I’d say that the price don’t fit the market, extra features or not. If you want to spend that kind of money on a slice of music and want an interesting new format why not buy a CD? You get to hold it, smell it, and rip it. (And it’ll sound better through your stereo.)

To make iTunes LP succeed, all Apple and the labels really need to do is offer the music at higher-than-CD-quality bit-rates, with the right to burn the audio to CD, so DJs could use the format in their live sets on those big, loud, but sometimes acoustically unforgiving PA systems.

One day maybe the digital world will fulfill the promise and offer music in better, rather than lower quality format.

Thanks to Cory Doctorow and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The latter have published the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, “a secretive document that requires its signatories to agree to a gag order on the terms of the deal.” The EFF got its hands on the document by filing a Freedom of Information Act request to NASA. EFF Senior IP Attorney Fred von Lohmann thinks it is a pretty poor deal for devs…

“Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That’s not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it’s a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold. In other words, it’s only because Apple still “owns” the customer, long after each iPhone (and soon, iPad) is sold, that it is able to push these contractual terms on the entire universe of software developers for the platform.”

More here and here.

Here via UberGizmo and Instructables is one of those images sure to spark a tiny frisson of Mac geek happiness in some congregation members out there – Snow Leopard running on a 1984 Macintosh.

(Catch is that it actually isn’t a 1984 Macintosh – the 8MHz processor and motherboard and, like, everything, has been replaced, but if you’re looking for a way to impress your Mac geek girlfriend this could be a weekend project, or something).

We so like this story on the Next Web. It truly reflects the increasingly weird nature of Apple-focused navel-gazing these days, as reports increasingly reflect the personal feeling/desire of some reporters in some form of wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Take the numerous reports that the iPad will have some front-facing (or back-facing) camera. These are becoming ever more mental. Now some satirist at Next Web has sat down to deliver something that reflects the times…a story that Steve Jobs runs Flash on the iPad.

We love the whole notion of this. Taking a grainy image of Jobs and showing it in different blown up views, complete with amateur-looking marks on the images which offer the author the chance to make ever more gleeful claims, such as “this is Flash”.

Sure, I’ve been dealing out bits and pieces across the years which contribute to this level of noise, but these days so much that actually constitutes real reporting is being drowned out by the nonsense. We’re all complicit, of course, running fast as we can to every tiny out of this world claim.

Also a personal reflection that new patents and whispers of new product design often have a 2-3 year waiting period before becoming reality. For example I still believe there will be some form of iPhone nano one day, but I couldn’t tell you which day. Though it won’t be tomorrow.

Take a look at the report here.

Good Shoes follow their recent month long sold-out European tour and ‘No Hope No Future’ album release with a UK tour and a brand new E.P. ‘The Way My Heart Beats’ to coincide.

‘The Way My Heart Beats’ ships with 3 brand new, previously unheard b-sides: Easier Easier, Run Away With Me and Stand By. The band is also offering fans an exclusive free audio/visual package via their website starting today.

The free download package includes:

• 2 x full tracks – ‘The Way My Heartbeats’ (special live acoustic version) and ‘Easier Easier (taken from forthcoming single).
• 2 x exclusive videos including a performance of the Daniel Johnston track ‘Despair Came Knocking’ and a personal video message from Good Shoes themselves.

A video of the special live recording of acoustic track ‘The Way My Heart Beats’ is right up there at the top.

April UK tour (with age restrictions):

19th April – Arts Centre, Norwich 14+
20th April  – Chinnerys, Southend 14+
21st April  –Dingwalls, London 14+
22nd April  – Audio, Brighton 16+
23rd April  –Guildhall, Gloucester 14+
24th April  – Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth 14+
26th April  – Cavern, Exeter 16+
27th April  – Little Civic, Wolverhampton 14+
28th April  – Deaf Institute, Manchester 18+
29th April  – Hi-Fi Club, Leeds 18+
30th April  – The Lamp, Hull 14+
01 May – The Royal, Derby 14+

Now we know Apple and Google aren’t such great friends right now, but now it looks like Google and Play.com may have figured out quite how to leak the Holy Grail of price discovery rumours, letting slip what could be potential prices for UK iPads….

Now, we’re not particularly excited at the prices we’re seeing here. “Search for “Apple iPad 16GB” on Google Products and you’ll get a iPad UK price of £499. Search for the larger 64GB version and there’s a price of £699.”

We don’t think that’s a sweet enough sweet spot for UK pricing, and hope there’s a little work going down to lower these a little more – at these prices you may as well buy a Mac, in my opinion. But never say never.

ElectricPig feels a little the same, saying, “We’d hope that Apple won’t simply switch the dollar sign for the pound sign when deciding the iPad UK price. It has happened before but if it did this time, UK iPad users would be getting a pretty bad deal.”

Macworld UK of course is currently the champion in the ‘guess the iPad price’ competition, with wide reports in circulation citing its basic GUESSING at a £417 entry-level spot.

We’ll wait and see.

Look – its Apple’s new TV ad spot, extolling the virtues of its camera-free (like anyone really needs one) iPad. Look in wonder as those hands lovingly caress the digital revolution. Ask yourself how often you’ll see one pulled out for playback on the tube or bus…is this a computer for some of us from the people who made the Mac for the rest of us?

Only time will tell, all the same Apple CEO Steve Jobs got a little extra buzz going by showing his face at the Oscars ceremony last night, wandering up the red carpet to attract intent stares from the stars and functionaries of the motion picture industry. There’s a picture of Jobs’ arrival right here.

What else? We’re expecting a lot. Lets wait and see what gives. Shame it will be late in the UK.

As the iPad looms, comics fans are buzzing off a big deal discount sale via giant online retailer Amazon US, which is offering key Disney-owned Marvel-published graphic novels at an incredible fraction of their usual price.

Granted we’re stretching here, but if you are in the US and you like your graphic novels Amazon’s prices are really something else – and the move is generating consternation across the comics industry.

We’re curious if Amazon knows something we don’t and the release of these books at such low prices is the retailer’s reaction to suspicions of new subscription-based services via Disney.

Equally, Amazon could be engaged in a right royal Sunday mess-up in which prices have been lowered and the company hasn’t yet jumped to fix this itchy glitch.

At the end of the day, the tagged-on speculation about the rational for these deals isn’t so important – US readers may want to take a look at some of them, such as the Ultimates Omnibus which is out for $8.24…..

Update: Bleeding Cool now informs us that the event is indeed a glitch that’s currently being fixed.

“In all likelihood if your order is being processed, then you’re getting those books at that price and someone will probably have to eat the difference. If not, expect to get a firm but polite email from Amazon explaining that you won’t be getting these books at the price you ordered them at – though you are welcome to purchase them at the usual discount rate.”

Highlights from Michael Jackson’s HiStory world tour have been released as an iTunes and BlackBerry application.

The concert movie features the late King of Pop onstage and backstage during the 82-date tour.

Footage also includes rarely seen footage of Jackson behind the scenes, rare photographs and performances of hits like They Don’t Care About Us, In The Closet, Wanna Be Startin’ Something, Smooth Criminal, I Want You Back, Billie Jean, Thriller and Beat It.

Short version: The next-generation iPhone will at last offer the capacity to make video calls, eagle-eyed visitors to the newly-updated O2 UK iPhone plans page are pondering.

O2 has added “video calls” to its list of Key Features for Apple’s device, the biggest hint yet at future inclusion of such a facility. This could be why the iPhone 3.2 SDK has the video calling feature everyone’s been generating site traffic through speculation about.

After all, the current SDK is 1/ Beta software and 2/ Also part of the wider iPhone development cycle. So we won’t be holding our breath for video calling on the iPad, but reckon this new O2 leak pretty much confirms the feature’s coming to the next-gen iPhone.

Redmond Pie recaps other rumours for the next iPhone, which should boast a faster processor and support for 802.11N wifi. Also look forward to a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash.

Jolly good.

iPad will be available for pre-order on March 12, and will ship in the US on Saturday April 3 for WiFi models and in late April for WiFi and 3G models.

As expected, servicing the product into international markets will lag the US launch, but not by long – all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK by late April, the company has announced.

Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

“iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

The iBooks app for iPad including Apple’s iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store in the US on April 3, with additional countries added later this year.

Apple has still refrained from announcing international pricing on the product, but does tell us the iPad “starts at $499” in the US. International pricing will be announced in April, the company said.

iPad will ship in additional countries later this year.

PS: Little personal this, but this is what I predicted quite some time ago. And at least one Apple watcher out there may recall the fall-out that accurate prediction created.

Alongside boosting the PC industry, transforming publishing, energising education and, erm, making the tea (it won’t yet make the tea) Apple’s iPad seems set to devour most of the world’s remaining stock of solid-state flash memory, according to “people in the know”.

DigiTimes – which has already told us many times before about how the iPhone and iPod touch have cunningly connived to constrain flash memory supplies – now tells us that the iPad is going to generate even more shortage as Cupertino consumes vast quantities of global supplies.

Apple already consumes almost one-third of total NAND flash output, and it looks like the iPad is going to grab an even larger share.

“With the iPad likely to grab most memory supplies, prices may increase causing higher prices for SSDs, the sources told DigiTimes.

Prices of this component aren’t expected to fall significantly until the latter half of 2011, when new 20nm process technology steams in to save the day.

Big news from China where Apple’s current carrier China Unicom says it hopes to reduce iPhone prices there – even as far bigger rival, China Telecom, confirms continued talks to distribute the Apple device in the country.

China Mobile Ltd. Chairman Wang Jianzhou said Friday that his company and Apple have been in talks on an iPhone distribution deal

For China it looks like a price war may be ahead (probably easier to achieve when you consider the devices are actually manufactured there) “For Chinese consumers, the sales price for iPhone should be the-cheaper-the-better, and we totally understand that,” said Chang Xiaobing, China Unicome chairman at the opening of the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing on Friday.

Chang’s remark marries well with earlier claims the carrier intends reducing iPhone prices by 20-30 percent at the end of the Month, with the Beijing Morning News citing claims from Merrill Lynch that Unicom may lower the iPhone price to 3,000 yuan ($439.46) to 3,500 yuan from the current 4,999 yuan to 6,999 yuan.

That’s a good price when you consider part of the reason for slow iPhone sales in China has been the strength of the grey market. Unlocked grey import iPhones (with WiFi) cost around 5,700 yuan ($835) in China’s street markets.

Chang confirmed over 300,000 iPhone sales in China since launch, adding the it continues to discuss the possibility of introducing a WIFi-enabled phone there in future.

China Unicom was reportedly contracted to buy five million iPhones at a cost of $1.5 billion.

War makes strange bedfellows, and now it looks like Google and Adobe may be cosying up as they attempt to circumnavigate the iPhone world with a stab at marching out on Android.

Adobe today announced developers now have access to the Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 editor, allowing them to easily make it a part of their applications and deploying its collection of new editing effects.

The battle story continues to move along, with Adobe’s Doug Mack, vice president and general manager of Digital Imaging and Rich Media Solutions saying, “Unlike iPhone, the Android platform allows us to make the Photoshop.com editor broadly available to developers so they can provide it within any application they are working on. Photoshop functionality can then easily be accessed from an online auction, real estate or social media application so users can quickly fix photos and make them look their best, before being showcased.

Developer Access to Adobe Technology A new developer site now allows Android developers to leverage the Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 editor in the creation of other application workflows.

Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 is available as a free download in all countries with Android Market in English only. Search the Android Market for “photoshop.com” to find it.

Along with revolutionising publishing, text books and the leisure and tourism industries, now Apple’s iPad’s being slated (slate, geddit?) to save the entire PC industry, driving shipments to climb 20 percent in 2010, at least, that’s what the analysts at Gartner this morning say.

The predict the rising popularity of notebooks and next-generation tablets will cause shipments to climb 20 percent rather than the 13 percent they originally predicted. Cue the iPad hyperbole…

“Apple’s iPad is just one of many new devices coming to market that will change the entire PC ecosystem and overlap it with the mobile phone industry,” said Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “This will create significantly more opportunities for PC vendors as well as significantly more threats.”

Gartner expects up to 10.5 million tablet devices to ship this year. PC shipments should hit 366.1 million units in 2010, up from 305.8 million units last year, they predict.

Whatever next for the iPad? Making toast – should there be an app for that? Slicing bread??

Blink and you may have missed it, but one recent change in Apple’s deal with developers was to begin rejecting apps which used location-based data solely for serving up ads – now it looks like a Google-owned patent on such uses may be behind the move.

Apple last month told developers, “If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”

We know things between Apple and Google are heating up – you only need to glance across at the HTC lawsuit to get a feeling for the future.

(We do see some already comparing Apple’s situation with that it faced all those years ago when involved in battle with Microsoft and HP, but we think that’s just a horror story for Mac-fixated history buffs.)

One weapon Google has is this recently-granted patent on the use of location in mobile advertising. This patent could be a huge blow for everyone involved in mobile marketing solutions, and the granting of the patent could have significant impact on every other player in the space. In this one, Google’s patent transforms it into the Microsoft of the day.

Google’s patent covers:

• Using location as a factor to decide whether an ad should be served or not (targeting and relevancy)
• Tracking the performance of an ad using location (metrics and analytics)
• Using location to determine what kind of content should be included in an ad (custom landing pages, banners, etc.)
• Allowing advertisers to enter their own location data for better ad targeting (advertising platforms)

“So if even part of the reason an ad publisher serves a particular ad to a consumer is because of that users location, they have now infringed Googles patent. Part of the patent covers just LOOKING at location information – even if you don’t use that information, Google has patented “accepting geolocation information associated with the requested”, one report observes.

The conclusion here is that how Google chooses to exercise its patent could be what affects development of these mobile technologies. However, as every old fool reporter knows, a company must defend its patent or it can lose it, so Google will inevitably have to execute certain legal cases to defend the patent it has.

What it will boil down to is if the patent remains in Google’s hands uncontested, as at present it seems to us to give the company rather too much power over the still-nascent market for mobile advertising.

That’s bad for business, bad for Apple and, one day after the initial Android gold rush, bad for competition and (ultimately) bad for Google…

And just the tiniest bit evil, in my opinion…

Apple has ceded a second content category to Google’s Android developers even while the contest between the two firms becomes more intense.

Today’s slice of weird news from the App Store disapprovals team is that Apple is pulling WiFi stumbling apps from the store – you know, the Apps which find and name locally operational open and closed wireless networks.

“We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi-Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information,” the developer of WiFi-Where says.

“It also appears that all other competing WiFi enabled apps have been removed as well. This is very unfortunate as the past 2-3 months have seen a handful of new WiFi apps get approved. Hopefully Apple will allow this functionality in a future SDK,” the developer concludes.

So there’s a second market to help stoke the coming Android App gold rush – WiFi finders for downloading stuff on open wireless networks, and adult apps to help you find stuff to download.

Via: Softpedia

One day only, people – today’s your chance to download a new Courtney Love/Hole composition, ‘Skinny Little Bitch’, for free….

The promotion lasts for one day only and is intended to boost attention for the new ‘Nobodys’ Daughter’ album which ships late April.

All you need to do is click here and visit the site, give Courtney a few personal details about yourself and you’ll be given the chance to download the track straight away, which is rather jolly.

The track’s only available for free download today – you got no chance if you leave it until tomorrow.

The track’s a nice slice of Courtney sneering anthem action, by the way.

Signing off, here’s some vintage Hole…