Coldplay, Led Zeppelin Album Covers Featured On New British Stamps

Album art from Pink Floyd, Blur and David Bowie also included.
By James Montgomery


Coldplay's new British stamps
Photo: Royal Mail

On Thursday (January 7), the U.K.'s Royal Mail unveiled a series of 10 new stamps, honoring the most iconic album covers of the past 40 years.

The albums featured in the new series are the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin's IV, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, The Clash's London Calling, New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies, Primal Scream's Screamadelica, Pink Floyd's The Division Bell, Blur's Parklife and — the most recent album on to make the cut — Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Meant to honor "the most potent graphic images of modern times, many of which have provided a visual soundtrack to people's lives," the series is the end result of a lengthy research process by the Royal Mail, who looked through thousands of album covers by British artists before deciding on the final list. And, during a Wednesday night BBC Radio broadcast, it was revealed that the queen herself actually approved each design.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page — who helped design the cover for IV — was on hand to celebrate the release of the stamps and recalled the mysterious nature of the album's iconic imagery.

"Almost 40 years after the album came out, nobody knows the old man who featured on the cover, nor the artist who painted him," he said. "That sort of sums up what we wanted to achieve with the album cover, which has remained both anonymous and enigmatic at the same time."

Of course, any great honor is befitting of an equally great contest, so, on the same day the stamps were made available to the general public, Coldplay decided to give one of their Rush of Blood stamps away. In a message on their official site, the band held a contest to send one lucky fan "a letter using a Coldplay stamp, postmarked with today's issue date."

"We visited our local post office earlier today and bought some of the Coldplay stamps," the message read. "Very nice they are too."

Related Photos Related Artists

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1629227/coldplay-led-zeppelin-album-covers-featured-on-new-british-stamps.jhtml

Amanda Detmer Amanda Marcum Amanda Peet Amanda Righetti Amanda Swisten

Watch: Sean Kingston Gives His First Interview Since His Jet Skiing Accident

Back in May we learned that singer Sean Kingston was involved in a near deadly jet skiing accident in Florida and have happily learned since then that his recovery and recuperation is coming along nicely. After Sean was released from the hospital he surprised fans by jumping up on stage to perform with Nicki Minaj [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pinkisthenewblog/~3/wMWqo7FUrnY/

Angelina Jolie Anna Faris Anna Friel Anna Kournikova Anna Paquin

Ke$ha Touched By Fan's Tattoo

Singer tells MTV News about gay fan inspired by her song 'Animal.'
By Gil Kaufman


Ke$ha
Photo: MTV News

Ke$ha knows all about the perks of being a headliner. On her Get $leazy Tour, the singer gets to call all the shots, blast her fans in the face with tons of glitter and handpick which dudes she wants to party and share the stage with.

But it's not all backstage shenanigans and groupie love. When MTV News sat down with the "Blow" singer in New York earlier this week before her gig at Roseland Ballroom, Ke$ha said that amid the nightly onstage parties there have also been some poignant moments on her first headlining outing.

"Best moment? There are so many. Every night's amazing. I have kids outside right now chanting my name and it's awesome," she said of the first leg of the tour. "There was one night a fan came onstage, I invited him onstage, and he had a tattoo of the dollar sign. I was like, 'Oh, that's awesome! Badass. You're part of the cult, man.' "

And then, she said, he began to cry and explained that he was able to come out of the closet to his friends and family thanks to her song "Animal."

"And I'm standing onstage about to sing a song about growing back a pair of testicles ["Grow a Pear"] and I had tears rolling down my face and chills all over my body," she said. "Because that's really the reason I do music, to inspire people to be themselves."

Ke$ha has been a vocal supporter of the "It Gets Better" video project, which aims to help gay, bisexual and transgender youth find hope in the face of teasing and bullying.

The "Get $leazy" juggernaut continues on Saturday night with a show at Clarion University in Clarion, Pennsylvania.

Are you planning to see Ke$ha on her Get $leazy Tour? Tell us in the comments.

Related Videos Related Artists

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1662061/kesha-get-sleazy-tour.jhtml

Angela Marcello Angelina Jolie Anna Faris Anna Friel Anna Kournikova

Michael Jackson Doctor's Trial Delayed

Judge pushes start of Conrad Murray's trial back to May.
By Gil Kaufman


Conrad Murray
Photo: AFP/ Getty Images

LOS ANGELES — Though Conrad Murray's lawyers had been pressing for a speedy trial, a judge in the involuntary manslaughter case against Michael Jackson's doctor ruled on Wednesday to delay opening statements in the proceedings until May.

The Associated Press reported that Murray's attorneys consented to the postponement after they discussed the matter with prosecutors and both agreed they could be ready for trial by May 9.

According to a transcript from the closed-door session, though opening statements will not begin for several months, Murray told Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor that he did not want to forfeit his right to a quick trial, but agreed to the delay if screening of prospective jurors begins as scheduled on March 24.

"It is only acceptable to me if this is not strung along over a long period of time," Murray told the justice. "I don't want to lose my constitutional right to speedy trial." Murray — who has pleaded not guilty to the charges — reportedly has been in favor of having the proceedings begin as soon as possible because he is facing financial troubles, but he said he understands that the delay is necessary to allow both sides to prepare for the trial.

Pastor consented because he said he didn't want to lose a jury pool, and believed a month-long delay might let potential jurors shuffle their schedules for the case, which could take up to two months to decide. The judge has reportedly clashed with Murray's defense team in recent weeks, pressing them for answers about why they had not turned over more witness notes and other potential evidence to prosecutors in the run-up to the trial.

Cardiologist Murray was hired to be Jackson's personal physician while the King of Pop prepared for his planned 50-date comeback series of shows at London's O2 arena in the summer of 2009. The doctor told police that he provided the then-50-year-old Jackson with sedatives and the surgical anesthetic propofol in order to combat the singer's chronic insomnia. He said he did so on the morning of June 25, 2009, when Jackson died of what a coroner deemed acute propofol poisoning.

Murray's lawyers reportedly plan to argue that Jackson was already in weak health before he died, that it's unfair to blame propofol for his passing and that, if the anesthetic was to blame, the pop superstar may have given himself the fatal dose by drinking the drug in a panic.

A status hearing in the case has been set for this Wednesday.

Related Videos Related Photos Related Artists

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1659100/conrad-murray-trial.jhtml

Hilary Swank Isla Fisher Ivana Bozilovic Ivanka Trump Izabella Miko

Skype 5.5 uses VP8 for video chats, keeps the WebM love aflame

Despite forming a coalition with a bevy of companies, Google's radical WebM video libertarianism has yet to take the world by storm -- unless you're talking El Goog's browser or YouTube. Well, Mountain View can breathe a sigh of relief, as Skype -- even after being bought by Microsoft -- has carried through with its earlier support of the open-source standard, bundling it within last week's Windows-only update. One-to-one and group video calls between version 5.5 clients now use WebM's VP8 codec, succeeding its ancestor, On2's VP7. Hey Redmond, who's speaking Esperanto now?

Skype 5.5 uses VP8 for video chats, keeps the WebM love aflame originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceWebMProject  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/06/skype-5-5-uses-vp8-for-video-chats-keeps-the-webm-love-aflame/

Ana Beatriz Barros Ana Hickmann Ana Ivanovi Ana Paula Lemes Ananda Lewis

Add playback hotkeys to Amazon Cloud Player with a Chrome extension

Sure, Amazon's Cloud Player works -- as long as you're in the U.S. or willing to do some tinkering -- but it's fairly simplistic at the moment. There are plenty of features missing which we'd like to see added -- but since Cloud Player is a Web app we don't have to wait for Amazon!

Google Chrome users, for example, can add playback hotkeys with an extension called keyMazony. Once installed, you'll have keyboard control of your Amazon Cloud Player queue. keyMazony commands will work as long as you're in the same Chrome window as Cloud Player, even if its tab doesn't have focus. The key combinations are customizable as well -- just make sure you don't set up a combo that conflicts with another extension or Chrome's built-in keyboard shortcuts.

Add playback hotkeys to Amazon Cloud Player with a Chrome extension originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/add-playback-hotkeys-to-amazon-cloud-player-with-a-chrome-extens/

Blake Lively Blu Cantrell Bonnie Jill Laflin Bridget Moynahan Britney Spears

Black Hat hackers demo Square card skimmer, feed it stolen credit card numbers

Square
Here's some more fun out of Vegas, this time involving Jack Dorsey's Square and a little thing we like to call credit card fraud. Researchers from Aperture Labs (seriously) held two demonstrations at the Black Hat Conference. The first used a script, written by Adam Laurie, to convert stolen credit card data into a series of audio tones that were then fed to the Square app via the headphone jack on a phone -- removing the need to have a physical card. A second avenue of fraud, also using code authored by Laurie, turned the Square dongle into a skimmer. It intercepted incoming data, which is unencrypted, and spit out human readable numbers that could easily be used to clone a card. New hardware that encrypts information pulled from the magnetic strip is in the pipeline but, until then, it seems everyone's favorite smartphone-based payment service has some troublesome holes to fill.

Black Hat hackers demo Square card skimmer, feed it stolen credit card numbers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceCNET  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/05/square-found-to-be-ripe-for-fraud-turned-into-card-skimmer/

Amber Arbucci Amber Brkich Amber Heard Amber Valletta America Ferrera

Field of Streams, Part 3

When ICE identifies a site that is violating copyright and/or intellectual property laws, it obtains a warrant from a United States court granting it the authority to seize the URL. At that point, ICE takes down the streams and throws up an intimidating warning that is overlaid on a red background with the word "SEIZED" written over and over. Case closed. But it's not that simple.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/73005.html

Jamie Gunns Jamie Lynn Sigler Janet Jackson January Jones Jennie Finch