One of my favourite songs this year has been a mashup of Green Day, Oasis and Aerosmith, called Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It’s a track from American Edit, a album of mashups from American Idol, with other artists such as Queen and even Doctor Who. The full album has been on the web for the past few weeks, until it got taken down earlier this week after Cease and Desist notices to Dean Gray who made the mixes. Which is a wasted opportunity. There was no financial gain from the creative work (the mixers asked for charitable contributions) and it gave a different audience for the original works. I’d never heard the Green Day album but I enjoyed the mixes enough to want and go out and get the original..but maybe not.

With similarities to the promotion around the Grey Album, a protest day is now being organised for 13 Dec, where the album will be made available for 24 hours for download. Go grab it when you have a chance – it’s a great set of songs.

Do these guys plan this? The two actors who play the soap Eastender’s hard men the Mitchell brothers (Ross Kemp and Steve McFadden) were alledgedlyl both assulted by women inthe last 24 hours. Weird.

Serenity, which opened here yesterday, continues it’s slightly unusual publicity drive. The Whedon fans have always being in a buzz about it but the hype was increased in May when special screenings of the unfinished movie were provided acorss the US and in a few other countries. Leading up to the launch, there were screenings for bloggers – but they were only allowed in on the commitment that they blogged the event. Over the last week the posters for it have been plastered everywhere around the Tube.

Universal have also taken the step of putting the first 10 minutes or so of the movie online, not just a trailer. They are using Vividas, which is a very nice piece of streaming technology allowing great quality full screen videos to be delivered You get to see the screen villain, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who, in the Holloywood cliche, has the cut-glass English accent. After all that – I think I better go see the film.

Terry Pratchett’s new novel Thud! is out. Always a dab hand at satire, the Discworld takes eveyday objects and gives them a twist. So now we have the imp-powered Dis-Organizer Mark 5. It’s imp powered because the world does not really do technology, but tather technomancy, using magic. (Joke spoilers coming if you read his books) .

So now, The Gooseberry offers Bluenose Integrated Messenger Service, where the imp runs really fast to the nearest telegraph station. As a full multi-media entertaining mobile device, it offers the games of Splong! (with its own set of bats) or Guess the Imps weight in Pigs. Alternatively, the imp will whistle one of your favourite tunes using the new, improved iHUM function that allows the imp to remember 1500 songs. take a read – fun books.

I signed up for Amazon’s DVD rental service at the weekend. SO far, so good. Set up a list on Sunday, desptched on Monday and arrived Tuesday. I guess the test wil come on the return and turnaround time, but feedback fromothers is that the service is good. It was fun settingup the list, going through lots of DVDs and adding all this stuff that I’ve not had chance to go to the cinema to see. But all I have to do is find time to watch – I’m still working my way through 24 and just received the 6th series of The West Wing.