Hed Kandi have decided to do an about turn and destroy the industry they were initially founded upon in the latest series of compilation releases “Destroy The Disco“.

Focussing on the “Twisted” brand Hed Kandi have built up over the last few years, usually consisting of breaks, electro and techno like sounds, Destroy The Disco seems like a rebrand more than something new. Admittedly, some of the tracks featured have a distinctively different sound to Hed Kandi’s usual stereotype, it seems like they’re also jumping on this year’s attempt at reinventing disco (such as the riduculously named “Space Disco” which has been cropping up throughout the year).

It may seem like quite a critical point of view. As much as a house advocate I am, since Hed Kandi was acquired by Ministry of Sound in 2006, I’ve always been concerned the brand will suffer from being overly commercialised in a somewhat niche market.

However, I’m personally quite fond of the design of this venture. Jason Brooks (the artist behind Hed Kandi’s look) has taken inspiration from Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop Art, originally inspired by comic book artwork. This look was made popular more recently by blockbuster movies like Frank Miller’s Sin City. The grungy illustrations lend well to the deeper side of house music, representing a somewhat darker experience at the club events.

It’ll be interesting to see how successful the Destroy The Disco brand works for Hed Kandi.

Destroy The Disco is released Monday 2nd November 2009 and is available to order from the following online stores:

• Play.com: CD (£9.99) and MP3 Digital Download (£9.95)
• Amazon UK: CD (£9.98)
• HMV: CD (£10.99)

Track Listing

Disc 1

1. Gossip - Love Long Distance (Riva Starr Remix)
2. Bloc Party - One More Chance (Alex Metric Remix)
3. Example - Watch The Sun Come Up (Devil’s Gun “Zeitgeist” Remix)
4. Calvin Harris - I’m Not Alone (Burns Rewerk)
5. The Young Punx ft Count Bass D - Ready For The Fight (Black Noise 6. Destroy The Disco Edit)
6. Fake Blood - Mars (Hervé Re-edit)
7. Double 99 - Rip Groove (Disco Damage Vs Hood Hooligan 2009 Remix)
8. AC Slater - Jack Got Jacked (Jack Beats Remix)
9. The Prodigy - Take Me To The Hospital
10. Polina - Shotguns (Trevor Loveys Destroy The Disco Remix)
11. Riton & Primary 1 - Who’s There?
12. Fatboy Slim - Star 69 (Rogue Element Remix)
13. Noisettes - Wild Young Hearts (Kissy Sell Out Remix)

Disc 2

1. Yves Murasca & BK Duke ft Angie Brown - Move Your Body (Funkanomics Remix)
2. Grum - Heartbeats
3. Lauren Flax ft Sia - You’ve Changed (War Games Remix)
4. Kraak & Smaak ft Ben Westbeech - Squeeze Me (Trevor Loveys 5. Skeezer Pleezer Jam)
5. His Majesty Andre - Peep Thong
6. Louis La Roche - Sunshine Hotel
7. Fake Blood - I Think I Like It
8. Noob & Brodinski - Peanuts Club
9. Sidney Samson - Riverside (Ralvero Remix)
10. The Young Punx - Juice And Gin (Riva Starr Mix)
11. Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity Of Huge
12. Sebastian Ingrosso - Kidsos

Google Calendar is a great cloud computing calendar solution which allows you to manage your calendar online, as well as invite others to shared events.

One feature Google Calendar is missing though is the ability to delete more than one event at a time. However, by using the remote calendar functionality Google Calendar offers, you can get around this.

(This solution uses iCal on OSX but you could use a similar approach with GooSync for Outlook if you’re on Windows.)

1. In iCal, select Preferences from the iCal menu.
2. Go to the Accounts tab and add a new account (+)
   
3. Select CalDAV from the Account Type then enter your Google username and password.
4. Enter the Server Address as google.com.
5. On the Server Settings, make sure the Server Path is set to /calendar/dav/[username]/user where [username] is your Google username.
6. You have now configured your Google Calendar to sync up with iCal.
7. If you have a mass of events with similar content that you need to remove, search for that term eg. “Morning Meeting”.
8. Select all the events and delete.
9. When iCal synchronizes with Google Calendar, all those events will be removed.

Back in October 2005, four like-minded web developers from around The Midlands met for a Saturday afternoon drink in a Walsall pub to discuss all things Web. Who’d've thunk four years on that small group of people would have become a growing friendly community who meet every month and hold regular events to discuss hot topics with industry leaders?

I could never have expected such a great outcome from that email I sent back in 2005, when I discovered I wasn’t the only enthusiastic web developer in Walsall and invited Paul and Jon for a beer to see what they do and whether they wanted to make the social event a regular occurrence. After throwing around a few ideas, we came up with the name Multipack, partly a cheeky play on the already established BritPack as well as suggesting the diversity of the group’s skills in multimedia.

(Hat tip to Paul for remembering the suggestive M to indicate the link with the Midlands).

What better way to celebrate the fourth birthday than to coincide it with the 4th Multipack Presents event, this time focussing on “Rich Internet Appliations” (RIA).

It’s sure to be a clash of the titans as heavyweight HTML5 “doctor” Bruce Lawson opens the proceedings with his recent research and development in HTML5 while Silverlight evangelist Nick Harewood takes us through his latest work with the Microsoft plugin and how it can compete in a competitive market against a heavily-biassed audience.

We’ll be meeting, as ever, in  The Old Crown in Digbeth from 2pm for some lunch and drinks before moving on to One Black Bear’s offices in Fazeley Studios at 4pm for the main event.

I (foolishly) promised to bring birthday cake to the event so be sure to join us for a few drinks, good conversation and a slice of Si Pie.

Having built quite a few calendar-based solutions over the last four years, the majority of which for major football tournaments, you can imagine my surprise when UEFA approached us to develop and integrate a similar calendar solution for their organisation.

As one of the largest football bodies in the world, it was clearly going to be a huge project that required immense planning and a thoroughly thought out solution. That didn’t deter us though.

Teaming up with Brian Suda, the developer who made the likes of World Cup KickOff and Euro KickOff possible, we put together a plan that would not only deliver what UEFA wanted but also impress them with our ideas.

Over the course of the last year, we have been working closely with UEFA to build the calendar system, using a suite of tools including their comprehensive internal infrastructure as well as a host of solutions we have been building over the last few years.

One of the biggest challenges was supporting all the international languages UEFA currently offered  including French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, German and Russian. By using a selection of translation tools and some rigorous testing, we found a reliable solution that worked perfectly for everyone.

After a hugely successful testing phase during the end of the 2008-9 season, UEFA were more than happy to keep the relationship going with us continually consulting and developing the bespoke calendar solution into the 2009-10 season.

You can read more information about the UEFA Calendar project or head on over to the UEFA Calendar service itself to find out more and download or subscribe to the calendars of your choice.