This Day in Led Zeppelin app

This Day in Led Zeppelin is the first in a series of apps that chronicle the biggest names in music, including unique audio-visual elements. Compiled by the team who run the award-winning This Day in Music, This Day in Led Zeppelin is a celebration of one of biggest and most successful rock music acts the world has ever seen.

The app includes events like Jimmy Page seeing Robert Plant perform live for the first time with his group Hobbstweedle, the date all four members of  Led Zeppelin played together for the first time, right though the band’s career to the 02 reunion show and Jimmy Page’s recent collaboration with U2’s The Edge and Jack White.

This Day in Music team then spent over a year researching every gig Led Zeppelin ever played and checked out studio dates, live venues and many research books while setting about writing song notes about every studio recording.

“It’s been a mammoth task, but at the same time very rewarding. It’s made me listen to every Led Zeppelin song, watch live performances and contact other Zep fans for their help. One thing I’ve learnt from this is that they were undoubtedly one of the finest rock bands (if not the best), we’ve ever seen. I was lucky enough to see Zeppelin live at The Hard Rock in Manchester, England when I was 14. They were absolutely brilliant: I can still see them walking on-stage, plugging in and then hitting us with a wall of sound! I remember being at school the following day, my ears still ringing.” said Neil Cossar, MD of This Day in Music.

A complete interactive experience, This Day in Led Zeppelin includes:

• A list of every gig the band ever played, including set lists, recordings, gigs, TV performances – the daily Zeppelin diary
• A Led Zeppelin quiz with hundreds of interactive questions
• A detailed critique of every studio track and every Led Zeppelin album with a unique link to play any Led Zeppelin track contained in your own iTunes music library
• Hundreds of Led Zeppelin trivia facts with brand-new Led Zeppelin graphics.

This Day in Led Zeppelin is a comprehensive guide to the group’s career, using Led Zeppelin trivia and facts covering the group’s entire history.

This great music app is a must for any Led Zep fan and also includes the following bonus features:

• Free ringtone – unavailable elsewhere and unique to this This Day in Led Zeppelin App (though the song is not performed by Led Zeppelin
• A Led Zeppelin career overview from former Melody Maker editor Chris Charlesworth, who, during the 1970’s, spent time with Led Zeppelin on their US tour and flew with the band on their private jet ‘The Starship’
• Links to the official Led Zeppelin website and the band members’ own websites
• Free unique Led Zeppelin art wallpaper
• Includes many photographs of Led Zeppelin live and recording venues specially shot for this music App

Neil Cossar, MD of This Day in Music, is a life long Led Zeppelin fan and explained:

“I had the idea of making individual apps for some of the biggest acts in the world, and thought the best one to start with would be Led Zeppelin, because of their iconic status.”

For more information on this and other apps visit www.thisdayinmusicapps.com.

Step into the arena. Hear the roar of the crowd. And prepare to FIGHT! You are Spartacus and this 3D game gives you the weapons and fury to kill your way to freedom. Whether you customize your fighting experience or go head-to-head with other players via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the goal is the same – survive.

The Spartacus: Blood & Sand game can be downloaded from the Apple iPhone app store.

Bravo have also created a site called Sparta-cuss. Sparta-cuss is an obscene swear generator to promote Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Bravo. Lay down some obscene insults. Become a Gladiator and throw down the gauntlet to your most sworn enemies. Strictly 18+.

Spartacus: Blood & Sand continues on Bravo tonight and every Tuesday at 10pm in the UK.

Not for the faint-hearted, the controversial Spartacus: Blood and Sand brings to life the bloody world of gladiators as the Roman Republic’s most brutal fighters clash in the ultimate arena, and depicts one of history’s most violent eras.

Betrayed by the Romans, forced into slavery and reborn as a gladiator, Spartacus is a rebellious soldier in the Roman Auxiliary who is taken prisoner and torn away from the woman he loves. Lucretia, who along with her husband Batiatus, own the slave Spartacus and the gladiator camp. The former soldier is then condemned to the ways of the arena fighter – under the brutal hand of trainer Doctore,– where blood and death are primetime entertainment, and treachery, corruption and sexual allure will test him to the limit.

After having ridiculous problems downloading and installing previous versions of to my iPhone 3G mobile phone, it was with a heaped spoon of trepidation that I reluctantly to download ate latest version of iTunes.  So why download the iTunes update if you have had a history of problems, you may ask.  The answer is my business pays for four iPhones on a 24 month contract.  If there is an updated version to the mobile phone software then I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect to be able to download it.  But downloading software updates from Blackberry and Nokia has never been a problem in the past.

As before, the downloaded started and appeared to be 90% complete before I am greeted by, one has become the most annoying popup window of the most frustrating software I have used in the past 12 years as an I.T. professional.  It reads:

“iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.  You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes.”

For those yet to be enticed by the superb iPhone marketing machine, your time will come; and for those already owning an iPhone, I am sure you have encountered this ridiculous problem.

The problem being that if your iPhone fails to download the software update successfully, instead of simply failing to update, your mobile phone becomes locked in a state of uselessness, and the only option is to ‘restore’ your mobile phone to the original factory settings.  Great!  So I lose all my contacts, calendar dates, notes, photos, music, apps and other personal data.  This is very irritating and time-consuming for personal use, but totally unreasonable and useless if, like me, you are running a small business and your mobile phone is the centre of all your business communications.

I have found the best way to tackle this problem, which unfortunately is only a solution to saving your data but can do nothing for the amount of time you will spend installing the latest version of iTunes on each iPhone mobile device.

Firstly, always make sure you save a backup from your iPhone before you consider updating the iTunes software. At this stage, make a list of the Apps on your iPhone as these will not automatically be reloaded.  Then disconnect your iPhone from your computer and download and install the latest version of iTunes on your computer.

Restart your computer before connecting your iPhone again.  This confirms that the latest version of iTunes software has been successfully installed.  Only then should you attempt to update your iPhone.  Once your iPhone updates successfully (and this still may take several hours or more) iTunes will ask if you want to create a new iPhone account or add the latest backup of whatever you have named your iPhone.  Choosing the latest backup will restore your contacts, email account settings and mail, texts and music. For some reason it doesn’t restore any downloaded Apps or a passcode.  These will have to be downloaded and installed manually.

Today I spent over two-and-a-half hours attempting to retrieve my iPhone from cyber limbo, and in the process missed three important business calls and in the process of restoring my data, lost one voicemail and 2 text messages.  And just in case you think this is something to do with me, my computer or a poor internet connect, I have spoken to many iPhone users over the past two months and all of them have experienced the same problem.  Furthermore, I have encountered the iTunes problems on several computers on several good quality home broadband services, none of which have problems with any other software.

So, in conclusion, after three months of using an iPhone I can confidently say it is a good phone and the Apps make it great fun for personal use.  But the iTunes issue means I will be returning to a Blackberry for business use, unless Apple can offer a more reliable solution to the iTunes download problem.