Take your best shot…

… and send it to Matt McGee.

As you all know Matt runs atU2.com. Over the past few months he’s been busy writing his book ‘U2 – A Diary’ and he’s just handed in his manuscript – we know how that feels!. He’s now looking for pictures to illustrate the book. You’ll find all the details on his book blog. But he’s looking for the following in particular:

• The “fan displays” at the Vertigo Tour gigs.
• Photos of Bono changing his shoes during “I Will Follow” at the July 7, 2005, show in Berlin.
• Photos of the PopMart Lemon getting stuck in Oslo, August 1997.
• Photos of U2 fans in line at Point Depot for tickets, November 1989.

Think you can help?

The Little Red Book of Poe-ee-tree

It’s World Water Day, and a handful of U2 fans have put together the the Little Red Book of Poe-ee-tree. It’s fillled with short stories and poetry and all the royalties go to the African Well Fund.

The fans, from the US, Canada, the UK, France and Australia all used to post their poems in a poetry forum, The Heart, which was part of U2’s official fansite back in 2001-2003.

Today is the book’s launch day, so check out the book’s MySpace and buy it at Lulu.com.

All donations to the African Well Fund go directly to Africare (one of the leading private, non-profit, charitable organisations assisting Africa) to fund water projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

U2 personal show charts calculator

Oh, the wonders of technology. U2-vertigo-tour.com have created an application that lists the shows you’ve seen and which U2 songs you have heard live: check out their personal show charts calculator. I was surprised to learn that with 50 shows under my belt, I’ve been subjected to Pride ‘only’ 45 times. Funny, it feels like more than that…

18 Hours of U2 music

This Thursday (July 13), U2 fans may tune into Cleveland’s WBWC 88.3 FM radio for its annual U2 marathon, hosted by Mary Cipriani and Todd Richards. For 18 hours, Mary and Todd will spin U2 hits, rare tracks, B-sides, live cuts, as well as talk with special guests and give away prizes to listeners.

The marathon will be streamed on WBWC.com from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. EST. Email your song requests to Mary and Todd at request@wbwc.com.

Use this link to listen to the marathon in RealAudio.

Flag day the Polish way

On the 5th of July 2005 at the Slaski Stadium in Chorzow, U2 played their only second ever concert in Poland to the 70’000 excited fans. Never mind the heavy rain, minutes before the showtime, what happened when The Edge hit the first notes of New Year’s Day meant that not only “The sky fell in Poland”.
The Audience stunt – the “White and Red campaign” caused lots of mouths to fall open, including the Band’s and Willie Williams’ himself.

Polish fan Zbych tells ‘The Story of the Flag’ on U2tour.de.

It’s no sekrit, BBC’s 6music plays U2

When software designer Matt Biddulph (incidentally, one of the people behind the new online BBC programme catalogue prototype), worked at the BBC, he had access to experimental data feeds generated by 6music radio station’s digital broadcast studio systems. For fun, hooked those feeds up to Last.fm.

Last.fm uses music profiles (like mine) to make personalized recommendations and generate charts from the collected data. Anyone can sign up and start groups, in a similar way to ‘Flickr’ or ‘YouTube’, but instead of photos, or videos, Last.fm revolves around the music you listen to. By adding a plug in to your player (iTunes, WinAmp, etc.), the system collects data from every track you play.

To put it simply, what Matt did was add a profile (by the name of ‘sekrit’) to Last.fm, but instead of adding a real person, he hooked up the radio 6fm playlist.

Matt’s left the BBC, but a year later, ‘sekrit’ had accumulated a record of more than 50,000 tracks played on BBC 6Music.

So guess which band was played the most? You guessed right. U2, although they share the top spot with Interpol.

At least four of U2log.com’s staff have profiles on Last.fm. It’s fun to be able to keep track of what you listen to, and to watch patterns emerge from your stats.

There’s a u2log group there too. If we can get 15 members together, Last.fm will start creating charts for our group. Join up and we can soon find out which U2 songs get played the most, and which other bands we listen to.

Drum up your photos

Fans either loved or hated it: Bono’s manic percussion act during Love and Peace or Else on the Vertigo tour. He always did march to the sound of his own drum. Bless. Whatever your feelings on the matter, you can now share your photographic memories of the Man with Big Drum and Bandanna at www.bonodrumming.com.

Dutch fans celebrate U2 DVD release

The Dutch U2 fanclub are organising an ‘Official U2 DVD Releaseparty’ to celebrate the release of U2′s Vertigo Tour DVD. Members as well as non-members are welcome to enjoy a U2 cover band and buy the DVD which comes with a free U2 collectable. and the ‘Chris Zegers meets U2 in Boston’ DVD. You’ll also be able to sample U2 merchandise, books, jewelry and t-shirts. Tickets are 8.50 Euro (7.00 for members).

Where: Stairway to heaven, Mariaplaats, Utrecht
When: Sunday, November 13 between 12-17 pm

You’re Invited!

Fans in Toronto and those who are traveling to the city for the U2 concerts scheduled next week are invited to attend the V3 Launch Party at Montana’s (located at John & Richmond) on Sunday, September 11. The party was organized by members of the U2 Greater Toronto Area (U2GTA) fan group as a way to celebrate the launch of the third leg of the Vertigo Tour and to raise awareness about the One Campaign. Admission to the party is only $1, with all the proceeds going to the One Campaign. ETS, the official tour and travel operator for the Vertigo Tour, is sponsoring the event. Tickets may be purchased from ETS’ web site.

U2-tech Dallas Schoo’s fans revamp their website

Thanks to Mike Sturgess for letting us know the Dallas Schoo : Guitar Technician website has been revamped with new features, a blog and a shoutbox.