The iPhone can do lots of cool stuff but the killer feature has to be the App Store, this essentially opens the platform up for anything (Apple approval allowing). The good news is that a lot of the best apps are free! Here are my 12 favourite apps on the house:

Click here to read the full article at willfrancis.com

So... we're only five days away from knowing the winner of the inaugural MySpace Trident Comedy Award! Since receiving all the entries back in September we've seen some amazing talent, both well-known and obscure. The final six reflects both ends of the spectrum with Patrick Monahan and Ivan Brackenbury at one end - acts who gig most nights of their life and have acheived great things already in their career - to Ashton & George - two schoolboys whose DIY bedroom-based show harks back to the old days of Adam & Joe and hitherto has only been seen by a relatively small online audience. That could all be set to change, and indeed whoever walks away with the prize on Thursday will produce a pilot series with Warner and MySpace and the mentorship of the eminent John Lloyd - the man behind such shows as Not The Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI. Not only will their pilot be taken to all the major broadcasters and commissioners but the winning act will enjoy £250,000 worth of promotion on the world's premier social network and entertainment portal!
You can win tickets to the event itself or catch the action live online - wherever you are on this planet of ours! Go to http://www.myspace.com/myspacetridentcomedyaward

Edinburgh, August 2008 - a parallel universe where watching live comedy is the single most important activity. At all times and in all weathers punters from around the globe, but mostly from Hampstead and Clapham, queue for entry to venues like they were queuing for the last loaf in Leningrad. A greater necessity than television, shopping, work and especially sleep – this thirst for live entertainment keeps plenty of Edinburgh's bars and venues open until 5am every day (highest alcoholism rates in Europe anyone?).

MySpace's own night – Spank @ The Underbelly – keeps pretty late hours too, running from midnight to 4am every night, making it one of the most lively nights on the Fringe. Many of the best comics come here after their own shows to perform or just watch and the atmosphere in the room is… erm, lively (most popular heckle - 'get your cock out'!). The young crowd go particularly chicken oriental during a section of the night called 'naked promo' in which members of the audience who are performing in other shows on the fringe can enter the spotlight and self-promote for a full minute, providing they are completely starkers. A mere 48 hours in the Scottish capital has yielded no less than three sets of genitalia and one particularly well-formed pair of breasts at close quarters – all without infringing on my wedding vows! Check www.myspace.com/comedyuk to see the latest live clips from Spank!

Whilst dashing between venues and being subject to a perpetual cycle of being biblically soaked and then slowly drying off we saw a dizzying array of acts. Highlights include Dan Minchin's musical stand-up set which, had the Underbelly not been underground, would surely have relieved the venue of it's roof! Check him out, like now, at – www.myspace.com/tim_minchin . Another name we expect to see in rehab by 2009 is Pappy's Fun Club where weapons-grade likeability alone had us in the palms of their hands within the first minute. Their Goons-esque show which combines theatre, music and stand-up is always inventive and hilarious whilst never predictable, indulgent or theatrical. Check them out at - www.myspace.com/pappysfunclub - or forever live without a mirth you never knew!!

Remember to check out www.myspace.com/comedyuk for the latest footage from Spank in Edinburgh and the funniest stand-up, sketches, animation and series!

Hi,

Firstly, I'm blogging again, which I haven't done since getting married in October last year, which is going fine thanks :)  I likened it the other day to the difference between buying and renting, which says it all really...

So, with my lovely wife I went to the Tate Modern on Sunday. We walked over the Millennium Bridge on the way which was quite pretty, if a little chilly, and arrived to look at lots of nice manmade things.

What I often find fascinating at these things (tourist attractions, special events, gatherings etc) is the people and what brought them there rather than the actual thing itself. I'm rarely caught up in the thing itself, which I suppose is quite sad. Anyway, I had to question what this enormous amount of people was doing just walking through very plain rooms, slowly regarding painted bits of canvas nailed to the walls. Modern Art is cool, but do those images dreamed up by Ernst, Magritte and di Chirico et al back in the dawn, well morning, of the 20th Century have any meaning or worth today? At the time they were created, as some audio guide will undoubtedly tell you in the languages of the world's most affluent countries, these images were like nothing anybody had ever seen. Shocking even. For a while now we've been used to seeing abstract images that couldn't possibly be photographs - CGI landscapes in Star Wars, racetracks in Wipeout, most adverts... we're surrounded by them. So why would so many people flock to see the earliest examples of images which do not depict an object as seen in the real world? Why aren't they at home playing World of Warcraft or watching The Golden Compass? Maybe it's the espresso cafe with the great views of the Thames, or the excellent gift and book shop. I think it's more likely that people want to feel cultured and despite being unaware of the historical or political climate in which these images were created they insist on seeing everything, so that they can get back on the tube, better people than they were when they crawled out of the underground station earlier in the day.

The truth is that if these people had stayed in and read say Norbert Lynton's 'The Story of Modern Art' that afternoon (or even gone all the way and bought Gombrich's classic 'The Story of Art') they would have had a far richer and more deeply edifying experience of Modern Art. For instance, most of my life I've known Hopper's 'Nighthawks', which is hanging on the walls of many a trendy flat, coffee shop and poster outlet. But when I saw it in the flesh a few years ago in Chicago, just another painting on the wall, I gained no further insight into the painting itself (although admittedly I was like "wow, no way, the real thing"!).

Anyway, after perusing the exhibits we swung by the couches in the windows where you can submit hand-drawn pictures of knobs on postcards, which never seem to get featured on the 'what people are saying about Tate Modern' board, and left via the main turbine hall. Outside we saw Gok Wan selecting candidates for 'How to Look Good Naked', a pretty stark reminder of the culture in which we now live, and suddenly pined for the cultural safety of the plain rooms full of canvases.

W x