All Eyes Out For You

Nick Cave - 'The Death of Bunny Munro'

It's rare that worlds of music, literature and technology converge so seamlessly, but the new novel by dark prince Nick Cave is available as an awesome iPhone app that includes the following features:

• The entire e-book of The Death of Bunny Munro for your iPhone.
• The entire audiobook read by Cave.
• The ability to toggle between them and bookmark the most recent page.
• Videos of Cave reading from the novel.
• Interviews with the makers of the audiobook (which features something called a "spatial mix" especially for headphones).
• Cave's intro for The Book of Mark from a few years back.

At $24.99 I imagine most folks will pass, but truthfully it's a bargain if you consider the hardcover would set you back about 17 bucks alone, and the audiobook costs $20.95 alone.

In other multimedia news, iTunes has launched it's "iTunes LP" concept, which is not quite as lame as I'd speculated.  One of the first offerings is Tyrese Gibson's MAYHEM! which is a comic book project that he's created in conjunction with a single.  For $1.99, there's an impressive amount of content.  

But when is Apple going to support the LP content on the iPhone?

Zen Bound (iPhone)

I'm not really an iPhone App Store enthusiast, though I have plenty of apps that are as cool as they are useful.  By and large, I've found most of the games to be pretty lame, as if developers are trying to shoehorn console game concepts into the iPhone.

But Zen Bound is radically different from any other game I've ever played, and it's a steal at $4.99 (a free "lite" version is also available).  I don't even really know how to describe it, other than it really isn't a "game" per se, but an immersive experience that encourages the player to just flow with it (hence the title).  The music and sound effects are part of the experience as well, and it's one of the first games I've found that actually encourages the player to leave their headphones on.  And it exploits the touchscreen of the iPhone in ways heretofore never seen.

It's been around for a few months, and it's already been hailed as the best game on the iPhone.  Who am I to disagree?