Virginian-Pilot finds clever way to use the Facebook album cover game
You remember the fake album cover game that’s all the rage at Facebook, right? We wrote about it last week.
The folks at the Virginian-Pilot found a way to use this in the paper. According to a story on the front of today’s features section:
A couple of random phrases plucked from today’s Daily Break, a random photo grabbed from HamptonRoads.com and - BOOM! - you’ve got your band name, your album name and local art for your album cover.
Very clever, guys. Very clever. Pilot features editor Elizabeth Thiel Mather tells us:
That’s our Miranda [Mulligan], all the way. She’s tops. She pitched this idea and ran with it.
The story continues:
Like “American Idol,” you don’t need talent to have some fun with this one. If you send ‘em to us, we’ll print some of the best in The Daily Break next Tuesday, March 10.
The instructions are slightly different from the Facebook version, which is based on random searches of Wikipedia and Flickr. For your band name, you’re to hunt today’s features section and find the bold footnote to corresponds to your birth month. For me, that would be April = 4, which is Richard Nixon.
Hmm. That’d be a terrific name for a rock band, in fact.
For your album title, you’re to find the footnote that corresponds to your birth date. In my case, that’d be 26, which I found all the way on the back page, in a story about the digital TV transition. My title would be: Losing All His Channels.”
For your cover art, you’re directed to the community photo gallery on the Pilot’s web site. Readers born between January and April are to use the third photo in the “Scenic Hampton Roads” gallery; May to August are to use the second photo in the “Your Pets” gallery; September to December are to use the first picture in the “Weather” gallery.
The story then directs you to combine the elements and upload the result to the Pilot’s web site. For readers not so technologically savvy, the paper provides tips and even says it’ll accept entries pasted together with arts-and-crafts supplies.
The paper plans to publish a selection of the results next week.