popping

You know that picture of you and your cat that features so prominently on your Facebook page? Well, play your cards right and you and Buttons could show up on the 7,400-square-foot Reuters Billboard in New York's Times Square. Fortunately for the rest of us cynical travelers, the pic will only tower 23 stories above the city for 15 seconds.

It's all part of a promotion by a new company called CanvasPop that lets you print any image at any size on canvas, including pics from Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and iPhones. CanvasPop's first 100 customers will … Read more

Getting kids to eat homemade ice pops can be a little bit of a challenge: after all, they don't have the cool designs and colors that the Popsicles at the store do. But with the Tovolo Blue Rocket Pop Molds, you can turn out a few fancy treats of your own. The molds work with just about any juice or flavor you want--and with a little extra work, you can actually make combined colors, like a rocket pop that is red, white, and blue. The molds are plastic and have a base that holds them upright in the freezer, … Read more

Pop Art Studio is a versatile program that allows users to perform all the typical image-editing functions and a few cool extras, as well.

The program's interface is a bit overwhelming at first, with a whole lot of little buttons across the top, but, on the whole, it is well-organized and intuitive. Users who are familiar with the basics of photo-editing software should find most of what they're looking for pretty easily. There are the typical options for cropping, resizing, retouching, working with layers, and so-on. What makes this program different is the variety of pop-art effects it … Read more

Bring out your dead: a Michael Jackson movie is in the works.

I'm just amazed it took this long to surface. Details are sketchy, but there are murmurs of a $60 million deal with Columbia Pictures to make the movie using video of Jackson rehearsing for his "This Is It" concerts in London.

The film, possibly in 3D, will be assembled from hundreds of hours of rehearsal and behind-the-scenes footage. So sure, expect lots of "extras" on Blu-ray. I'm sure the film will make oodles of cash, but that's par for the course for dead stars.

The dead rock star thing started on February 3, 1959, when a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, killed three first-generation rock musicians: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. It was "The Day the Music Died," but the dead-star business really kicked into high gear when Elvis Presley died of an overdose in 1977. The King was dead, but his career was in great shape.

He's been one of the top earners on dead celebrities lists for decades. In 2007, 40 years after his death, Presley-related products pulled in $49 million. Kurt Cobain and John Lennon are also strong "performers." But Jackson looks likely to top this year's list.

Dying is a great way to kick a lagging career into pure profit mode. And it's so easy, just dredge up "lost" tapes and live performances that were deemed sub par while the artist was alive, and devout fans devour them.… Read more

If you're into toolbars, Internet Explorer, and Google, the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer does more than give IE a mere shot of nitro. With a set of features both useful and self-promoting, Google Toolbar 6 feels like it adds eight cylinders to IE's engine, turning it into a powerhouse of personalized functionality for both IE 8 users and those who are stuck on earlier versions.

There's the dedicated Google search window, the effective pop-up blocker, the form autofiller, the translation utility, the spell checker, and the map tool that automatically links addresses in Web pages to … Read more

The iPhone 3GS is already wooing game developers with its faster, more powerful platform, but don't expect a ton of games fully taking advantage of it to flood the App Store--yet.

Though 1 million iPhone 3GSs sold in one weekend, the latest Apple mobile device is essentially still a niche product, compared to the 40 million original iPhones, iPhone 3Gs, and both iPod Touch models already sold. And those won't be able to run games with the same efficiency and speed as the new iPhone 3GS.

In short, it's still too early to declare the era of iPhone 3GS games officially arrived. Some game makers are waiting, or not creating games to take advantage of the device at all. Some say it's "not wise" to play specifically to what is still a small slice of the audience combing Apple's App Store for the latest downloads. For example, Pop Cap, the company behind Peggle and Bejeweled for the iPhone, said its games are benefiting from the faster load times the 3GS offers, but it has no plans to create games that are iPhone 3GS-specific.

This wait-and-see approach may be contrary to what some expected. The iPhone 3GS was essentially an update to the iPhone 3G. The "S," we were told, stands for "speed." Indeed, there's a faster processor, a PowerVR SGX graphics chip that can handle 3D rendering, and support for OpenGL ES 2.0, a standard use for creating 2D and 3D graphics. It also has a magnetometer and a video camera, unlike other Apple mobile devices.

… Read more

In a very special, and very serious, episode of The 404, we sit down to reflect on the many ways Michael Jackson changed the world. From his music to his dance and music videos, MJ's ubiquity is undeniable. Heroes come and go, but legends never die! Rest in peace, Mike!

We've never done this before, but Michael Jackson had such a positive effect on all of our lives that we felt the need to take a moment and show him our appreciation. Obviously, we're not the only ones numbed by his passing--news sites across the Internet couldn't keep up with the hordes of people desperately trying to hear the news. Like so many people, Wilson and I spent hours poring over Michael's fantastic career, but there's something so edifying in knowing that the entire world shares this loss.

The real testament to MJ's success is the love from his fans--his live shows drew tons of people, many of whom often fainted at the sight of their favorite musician onstage.

Michael was also famous for bringing his most adoring fans up onstage for a quick hug before getting aggressively taken off the stage kicking and screaming for another chance to hug their hero. Isn't it weird to think about how many people have enjoyed his music? We all have our stories, whether it's dancing to "Thriller" at a prom, or singing karaoke to "Never Can Say Goodbye." Check out this episode and help us pay tribute to the King of Pop.

This story has been updated. See below for details.

Can you really take everything that's going on with movies, TV shows, music, Internet memes, and social media, and wrangle it all into an hour of live television? MTV believes it can--with some help from Twitter, Facebook, and a quirky British model-turned-TV-host named Alexa Chung.

The pop-culture cable network's new daily talk show, titled "It's On with Alexa Chung," premieres at noon on June 15 and expectations are high. The show is taking over the time slot once held by "Total Request Live," or &… Read more

Plants vs. Zombies is a fun, funny, and remarkably well-designed game that should prove addictive for newcomers to tower-defense games, as well as challenging and satisfying to serious fans of this real-time-strategy subgenre. The interface and gameplay start out simply: you must plant seeds, collect sunlight, and tend a gridded garden that is your only defense against ravenous waves of the cartoonish undead. Zombies advance right to left in rows, and you have to decide which kind of plants to use and where to put them, whether you choose sunflowers to accelerate sunlight production or a variety of other plants … Read more