wall

One of the newest and most popular Facebook apps making the rounds is Graffiti Wall, an application that does exactly what it says: it lets your friends tag your profile. Facebook has had its wall feature for years, allowing users to write personalized messages to one another for everyone to see. With Graffiti Wall, instead of words, you can break out your art skills and go to town on a 600-pixel wide canvas.

Once you've created your masterpiece, it will show up on your friends' Graffiti Wall, assuming they have it installed. If not, others will still be able … Read more

The Wall Street Journal has a scoopy story about Facebook's forthcoming announcement on Thursday. The report says Facebook will be opening itself up for other companies to add their wares in the form of branded pages and services made available to Facebook users on different networks.

Previously, Facebook's strategy for adding this content was in the form of specialty groups, which Facebook members had to join in order to access or gain benefit from. According to the WSJ, these services will now be integrated as standalone portions of the service and will be available without leaving the social … Read more

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp. and owner of the tabloids The Sun in England and the New York Post, is promising to retain the journalistic integrity of The Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones if he succeeds in acquiring them for $5 billion.

In a letter sent over the weekend to members of the Bancroft family that owns the company, Murdoch asked to meet with the family and company officials. He assured them that he is "first and foremost" a "newspaper man." "I have also always respected the independence and … Read more

The unrelenting ravages of time may have taken their toll on many of us aging Boomers, but one aspect of our misspent youth remains intact: the love for ancient video games.

The nostalgia is so strong at Spark Fun Electronics that a crack team of nine professionals came up with a "Picture Frame Tetris," a wall-sized version of the retro game using 720 colored LEDs and 16 microcontrollers. We're not Tetris experts (being of the Asteroids camp instead), but Technabob breaks down the technicalities in plain english: "The game features a unique interface that controls the … Read more

Crave prides itself on embracing (almost) all techno-cultures, but this is one trend that's left us baffled: turning tabletops and other flat surfaces into speakers.

The latest entry into this apparently growing market is the "Soundbug," which Gadgetizer says resulted from a "British moment of inspiration." The $70 device, which is supposedly compatible with anything from media players and laptops to game consoles, has a suction cup designed to ensure proper conductivity for "wicked sound output"--as well as allowing it to work with walls, ceilings or anything else it'll stick to. … Read more

Disney.com unveiled its new look this morning. Announced last month at CES by CEO Bob Iger, the new Disney.com aims to bring more personalization to the site and cash in on provide Disney content to share with others. Funny thing is, you can't even share the content on outside sites like MySpace or blogs.

It's downright tough to find the new personalized area of Disney.com, but it's called XD. The Flash-based XD interface takes about half a minute to load, and you're greeted to a smattering of widgets featuring Disney content that appears … Read more

-- Google expands video ad test. Not to be confused with ads placed in user-generated videos on Google Video and YouTube, these video ads from Google will be embedded videos on the page that users must click on to begin. Google is now partnering with content providers such as The Wall Street Journal and Epicurious.com to bring Adsense video ads. (CNET News.com)

-- AT&T to ramp up IPTV rollouts. While Joost and Babelgum have made some noise among the blogs, the prospect of watching IPTV programming on an actual TV is coming closer to being a … Read more

If CD players like this had been designed earlier, the pending extinction of the disc might have been put off for years.

The "Square CD" player from Yanko Design is as much a work of art as it is a piece of technology, similar to the "Cuboglass" TV. (Both are designed in Italy, of course.) In each case, the appliance is meant to be displayed as part of the decor even when turned off.

Unlike most products created with this concept in mind, however, the Square CD looks even better turned on. That's because the … Read more

The Apple iPod is, far and away, the most popular MP3 player on the market--less a product and more a way of life for many people. But just how reliable a product is it? That's the question posed by Nick Wingfield's article in today's Wall Street Journal. "When iPods Die" (which, like most WSJ content, is locked behind the paper's subscriber firewall) compiles some compelling iPod war stories. Among the frustrated 'Pod users chronicled is Tom Westrup of Austin, Texas, who--after suffering from repeated freeze-ups during playback--is currently awaiting his fifth replacement iPod. There'… Read more