tags

Nerf, "Star Wars," and Marvel gear was everywhere at Hasbro's showcase at the Toy Fair in New York City.

Hasbro's Toy Fair showcase was housed several blocks away from the rest of Toy Fair 2012, in a two-level set of showrooms that was easily one of the most elaborate setups of the weekend.… Read more

It's starting to look like NFC tags are going to be all the rage soon.

Between Sony and rumors of Apple working with MasterCard, NFC is going to go mainstream. So why wait? If you already have an NFC-capable device, you can start using NFC around your home or office, and have fun with it while you're at it.

To program an NFC tag, you will need an Android device with NFC capabilities. You will also need some NFC tags, which appear to be nothing more than a sticker on the outside, as well as an app that … Read more

A new music video for a U.K.-based hip-hop artist showcases a fun idea: talking (and moving) graffiti.

The video, by British design outfit Paintshop Studio, features, in the words of Paintshop's blog, "animated graffiti rappers, created entirely in spray paint and brought to life by painting and repainting key elements."

Now, whether the idea of talking (and moving) graffiti is fun or horrifying depends on your point of view. Imagine if every tag you walked past in the city shouted the name of the tagger at you. (Then again, someone like street artist Banksy could no doubt work amusing, and even profound, wonders with this--as could a group of experimental poets, composers, and urbanists.)

Of course, this particular graffiti mural is confined to a video. But it does make us think. What if you combined this idea with QR tags and augmented reality? We've seen similar things before. Artists have "hi-jacked" billboards using iPads and AR, and damaged murals have been "restored" using QR tags. It might be pretty sweet if you could hold your smartphone or tablet up to a piece of graffiti or a mural and watch it come alive.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Near field communication (NFC) technology enables smartphones to work with mobile payments and public transit systems, but a new accessory from Sony could make the wireless wonder much more personal.

SmartTags are small programmable tokens that give your NFC-equipped Android phone a series of commands to keep you from performing repetitive tasks.

For example, swiping your phone by a SmartTag placed on a nightstand could turn your phone silent, turn off Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and activate your alarm for the following morning. While the aforementioned tasks are easy to do on your own, perhaps there is a certain charm … Read more

LAS VEGAS--As helpful as the original Cobra Tag was for a forgetful guy like me, it had one fatal flaw: I kept forgetting to recharge the darn thing!

The new Cobra Tag G5, set to be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, now only needs charging twice per year. Cobra is claiming more than six months of monitoring between recharges of the new Tag G5 thanks to its implementation of Bluetooth 4.0 technology. However, in order to achieve this astronomic battery life, the phone the Tag G5 is paired with will also need to support Bluetooth … Read more

Another social network knocked out by Facebook has been forced to sell itself.

Former social network and now social gaming site Hi5 has been acquired by fellow social network Tagged for an undisclosed amount.

Sharing the market with the likes of Facebook and Myspace, Hi5 was once a popular and heavily trafficked social network. But just as Myspace increasingly saw more people jump ship to Facebook, so too did Hi5's users start to abandon the service.

In the face of Facebook's growing dominance, Hi5 transformed itself into a social gaming site a couple of years ago. But despite … Read more

It seems a mural sponsored by the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, as a deterrent to graffiti, wound up attracting a little instead. But someone came up with an interesting temporary fix for the defacement.

A tipster named Jason informed street-art site Wooster Collective that a giant QR code had been placed over the offending, spray-painted tag.

And when passersby scan the code with their smartphones, they're served up an image of the original, undamaged mural, along with information about its origins.

That's a nice idea. But in describing the fix as "temporary" a few paragraphs … Read more

If you have friends who love to upload pictures to Facebook, chances are that you get tagged pretty often. But sometimes you don't want others to be able to share pictures of you without prior permission. By default, Facebook lets friends tag you in posts, in photos that look like you, and check you in to places that you haven't visited. Here's how to put a stop to any (or all) of these tag-happy features:

Step 1: Log in to your Facebook account and click on the menu in the top-right corner (small arrow).

Step 2: Select … Read more

Here at the epicenter of social networking, birthplace of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, it's easy to lose sight of just how much the rest of the world loves our homespun social-media creations.

As it turns out, social networking is enjoyed overseas even more than here at home in Silicon Valley. Underscoring this notion is a newly released international study from Experian Hitwise tracking the top eight countries spending the most time on Facebook and other social networks.

Here's the lowdown: Singapore loves Facebook more than any other country. In August, people in Singapore spent the most time on Facebook 38 minutes and 46 seconds per session, while those in New Zealand spent 30 minutes and 31 seconds. Australians spent 26 minutes and 27 seconds; next, folks in the United Kingdom spent 25 minutes and 33 seconds; and the United States came in 5th place with 20 minutes 46 seconds, followed by France, India, and Brazil.

Not surprisingly, Facebook was the most visited social network in the United States in August, leading with 91 percent of all visits. Second place went to Twitter with 1.92 percent of all social-networking visits. San Francisco-based Tagged.com came in third place for the first time with 1.04 percent of all visits, overtaking MySpace. … Read more