Entertainment

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one-time pop darling Britney Spears' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month was a total and utter trainwreck.

But, as viral video fans soon learned, some crazy guy with a YouTube account didn't agree. He promptly put up a clip of questionable sanity in which he lay in bed, sobbing, begging us haters to "Leave Britney Alone." The video has racked up nearly 8 million views on YouTube, reaching a degree of overkill that's made many of us hope the buzz will fade away quickly or … Read more

The tech industry has a rich and hilarious history of being unable to promote itself as anything other than unutterably dorky. Originally we were going to call this "The top 10 worst tech ads," but as we hunted around we discovered these are pure gold. They are shockingly bad, but you'll derive so much pleasure from watching them it didn't seem right to use "worst" anymore.

Anyway, we've collected 10 of our favorites--in no particular order--that made us laugh, either because they feature lycra, awful singing, pathetic old technology, Steve Ballmer or some … Read more

Like many other suburban American males who grew up in a certain era, I [hearted] Led Zeppelin. And while my ardor's diminished considerably since adolescence, they're one of very few bands I discovered decades ago that I still enjoy today. (In contrast, I can't believe I actually own a half dozen Doors LPs.)

So when Led Zeppelin announced a one-show reunion (with their original drummer's son on drums) to celebrate the life of Ahmet Ertegun, the Atlantic Records cofounder who signed them, I expected it'd be popular. But apparently the registration site for tickets got … Read more

iPod or i-Sobot? For just a little bit more than an 80GB iPod Classic, you can now preorder Tomy's tiny-but-impressive bipedal robot on Amazon.com.

The 6.5-inch tall, $300 i-Sobot has already been available in Japan for a while, and it's slated to hit U.S. stores in October.

The miniature robot uses three AAA batteries to power the 17 servo motors for its joints and limbs, three separate CPUs to control its voice and movement, and two gyroscopic sensors, which give it a pretty good sense of balance. The robot can perform such nimble actions as … Read more

Mash, Yahoo's way of quietly saying farewell to Yahoo 360, is at first glance a somewhat uninspired attempt to catch up with Facebook. Even the name is boring--Mash. Don't mix it up, by the way, with Mosh, Nokia's mobile networking site (currently in beta) and Mashable, the social-networking blog. Mash (invite-only as of now) looks like a cross between Facebook, MySpace and Netvibes--and it also has a bit of wiki DNA: Anyone you grant permissions to can edit your profile or add modules they think are relevant to your profile. Besides that, nothing new.

To be … Read more

Voting is now closed for this round. See the results of these battles here and vote on the Final Four matchups here.

Get it now! Your updated, printer-friendly tournament bracket.

This is why they call it Late September Lack-of-Sanity. Upsets, upsets, upsets were the theme of last week's nonviolent robot vote-battles, and only two No. 1 seeds are still in the mix.

Which nonviolent robots will win their division finals and go on to the Final Four? Vote for the winners right now; you have until Sept. 23 to vote on these Elite 1000 matchups.

The battle for net neutrality might be in its infancy, and already we're seeing casualties. There have been murmurs that Comcast has been capping bandwidth usage on its all-you-can eat high-speed subscribers that have simply used more of their connection than Comcast is comfortable with, along with evidence the ISP has been monkeying with people's BitTorrent usage. Last week GameDaily BIZ got in touch with Charlie Douglas, a spokesperson for Comcast Corporation who confirmed that the company was indeed capping monthly downloads of its "excessive" users.

The actual ballpark figure Douglas gave GameDaily BIZ was "… Read more

The words "inflatable" and "robot" rarely appear next to one another in a sentence, but there's a first time for everything.

The sub-$40 Mega Mech Airmagination radio-controlled robot may be full of air, but as the photo that accompanies this story shows, it's also full of enough awesomeness to cause amazed facial expressions from mulleted youngsters.

The robot has a built-in voice chip that spits out pre-loaded phrases, as well as wheels in its feet that let you drive it around RC-style.

Like most cutting-edge robots, the Mega Mech Airmagination is available at Walmart. … Read more

Of all the things a robot should be able to do--smashing things, shooting stuff with lasers, lifting large objects, transforming into a 18-wheeler--making you feel like you're the world's best comedian should be pretty high up on the list.

And hopefully, you're willing to pay $3,000 for that privilege.

The Speecys "Mi-Rai" PC-101C robot is notable because it boasts facial-recognition skills and an open-ended software platform that lets developers write applications for it. More importantly, it also goes friggin nuts when you tell a joke. For evidence, watch this video.

[Via GeekAlerts.]