Entertainment

Ringtone roundup: Make your own in four phone clicks

It's a pretty boring Billboard ringtone chart this week, with the same crowd of top-10 contenders simply shuffling around.

"Adios Amor Te Vas" by Grupo Montez de Durango is back in first place, while Henry Mancini's funky "Pink Panther" ringtone is in second and the Koji Kondo "Super Mario Brothers Theme" is in third.

So, let's review one of the quickest methods for making your own.

While there are many programs available for making your own ringtones, some cell phones offer you a simple three- or four-click solution.

This is old … Read more

Report: Yes, Mark Cuban will be on 'Dancing with the Stars'

Gazillionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban might hate YouTube, have a feud with Donald Trump, and think that the Internet is dead and boring, but clearly Dancing with the Stars falls into his favor.

According to the Associated Press, the Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet founder will be on this fall's season of the reality show that pairs celebrities with professional dancers and then pits the couples against each other. This rumor had been floating for a while, but now--barring a sudden change of heart on Cuban's or the network's part--it looks like it's all but confirmed.

Cuban'… Read more

HP announces DVD program so you can watch Barry Bonds over and over and over

At this week's Print 2.0 conference in New York, HP's Digital Entertainment Services group announced a new program called NextDayTV, which will make local TV coverage, events, broadcast programs, and televised sports games available on DVD soon after their original air dates. The inaugural partnership for the program is a deal with Major League Baseball, and you can now purchase a DVD of the game in which Barry Bonds hit his legendary 756th home run at San Francisco Giants Dugout stores as well as online at the Wal-Mart, Major League Baseball, FYE, and Suncoast Web sites.

Still … Read more

New reality show lets you beat up your co-workers

This post has been corrected to provide the correct URL for Red Line Films.

If you thought Kid Nation was pushing the envelope, wait till you hear about this one. Production company Redline Films has just announced that you can now audition for its latest creative masterpiece, Office Fight. It's exactly what you think it is: it'll take co-workers who don't like each other and make them go face-to-face in a boxing ring.

Do you find this as supremely awesome as I do? Of course! To make it even awesomer, getting involved with Office Fight is easy … Read more

Sony's new Vaio LT19U: some all-in-one firsts

Update: It took us a minute to figure out that the Blu-ray region hadn't been set in the software. That and the sheer length of this review mean you should look for it tomorrow. Almost done.

Apple's new iMac remains the all-purpose all-in-one to beat, but Sony's just-announced Vaio LT19U has three features we've never seen in a PC/monitor combo before. This $2,899 model (an update to last year's Vaio LS1) has a Blu-ray burner, a pull-out sled for adding a second hard drive, and a VESA-standard wall mount input. It also comes … Read more

Vote: Battle of the non-violent robots

Voting is now closed for this round. See the results of the battles here and vote on eight more first round battles here.

Complex as they are, most robots solve dilemmas in a basic way: they fight each other. Then Michael Bay films it, charges $10 a ticket, and everyone enjoys the marvelous robots-kicking-the-crap-out-of-each-other show.

But there are plenty of robots that have no appetite for destruction. What about these robots, ones that have to rely on personality, artifical wits, social skills, and dance moves in order to survive?

Even if they banded together, these robots couldn't fight their … Read more

Say what? When it comes to uptime, 'Second Life' founder is on cloud nine

Virtual world Second Life, the centerpiece of this weekend's Second Life Community Convention in Chicago, has occasionally come under fire for its outages. Scheduled downtime, unpredicted outages, server crashes due to onslaughts of thousands of Super Mario graphics flooding the tubes (those are from griefers, natch)--it's a headache for newbies and avid residents alike.

But in his keynote at the convention on Saturday morning, Philip Rosedale, the founder and CEO of Second Life parent company Linden Lab, suggested that we all look on the bright side. The virtual world is active about 90 percent of the time, … Read more

SLCC '07: Chicago is the metaverse's metropolis

CHICAGO, Ill.--This might just be the perfect city for a Second Life convention. At least this out-of-towner thinks so.

When you think about it, a good number of Chicago's urban planning quirks have quite a bit in common with the aesthetics of some of Second Life's more popular "sims." It's because parts of the city are so planned--as though they were created with a few well-thought-out mouse clicks that could easily be tweaked and improved. The business and shopping districts are peppered with bright displays of greenery and flowers, the streets and gardens in … Read more

'Second Life' radio station emerges

CHICAGO--One of the predictions in the lead-up to this weekend's Second Life Community Convention here has focused on the potential for lots of talk about organization.

There are plenty of critics who claim, however erroneously, that Second Life is a mess both structurally and technologically. And Linden Lab's decentralized and laissez-faire approach to the largely user-created virtual world, it could be argued, has allowed its identity to be shaped by its most prominent and press-worthy residents--who are, on occasion, blowing up buildings, stealing identities, and barraging lectures with oversized flying man-parts.

We won't really know until tonight … Read more