together

Hearts, Roses, Love offers to help users make their computer a more romantic place. With an elegant design and lovely graphics, this screensaver is perfect for Valentine's Day or any time of love.

The program's interface will be easy for anyone who has used a screensaver on Windows. Users navigate the display choices to their liking and are done. Utilizing this screensaver is simple enough for all users and doesn't offer a Help file. The screensaver consists of well-shot images of roses, hearts, and the word "love." These three fade in and out of the … Read more

From the creators of "Drawn Together" comes "DJ & The Fro," a new daily, animated show on MTV. The 404 speaks to the creators, Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser, about the show and talk about how Michael Jackson's death almost ruined the shows' first few episodes.

The show creators call it a rip-off of "Beavis and Butthead" for the viral video generation. DJ and the Fro are two twenty-somethings, who spend most of their day watching viral videos and commenting on them. Sounds eerily similar to what The 404 guys do all day long. Anyway, the guys tell us about how the show came into being and let us know that a "Drawn Together" straight-to-DVD movie is coming out as well!

"DJ & The Fro" reminds us a bit of "Tosh.0" on Comedy Central, which premiered just a few weeks ago. The 404 guys think we should have jumped on to this bandwagon a long time. This is what we do already for the show every day!

Anyway, hope you all enjoy the abbreviated show along with our Michael Jackson commentary. He will be missed. Spend your weekend listening to your favorite MJ jam and reminisce about the fond memories you had while karaoking to "Billie Jean."

"All I can do is be me, whoever that is."--Bob Dylan

That's the thing about Mr. D, he never stands still. He's always evolving and these four newly remastered CDs, "New Morning," "Before the Flood," "The Basement Tapes," and "Dylan and the Dead," are proof of that.

I'll tell you upfront I've always had a thing for "New Morning," and I was bummed when it wasn't part of the 2003 SACD release collection. Sony put out 15 titles in one big chunk, and they were pretty amazing.

These four new titles were last remastered 20 years ago, so I had my hopes up. The new ones come in Digipak cases (matching the look of the SACD versions) with new photos, but no new liner notes or bonus tracks.

OK, now that I finally have a newly tweaked "New Morning," was it worth the wait? Released in 1970, "New Morning" kicked off the second phase of his long career. There's no big hits, but it's one of Dylan's most consistent albums, not a weak tune in there.

The sound is very warm and natural, and Dylan's vocals sound like he's in the room with you. The new CD sounds so close to the sound of my original LP it's scary. It's interesting, I can hear the analog master tape's hiss more clearly on the CD (it's not obtrusive, but it's there) than the LP (the LP's surface noise obscures the tape hiss). "New Morning" is one of Dylan's forgotten gems.

"Before the Flood" is a live, two-disc album, originally released in 1974. Dylan's vocal style was always changing, and he sounds completely different here. The songs tempos are much faster than the studio versions, and Dylan's almost screaming the lyrics. He's backed up by The Band, and they're terrific. They get to do a nice set of their own tunes. Sound quality is average for a live 1970s set. … Read more

The first thing that my father-in-law said to me when I got to his house on Thanksgiving was, "Stay off the computer. Be with the family." If he really wanted me offline, he could have turned off the Wi-Fi. But he didn't. And I met him halfway by sitting down with my mother-in-law and my ThinkPad, and working on the family tree on Ancestry.com. She loved it, and it was a good family-bonding experience.

There are other good ways to gather 'round the Web during the holidays. So if you're going to be with family, and would rather that they keep you company on the Web instead of the alternative--everyone stays off and plays Parcheesi--try these family-friendly Web 2.0 activities:

Like I said, this is my top tip. Fire up Ancestry.com and ask a relative to sit with you and tell the story of his or her family tree. Capture it all on the site. Repeat with other family members and you'll be surprised what you learn. Bonus: Everyone will have something new to talk about, instead of criticizing your job, clothing, child-rearing skills, etc. See also: Geni, Kindo, and Amiglia.

Before you go on your trip, upload a bunch of old family photos into your Flickr account. Then, when you're in need of an online group activity, sit down and start tagging photos with names, events, and so on.

If you have old film negatives, slides, and prints you want to work with, check out ScanCafe, which offers very good prices for a scanning service. It takes a while to get your images back, though.

Once you've got your photos online, consider creating a family photo book with a service like Blurb.

Bonus photo activity: Give the gift of a digital picture frame (like this unit from Ceiva) that supports over-the-Web access. Upload cute pics of the kids at least once a week.

Sick of the three cheesy CDs your uncle is playing on the stereo? Hook your laptop up to the aux in (bring a 3.5mm mini to RCA interconnect cable with you), fire up Pandora, search for "Christmas," and you're off. You'll have to tell Pandora that yes, you know it would rather search by artist than genre, but once you do so it will display several Christmas playlists for you to choose from. Also works for "Hanukkah." The same trick works on Last.fm.

… Read more

As many a deafened parent of pre-teen kids will tell you, Disney's High School Musical is a force to be reckoned with. It has gone well beyond its TV-movie origins to become an international phenemenon, with live shows, DVDs, CDs and maddeningly repetitive pop tunes that are driving innumerable moms and dads to the brink of insanity.

All of which makes it a perfect storm, of course, for a major merchandizing blitz. Never one to shy away from a marketing challenge, Amazon is offering a "High School Musical Wii Bundle With Microphone" next month. But Gizmodo notes … Read more