Crave

No, it's not Daft Punk, but the robot-suit-clad techno heroes' influence is evident in the choices of artists for MySpace.com's second concert tour.

The tour, produced by concert powerhouse Live Nation, is slated to take place in March in a number of U.S. and Canadian cities. Headlining the tour will be French electronic duo Justice. Joining that act on select nights will be a combination of the electronic and hip-hop acts Diplo, DJ Medhi, Chromeo, Busy P, and Fancy.

The first show will kick off on March 3 in Austin, Texas, and will hit a total of 18 cities, winding up in Los Angeles on March 31. Interested fans will be able to buy tickets from January 9 to 12 through the MySpace Music Tour site, as well as through the venues and local ticket outlets.

MySpace's first concert tour, which featured a number of 'emo' and pop-punk artists, took place in October and November. Additionally, the News Corp.-owned site throws a series of "Secret Shows" concerts in cities worldwide, as well as a number of other live music events.

Music is true to MySpace's roots--the social-networking site gained initial buzz as a hub for indie music, where fans could discover and listen to new bands. It now counts more than 6 million bands among its user profiles--but the concerts are also a strategic move.

As the social-networking field grows increasingly crowded, MySpace has the advantage of big-media muscle and a reputation for pop-culture influence as a tool to keep it above the fray. This has meant not only high-profile music projects, but also original video programming and youth activism campaigns.

Justice, the French duo headlining MySpace's concert tour

(Credit: Justice's MySpace page)

The dates for the March concert tour are as follows:

March 3: Austin (Stubbs)

March 4: Dallas (Palladium Ballroom)

March 6: Orlando, Fla. (The Club at Firestone)

March 9: Baltimore (Sonar)

March 10: Philadelphia (The Electric Factory)

March 11: New York (Madison Square Garden)

March 12: Washington, D.C. (9:30 Club)

March 15: Boston (Paradise)

March 16: Montreal, Quebec (Cepsum)

March 17: Toronto, Ontario (The Docks)

March 19: Detroit (Royal Oak Music Hall)

March 20: Chicago (Riviera Theater)

March 22: Denver (Ogden Theater)

March 24: Seattle (Showbox SoDo)

March 25: Vancouver, British Columbia (Commodore)

March 26: Portland, Ore. (Roseland Theater)

March 27: San Francisco (Concourse Design Center)

March 31: Los Angeles (Mayan Theatre)

On Monday, MTV Networks is set to unveil an initiative to connect its television, online, and mobile presences by helping music fans answer that crucial question--"Who the (expletive) sings that song?"

In other words, MTV Networks, the Viacom division that encompasses the MTV, VH1, and CMT brands as well as a host of other pop culture channels, is aiming to renew its focus on music by bringing lyrics to the forefront. This will begin rolling out in November and is expected to be complete by the middle of 2008.

On television, several of the networks' existing music-related programs will start to incorporate "lyrics and the artists' inspirations for their words" into their structure, and all three channels will air a new "Name That Tune" series, according to a release from MTV Networks.

Online, the networks' Web sites will feature lyrics search data from digital music database Gracenote, accompanied by multimedia artist information, trivia games, and a link to purchase the song in question--which will undoubtedly be tied into MTV Networks' Rhapsody-powered music store when that launches. And in the mobile space, curious music fans will be able to text-message inquiries (an artist's name, song name, or snippet of lyric) to a SMS code and receive a link to a mobile Web site containing data pertaining to the song and artist.

This is a potentially lucrative move for MTV Networks, which has not only struggled to bring its pop culture influence to the Web but has also fallen from some music fans' favor as its networks increasingly prioritize reality shows. Unlicensed lyrics sites are currently facing incipient copyright scrutiny--not to mention the fact that there's no such thing as a Google Lyrics Search.

Not yet, at least.

I can't remember the last time I saw a TV ad for a piece of software. Not watching much TV doesn't really play into this. TV ads are just too expensive for the average software publisher to purchase. The market in Japan is different, though. It'll support just about anything with folks in weird costumes doing even weirder things.

So it's my pleasure--no, really, I feel good about this--to introduce you to Symantec's Norton 360 ads. Called CM's in the local parlance, they feature a yellow Power Ranger-style superhero called Norton Fighter getting attacked by a gang of mostly black-clad ninja-type characters who're supposed to resemble viruses and other malware.

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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.

Chris Crocker's 'Britney manifesto'

(Credit: YouTube)

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 give way to some other irritating pop-culture sensation.

But don't hold your breath. That impassioned young fellow is Chris Crocker, a 19-year-old from Tennessee whose 15 minutes (seconds?) of fame just might not quite be over: Variety is reporting that a television production company, 44 Blue Productions, has inked a deal with him for a potential TV show. It's not totally serendipitous, as the entertainment site explained that Crocker has actually had a sizeable MySpace following for some time now, and that he's been on 44 Blue's radar for almost a year.

"(The show is) going to pretty much be the 'Chris Crocker experience,'" 44 Blue co-founder Rasha Drachkovitch told Variety. "We consider him a rebel character that people will find interesting. He's going to be a TV star." In other words, they're catering to the Perez Hilton demographic.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

(Credit: Twitter)

Could this finally be what breaks Twitter out of the early-adopter geek set and into the population at large? The microblogging service has partnered with the inarguably mainstream MTV for its upcoming Video Music Awards (or VMAs), according to an e-mail sent to Twitter members by founder Biz Stone.

So far, the partnership isn't totally clear. A Twitter account has been set up for the VMA "Moon Man" mascot, the pop-culture awards' equivalent of the Oscar statue. In Stone's e-mail, he elaborated that the VMA Twittering will expand, too: "(MTV has) some fun ideas which involve artists and celebrities including the MTV Moonman twittering from Las Vegas during the whole weekend leading up to the VMA broadcast on Sunday, September 9th," he wrote, adding that Twitter would also be featured on TV.

This is indeed prominent placement for the heavily hyped Twitter, which gained a rabid following among the social media junkie crowd at this spring's South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. But as for breaking into the crowd that restricts its social networking use to Facebook, MySpace, and maybe Last.fm, Twitter hasn't been quite as successful. The MTV partnership could flop embarrassingly, or it could give the little site a big push.

Just think about it: maybe, the next time you go to the local mall, that teenage girl texting on her cell phone in Abercrombie & Fitch just might be Twittering about how she like, OMG totally loves those cute zip-up hoodies.

Urban travel blog Gridskipper has a great new list of geek hotspots in New York City: from bizarre curio shop Evolution, to comic culture megastore Forbidden Planet, to Barcade, which is exactly what you'd think it would be.

The list misses a few, like West Village gaming center Nyclan (coverage here) and the Manhattan outlet of Japan-inspired gallery and retail shop Giant Robot. But overall, this New Yorker thinks it's a decent and diverse selection that clearly indicates there's more for nerds to do around here than go for Water Taxi rides.

(Credit: Flickr user n1c1c8)

There have been plenty of sites out there showcasing how to make Miis, the little avatars for Nintendo's Wii games, for various celebrities, even turning them into Coen Brothers-inspired machinima (Miichinima?) with a re-enactment of a scene from The Big Lebowski. Now it's gone a step further into the pop-culture realm, as I learned on Best Week Ever that someone with way too much time on his/her hands has created a Flickr gallery of Miis for most of the cast members of NBC's "The Office."

CHALLENGE: First person to make an "I'm a Mac" ad using Miis gets to be Crave's person of the day. If it's good, you can even be person of the week.