britney spears

Google CEO, Larry Page might--at this very moment--be lying down, looking up, and whispering "Hit Me Baby One More Time."

This is not an excessively wishful and twisted thought on my part. Instead, it is an expression of how pleasing it must be for Google's hierarchy to finally have some legitimacy for its social network, Google+.

For someone at PC World has been diligent or nerdy enough to notice that La Spears now has more Google+ followers than La Page. At the time of writing, she leads him by around 8,000 humans. (She's at just … Read more

This tech CEO has all the right credentials to steer a digital-music start-up.

In addition to degrees in computer science and economics from Stanford University, Prerna Gupta is expert in all things Britney Spears.

Gupta is a former beauty pageant winner who aspired to follow in the hip-hop dancing footsteps of her childhood idol, Spears. Now, as the 28-year-old CEO of Khush, the company behind a new iPhone app called LaDiDa, Gupta's performance background may help her as much as anything she learned in college.

LaDiDa works this way: compose a song, sing it into an iPhone or iPod Touch, and the software will provide the musical accompaniment. Think of it as reverse karaoke. Sing your own tune or "Taxman" by the Beatles. LaDiDa, which sells for $2.99, will determine what key you're singing in, match it with favorable chord progressions, and toss in some effects, such as reverb. LaDiDa will spit out a recording of your enhanced voice and backing tracks.

Parag Chordia, Gupta's husband and Khush's chief technology officer, is a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the school's music intelligence lab. LaDiDa was developed there, Gupta said.

The software is "trained" to recognize notes and common chord progressions, Gupta said. To do this, a composer inputs "musical atoms," the term she uses to describe small chunks of music. The software makes a guess based on its training on what will sound best with the song it hears to quickly arrange the chunks.

Whiz-bang technology is one thing, but to make LaDiDa a hit, it needed someone with an innate understanding of people's desire to put on a show. And no, that desire is not just about lots of sake. … Read more

It seemed like celebrity deaths were contagious last week. After the sad news about Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon dying, a wave of viral death notices went out on Twitter for Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Jeff Goldblum, and P. Diddy. But all are safe and sound.

"Britney has passed today," the bogus tweet announced on Sunday. "It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come."

The message was immediately taken down and Spears' staff tweeted that her account was hacked into and that, "She is fine and dandy spending a quiet … Read more

CNN gained nearly a million Twitter followers on Wednesday when it acquired the @cnnbrk Twitter account.

The account, the largest on Twitter with more than 947,000 followers, had been maintained and nurtured by James Cox. CNN did not disclose financial details of the acquisition, probably because rules at the microblogging site prohibit the selling of Twitter accounts.

The acquisition comes as the race to 1 million Twitter followers heats up. As of Wednesday afternoon, Ashton Kutcher was in second place with 917,000 followers, followed closely by Britney Spears, who has about 913,000 followers.

Kutcher publicly challenged CNN … Read more

Greetings from sunny Las Vegas! It's sunny, but not hot at all, which is awesome. Today's CES show was a nice dry run, but tomorrow is when the real fun starts. So make sure to stop by the CNET stage at 5 p.m. pacific time to catch us live! Did we mention there will be giveaways?

On today's show Ariel Nunez joins us to talk about why Macworld was absolutely terrible and why you'll need an HDTV to listen to Ludacris' new record. Then we'll discuss Ludacris' comments about our own Natali Del Conte. … Read more

Thanks to Google, they know where you live. Thanks to Twitter, they know when you floss your teeth.

Now a devious, perhaps ludicrously insane, hacker has taken it further. He (must be a 'he.' Women can spell and are never rude) found his way into the twitterdom of celebrities and tinkered with their tweets.

For example, he attempted to suggest to twitterers of Britney Spears foul words that would surely never have emerged from her imagination. He implied to followers of Rick Sanchez that the CNN anchor partakes of scientifically concocted substances, surely a (free)baseless lie.

Even the President-elect'… Read more

News of the Yahoo demographic's searching habits arouses a sudden love for space in Brian Cooley today. Also, the Nokia N97 gets a chilly reception, especially in light of all those delectably cheap Netbooks flooding the market. Pownce disappears, Apple suddenly starts recommending antivirus for Mac users, and Microsoft claims the Xbox 360 pwned Black Friday.

iPhone beware, the Nokia N97 is coming (PC World) http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20081202/tc_pcworld/iphonebewarethenokian97iscoming http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10110873-1.html http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1274500

Netbooks dominate cyber-Monday, at … Read more

When we heard that pop singer Britney Spears was reinventing herself, we didn't know it involved a Twitter account.

But it's true--go to the newly revamped BritneySpears.com, and check it out. You can "Friend Britney" not only on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Britney's own "VIP" social network, but also Twitter. For obvious reasons, it's not actually Spears doing the Twittering. But you can still get updates like "OMG!! 7 hours until Womanizer premieres!!!!!!!" ("Womanizer" is Spears' latest hit single) and "Hey paparazzi...Rolling Stone cover rumors? … Read more

Still stunned by the tale of a man who called 911 to complain that Subway had left the sauce off his sandwich, I discover another telephony cacophony.

It surrounds robocalling.

Which, apparently, involves some clever and remarkably cost-effective technology that allows millions of calls, many featuring the (scripted, naturally) voices of the famous, to be made simultaneously on behalf of political candidates.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, activists are fighting to regulate political calls in a way similar to the Do Not Call Registry that came into effect five years ago to regulate America's (or, sometimes, Canada's) … Read more