meme

President Obama's State of the Union speech didn't generate any memes, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio gave the Twitterverse something to shout about: his awkward reach for a tiny bottle of Poland Spring water during his official Republican rebuttal address. Almost instantly, the moment was a trending topic.

Unfortunately for Poland Spring, its social media people -- if it even has any -- dropped the ball. What appear to be its official Twitter accounts, @PolandSpringWtr, and @PolandSpringInc, were both dormant after Rubio's instantly panned water break. In fact, the most recent tweet from either account came in … Read more

Whether you love them or hate them, memes -- culturally relevant multimedia often enhanced with a witty caption -- are here to stay.

In an attempt to crown the king of all that is viral, the meme maniacs at the site Know Your Meme analyzed internal page views, search interest on Google Trends, covers, and even parodies to suss out the top memes of 2012. … Read more

We've come a long way since the iconic 1964 "Daisy Girl" political ad. These days, candidates are turning to complex data sets to help pinpoint potential supporters.

So exactly what kind of information are political parties getting about you? According to a New York Times article, callers will know if you have homes in foreclosure, what kind of beer you drink, or the type of vacations you enjoy.

But technology works both ways.

Keep the facts straight with apps like Super PAC and Ad Hawk. These free apps "listen" to political advertisements on television and … Read more

The newly released Photo Punch app for Android lets you cut figures out of one photo and add them to another. Here, we show you how to use the app to create funny and whimsical photos for sharing with your friends across the Interwebs.

Step 1: Download and install Photo Punch for Android It's free, and available now on Google Play.

Step 2: Create a Punch Shot A Punch Shot is essentially a cut-out foreground element from a photo, which you paste onto a different photo. In our example, your Punch Shot will be of a woman, while your … Read more

When some of you stumble home from kicking off the weekend early Saturday morning to finish things off with a nightcap in the form a delicious GIFwich, prepare to be sorely disappointed.

That's because Tumblr -- home to some of the hippest, snarkiest, weirdest, and most ironic and meta micro-blogging in the universe -- has gone all pro-active in announcing that it will be going down in Saturday's wee hours for some maintenance and upgrades.

"We are preparing for any issues that may arise and want you to expect your blogs to be unavailable starting at 4 a.m. EDT this Saturday (Oct. 6), and to come back online slowly over the next few hours," writes Tumblr engineering VP Blake Matheny.

Come back online slowly? Ouch.… Read more

While it might be impossible to put a dollar value on awesomeness, the epic rise of the meme surrounding South Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" sensation gives us an opportunity to try.

Right now, Psy's music video has more than 337 million views on YouTube, making it the ninth most watched video of all time, and one that's quickly advancing on Justin Bieber in position eight. It's also topped the U.K. charts, garnered over 2 million Facebook Likes, and inspired a Klingon version.

How much is all that viral, meme-licious goodness worth in real-world currency? Quite a bit, it turns out.… Read more

I've noticed something shocking lately. Many Web sites don't have any cats on them at all. The CNET front page, for example, is completely devoid of Nyans, monorail cats, and keyboard cats. What has the online world come to?

Thank goodness for Meowbify. When you run a URL through Meowbify, it puts everything into its rightful place. Cats become the stars of BBC News. Animated cat .gifs take over GameSpot. The official White House site is invaded by a white cat popping out of a box. All is right with the world.… Read more

McKayla is not impressed with Thursday's big tech stories:

Microsoft helped develop a surveillance system for New York that pulls in information from video camera footage, 9-1-1 calls, radiation detectors and license plate readers, and analyzes the data in real-time to better fight crime and terrorism. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the program, known as the Domain Awareness System, and it will be available to law enforcement agencies around the world (New York earns 30 percent of sales revenue). It doesn't use face-recognition software, but even still, some critics are worried officers could abuse this technology and … Read more