poster

Anyone who's ever shopped for a piece of art to hang behind the living room sofa knows that big art typically comes at a big price. Even if you pick up some mass-produced Ikea canvas, you still have to contend with fitting it in the car, or paying someone to deliver it to your doorstep.

If you have more time on your hands than money, there are some easy solutions for printing infinitely large posters from even the most modest printer.

The first step is the image. Whether you're going to print in black and white or full … Read more

Sometimes we get to try the most unique, unusual, and specialized software. For example, take SoftWeird's Pic-Poster. This unusual free tool analyzes faces and image metadata to estimate an individual's age range, based on initial data you enter. You can post your images online to view or share, too. It works with a wide range of images, but it's meant to be used on digital snapshots of individuals (like newborns) bearing date stamps and other metadata. Its chief purpose seems to be to help busy parents quickly sort through gigabytes of family snapshots without the help of … Read more

Photofunia is a ridiculously simple photo effects app that lets you drop your photos into funny and interesting scenes, similar to those you might find at an amusement park photo booth. If, say, you want to see what your face might look like on a billboard in Times Square, Photofunia has an effect for that. How about on the cover of Esquire Magazine? Photofunia's got that covered, too. With an incredible number of effects available, the possibilities seem endless.

To get started with Photofunia, just fire up the app and start looking for an effect you like. You can … Read more

The nanocontent company Twitter is buying the microblog site Posterous, according to posts on both services (Twitter | Posterous). Terms of the deal are not yet public.

Posterous is a blog platform with a focus on simplicity. Like competitor Tumblr, it's designed so users can quickly create short posts. Items can be posted from the Web, the Posterous mobile app, or from e-mail.

The announcement posts say that the Posterous service Spaces will stay up and running "without disruption," but that users who wish to move off the system will get instructions for doing that shortly. The posts … Read more

Forget spending countless hours and dollars on a viral video--hello OK Go!--one band is doing viral the old fashioned way.

You probably haven't heard of Dry The River, but come this March you will, and if you're in London it will be via the old fashioned "lover's phone": a tin can on a string.

Twelve posters are scattered around London which, if you hold the can up to your ear, will play a track from Dry The River's new album "Shallow Bed."

The posters feature animals constructed from wires pulled from … Read more

LAS VEGAS--True Beliebers never travel without signage materials, but what to do with the photos you take with JB here at CES?

Invest in the new Epson Artisan 1430 wide-format photo printer and you can print a personalized poster to bring to the next sighting.

Amateur photo enthusiasts and image professionals will both find the Artisan 1430 easy to use now that the printer is compatible with Epson Connect, a mobile app that lets users print directly from a variety of compatible iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and tablet devices.… Read more

Super-simple blogging tool Posterous is getting a major refresh today. The new system, while still dead simple, has more up-to-date social and sharing tools. The new Posterous encroaches on Facebook and Google+ in some ways, although with only 15 million users after three years running, it's not technically in the same league.

The new Posterous Spaces, as it's called, is "really trying to go after controlled and private sharing," CEO Sachin Agarwal told me. Your spaces (formerly sites) on the service can now have members (formerly you had to set up groups). And in contrast to Facebook and Google+ Circles, spaces memberships are symmetrical--everyone can see everyone else, and there's none of the lopsided sharing and following in your tight groups that you can get with Google+ and Twitter. You can set up as many spaces as you want, and each can have different members.

You can also follow (not author) other users' public Posterous sites, and there's a wall- or Twitter-like "Reader" tab now for doing that.

Posterous has always had a strong mobile app, as befits a super-simple, quick-and-dirty blog platform. Posterous Spaces gives you fine-grained and clear control of spaces and members from the app. There's a lot more in the mobile app now, and it's more complicated than the last app, but worth it for the flexibility.

Posterous is not insular, either: Posts on the service can get automatically pushed to existing social sites like Facebook and Twitter. This is a standard feature for a user-focused site today, though.

The company is still not making money, and I would say it's getting a bit old to still be living off VC funding (Redpoint and Trinity), but Agarwal says, "things are going so well, we've been able to focus on user growth instead of revenues." If his funders are happy, I'm not one to judge. And he does confirm that paid professional and business accounts are coming soon.

Posterous plans to roll out the new service from a paid exhibit space at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco today. … Read more

Pardon our dust, 404 video viewers! We're right in the middle of a grand studio makeover! The 404 clubhouse is getting all new gear, including wide-angle lenses and a brand new HD tricaster so you can see our radio-friendly faces in high-definition! Actually, we'll let you determine whether that's good or bad, but bear with us for the next few days as we finish setting everything up.

To make it up to you (and in honor of our favorite holiday), we're giving away original 404 art courtesy of the incredibly talented Blake Stevenson! If you just started listening to the show, Blake is the unofficial artist of The 404 that donated his talents to our official logo as well as many of the posters you see in our studio! He recently created the Halloween poster you see on this page and we're really excited to give it away! To enter, all you have to do is follow Blake on Twitter and RT this message:

"RT this & follow @blakestevenson to get some original @the404 ink! http://goo.gl/1XXG"

...and that's it! You have all weekend to do that for a chance to win some awesome art from your favorite podcast; we'll announce the winners next week--good luck!

Now onto today's stories. The first one is almost NSFW so I'll skip that for now, but the next one raises controversy about the recently released first person-shooter game, Medal of Honor. The EA reboot is a gritty take on the current conflict in Afghanistan, and the prerelease even let you play as Taliban soldiers attacking the U.S. Special Forces.

EA has since renamed the Taliban the "opposing force," but the post-censorship becomes a divisive issue for The 404. Jeff doesn't have a problem with it, Wilson thinks it's just "too real," and I'm stuck in the middle like a preteen begging his parents to stop the madness. Tune into the first half to get the full story!

After the break, we hit another milestone for the show: our first ever listener-submitted VIDEO VOICE MAIL! As you know, listeners usually call in and leave an audio voice mail that we play on the air, but Blazer from Cincinnati had the genius idea to post a YouTube link to show us a skateboard trick he created and named after the show!

It's a no-comply pressure flip that he calls The 404 Flip, and we'll definitely show Tony Hawk when he returns to the show next Friday! In the meantime, we'd love to receive more video voice mails, so upload your best messages to YouTube and send us a link at the404(at)cnet(dot)com. Of course we understand that not everyone has access to a video/Web camera, so audio voice mails will certainly be accepted as well--the number's the same: 1-866-404-CNET. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday for the triumphant return of Ms. Natali Del Conte!

Have you ever made a nasty online comment about your boss and then wished you hadn't? If so, the diagnosis is poster's remorse, and you're not alone, according to Retrevo.

Among the 1,000 or so people interviewed by Retrevo, more than one-third said they've had poster's remorse over an inappropriate comment they made on Facebook, Twitter, or another social-networking site, according to a blog published last week.

The condition was even higher for smartphone users and the younger crowd. A full 54 percent of smartphone users and 59 percent of iPhone users have felt … Read more