mob

Samsung tried to conjure up a bit of Fred Astaire for its latest Galaxy S4 promotion.

As the new Galaxy phone gets ready for its big debut tomorrow, the smartphone maker took to Times Square to try to wow the crowds with a dance number.

Outfitted with bowler hats and black suits with the number 4 on the back, the dancers emerged from a paneled box entitled "Be Ready 4 The Next GALAXY." The troupe performed the old soft-shoe routine before dancing back into the box.

Samsung described the video as a "a cool flash mob for … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--If there's one man in the world who can convince thousands of people to take off their pants in the subway, to follow the disembodied instructions of a downloaded MP3, or to high-five a stranger on an escalator, it's Charlie Todd.

The brainchild behind Improv Everywhere, a New York-based "prank collective" that has been culture jamming society since 2001, Todd knows a thing or two about how to get a group of perfect strangers involved in something very unexpected and very funny.

Over the years, Improv Everywhere has grown from Todd and a couple of … Read more

Times are tough economically in Europe and rates of youth unemployment are crazy-high. Sounds like the perfect conditions for an epic Italian flash mob, Gangnam Style.

You wouldn't know the continental economy has been on the brink of catastrophe for some time now by the way thousands of mostly young folks emulated the now renowned style that mocks life in an affluent Korean suburb.… Read more

In just a handful of days, a startup company named Carrier IQ has been subjected to extraordinary public vilification, with reports accusing it of making a "rootkit keylogger" that "creeps out everyone" or is the "rootkit of all evil."

The only problem, which is always a risk when a public lynching takes place, is that Carrier IQ appears to be not guilty of the charges lodged against it.

The most serious charge against Carrier IQ, a venture capital-funded startup in Mountain View, Calif., that makes diagnostic software for carriers, has been that it records … Read more

Contract Killer puts you in the shoes of a master sniper for hire. Work your contacts, look for missions, and complete hits in order to gain new weapons, experience points, and money. Become a good enough killer, and you might be able to climb your way to the top of the underworld ladder.

Sniping is simple. Just tap and drag around the scene to find your target. Once you find him, tap the scope button to zoom in, drag around to adjust your crosshairs, and fire away. Aim for the head for an instant kill. But watch out, because crime … Read more

YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley and AdMob founder and head Omar Hamoui are leaving their positions at the Google-acquired companies, according to reports.

Hurley told reporters at the F.ounders international Web conference in Dublin that he was in the process of transitioning out of his role at YouTube and that he would become an adviser to the video-sharing site and work on other projects at Google. (The Guardian has audio here.) Salar Kamangar, who's been the de facto head at YouTube for the past two years, will officially step into Hurley's role, according to The Wall … Read more

Count Google's AdMob division among those glad to see that Apple has had a change of heart regarding restrictions on App Store development.

Omar Hamoui, former CEO of AdMob and currently vice president of product management at Google, had been worried that changes to Apple's iPhone Developer Agreement prohibited developers from using AdMob's in-application advertising products--Apple had banned the use of third-party analytic data by companies "owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices." But Apple's decision Thursday to strip its agreement of that language elicited a thank-you note from … Read more

You know you have a hit single when Jeff gets off his antiboogie butt and dances to it; such is the case with Cee-lo Green's latest single from an upcoming album titled "The LadyKiller."

The song title described by the Washington Post as a "two-word, Anglo-Saxon, hortatory phrase whose first word is typically rendered by dashes or a string of nonsense characters from the upper levels of a keyboard," rhymes with "Cluck You" and has already racked up over 2 million YouTube hits since its release earlier this week.

The up-tempo beat is … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Despite putting a scare into AdMob and its customers with its new policies on third-party ad networks, Apple has not yet enforced those policies, AdMob's CEO confirmed Tuesday.

Omar Hamoui, founder and CEO of Google's AdMob division, said it has been business as usual for AdMob's ad network customers seeking to place ads in iPhone applications ever since Apple inserted language into its iPhone Developer Agreement in June that appeared to kneecap ad networks owned by anyone competing with Apple in mobile computing, such as AdMob parent Google. "They haven't been enforcing (the new … Read more