MTV web site

MTV web site

Just when you thought MTV had completely turned its back on music videos, the MTV Music Web site (mtvmusic.com) proves that the network hasn’t completely forgotten its roots.

From classic videos from the 1980s to today’s hit songs, MTV Music features a deep music video database. You can find videos from one-hit wonders like The Buggles (“Video Killed The Radio Star”) or established bands such as U2.

In addition to music videos, MTV Music also features interview and performance clips that previously appeared on MTV or its sister networks, VH1 and CMT.

MTV Music also functions as an online community, allowing members to rate and comment on videos as well as compile their favorites into playlists.

The music videos don’t quite match the high-definition quality found on the Plugged In music video site (http://www.pluggedin.com) but are definitely better than what you’ll find on YouTube.

photos on the web

There are so many online photo-printing services available on the Internet, they all seem to blend together. One service, Shutterfly (shutterfly.com), is betting that personalization and social networking tools can help separate it from the pack.

Shutterfly offers its members the opportunity to create their own photo-sharing Web sites. In addition to uploading your favorite pictures, you can post journal entries, embed a planning calendar, create your own polls and more, all with tools provided by Shutterfly.

Setting up a customized site is so easy even computer novices should be able to do it. To begin, Shutterfly lets you select from a wide range of basic, but attractive site templates. You can rearrange elements on the templates by simply dragging-and-dropping it to the area you like. Child’s play!

You can also control the level of privacy on your site, restricting who has viewing access, upload/download permissions as well as who can leave comments.

And because the site is hosted by a photo-printing service, visitors to your site can create and purchase any number of products that Shutterfly offers such as photo books, cards, posters and more.

alive and kicking

Sony and Nintendo have made big strides over the last year in downloadable games for the PlayStation 3 (Sony) and the Wii (Nintendo). But Microsoft’s Xbox Live service got there first — and it still holds a comfortable lead, both in quantity and quality of content.

Not that Microsoft is coasting. Xbox Live hosted the exclusive launch of Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost & Damned,” which broke all the service’s single-day records when it was released in February. And the company is making another big online push over the next two months with its “Days of Arcade” promotion.

The series of new releases begins this month with Electronic Arts’ “Hasbro Family Game Night,” which is actually four separate games: Scrabble, Yahtzee, Battleship and Connect Four. Subsequent weeks will bring the puzzle games “Flock,” “Lode Runner” and “Puzzle Quest: Galactrix”; the six-player racer “OutRun Online Arcade”; the indie-developed hack-and-slasher “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai”; and “Uno Rush,” the long-awaited sequel to Xbox Live Arcade’s best-seller.

hot song

America’s favorite cartoonish hip-hoppers, the Black Eyed Peas, are back to making hip trends palatable to the mainstream with their new single, “Boom Boom Pow” (Interscope). Take “My Humps,” a little of Kanye West’s “Stronger,” some AutoTune vocals and throw in Fergie vamping with such lines as “I’m so 2008, you so 2000-and-late” and the Peas get another hit.