June 27, 2012 – Spotify is always looking for more listeners, and just a week or so after announcing a wide-ranging mobile streaming service, is now turning to original Internet search giant Yahoo to find them. Starting with Yahoo!'s music section, and later spreading across other parts of the site, you'll start to find the Spotify Play button, which is a built-in music player app that can stream Spotify songs from any web page (a free Spotify membership and initial app download is still required). The partnership between the Spotify and the decidedly less trendy Yahoo! may seem like an odd one, but despite not having much buzz, Yahoo! is still a huge player online, reaching nearly 700 million users per month. Spotify, in comparison, has about 10 million active monthly users.

May 2, 2012 – After several years, the era of zombie chic shows no sign of waning. The Resident Evil series continues to pump out video games and movies, Brad Pitt is working on a film version of the popular novel World War Z, and The Walking Dead has become the breakout ratings hit for AMC that the more well-regarded Mad Men and Breaking Bad aren't quite. Based on a (wildly overrated) comic book, the franchise's latest offshoot is a downloadable video game, available for Xbox, PlayStation 3, and PC/Mac (an iOS version is in the works as well).

March 29, 2012 – Mass Effect 3 Electronic Arts Xbox 360, PS3, PC The first real blockbuster game of the year, the latest entry in the Mass Effect series has become the type of pop-culture experience Hollywood filmmakers dream of. It certainly shows up big budget sci-fi disappointments such as the overhyped John Carter, selling nearly one million copies in its first 24 hours (at $60 each, no less). How did this dialog-heavy tale of inter-planetary diplomacy and inter-species dating become so huge? By picking up the mantle of Star Wars, Star Trek, and other vintage sci-fi juggernauts, building a living, breathing universe filled with interesting characters, alien civilizations, and enough interconnected storyline threads to make J.J.

March 22, 2012 – Following in the footsteps of the then little-known Twitter, which first caught fire at the 2007 edition of SXSW Interactive, Highlight is suddenly on everyone's minds and everyone's phones (although a good number of people end up disabling or uninstalling the app as well; it's not all rave reviews). The basic pitch is this: Install this free iPhone app and it will alert you when either your friends, or new people you may want to be friends with based on common interests, are nearby. It's a mix of two hot trends — social discovery and geo-location — which just means it uses social media and your phone's GPS to connect people.

February 24, 2012 – After the all-important holiday season, January is always a dead zone for video games. The year in games really starts in February, when the first trickle of high-quality new releases hits store shelves. Here's what we think you should consider dropping your next $60 on this month. The Darkness 2 2K Games, Xbox 360, PS3 A rare comic book spin-off that was actually good, the original Darkness game was an urban mob story with a supernatural twist, and plenty of blood and violence. The sequel has even more of a graphic-novel vibe, with a new animation-inspired art style, and fans will be pleased to know that Faith No More’s Mike Patton reprises his role as the titular malevolent force powering the game's anti-hero.

February 24, 2012 – Get ready to have a brand new case of television envy, even if you just dropped a small fortune for the latest and greatest. We've recently had some eyes-on time with what may be the single most stunning new device of 2012: a 55-inch television built using a new technology called OLED, or organic light-emitting diode. (Don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz.) Sure, there are plenty of impressive 55-inch and larger TVs, but this one is a mere four millimeters thick — that's a few credit cards stacked together. Put another way, it's too thin to even plug an HDMI cable directly into it — instead a slender wire leads out to a breakout box for connections. Look at one of these from the front, and the bright, clear image blows any current plasma or LCD out of the water.