Usher's 'OMG' ' 'Kills It Every Night,' Says Tourmate Miguel

'There's so much anticipation for this song when he comes out,' Miguel says of MTV News' Song of the Year.
By Vaughn Trudeau Schoonmaker


Usher
Photo: Jason Merritt/ Getty Images

MTV News just named Usher's "OMG" the #1 song of 2010, and clearly we're not alone in our admiration. But what is it like to watch it performed night after night? Miguel, who is currently opening for Usher's OMG Tour gave us a little insight.

"There's so much anticipation for this song when he comes out, and he really gives the fans what they want," Miguel laughs. "He kills it every night."

Before his latest string of hits, Usher was out of the spotlight for a period of time in 2009, when he was dealing with personal issues including a divorce. Miguel finds his 2010 comeback inspiring.

"There was a period of time, when a lot of people didn't believe in Usher and thought he was finished ... just kind of going to ride off into the sunset and disappear," the up-and-coming singer noted.

With the release of Raymond vs. Raymond and its extended, companion EP, Versus, in 2010, Usher proved the skeptics wrong with chart-toppers including "OMG" and "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love."

"He's such a tremendous example of perseverance and determination," Miguel beamed. "I was there throughout this album, so I've seen the adversity that he's had to overcome perception-wise."

MTV News' Top 25 Songs of 2010 have all been counted down. But the fun isn't over yet: We still want to see your picks in the comments below!

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1654059/20101210/usher.jhtml

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Gmail?s Holiday Gift: Another Year Of Free Calling To The U.S. And Canada

I own an iPhone. I live in San Francisco. As such, it's basically a total crapshoot as to whether or not I'll be able to make a phone call in the city. Skype had always been a pretty good back-up solution, but an even better one came a few months ago: Gmail Calling. And now Google has just extended the free period of the feature through 2011. Yes, through next year. Gmail Calling is great because it exists fully in the browser in an app that I always have open anyway: Gmail. If you use gChat, it's right below your status message marked with a phone icon and the words "Call phone". Hitting this launches a dialpad window within Gmail (similar to a chat window) and you can call any number in the U.S. or Canada for free. In my experience, the call quality and reliability have been excellent.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VHF8tQe_ZE8/

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Michael Jackson Album-Cover Artist Explains Hidden Meanings In His Work

Kadir Nelson leads MTV News through his tribute to the King of Pop.
By James Montgomery


Kadir Nelson
Photo: MTV News

It is a testament to the legendary life of Michael Jackson that no matter how big a canvas artist Kadir Nelson used to tell MJ's story — and at 9 feet wide and 4.5 feet tall, he used a pretty big one — he kept running out of room. It seems that Jackson's reign as the King of Pop was just too lengthy, his list of achievements too large and his life too all-encompassing to be summed up in even the most massive of murals.

"Michael's life was so huge I couldn't get it all into the painting," Nelson told MTV News. "So I would take images from throughout his life that were milestones ... images that would resonate with his fans. And even doing that was a challenge."

Still, Nelson gave it his best effort, and the result was "The King of Pop," his epic tribute to Jackson's life, which struck such a chord with the late icon's estate (and his label, Sony Music) that it was chosen as the cover for the just-released Michael album. But what fans see on that album is just a fraction of Nelson's original work.

" 'The King of Pop' is the life story of Michael Jackson, so what you see on the album cover is the centerpiece of the mural; Michael is wearing his famous bejeweled glove, and he's wearing a golden suit of armor, and he has this collar around his neck, like what you would see in a French painting of King Philip," Nelson explained. "The theme for this painting is 'royalty' and 'pop,' because Michael was the King of Pop. So you have Michael being crowned by two Cupids, he has his birthstones in his crown. He's wearing a soft, velvet drapery over his armor, because Michael had a very soft heart. Also, his hand is placed over his heart, because he had a big heart, and he put that big heart into everything he did."

And radiating from that royal image is Jackson's life story, which begins with images of his childhood in Gary, Indiana, extends upward to a gallery of his musical influences (Barry Gordy, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye, to name just a few), and then explodes with the launch of his solo career, starting with his star-making turn at the "Motown 25" television special (where he unveiled his "moonwalk" dance) and rolling right along to his Thriller heyday. There are also portions of the painting dedicated to his Bad, Dangerous and HIStory albums, and images of his children, the omnipresent media that followed him everywhere, and the women with whom he shared close relationships (Liz Taylor, Lisa Marie Presley and Madonna).

There are also, as Nelson explained, coded images hidden throughout the painting, everything from bubbles (blown by his pet chimpanzee, of course), an apple (because, as the painter explained, "kids would call [Jackson] 'Applehead' on his Neverland Ranch"), Peter Pan soaring off into the Northern Lights (meant to symbolize Jackson's ascension after his death) and, perhaps the most striking image of all, a golden throne atop a mountain: Jackson's throne, never to be occupied again.

"It's empty," Nelson explained, "because no one will ever sit in it now that he's gone."

What do you think of the Michael cover? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1654225/20101214/jackson_michael.jhtml

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Three password apps to protect yourself from trouble like the Gawker database hack

Sure, it's fun to post comments on websites and converse with your fellow readers, but there's always a little danger involved. Why? Because sometimes the sites where you post those comments rile up the wrong people and wind up with a big security breach -- like the one at Gawker.

One of the biggest lessons to be learned from the Gawker fiasco is this: don't use the same password everywhere.

But remembering all those different passwords is hard, yo!

Yes, it is -- but there are secure tools you can use which make it so you don't have to do the remembering yourself. Apps like LastPass, OnePassword, and KeePass make creating and utilizing complex, secure passwords a trivial task. All you need to do is pick an app, create an account, and set up one really good password you can remember to protect it. Your password manager will take care of the memorizing.

Take the jump to see how easy it can be to better protect your logins online!

Continue reading Three password apps to protect yourself from trouble like the Gawker database hack

Three password apps to protect yourself from trouble like the Gawker database hack originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/12/13/three-password-apps-to-protect-yourself-from-trouble-like-the-gawker-hack/

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Deal of the Day ? Save $200 on a Lenovo IdeaPad U460 14-inch Laptop

The LogicBuy deal of the day is for a Lenovo IdeaPad U460 14-inch Laptop. Lenovo direct store is offering a $200 stackable coupon on select 0.75″ thin 14-inch Lenovo U460 Laptop models. The sleek IdeaPad U460 features built-in light sensor, fingerprint reader, optional NVIDIA GeForce 305M discrete graphics, 8-cell battery and more. Using the coupon [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2010/12/17/deal-of-the-day-save-200-on-a-lenovo-ideapad-u460-14-inch-laptop/

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Kensington ClickSafe Review

Laptops are attractive for their portability, but can also be a security nightmare for the same reason. Kensington locks have been around for years securing laptops. I still have the first one I bought over 10 years ago. Essentially the Kensington lock is a cable with a lock that fits into a slot of your [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2010/12/20/kensington-clicksafe-review/

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Motorola's 'Tablet Evolution' video teases some Honeycomb at CES


It's on, suckers. Motorola just sent us this "Tablet Evolution" teaser video for their CES 2011 announcements, and it doesn't mince any words -- it calls the iPad a "giant iPhone" and says the Samsung Galaxy Tab is running Android "for a phone" before closing out with a buzzing bee over that new red Motorola logo. That certainly suggests some Honeycomb action to us -- and it fits perfectly with Andy Rubin demonstrating the next-gen version of Android on a Motorola tablet back at D: Dive Into Mobile. You know, the tablet that's since leaked out with a Verizon logo on it. Yeah, we're ready for this to go down -- and you know we'll be there live as it happens.

Motorola's 'Tablet Evolution' video teases some Honeycomb at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/20/motorolas-tablet-evolution-video-teases-some-honeycomb-at-ces/

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Scientists attempt to predict flu spread, give ZigBee radios to 700 high school students

This is the Crossbow TelosB wireless remote platform, and it did an important job for science in January of last year -- it monitored the close proximity interactions among 788 students and staff at one US high school to track a virtual flu. After collecting over 762,000 sneeze-worthy anecdotes among the module-toting teachers and teens, Stanford researchers ran 788,000 simulations charting the path the virus might take and methods the school might try to keep it in line. Sadly, the scientists didn't manage to come up with any easy answers, as virtual vaccination seemed to work equally well (or poorly) no matter who got the drugs, but that if only we could actually monitor individuals in real life as easily as in a study, prevention would be much easier. But who will bell the cat, when it's so much less political to ionize?

Scientists attempt to predict flu spread, give ZigBee radios to 700 high school students originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/20/scientists-attempt-to-predict-flu-spread-give-zigbee-radios-to/

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