Chatty, blocky LEGO action in 'Batman 2: DC Super Heroes'

(CNN) -- "Batman 2: DC Super Heroes" is a blocky-looking comic book come to life, with an open world for exploring, more new heroes and villains, and (for the first time ever) actual dialogue from LEGO characters. Batman and Robin return from their adventures in the original title to take on major baddies with a little help from their friends. The story takes place in Gotham City, where the Joker and Lex Luthor decide the best way to rig a presidential election in Luthor's favor is to drug everyone with Joker gas. The campaign takes players through several different set pieces, but also allows for free roaming throughout Gotham City in between the missions. Everything is built with LEGOs, which means nearly everything can be broken into blocks and bits, the currency of the LEGO world....

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Apparently This Matters: Paging Dr. Mario

Editor's note: Each week in "Apparently This Matters," CNN's Jarrett Bellini applies his warped sensibilities to trending topics in social media. New York (CNN) -- This week I was sent on a three-day work trip to New York because, for some unfathomable reason, these people trust me outside the confines of my cube. Generally speaking, I don't mind being there. I like my cube. It has Tiki torches. Nevertheless, they were sending me out on an assignment with real journalistic merit. (Mind you, this wasn't it. This will make you dumber.) So, on the morning of my flight I poked around several sites to see what was trending in the Big Apple. Surely there was something locally interesting going on that people were talking about all over the Web -- something culturally relevant and noteworthy...

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Google fights to save 3,054 dying languages

(CNN) -- Will you be any worse off the moment humans cease to speak in Aragonese? How about Navajo, or Ojibwa? Or Koro, a language only just discovered in a tiny corner of northeast India? No, you probably wouldn't, not in that moment. But humanity would be. Science, art and culture would be. If, as the phrase goes, another language equals another soul, then some 3,054 souls -- 50% of the world's total languages -- are set to die out by 2100. Mashable.com: Kindle Espanol: Amazon launches Spanish-language ebook store If there is hope, it lies in the world's centers of information -- such as Google. The search giant's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has launched the Endangered Language project, a website devoted to preserving those ancient tongues that are now only spoken by a few thousand...

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Instagram wants photos to be seen beyond '10-hour' window

London (CNN) -- Instagram is hoping to extract more value from photos uploaded in the past, co-founder Kevin Systrom said Tuesday. Systrom, making one of his first public appearances since Facebook acquired his photo-sharing app in April for $1 billion, said he wants to expand the software to go beyond the "10-hour" time frame viewed by most users. "We're still really hard at work on our product ideas," he told attendees at Le Web London -- an offshoot of Europe's biggest internet conference, usually held each December in Paris. "We're going to see Instagram evolve in really interesting ways, and I'm really excited about it." With the...

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Facebook to show you ads based on your Web browsing

(CNN) -- Facebook will soon be using your Web browsing to help decide which advertisements you see. A new Facebook system will use your activity on other websites to send you what Facebook thinks are ads about your current interests. Advertisers will, in effect, be bidding to get their ads in front of you. Here's an example: Say a Facebook user visits a travel website and clicks on a page about a vacation package to Las Vegas. If an advertiser has bid on that kind of search, that user could then see ads for discounted trips to Vegas the next time they visit Facebook. "By bidding on a specific impression rather than a larger group, advertisers are able to show people more relevant ads while also running more efficient and effective campaigns," a Facebook spokeswoman said in a written...

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