Child Stars: Then And Now (Photo Gallery)

There are many famous television roles we grew up with in the 80s and 90s that are seared into our brains. It’s fun to see these child stars all grown up.

Let’s check out some movie and television child actors we’ll all remember. Some child stars grew up pretty hot!

Abigail Breslin

Most of you will remember little nerdy Abigail Breslin in the film “Little Miss Sunshine”. Abigail is now 16-years-old and quite the looker.

She starred alongside Halle Berry in the film “The Call”.

Bindi Irwin

We bet you remember little Bindi Irwin, the daughter of the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin that starred with her family on the Animal Planet series.

Bindi is now 14-years-old and is starring in a new Hallmark Friday night family movie showcase in “Return to Nim’s Island.”. It will be her first feature-length film, but far from her first time on television.

Jonathan Lipnicki

Most of us remember the little boy with glasses that starred as Renee Zellweger’s son in the 1996 film “Jerry Maguire”. He also starred in “The Little Vampire”.

Now Lipnicki, now 21, is all grown up and appears in Independent films and competes in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, according to his website.

Mayim Bialik

Mayim Bialik will forever be remembered as little Blossom Russo on NBC’s show “Blossom” that ran from 1990-1995.

Bialik now plays the role of Amy Farrah Fowler on CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory”, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She doesn’t just play a smart chick on the show. She actually has a Ph.D. in neuroscience.

Jaleel White

Jaleel White is the name of the actor we all referred to as “Urkel”, who played the nerdy Steve Urkel on the sitcom “Family Matters”.

These days Jaleel is buff and hosts a game show on SyFy called “Total Blackout.”

Amanda Bynes

Child star Amanda Bynes was seen on Nickelodeon’s popular sketch comedy show, “All That” in the late 80s and early 90s. She went on to star with Jennie Garth in “What I Like About You”.

In recent years, the 26-year-old has acted a little cuckoo. She announced her retirement from acting and was recently evicted from her New York apartment according to reports.

Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling is most known as the guy in the romantic movie “The Notebook”, but he actually started out as part of the “Mickey Mouse club” and even starred in a “Goosebumps” episode in 1996 called Say Cheese and Die.

Alexa Vega

Alexa Vega is most known for her role as Carmen Cortez in the “Spy Kids” films, but she is all grown up now and starred in “Machete Kills” as Killjoy.

Happy Mother's Day: A Salute to Celebrity Moms!

Happy Mother's Day! We can all enjoy this celebration honoring mothers, motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of moms in society in general.

Here at THG, this means a tribute to some of the celebrity moms we all know and love ... and also a bunch who could use some improvement.

So on Mother's Day 2013, take a look at a 13 popular celebrity moms (and 13 more who also have kids) and vote for your favorite (and least favorite):

Angelina Jolie, Kids

Angelina Jolie and four of her kids in a recent photo. Cute family.

Will, Jada and Family

Will Smith and Jada pose here with their very famous kids: Jaden and Willow, who are named after their parents.

She's still an occasional actress, but Jennifer Garner has taken on a far more important role for years: mother.

Blue Ivy Photo

Say hello to Blue Ivy Carter! This is one of the first photos of Beyonce and Jay-Z's adorable daughter.

Obama Family Portrait 2011

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama pose with their beautiful daughters Sasha and Malia for their 2011 White House portrait. Nice looking family.

Jessica Alba and Daughters

Is this an adorable family or what? Jessica Alba poses for You magazine with children Haven and Honor. 

Who's your favorite celebrity mom?

 

Jennifer GarnerReese WitherspoonBrooke BurkeGwen StefaniMichelle ObamaAngelina JolieJessica AlbaJada Pinkett SmithAmy PoehlerJulia RobertsKelly RipaEmily MaynardBeyonce

Google Quietly Kills SMS Search, Closing One Way Of Connecting With Mobile Users Who Don’t Have Data Plans

Google is well known for its regular bouts of spring cleaning when it kills off a number of products in one fell swoop, but it also sometimes makes quick changes in between the bigger announcements. One of those has now hit its portfolio of SMS-based products aimed at users of lower end devices: Google has quietly closed down SMS Search.

People began to notice the service stop working on Friday, and asked about it in one ofGoogle’s Product Forums (good thing those haven’t been closed down yet) and on Reddit. Jessica S., a Google employee, set the record straight:

“Hi everyone,

Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people’s lives.

Thanks,
Jess”

For those of you who didn’t use it, SMS Search was a service Google had created that let users send search queries by text message to a short number, in this case 466453. The search results would also come back as text messages. These would not be links to further web pages, but actual information, playing on the many services that Google offers on its desktop search portal for things like currency conversions, weather and local listings. This was mainly intended for feature phones without data connections:

But the search could also be used on smartphones:

Google’s SMS services page hasn’t removed a link to SMS Search yet, it goes to a 404 page.
Trying to find a picture of how SMS Search looked, I came across (on Google) a link to its Canadian SMS Search page, which appears to still have an active link, but as Ghacks points out that won’t work because it uses the same short code number as the U.S. service did.

In some regards, you can see why Google would choose to axe SMS Search. The number of feature phone sales is on the decline worldwide as more and more people make the shift to smartphones.

In the last quarter of 2012, Gartner says the number of mobile phone sales worldwide was a 472 million units, compared to 478 million a year ago, but at the same time smartphone sales increased by 58 million to 208 million (it has yet to release its quarterly figures for Q1 2013).

It could be that Google is simply doing this to stay one step ahead of the times. Or it could be that, as with other products like Google Reader, it was not getting enough use of the service.

For now, Google’s other SMS products that let you check your calendar, update your Blogger blog, check your Gmail, and send and receive SMS text messages through Google Voice, appear to still be working; but users will inevitably start wondering if these will be next on the chopping block.

We’re reaching out to Google to ask and will update as we learn more.

Iterations: Snoopify, The Greatest Mobile Photobombing App Of All Time

“What are the cool new apps you’ve seen lately?” To this oft heard question, lately, there have been lots of answers. So, mobile is indeed exciting and moving fast. And, just recently, a fun new app came out that instantly captured my attention — no, it’s not from a Stanford dropout or from the  ”innovation lab” of a large technology company. No. It’s from Snoop Dogg— excuse me — Snoop Lion. Yes, that’s right, the same artist so many of you grew up with. He’s diversified his musical career into the business of his own branded apparel, a television show, and now he invades the greatest consumer stage of our times — our mobile phones. And, what’s more impressive is just how he did it — the genius to observe and iterate, to pull out the nuggets of lessons we have learned and package it together with marketing that’s both fun, easy, and devilishly derivative yet simultaneously novel.

The app is called “Snoopify.” I think it’s both a noun (the app) and a verb (as in, to “Snoopify” a photo). Essentially, you can take a new or existing picture, and then open up a box of Snoop stickers (that’s right, stickers) and overlay them onto the picture before sharing it on every social platform . Most of the stickers, as you can imagine, have something to do with Snoop and his brand, which makes for a hilarious “Snoop filter” on these doctored photographs. The first time I downloaded the app, I  ”Snoopified” about five times in the span of 10 minutes and shared them everywhere. Snoop has essentially digitized himself and appified a scalable way to photobomb any picture with his signature brand. And, this is the best part — if you want to unlock the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pages of stickers, pull out your credit card because they’re locked behind a paywall.

In-app purchases. Genius.

From a marketing and branding standpoint, this is all fascinating to me. Look at the intersections of trends here: (1) Photos remain the premium communication currency in our mobile world. Like SnapChat showed with their expiring images, there’s no end to the creative manipulation mobile software can offer to pictures. (2) Influencers with their own global, diverse audiences can leverage networks like Twitter and Instagram to breakthrough the noise and clutter of the iOS app storedistribution minefield. There’s the tactic  of growth hacking, yes — and then there’s the pure organic lift a celebrity can leverage to surpass everyone else. And (3) Stickers. Just a few months ago,everyone was hemming and hawing about Path’s latest 3.0 update which include new sets of free and paid stickers, perhaps influenced by the growth of mobile messaging apps in Asia (such as Line, an app which reportedly raked in US$50M+ in Q1 of 2013 by selling virtual goods in-app).

So, Snoop and his team watch all these trends converge, and steal a page out of the apps like Line and Path. Great artists steal, right? And, what do you know, it worked — I bought stickers, my first in-app purchase of a digital good. Brilliant.

I’ll be writing more about the overall trends I’m seeing at the app layer here in my column this summer, but an app like Snoopify, which rose quickly in the charts earlier this week, breaks convention with how much of the startup world views  how apps are supposed to be made and distributed. Distribution may, in the end, be just as, if not more, important than the actual app. Maybe. The creator of the app doesn’t actually have to do the hard-coding of the software — he or she can commission it, and it can be developed elsewhere. Of course, as I finalize this post, the app has already slipped in the charts. When I started drafting this post a few days ago, “Snoopify” was in the Top 25 trending free apps according to App Annie, but now as I finalize this early Sunday morning, it’s slipped to #36 (on AppData) and #58 (on App Annie) and is ranked #156 for grossing according to the official Apple App Store.

An app like Snoopify was destined to be faddish and not a business. Or, maybe this is just the first move by Snoop Lion to cut into the iPhone, on the app level. At scale, it’s an incredibly clever technique to extend his brand on top of other peoples’ pictures — the greatest photobomb at scale….ever! Perhaps he doesn’t see enough quality engagement on his work in popular music apps like Spotify or Rdio or other myriad music apps. Maybe he’s tired of Instagramming and receiving hearts in return, or maybe Twitter is just for distribution to his fan base. Maybe after stickers, he’s going to open private messaging inside his app, or broadcast scenes from his next concert to a select audience. (I’m having fun with this, naturally, though it’s not out of the realm of possibility.)

The opportunities on mobile are continuing to prove endless, and for someone as creative as Snoop, even a little mobile icon can represent the largest of sandboxes. Of course, not every artist can go to the lengths that Snoop went to in developing and promoting his mobile app, but of the ones who do have this luxury, Snoop’s foray into the  app store was a brilliant move, complete with a built-in revenue model, a platform for showcasing his brand, and artfully blending some of the biggest trends in consumer mobile behavior we have all collectively observed. Well played, Snoop — well played.

Google X Phone leaks converge: is Nexus done for?

Here in the weekend days before Google I/O 2013, the company’s big developer conference for the year, two new clues leading to a new era in Motorola-made Android smartphones have been added to story called X Phone. The device in question has appeared as an AT&T-supported smartphone in the FCC this weekend as well as in benchmark test results on a publicly viewable archive. This device will likely appear as a developer give-away at the Google convention on Wednesday.

The Motorola XT1058 XFON has appeared in benchmark results pointing toward a far less top-of-the-line device than past Google I/O-bound smartphones have been. With a 1280 x 720 pixel 4-inch display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus processor under the hood, this device is certainly one that would better have suited the crowds of 2012′s convention.

A 4-inch display – this is smaller than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the device given away at last year’s Google I/O, using here an amount of pixels that matches that Nexus device. With the Snapdragon S4 Plus dual-core processor onboard (the MSM8960), this Motorola device works with the same power as the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Motorola RAZR HD, and the first version of the HTC One X for AT&T.

The same processor also rests in the BlackBerry Z10, the Nokia Lumia 920, and the Nokia Lumia 928 (coming to Verizon soon as an upgraded version of the 920). Could it be that there’s an emerging “We don’t care which processor is in our phone as long as it gets the job done” segment in the mobile market?

The Motorola smartphone being revealed in miniature, tell-tale leaks here and there throughout the last few weeks has been attached to the device build code-name Ghost. The benchmark results for this device appears on GFXBench where they’re firmly attached to Motorola precedents like a build host code il93lnxdroid80.

You’ll also find this device up in the FCC with 4G LTE connectivity on AT&T. According to Blog of Mobile, this device is also open to a release on each of the other major carriers in the future – Verizon and T-Mobile included, 4G LTE included.

In the past, this device has also been tipped to be coming in a variety of colors and makes, the case available in more than just plastic or glass – more than just a normal one-off release. This device may very well be part of the Motorola tip for the future of the company with a perfect palm-sized form factor as well.

One way or another, this device will be nor ordinary, every-day release. And if it replaces the Nexus giveaway at Google I/O 2013, it may be a sign of Google switching gears with Motorola sooner than expected.

The Ultimate Arcade Game Cake

After years of thinking about it, I finally bit the bullet and ordered a custom MAME cabinet for my basement. It’s finally coming next week, so I can’t wait to try and beat these guy’s Donkey Kong high scores. Or not. But if I wasn’t getting my own arcade machine, I’d take this arcade cake instead. It’s definitely the next best thing.

This three-tier cake was made by Wedding Cakes by Nicole, and it features colorful images of classic arcade games on each of its sides. It’s got arcade-accurate versions of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Frogger, and even Pong.

It’s even got arcade-style buttons and a coin slot. Though I bet if you tried to mash on those buttons, you’d get food coloring all over your fingertips. The only thing its missing is a couple of paddle controllers for Pong, but I’ll forgive Nicole that.

I wonder if that joystick is edible. I so want it to be a red jawbreaker.

Heidi Klum's Soccer Saturday

Dutifully performing her role as soccer mom, Heidi Klum attended her boys' game in Brentwood, California on Saturday (May 11).

 

The "Project Runway" host wore a dark patterned T-shirt, black denim cutoffs, and flip-flops as she cheered on her brood from the sidelines and made floral leis with a friend.

Later in the day, the family hit the beach in Santa Monica for a bike ride, along with former bodyguard turned boyfriend, Martin Kristen.

Recently, the German model spoke to Us Weekly about parenting four children, saying, "They all have different likes and dislikes and activities that they want to do. You have to learn how to juggle all of that, and at the same time, give them each the love that they need."

Mama': An Atmospheric Horror Fable With a Frustrating End

Oftentimes, it seems as if films "presented by" directors take that approach solely to draw attention to emerging talents and generate theater turnout, but this isn't exactly the case for the works touted by Guillermo Del Toro, where he often serves as an active producer. Between The Orphanage and now Andres and Barbara Muschietti's Mama, his fingerprints -- entrancing visuals, robust characters, and eerie atmosphere -- can clearly be spotted and noticeably elevate the creations under his wing, while allowing the respective directors' viewpoints to shine through. The inspiration for this particular fable of absent parentage and looming secrets is a three-minute short by the Muschiettis, featuring a disturbing, gangly-armed "mother" who stomps after two children in a dimly-lit home. Extended into a warped study of unlikely mothers and spectral guardians that look over feral daughters, this is a flawed, slight, yet consistently haunting parable that wouldn't appear out-of-place among its presenter's own work. 

Mama goes down that well-worn path of dark and quixotic children's horror that Del Toro has brought somewhat to the mainstream, depicting a pair of sisters, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse), left to fend for themselves in a forested cottage following a car accident. Thought to be lost, but not without being sought by their uncle, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Game of Thrones), the girls are rediscovered five years later in that same cottage -- filthy, crawling like animals, and detached from normal emotion and maturity. Despite offers to take the children into more suitable custody, Lucas maintains a stern desire to keep the girls, despite not really having the means to do so. A solution arises in a house built for psychological evaluation, where Lucas and his prickly rocker girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty), would look after them while they're under continuous evaluation by psychologist Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash). A question remains, though: how were the girls able to care for themselves in the wild, and who is this nonexistent "mama" they say looked after them?

Annabel provides a necessary dimension to the story in the form of a headstrong bass player who isn't really built for the domestic-parent lifestyle, or, at the very least, isn't ready for it at this point in her life. She's an interesting challenge for Jessica Chastain: harsher, resistant, driven less by empathy and optimism than her other name-making roles. But she's also crucial to the dramatic backbone supporting the spook tactics to come in Mama; Annabel's ability to adapt to the situation, and her growing pains while trying to be a stand-in mother to oddly-behaving daughters, jumps between frustration with parenting to a young(er) rocker's decision whether to endure the situation or not. Unlike other up-and-coming actresses who fall prey to horror-suspense films that don't do their careers any favors, Chastain not only enhances what's otherwise a contrived slate of scenarios, she becomes crucial to both the eeriness and emotional purpose that the Muschiettis eventually aim for. 

The complicated maternal setup works well once the scares emerge in Mama (and once Annabel is forced to care for the girls by herself), providing a levelheaded opportunity for Andres and Barbara Muschietti's ideas to unnervingly creep out of the shadows. Steadily, we learn what's followed Victoria and Lilly from the cottage, and the role ... it served in their life while they were secluded for five years. Their ethereal little secret avoids our field of vision through clever plays on perspective that Antonio Riestra's cinematography achieves -- namely, the mischievous framing of multiple rooms within one shot, relishing who's in each and who isn't. The spacious, creak-and-slam-friendly house provides corners and corridors for Annabel to creep herself out in, while flickering lights and guitar amplifier feedback rattle the nerves through a few unnecessary but heart-thumping parlor tricks. Conventional jump-scares and glimpses into shadowy spaces end up appearing too orthodox for such a distinctive and straight-faced supernatural mystery, but they're polished, austere, and maintain a marvelously macabre atmosphere that begs for "mama" to make its mysterious presence known, a mix of curiosity and trepidation.

Written by the Muschiettis and television scribe Nick Cross, the script sustains its supernatural purposes by focusing on a mystery to be solved about the girls' elusive guardian, as they tiptoe around the evil stirring in the house; in fact, it's rather compelling on those simple terms. Once it goes any deeper than that, though, Mama becomes harder to take seriously. Dark, decaying magical holes in walls, creepy moths, and household accidents deal out visceral scenarios more concerned with unnerving the audience with arty horror instead of allowing the drama to keep a level head. What's more, the characters have that age-old fascination with sleuthing at night just so the darkness can cheaply draw them into powerlessness. Chastain's performance and the undertones about an evolving maternal bond beckon those watching to grasp what's going on, empathize, and care about their well-being -- which does work -- but getting wrapped up in those intentions becomes difficult when the characters are corralled into plot-rigged traps.

Mama struggles to right an uneven balance between inspiration and creative prudence all the way to the conclusion -- a bold, devious, but bizarrely forced culmination on a craggy moonlit bluff, underscored by maternal instincts and the eerie mystery that unraveled alongside the scares. While this is an unapologetic supernatural hybrid of horror and melodrama from start to finish, the melancholy ending crosses a line in both emotionally-charged and unsatisfying ways, plagued with the rough kind of ambiguity that provokes somber questions about the outcome and mandatory moral grayness. Andres Muschietti's film achieves a suitable evolution of Annabel's nature against a supernatural force of domineering parenthood, where stark atmosphere both weathers and warms her, but it comes remarkably close to undermining the effort in one fell swoop of forced misinterpretations and last-minute empathy. It's a good thing, then, that the atmosphere works so well leading right up to it. 

Sacramento Kings sale: Maloofs reportedly cut new deal with Seattle group

After the other NBA owners rejected a possible move to Seattle, the Maloofs have agreed to a new deal with Chris Hansen that would make him a minority owner and allow them to keep the team.

Even after the NBA's relocation committee rejected a possible move to Seattle, the drama surrounding the sale of the Sacramento Kings shows no sign of slowing down.

According to a report from Brian Windhorst of ESPN, the Maloofs have agreed to a new deal with Chris Hansen's Seattle-based ownership group that would allow them to retain control of the franchise if it stays in Sacramento.

In the deal, Hansen would pay $125 million to become a minority investor, giving the cash-strapped Maloofs the money they need to continue operating the Kings.

The proposal would serve as a back-up plan in case the NBA rejected Hansen's latest proposal to move the team, in which he upped his offer to $409 million and included a $115 million relocation fee.

The NBA's relocation committee was scheduled to meet before next Tuesday's meeting of all 30 ownership groups in Dallas to discuss Hansen's offer, even before this latest twist.

It's unclear how this development will affect their decision. While no minority owner can be added without the approval of the league, the Maloofs can also not be forced sell the team.

The Maloofs have shown no interest in selling to the Sacramento-based group led by local investor Vivek Ranadive, who have been negotiating directly with David Stern and the NBA office throughout this process.