You probably know Mafia Wars as one of two things – the game you’re hopelessly addicted to or the game that constantly spams your Facebook news feed with annoying updates. In either case, you know Mafia Wars is a big deal, big enough to draw attention from Snoop Dogg, no less.

Just a month ago, Mafia Wars launched it’s newest iteration – Mafia Wars: Las Vegas – and the game has already hit the 10-million-visitor mark. To commemorate the event, Snoop Dogg will be in Las Vegas to blow up a four-ton armored truck. That isn’t blow up like your cell phone, that’s blow up like a bomb. Bullz-Eye’s own Will Harris will be on site for the event.

I decided I was going to try a streaming service for the sheer amount of music available. Pandora isn’t on-demand so that was out. I gave Rdio a shot because it was free and had just launched but their selection was woefully slim (they were missing big names like The Arcade Fire among some lesser stuff I was hoping for). From there I turned to MOG and I’ve been fairly impressed. Their selection is good, the iPhone app is passable, as is their web-based player, but I don’t think I’ve discovered all that much.

MOG does have a feature on the web player that allows you to broaden your horizons by including similar artists to the one at the top of your playlist, but it’s just not diverse. It’s the same thing with Pandora. What I want is some sort of discovery mode, where the player throws a wide selection of stuff at you, based not just on the music you’re listening to, but what other people interested in that selection listen to. I would love if it there was even some sort of blacklist feature so that you wouldn’t get the same old mix.

As a for instance, I’m listening to The Hold Steady right now. The similar artist list is about what you’d expect – Modest Mouse, A.C. Newman, Spoon, White Rabbits – all bands that someone listening to The Hold Steady would probably say, “Hey, you’d like these guys, too.” I don’t need that kind of guarantee, though. I want to hear a mix of stuff I might not like and might like and might be surprised I like, and I haven’t found a music service that provides that.

I probably won’t renew my MOG subscription beyond a month because I’m not getting a whole lot more from it than I can get from a Pandora. The on-demand is nice, but the web-player is a little clunky, and I have plenty of music to get through on my own.

For the road trip, my girlfriend and I made our way up to NYC to visit some friends. It was a great little vacation, but we got caught in traffic outside every major city between North Carolina and the Holland Tunnel. I laid in the back of the car while our friend drove, playing Words With Friends with a couple people, reading forums, updating the blogs I write for, cruising Facebook, and watching ridiculous YouTube videos. It made the stop-and-go that is DC rush hour not only bearable, but almost enjoyable.

After being home for just under a week I left again, up to Ohio to celebrate my grandmother’s 80th birthday. I hopped a plane from Wilmington to Charlotte, wherein I was trapped next to a nervous flier. I don’t think anyone is truly comfortable with the bangs and clicks associated with flying, but nervous fliers stress me out. They’re always shaking, breathing heavily, whimpering any time the plane takes a quick dip. It is as awkward a situation as you can create – two strangers mashed up against each other, one of which will be in desperate need of some consoling. I’m sorry, but I don’t fly to console people. I queued up some Tap Tap Revenge, put on my noise-canceling headphones, and tried to ignore the fact that my seat was shaking from this person twitching.

We landed in Charlotte despite some thunderstorms, but my flight to Ohio was delayed by a solid two hours (I already had an hour layover). I started digging through the App Store for something to do and found Angry Birds (all of the addictive stories are true). I started downloading an episode of This American Life for the next flight, and flipped over to some Angry Birds. In between levels I could flip back and forth between Words With Friends and text messages from family members wondering when they should be at the airport.

None of this is new or thrilling, but when it’s you stuck staring at terminal screens, trapped in tiny coach seats, or staring at the ceiling in the back of a friend’s car, you start to appreciate just how great all of our tech can be.

The iPhone app allows you to snap pictures of your friends and then turn them into the zombies they’re sure to become after they’ve been bitten. It’s a great novelty app, especially as far as book tie-ins go. The app also includes support to add the image to Facebook once your friends have been modified.

For the best idea of what this thing is, check out the video below. While “hellopurr” may not be the most creative use, I’m sure the creatives of the world can come up with some pretty cool stuff. This thing alone makes me wish I had an Android phone. I love the iPhone, and the iPhone 4 has been really good to me unlike many others, but the way this opens up the Android platform is really cool. Sure, a lot of the applications that get made will be really, really crappy. But there will be good ones, and who’s to say the good ones can’t get picked up by more prominent developers and given full support?

On the whole, I think this is a great play by Google and will certainly give them even more cred with the nerd world. Nicely done.

I say “HD” because you should take a look at that screenshot above. Yes, that’s a screenshot. Notice anything? That it looks like shit, perhaps? That’s a shot from my iPhone 4 on a Wi-Fi connection and it looks like total crap. Sorry, Hulu, but you’re going to have to do better. Even worse than the quality, you still have to watch ads despite your subscription fee. You guys do know how to make me feel like a dollar sign.

What I really want for streaming video is something more akin to the Netflix Watch Instantly system. It’s painless, easy, and for serial programming it’s better than anything (even NinjaVideo). I’ve been watching Party Down recently – updated weekly with the new episode – and I’ve fallen in love with the Netflix system. If anyone has the future of online video in hand, it’s these guys. It’s not as expensive as Hulu Plus and you get access to a library of movies as well.

If you want to see Hulu Plus for yourself, download the free app and check out some preview episodes or opt-in to the preview invite system over at Hulu.

There is some bad news with the good, though. Skype has said they may start charging users for Skype-to-Skype calls made over 3G as early as next year. Skype has always been free for in-client calling. There are still no specifics on pricing, though Russ Shaw, Skype’s mobile GM, said he wanted to stay competitive. “We’re not going to want to price ourselves out of the market,” he said. “I can’t ignore the fact that consumers (currently) use us for free.”

You know, Mr. Shaw, even $.03 a minute is more than free. You probably won’t find many people who will be happy about the change.

In this case the app only differs from the iPhone in that it’s been optimized for a larger screen. It still offers the same information, which according to IMDB is access to the info on 1.5 million movie and TV titles and 3.2 million celebrities, actors, actresses, directors and crew members.

One of the best features for the iPad will be watching trailers in HD. That screen is just so damn pretty.

The new app include fancy features like page turn animations and adjustable backgrounds while holding onto the Amazon Whispersync technology to keep your reading experience up to date across multiple devices. While this may be the future of reading with Amazon, it makes me wonder where the future of the company’s hardware lies. I still can’t imagine a world in which Amazon wanted to get into the hardware business for just a couple years, but maybe it did. It’s still the largest online retailer, and content distribution is really a nice business. Just ask Apple.

If the future of the Kindle brand lies in apps across all platforms, though, Amazon would do well not to piss off so many publishers. All the work Amazon has done to this point will be null if readers can’t get the books they want in the Kindle store.

Unless Steve Jobs has something truly compelling up his sleeve this June, Netflix capability will make more than a few media geeks reconsider an iPhone purchase. There have been rumors of this and other similar applications coming to the iPhone for years now, but we haven’t seen much progress. There’s Slingbox, but that’s not quite the same situation. On demand streaming is where the world is pointing, from potential iTunes deals to the success of sites like NinjaVideo.net.

Gizmodo has a preview of the service working. It’s just a prototype, but usually the word prototype means it’s only going to get better.