Two brothers from Australia pulled big crowds at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival with a novel app that lets anyone create a song just by crooning into a smartphone. Jam, released eight weeks ago for Apple's iPhone, was developed by Joe and Sam Russell, members of a musical family from Melbourne who took the concept behind social-media photography and reinvented it for music.

Rock star Bono embraced his inner nerd on Tuesday as he made a case that extreme poverty could be eliminated by the year 2030 with the help of technology. "Forget the rock opera, forget the bombast," Bono told a rapt audience at a prestigious TED gathering in Southern California. "The only thing singing today is the facts. I have truly embraced my inner nerd." He playfully put his trademark tinted glasses on upside down to highlight his point. "Exit the rock star," he said. "Enter the evidence-based activist. The factavist."

(Recasts, adds details) By Suzi Parker LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Feb 17 (Reuters) - Troubled country music star Mindy McCready, whose platinum singing career was shadowed by substance abuse and suicide attempts, was found dead on Sunday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, an Arkansas sheriff said. She was 37.