A simple stroll around Times Square is enough to show that iPhones, iPads and other smartphones and tablets have virtually replaced paper maps, guidebooks and even digital cameras among the tourists visiting New York City. 

Colony Records, the famed sheet music and memorabilia store on Broadway at 49th Street in Manhattan, will close its doors after 64 years. It is falling victim to a transfigured, digital world.

Out with the old, in with the new! There's no shortage of places to celebrate the early hours of 2012 in New York City. Here are some of them that caught our eye.

When the nearly 12,000-pound Waterford Crystal ball is lowered Saturday, New Year’s Eve, and confetti rains down on almost 1 million revelers, 1,500 rookie officers will be getting a first taste of crowd control, many restaurants will be brimming with customers and taxis will be out in full force.

Takagi's photos of food found in the city's various immigrant enclaves -- from a box of Mexican mole to canned herring from Poland -- are part of the show "Blender," the latest public art project to come to Times Square.

Thirty-five area restaurants are setting up shop on Monday on the pedestrian malls as part of the "Taste Of Times Square Food and Music Festival." The festival features recognizable buskers with bite-sized street eats, priced between $1 and $5.

Most New Yorkers try and block out the sounds of the city. But a new smartphone application, along with a collaborative sound project called UrbanRemix, is encouraging city residents to transform the recordings of screeching subway cars, hawking vendors, rowdy teenagers and other ambient street sounds around Times Square into music.

A few weeks ago, Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and one of the most outspoken critics of Islamic groups, said the debate among Muslim organizations, their allies and their opponents was to a large degree "a propaganda war in the information battle space."

"Harry Potter: The Exhibit," which previously passed through Toronto, Boston and other cities, is arriving at Discovery Times Square on Friday.

Full service may be coming to the Times Square pedestrian plaza this summer. Restaurants and vendors were asked for proposals detailing food and drink service operations to those seated at the 100 tables in the car-free zone on Tuesday.

This week, fine art meets flash as five sculptures by high-profile artists land in Times Square, a public art exhibition connected to Armory Arts Week. On Tuesday morning after the unveiling, tourists and native New Yorkers alike wandered among the statues. Here's what they said.

Chinese ad in Times Square featuring inventor of hybrid rice Yuan Longping on January 19, 2011 11:35 a.m. (Photo by Stephen Nessen)

China's soft power push or public diplomacy campaign has hit Times Square in the form of a 60 second video loop. The video ...

Which billboard in all of New York is the most valuable to advertisers? One Times Square It's an iconic location at the corner of 43rd Street and Broadway and is best known as the place where the ball drops each New Year's Eve. It is also covered with the most expensive billboards in the world.

Times Square isn’t known for its subtlety, so it’s no surprise that even an illuminated sign gets a red carpet welcome.

Public displays of unbridled smooching are now being encouraged in Times Square. Standing beneath a 26-foot sculpture modeled on the iconic photo of the American sailor kissing a nurse on the day known as V-J Day in 1945, visitors are already practicing the art of the kiss.

No more tickets at TKTS?  Not to fear.  Visitors heading to Times Square to see a show can now be a part of one.

We’d like to know what YOU think should define the pavement on the new Broadway Plazas. Share your ideas here.

Times Square February 26, 2009, (Getty)

Mayor Bloomberg announced today that the city will close two sections of Broadway to vehicle traffic starting this spring. Already, the plan has supporters and opponents. Truck driver Telly Davis was delivering props to a theater on 45th street today. He says losing five blocks of Broadway will make his job tougher.

'Why do I want to sit in traffic longer than I have to just to get down the street. I mean it's already crowded down here people have stopped looking at the light, enough's enough!'

But tourist Iris Cohen likes the planned pedestrian zones. She says they've already been a big success in her native Israel.

'We have many of them and people prefer to go on boardwalk or this closed street and kids they can go with parents, I think it's great.'