MapQuest, the 15-year-old mapping and direction site, has launched Vibe, a social algorithmic service designed to make you feel like a local anywhere. The new service delivers neighborhood rankings within cities with “Vibe Scores.”

MapQuest Vibe uses data collected from the past 10 years about cities’ most popular destinations. Vijay Bangaru, MapQuest vice president of product, writes that the concept originated out of a shift in users’ needs from “maps and directions” to “local search.”

“We felt like people were using us more and more to figure out local experiences,” Jennifer Asbury, a company spokesperson, tells Mashable. “Vibe will help them make better decisions based on their interests.”

While all neighborhoods are given one overarching Vibe Score, you can also adjust the rankings depending on what you are looking for within a city, in terms of popularity, walkability, going out, edginess, shopping, residentiality and “burbiness,” a term the site invented to reflect commercialism and the prevalence of national chains. Combining the seven factors creates the Vibe score.

Within neighborhoods, you can search for specific attractions as well, like shops, restaurants and services. You can vote on places you’ve been, and read or leave reviews for different sites.

Neighborhoods feature hotspots — high-density locations where people visit most. A hotspot could be a popular intersection within a city — like Chicago’s Damen Ave. and North Ave., or San Fransisco’s Castro St. and Market St.

If you’re visiting a new city, Bangaru suggests zooming out to compare several neighborhoods to determine how to spend a day of urban exploration.

Thursday’s launch includes 50,000 neighborhoods in 27,000 cities, featuring 50,000 hotspots. Another 35,000 neighborhoods are on the way in phase two. The company says it extends to 98% of the U.S. population.

The second phase will have a more developed social layer, as you will be able to win badges, track friends activities and connect with others with similar tastes in your neighborhood. Bangaru writes you can expect local deals, news and events through the platform in the future.

Within a month, you’ll be able to follow neighborhoods and points of interest. Once you review or vote on a spot, you’ll automatically be following it. You’ll also be able to customize your notification settings. Over time, Vibe will become more integrated into MapQuest, adding reviews and scores to places like rest stations and national parks. A mobile app is also in the works, which will be separate from the MapQuest directions app.

Take a look through these shots of Vibe. Has MapQuest found an untapped niche or is it entering an over-saturated market of local review services?

Welcome to MapQuest Vibe

This is what a zoomed out version of Denver looks like. Darker colored neighborhoods indicate higher Vibe Scores.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: location based social networks, MapQuest, mapquest vibe

The Australian court has barred Samsung from selling its tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, in Australia until it resolves its patent lawsuit with Apple.

In August, Apple filed an injunction against Samsung in Australia, claiming that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 violates 10 of its patents.

Samsung tried to prove that the Australian version of the device would be different from the U.S. one, but the judge once again sided with Apple, and now the case will be going to a trial.

There’s still a chance for Samsung to actually win the case, but for now, Australian customers will not have a chance to (legally) buy the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

“Samsung will continue its legal proceeding against Apple’s claim in order to ensure our innovative products remain available to consumers,” said Samsung in a response to the court’s ruling.

Apple and Samsung have been litigating in a patent war all over the world, including Europe, U.S. and South Korea, and Apple has so far had more success, with some of Samsung’s products being barred from sale in several countries. Samsung has counter-sued Apple in several countries, including South Korea, France and Italy, but it hasn’t yet been able to delay the sales of Apple products.

Check out our gallery comparing the Samsung products Apple claims violate its IP.

The Original iPhone

Apple released the first iPhone in June 2007.

Click here to view this gallery.

[via Sydney Morning Herald]

More About: apple, Galaxy Tab 10.1, lawsuit, litigation, patent, samsung

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If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable‘s Job Lists gather all our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles, How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter.

But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable‘s job boards are a place for socially savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions on the web, social media space and beyond. Have a look at what's good and new on our job boards:

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Mashable Job Postings

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Community Intern (Fall 2011) at Mashable in New York, NY.

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Community Intern (Winter 2012) at Mashable in New York, NY.

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Graphic Design Intern at Mashable in New York, NY.

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Editorial Intern (Fall 2011) at Mashable in New York, NY.

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Editorial Intern (Winter 2012) at Mashable in New York, NY.

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Tech Reporter at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.

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Editorial Assistant at Mashable in New York, NY.

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Mashable Job Board Listings

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Director, Digital Communications at Weber Shandwick in Chicago, IL.

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Assistant Manager, Online Marketing (Web, Social, Mobile) at Direct Brands Inc. in New York, NY.

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iOS Developer at Call + Response/Slavery Footprint in Oakland, CA.

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Web Developer at Call + Response/Slavery Footprint in Oakland, CA.

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We Seek Web Geek at TrueFire in FL.

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Strategist at Carrot Creative in NY.

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Developer/Engingeer/Hacker at Carrot Creative in NY.

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Digital Membership Technologist at The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, VA.

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Interactive Designer at Weber Shandwick / Powell Tate in Washington, D.C.

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Digital Producer at Adkeeper in New York, NY.

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Sales Director, Consumer Electronics at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.

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Software Engineer – Front-End at Yelp Inc. in San Francisco, CA.

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Marketing Associate at Insight Cuba in New Rochelle, NY.

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Client Services Director at iProspect in New York, NY.

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SEO Manager at iProspect in New York, NY.

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Global Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, VA.

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Senior Social Media Strategist – Digital Agency at Flightpath in New York, NY.

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Marketing Manager at credo mobile in San Francisco, CA.

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Intern – Blogger Relations at Porter Novelli in New York, NY.

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Client Development Manager at Conversition in New York, NY.

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Chief Digital Officer at YourTango in New York, NY.

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Information Architecture Engineer at Inc.com in New York, NY.

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Programmer at AlphaGenius in Los Angeles, CA.

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Social Media Marketing Manager at HBO in New York, NY.

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Digital Media Account Manager at THE PULSE NETWORK INC in Canton, MA.

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Web Developer (Temp position) at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA.

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Social Media/Digital Marketing Strategist at Haberman in Minneapolis, MN.

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Project Manager, Web-Based Initiatives at National 4-H Council in Chevy Chase, MD.

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Director at Social Media Link – Smiley360 in New York, NY.

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Lead UX Designer at Lookout in San Francisco, CA.

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Web Designer at Vanns, Inc in Missoula, MT.

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Director of Product Development at Whale Shark Media in Austin, TX.

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Account Director – General Mills at Imagination Publishing in Minneapolis, MN.

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Social Media Specialist at Tha Madison Square Garden Company in New York, NY.

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Online Marketing Manager at New Relic in San Francisco, CA.

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Senior Vice President – Digital at Edelman PR in Los Angeles, CA.

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Vice President – Digital at Edelman PR in San Francisco, CA.

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Sr. Manager, Online Marketing-SEO at HSNi in FL.

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Senior Social Media Manager at DocuSign in San Francisco, CA.

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Merchandising Manager – RetailMeNot at Whale Shark Media in Austin, TX.

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Partner Development Manager at Whale Shark Media in Austin, TX.

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Partner Manager at Whale Shark Media in Austin, TX.

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Socila Media Campaign/Ops Manager at Vivaki (A Publicis Groupe Company) in Chicago, IL.

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Editor, NewNowNext at MTV Networks in New York, NY.

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Account Manager – Xbox at roundhouse in Seattle, WA.

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Project Coordinator at Anchor Wave Internet Solutions in Tucson, AZ.

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Director, Digital Media at iCrossing in Chicago, IL.

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Online Marketing Manager at Bain & Company in Boston, MA.

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Assistant Content Manager at BFG Communications in Bluffton, SC.

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Head of Marketing and Communications at Formspring in San Francisco, CA.

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Online Marketing Account Coordinator & Analyst at Intermundo Media in Boulder, CO.

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Integrated Marketing Manager at Johnson & Johnson in New York, NY.

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Social Media Assistant at theatreMAMA in New York, NY.

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Mashable‘s Job Board has a variety of web 2.0, application development, business development and social networking job opportunities available. Check them out here.

Got a job posting to share with our readers? Post a job to Mashable today ($99 for a 30 day listing) and get it highlighted every week on Mashable.com (in addition to exposure all day every day in the Mashable marketplace).

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, YinYang

More About: COMMUNICATIONS, design, jobs, List, Social Media

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Apple has just unleashed six new applications along with iOS 5. Here’s a pictorial tour of each one. The push marks the company’s most aggressive software rollout to date.

Apple has released Newsstand, Reminders, Find My Friends, Cards, iTunes Movie Trailers and AirPort Utility. The applications are either included with an update to iOS 5 or now available on the App Store.

Some of the applications will even compete against existing third-party applications including Postcard On the Run, Postagram, Flixster, Can’t Wait!, Neer and Glympse.

Here we take you on a visual walkthrough and introduce you to Apple’s newest software creations.

With Apple delving deeper into its own application business, one has to wonder: What’s next?

More About: apple, Cards, Find My Friends, iOS 5

If you’re a BlackBerry owner, Research In Motion’s recent outage probably isn’t that funny, but if you’re anyone else, there’s a lot of good tweet material.

Many Twitter users took the outage as an opportunity to launch some zingers at the beleaguered RIM, which had the bad luck of experiencing a global outage at the same time positive reviews rolled in for the iPhone 4S and users rushed to download iOS5.

In a press conference on Wednesday, RIM CTO for Software David Yach blamed backlogged messages in Europe for the issue as Twitterers blamed RIM. Here are some of the funniest tweets so far:

@petridishes

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Marich Terz

More About: blackberry, outages, RIM, Twitter

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: CircleMe

Quick Pitch: CircleMe is a new social platform to track, engage with and share all your true likes in one place.

Genius Idea: Helping web users get more out of their digital lives.

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Who are you? It’s a metaphysical question with an ever-changing answer. But in the age of Facebook “Likes,” Foursquare checkins and continual social updates, perhaps the answer can be found in what we share.

CircleMe, a newly launched social site from UK-based startup Cascaad, is the inverse of the typical social network. Instead of focusing on connecting you with friends and family members, CircleMe connects you to you — for a deep dive into your sense of self, as defined by the various kinds of digital things you like.

“We wanted to provide a place for people to able to engage more than themselves,” Cascaad founder Erik Lumer says. “The idea is to provide a way to collect, in one place, all the things that you really like — whether that’s music, movies, famous people or things that you’re fond of.”

The CircleMe user can pull in a selection of favorite people, places, movies and things from their Facebook “likes,” Foursquare checkins and Netflix streaming activity. The end result, with a little tweaking, is you — or a digital rendering of your likes in a classy, customizable profile that can be shared with others.

CircleMe, explains Lumer, has three key functions: To help you collect your likes across a broad range of categories in one place, to give you a way to express your likes in a visually stimulating and emotional way, and to allow you to engage and cultivate interests through the discovery of new information.

And why might this be important? For the same reason that Facebook created Timeline — because much of what we share on the web is ephemeral.

“You’re collecting likes just as a byproduct of sharing with other people,” says Lumer, “but you’re not creating them with the idea that you’re collecting the most important things in your life.”

“The only value of having those likes is for advertisers,” he adds. “We really wanted to provide a way for users to get more out of their likes.”

For a still-maturing private beta product, CircleMe delivers on its promise rather well, and its first few thousand users, says Lumer, have responded positively to the product.

CircleMe launched into private beta last week. Mashable readers can sign up to get early access to the service.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, spark-of-genius

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For social media fans, the tight integration between iOS 5 and Twitter is one of the best reasons to upgrade. We touched on this integration in our in-depth iOS 5 review but we wanted to spend some additional time looking at how it works and what it means for users.

Since iOS 5 was released Wednesday afternoon, a number of additional apps in the App Store have been released with native support for Twitter. iOS 5 shipped supporting Twitter from the Photos app, Maps, YouTube and Safari. Since then, The New York Times app for iOS and the new iTunes Movie Trailers [iTunes link] app have both appeared with native Twitter support.

One of the new features for developers in the iOS 5 SDK is support for the Twitter API. Apple has made it easy for developers to add Twitter support to their apps and to allow users to easily control whether or not an app has access to post to their Twitter account.

Mobile Safari

Users can send tweets directly from article pages in Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPad.

Click here to view this gallery.

With The New York Times app, the integration is easily accessible from any article page. It’s a nice touch to use the official app integration rather than building in a secondary authenticating mechanism.

Likewise, sharing links to movie trailers or to YouTube videos is quick and easy.

The genius part of how iOS is using Twitter, however, comes to control. After using an app that has access to Twitter, that app appears in a list in the Twitter panel of the Settings app. There’s you can turn off Twitter support for an app. Maybe you don’t want be able to tweet from the photos app or share your favorites from The New York Times. You can turn off support for one app without muting Twitter support system-wide.

Now that Twitter integration is so easy, we expect official support to find its way into many more iOS apps.

What do you think of the way Twitter and iOS 5 work together?

More About: apple, iOS 5, ipad, iphone, Twitter

Max Blau is Paste Magazine‘s multimedia editor, where he oversees all audio, video and photo content on the website. He is also a freelance writer, photographer and videographer. Follow him at @MaxBlau or check out his blog.

Apple's marketing has changed the career trajectories of musicians around the world. A 30-second music clip in an Apple commercial often heralds instant fame and heaps of MP3 downloads for artists.

How did Steve Jobs and Apple do this? Apple has managed to tie its products into our personal culture. The company designed its products with our songs, films and ideas in mind. Apple's soundtrack is our soundtrack.

After a decade of using music to promote its gadgets, Apple has more than achieved its goal of creating a culture via the following songs. So much so, in fact, that even Apple accessories (like the iPad Smart Cover) have become cultural touchstones complete with their own soundtrack.

1. iPod 1G: The Propellerheads -- "Take California"

In October 2001, Apple debuted its first commercial for a portable MP3 player called the iPod. The ad predated the dark silhouettes featured in their later campaigns. The Propellerheads did not latch onto Apple's increasing popularity, however, as they never released an album after the ad aired.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: apple, contributor, features, Marketing, Music, steve jobs

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has finally gotten the message and joined Google+.

The former Google CEO wrote his first public message on Google+ earlier today, a simple post with links to his thoughts on Steve Jobs (Schmidt served on Apple’s board of directors until 2009, when the competition between Android and iPhone became a major conflict of interest).

I recently criticized Google’s management for not eating its own dog food and using Google+. At the time, Schmidt didn’t even have a Google+ account. Only two Google executives — SVP of Chrome Sundar Pichai and SVP of Social Vic Gundotra — were active users of Google+ (at least in public — it’s important to note that additional Google executives may have been more active privately).

Since that article, several Google executives have started posting publicly to Google+. They include SVP of Search Alan Eustace and SVP of Ads Susan Wojcicki, and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora.

To Arora’s credit, he directly addressed the points I made in my article. “Having worked closely with my friend Vic on this, I think I have lots of dog food in me,” he told a Google+ user. “I do prefer posting to circles and sharing with people who have expressed interest in following me. I intend to follow a lot of your advice. Perhaps if I have pearls of wisdom to share, I might do so publicly.”

Google+ has received additional scrutiny in recent weeks. Google+ traffic has fallen since the spike from its public launch and a Google engineer’s rant about how Google+ “is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo).”

via TechCrunch

More About: eric schmidt, Google

We haven’t forgotten about you, Android fans, and neither has Amazon. Amid all the hype and adoring hoopla over the iPhone 4S and its just-born iOS 5, Jeff Bezos & company offers a respectable collection of Verizon Android handsets (and others) for a mere penny.

Certainly these must be some second-rate cellphones nobody wants, right? That’s what we thought until we gazed upon the choices Amazon has laid out for us for $.01, including the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G (that, for example, originally cost $299.99 with a 2-year contract), Motorola Droid 3 (that we favorably reviewed), Samsung Droid Charge(that gave us some of the best data speeds we’ve ever seen) and the coveted HTC Thunderbolt and HTC Incredible 2.

That’s not all — there are 31 flavors of serious smartphones that Amazon is practically giving away. Mostly are of the Android persuasion, but there’s an HTC Trophy for the Windows Phone crowd, and even three BlackBerrys in the mix (Bold 9930, Bold 9650 and Curve 9330) as well.

But wait. Giving away? Hardly. Of course, there’s a contract involved, so over the life of that agreement, you’ll be paying for the phones anyway. And there’s one last caveat, and here’s how Amazon might’ve gotten a break from Verizon: All activations associated with such phones must be brand-new, with a new line of service. Jeez, and we were getting excited there for a minute. So this is what Verizon acts like when it’s sold every single iPhone it can possibly get its hands on?

Take a look at the list of phones in Amazon’s “Penny-Pencher Sale,” and see if one of these highly capable handsets might lure you away from the cachet of paying an Apple tax. Well, maybe if the Samsung Galaxy S II were in there, we could be convinced.

[via DVICE]

More About: amazon, android, verizon

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Facebook’s new Timeline design gives you a big space for a photo at the top of your profile. So far we have seen some cool and creative uses of this new “cover photo.”

If you don’t have the time to design your own, consider these fun free services that can help. We have found five fledgling websites that offer free cover photos you can easily upload to your profile.

SEE ALSO: How to Enable the New Facebook Timeline NOW | HOW TO: Fill In Your Facebook Timeline

Take a look through the gallery above to find out more about the services. Let us know in the comments about any other similar sites you can recommend.

Editor’s Note: We have tried and tested these five sites and our profile didn’t mutate into a spambot, but please exercise caution when allowing apps access to your Facebook account.

More About: Facebook, facebook apps, facebook timeline, features, gallery, photography, Social Media

Having problems upgrading to iOS 5 on your iPhone or iPad? You’re not alone.

The most prevalent problem when upgrading to iOS 5 is “Error 3200.” Apple’s service reps are telling multiple users that this error is something they’re working on, and add that there is nothing users can do to change that error code.

The problem is occurring because there are too many people trying to access Apple’s servers at the same time. The reps say the problems should subside in a few hours.

The problem starts when your device tries to contact Apple servers for authorization. When the servers were slammed the hardest, many of the requests were not being fulfilled. As a result, many users are reporting trying over again, where the Error 3200 mysteriously disappears.

So one way to solve the problem is just to keep trying. Since Apple’s servers are said to only be fulfilling about half the requests, you can easily win the coin-flip and get authorization.

Other problems reported:

• Having to reorganize all your apps.
• Backup taking a long time. One user told us it took three hours.
• Downloading the upgrade taking a long time. It’s more than 700 MB, and because the servers are so overburdened, it’s taking longer than usual.
• Inability to register for iCloud.

On the positive side, a few users are saying the process has been seamless — even though most find it takes a long time to download iOS 5. Some report downloading the update in 15 minutes. But after that, there is an extra backup process that takes much longer than usual.

If all this is too much for you, just wait couple of hours. Meanwhile, check out our iOS 5 gallery, below.

New Home Screen With Notification

Notifications are a big deal in iOS 5. Taking some cues from Android, iOS has finally unified the notification system and made it less clumsy and intrusive.

Message now appear at the top of the screen (though you can choose to allow them to display in the middle) while you are using the phone and they don't interrupt what you are already doing.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: iOS 5, ipad, iphone, upgrade

Google is giving Google+ users two enhanced ways to find information disseminating across the social network, with real-time search and hashtags.

“Now when you search in Google+, you’ll see a message about new posts the instant they’re available,” Vic Gundotra, Google’s SVP of social, explained in a post on Google+ Wednesday. “If you click on this message, or select ‘Most recent,’ then relevant posts will start appearing in real-time.”

Also, should you opt to put a hashtag in any of your Google+ updates, that hashtag will automatically link to search results for the term.

The improvements will come as welcome additions for Google+ power users, journalists and media types interested in keeping up with breaking news on Google+. The search updates may do little to convince more casual social networkers to stick around on the social site or give it second chance.

They have some long-term significance, however. We expect this technology to become the foundation for a revamped real-time search experience on Google.com itself.

You may recall that Google Realtime Search went on hiatus in July — after Google failed to reach an agreement with Twitter for continued access to its firehose of data.

More About: Google, Google Realtime Search, Search

Now that iOS 5 is available, scores of eager iOS users are busy downloading and updating their devices to the latest and greatest OS. We’ve already weighed in with our in-depth review but wanted to spend some time highlighting ten of the best and most upgradeworthy features in iOS 5.

Some of the features, like Notifications and iCloud, have been touted by Apple since WWDC back in June. Others, like Newsstand, photo editing and “Find My Friends” haven’t received as much press but are every bit as upgrade-worthy.

What are your favorite new features in iOS 5? Let us know in the comments.

More About: apple, Feature, iOS 5, ipad, iphone

TV is getting more social every day. A recent study from Nielsen and NM Incite gives a detailed glimpse into how, when and who is driving the social TV buzz.

The study culled from years of data and millions of messages from all the major blogs, boards and forums covering TV. Take a look at some of the study’s charts and findings and let us know in the comments what stats you found most surprising.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Robert Couse-Baker

More About: Social Media, social tv, stats, television, TV

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Ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Timeline last month, the tech world has been busy trying to guess when the new profile layout — which focuses on users’ entire lives rather than their most recent updates — will launch for all Facebook users.

Would it be Sept. 29? Obviously not, since that date came and went. Oct. 6? Nope. How about Oct. 19? Probably not.

Here’s what seems to be happening: When users activate the Timeline feature, Facebook gives them a date when their personal profiles will publish. It does not necessarily refer to the date when all users will receive the feature, and varies from user to user.

Anecdotally, the date when Timeline profiles go live seems to relate to when the profile was activated. Someone who activates today, for instance, receives a later date than someone who activated a couple of days ago.

Some observers have interpreted the multiple dates as evidence that Facebook has pushed back its public launch of Timelines, perhaps as a result of a trademark lawsuit that was filed by Timelines.com (nothing in the legal filing indicates that Facebook changed its Timeline launch date). It is more likely that the feature is intended to launch gradually rather than all at once. We haven’t discovered a launch date, because there isn’t just one.

This is consistent with what Facebook has said about how it will launch the Timelines. A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable that it would “roll out” in the coming weeks. The spokesperson did not say it would “launch.”

The New Facebook Profile: Timeline

Timeline is a radical departure from previous versions of the Facebook user profile. The most prominent feature is the addition of a cover photo at the top of the page. Users can change this to whatever they'd like it to be.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Facebook, facebook timeline

In a brief press conference Wednesday, Research in Motion CTO for Software David Yach said a backlog of messages to Europe has created a cascading outage effect around the world.

The company has determined the root cause of the initial European BlackBerry email service outage, which started three days ago, and said there’s no evidence that a hack or security breach was involved.

RIM customers in Europe have been suffering from major outages for days, but it wasn’t until today that the Americas caught the bug and BlackBerry customers started complaining on Twitter of mail delays and inaccessibly on their BlackBerry devices.

Yach described the initial outage as a failure of one of RIM’s core switches. However, the real trouble began when RIM’s redundant systems failed, as well. “The failover did not function as expected,” Yach said, “despite the fact that we regularly test failover systems.” This led to a significant backup of mail.

RIM responded by throttling service in the impacted area to stabilize service, which apparently resulted in backup of mail in other regions trying to reach RIM’s European customers. The Canadian-based company would not reveal the exact number of RIM customers affected, saying only that many customers are impacted in a variety of ways. “Some see delays, some service interruption,” Yach said.

For now, RIM says it is working “around the clock” and “globally” to try and restore service. It has not throttled service in regions outside Europe. RIM’s Yach said they’re focusing on clearing out the backlog of email, much of it in Europe and for anyone trying to deliver email to Europe.

When asked if RIM might try and wipe the slate clean and clear out the backlog without delivering messages, Yach answered swiftly: “All email will be delivered. We will not be dropping any email messages.”

While Yach said RIM knows the root cause of the initial failure, it wasn’t willing to share it — at least until it finishes its own thorough investigation. That won't come until after all service is stabilized and restored.

Do you think RIM is doing enough? Share your thoughts in the comments.

More About: blackberry, RIM

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Spotify has gone live in Denmark, meaning the startup’s freemium streaming music service is now available in the U.S and eight European countries.

Spotify users in Denmark will have access to the same three service tiers — free, premium and unlimited — available to users elsewhere.

“Spotify is thrilled to be rolling out our service to Danish music fans today. Denmark marks our ninth country,” a company spokesperson tells Mashable. “Denmark was a very natural next step for us.”

The new expansion comes just weeks after Spotify was integrated into the Facebook experience as part of Facebook’s new Open Graph app platform. The roll out also continues the startup’s aggressive push to attract new users, beef up its paying subscriber base and get ahead of competitors such as MOG and Rdio.

The streaming service currently has more than 2 million paying subscribers.

More About: music streaming, spotify

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You can learn a lot about a person from his or her mobile device, browser or computer preferences. New research shows that — at least when it comes to donation patterns — Apple users trump their PC, Android and Blackberry using counterparts.

Mac users out-donate PC users, Safari users out-donate Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox users, and iOS users out-donate Android and Blackberry users. The world's 400 million Windows users donate more than its 80 million Apple users in total, but the Apple users take a 20% share of all donations — twice their share of the market.

The iPad is responsible for the largest share of mobile donations, which is not all that surprising, considering the iPad’s growing share of web traffic.

If you’re looking for the most successful method for soliciting online donations, personal emails are your best bet.

The data was collected by online fundraising portal Razoo. Because the research only considers donations through the site, its applicability to all online giving is unclear.

Check out the breakdown of online giving by browser, computer type, solicitation type and mobile device.

More About: apple, infographic, Social Good

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It's only been a couple of hours since Apple unleashed iOS 5 — the new platform for the iPhone, iPad and iPod — on a suspecting public, and already we've seen reports of long back-up waits and surprise deletion of apps and other content.

The new OS arrives hours before millions of Apple customers start receiving their shiny, new iPhone 4S's, which look exactly like the iPhone 4, but with almost all new guts. iOS 5 is a significant operating system update that promises improved notifications, integrated Siri voice recognition, over-the-air-updates, AirDrop (file moving from one iOS5 device to another) and iCloud. Apple's cloud solution could be the biggest change of all for Apple customers. Finally, no more reinstalling apps and re-downloading music. Even documents and photos will be synchronized across iOS 5 devices.

New Home Screen With Notification

Notifications are a big deal in iOS 5. Taking some cues from Android, iOS has finally unified the notification system and made it less clumsy and intrusive.

Message now appear at the top of the screen (though you can choose to allow them to display in the middle) while you are using the phone and they don't interrupt what you are already doing.

Click here to view this gallery.

Some, but not all of these improvements will work quite well on existing hardware like the iPhone 4. As a result, countless Apple fans are already downloading and getting their first iOS 5 experiences. The first iOS 5 install, by the way, does have to be done through the computer.

In fact, Mashable is right in there with you. Intrepid editor and gadget fiend Christina Warren is busy working with iOS on an iPad and iPhone 4 and has delivered a massive report. Christina, though, is just one person. We want to know: What has your iOS 5 install and update experience has been like. Is your hardware still working? Is it better than ever?

SEE ALSO: Siri's Greatest Hits: 10 Witty Comebacks from the iPhone 4S

Let's all commiserate below on the ups and downs of installing a new operating system on slightly august hardware. It doesn't always go smoothly, does it? Tell your tale in the comments below.

More About: apple, apps, ipad, iphone, iphone 4, iPhone 4S, ipod, operating system

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Nominations for the fifth annual Mashable Awards, presented by Buddy Media, opened yesterday. To ensure it is as easy as possible to nominate your favorite tech and social media innovations and innovators of the year, we decided to show you how.

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How To Nominate

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Nominating your favorite digital startups, companies and personalities for a Mashable Award is easy. As in years past, Mashable has created a unique and social voting platform. Submitting your nomination requires four easy steps:

Step 1

Visit mashable.com/awards.

Click here to view this gallery.

You may nominate once per day in each category. If there are multiple entries for your nomination, for example, ‘Mashable’ and ‘mashable,’ don’t fret! The categories will be combined at the end of the nomination process.

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Promote Your Nomination

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If you are a company or individual up for nomination (you can nominate yourself — go ahead, we won’t tell!), you can help spread the word by including a nomination button on your blog, Fan Page or website.

Just go to the Promote page, and use the code generator to create a promotional badge. Simply select the category from the drop down menu, enter the desired nominee in the box and click ‘Generate.’

The generator will create code for eight different badge styles. You can create and use as many as you want!

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Awards Timeline

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The nomination period for the 2011 Mashable Awards will run until 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 18. Nominations will then be counted and tabulated in accordance with the official rules, and Mashable‘s editors will select seven finalists for each category from among the most nominated submissions. Your nominations will greatly influence the editorial selection of the finalists.

Finalists will be announced on Monday, Nov. 21, which will also kick off the public voting period.

Remember, you may nominate once per day in each category.

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The Categories

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Social Media

• Best Social Network
• Up-and-Coming Social Media Service
• Must-Follow Actor or Actress on Social Media
• Must-Follow Musician or Band on Social Media
• Must-Follow Athlete on Social Media
• Must-Follow Media Personality on Social Media
• Must-Follow Business Personality on Social Media
• Must-Follow Non-Profit on Social Media
• Must-Follow Politician on Social Media

Tech

• Best Smartphone
• Best Mobile Game
• Most Useful Mobile App
• Most Innovative Mobile App
• Most Useful Tablet-Based App
• Best New Gadget

Business

• Viral Campaign of the Year
• Most Innovative Use of Social Media for Marketing
• Must-Follow Brand on Social Media
• Best Branded Mobile App
• Best Social Good Cause Campaign
• Most Digital Company of the Year
• Breakout Startup of the Year

Entertainment

• Game of the Year
• Viral Video of the Year
• Best Music Service or App
• Best Online Video Streaming Service or App
• Most Social TV Show
• Best Social Movie Campaign

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The Winners

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Award winners will be announced on Mashable on Monday, Dec. 19. Following the competition, we’ll celebrate our winners at MashBash CES on Jan. 11, 2012, at the 2012 International CES convention at 1OAK, the hot new nightclub at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

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The 2011 Mashable Awards Are Presented by Buddy Media

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Buddy Media is the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers, empowering them to build and maintain relationships with their consumers in a connections-based world. The Buddy Media social marketing suite helps brands build powerful connections globally with its scalable, secure architecture and data-driven customer insights from initial point of contact through point of purchase.

More About: mashable, mashable awards

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More bad news for Google+: First, we discovered that Google’s top management apparently aren’t big users of the company’s social network, then traffic fell and now it appears that at least one of the rank-and-file is pretty critical of the platform as well.

Steve Yegge, a Google engineer, intended his 5,000-word post to be an internal diatribe for other Google employees, but accidentally published it for his 2,000 or so followers. The rant, posted in its entirety here, at first focuses on Yegge’s former employer, Amazon, which he calls to task for its inconsistent hiring practices and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is presented as an obsessive micromanager.

Then Yegge switches gears to talk about Google.”That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t ‘get’ platforms,” Yegge wrote. “Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo).” The G+ platform, Yegge wrote, is a “pathetic afterthought” and Google lacked an API at launch.

Google’s biggest blunder, he added, is that it didn’t emulate Facebook’s plan of building “an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work.”

Yegge went on to write, “Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: ‘Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.’ Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.”

Yegge’s most recent post is an apology for the rant: “Sadly, it was intended to be an internal post, visible to everybody at Google, but not externally. But as it was midnight and I am not what you might call an experienced Google+ user.”

Google reps could not be reached for comment on the post.

[via Business Insider]

More About: amazon, Facebook, Google

Apple just made iOS 5 available to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users. iOS 5 is a massive upgrade for Apple’s mobile operating system, adding a ton of new features and enhancements to the already solid iOS.

I have been using iOS 5 since it arrived in beta early this summer. Over the past four months, I’ve watched it mature. The final release is one of Apple’s most polished yet. Building on the foundation of iOS 4 and iOS 4.2, iOS 5 feels like a fully-rounded product.

For end users, many of the new features are bundled under the hood. The basic user interface is the same, but some aspects have been refined and reconfigured.

SEE ALSO: iOS 5: Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade

The biggest new feature is the notification system. Apple has taken some cues from Android and delivered a notification system that should leave users frustrated with the old system satisfied. Furthermore, Apple has made sensible refinements to the way notifications are delivered and how they appear while users are in other apps.

Twitter is now integrated into iOS 5 at the system level. You can install the app directly from the Settings panel and send tweets from within apps like Maps, Photos and Safari.

Apple has also released iMessage, which is a lot like the popular RIM service BlackBerry Messenger for iOS users. This allows users to send MMS-style messages to other iOS users using their email address. It’s what other group text message services have been using for several years, but this time it is integrated directly into iOS.

SEE ALSO: Share Your iOS 5 Download and Install Experiences [OPEN THREAD]

The process of taking and editing photos also got a major overhaul. Not only can users now access the camera button directly from the lock screen (and take pictures using the volume buttons), the photo-editing capabilities within the app are simply fantastic. Cropping, rotating and removing red eye is easy to do from a phone or iPad. Edited photos can then be easily tweeted, emailed, sent via text or shared on iMessages.

A must-have for all iPad, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPod touch users, iOS 5 delivers on its promises to bring a more robust experience. Will you be downloading it today? Let us know in the comments.

More About: apple, Feature, iOS 5, iphone, trending

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

Jabba the Hutt, the slug-like crime lord from the Star Wars saga, has inspired the latest parody of Maroon 5′s chart-topping “Moves Like Jagger.” The lyrics for the new spoof — titled “Moves Like Jabba” — poke fun at the fictional character’s unfavorable eating habits and enormous size. For example:

“No Jedi mind tricks can control him / The force bounces off his double chin / With them moves like Jabba / He’s got big boobs like Jabba / I gotta moooooooove like Jabba.”

Other Star Wars characters have recently made their way into several viral videos, including Darth Vader and a pair of Stormtroopers in a Disneyland commercial and a mini Darth Vader in Volkswagen’s Super Bowl ad.

SEE ALSO: The Entire Star Wars Saga Told in Less Than 3 Minutes … with Legos [VIDEO]

“Moves Like Jabba” comes from Break Media, the digital publishing company that brought you “The Google+ Song” in August.

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BONUS: “Moves Like Jagger” Covers

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There are dozens of other “Moves Like Jagger” parodies, but we’re most impressed with the amazing covers on YouTube such as Peter Hollens’s playful a cappella beatbox rendition (see video number one below).

So if you prefer the normal lyrics of “Moves Like Jagger,” check out these 11 covers of the song from musicians across the globe. To watch Maroon 5′s original version, click to video number 12.

Peter Hollens & Savannah Outen

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Music, music videos, Star Wars, viral videos, viral-video-of-the-day, YouTube

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Next Media Animation (NMA), the company famous for lampooning everyone from Tiger Woods to Apple in over-the-top video animations, may have satirized the wrong tech giant. Apparently, Apple rejected NMA’s iPad app because, according to the Taiwanese animation company, the app contains defamatory and offensive content.

NMA retaliated by, of course, making a ridiculous video showing poorly animated Apple employees with twigs in their rears, the late Steve Jobs wearing a Darth Vader helmet and a giant, crying panda wearing a communist party hat.

NMA is known for its over-the-top videos, re-enacting modern day news stories with significant embellishment (see: giant crying communist panda). The animation company gained notoriety with its re-enactment of Tiger Woods’ car crash. NMA has since released dozens of videos including spoofs of the NBA lockout and a fake iPhone 5 preview.

The videos are usually more ridiculous than offensive, so it’s strange the app was banned. In this video, NMA claims they were banned because they’ve previously lampooned Apple and Steve Jobs. NMA also claims the app store provides certain exemptions for professional satirists and humorists.

More About: App, apple, Entertainment, ipad, NMA, Video

Foursquare has released version 4.0 of its iPhone app with a new feature called Radar that informs users about stuff happening nearby.

Radar leverages new functionality available in Apple’s iOS 5 SDK — specifically “region monitoring.” Once you opt in to Radar, Foursquare will send you push notifications when you’re nearby places on the Foursquare lists that you’ve created and the lists that you follow, Alex Rainert, Foursquare head of product, tells Mashable. The application will also alert you when three or more friends are checked in at a location within walking distance.

Radar is a big step in the direction of Foursquare’s vision, says Rainert. “This is something that we have been working on since Apple first released the SDK,” he adds. “We’re excited to see it in the wild … and learn from that.”

Foursquare will add Radar to its other mobile applications in the months ahead. “Radar is core to what we want to do. It’s important to us to have it available to all of our users,” says Rainert

Foursquare version 4.0 is already live in App Store, but it requires the user to also update to iOS 5.

More About: foursquare, iOS 5

Apple has just released iOS 5, the newest version of its mobile OS, to the public.

The updated OS is now available for download through iTunes 10.5. Apple announced iOS 5 in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The new OS includes a slew of new features including deep Twitter integration, a revamped notification system, an updated camera app, a revamped version of Safari and more.

SEE ALSO: iOS 5 for iPhone and iPad is Here: Apple's Best Release Yet? [REVIEW]

iOS 5 also includes iCloud, Apple’s service for accessing and syncing photos, music, emails and other media through the cloud.

SEE ALSO: Share Your iOS 5 Download and Install Experiences [OPEN THREAD]

In addition to iOS 5, Apple has released a new version of Mac OS X Lion that includes support for iCloud.

New Home Screen With Notification

Notifications are a big deal in iOS 5. Taking some cues from Android, iOS has finally unified the notification system and made it less clumsy and intrusive.

Message now appear at the top of the screen (though you can choose to allow them to display in the middle) while you are using the phone and they don't interrupt what you are already doing.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: apple, icloud, iOS, iOS 5, iphone, iphone 4, trending

For a service that some say drives more traffic to websites than Facebook, StumbleUpon is not well known. However, user data that the company has released suggests that “stumbling” is on track to enter the mainstream vernacular.

In the past 16 months, the personalized discovery engine has doubled its user base. It now has more than 20 million registered users who “stumble” (click a button to load a webpage the site has picked out based on users’ preferences and behavior) more than 1 billion web pages every month.

StumbleUpon‘s growth spurt coincides with a hiring spree — it doubled its number of employees from 40 to 80 — and aggressively launched its first mobile apps. Since August 2010, the company has launched iPhone, iPad and Android apps, with help from a $17 million round of funding that closed in March.

“It’s only been a year and we’ve gone from really just being at your desk to a whole new group of people who only use it on their phones. They don’t even know there’s a website,” StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp told Mashable. “Next year we’re going to be as much on mobile as we are [on desktop].”

StumbleUpon’s 20 million users still don’t make it quite comparable to other popular social sites that it might be tempting to group it with. Tumblr has 31 million blogs; LinkedIn has more than 100 million users; Twitter has 200 million registered users; and Facebook has 800 million users.

But it's gaining steam that could someday put it in that group. The next step, Camp says, will be international expansion.

“We're just exploring it now,” he says. “Hopefully next year.”

Click the chart to enlarge.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Laughing Squid

More About: stumbleupon

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eBay has launched X.Commerce, the company’s new commerce developer platform designed to house all of eBay’s major commerce and developer tools.

The main pillars will be PayPal and eBay, but also includes RedLaser, ProStores, Milo, GSI Commerce, Zong, Where and Magento (eBay’s popular e-commerce software).

“We intend to build the full suite of commerce tools,” eBay CEO John Donahoe said Wednesday on stage at the X.Commerce Innovate conference in San Francisco.

Donahoe said that the X.Commerce platform has three key tenants. First, eBay will make sure it has all the commerce tools developers and merchants need to do business, and eBay will make the acquisitions necessary to get it done. Second, the platform will be an “open platform.” And third, it will be designed to be easily accessible and usable.

One of the tools eBay will launch as part of X.Commerce is PayPal Access, a service that allows people to use their PayPal accounts on other merchant websites, eliminating the need to give third parties their credit card information.

More About: ebay, paypal, X.Commerce

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NASA hopes its new space mission simulation video game will get tech-saturated kids excited about space travel.

The game, called NetworKing, is free and works on PC and Mac. The goal is to establish integrated communications networks, while getting users familiar with NASA’s 5 year-old Space Communication and Navigation program. Players create command stations around the globe and accept clients like satellites and space telescopes. Throughout the game, you earn points to acquire more clients.

Players with the best communications networks can buy more complex clients like the International Space Station, the Kepler mission and the Hubble Space Telescope.

SEE ALSO: How NASA Plans to Make Astrophysics Fun With an Ambitious Social Game

The game is not the first planned NASA digital media initiative. NASA currently offers a 3D Station Spacewalk game for PC and Mac. A Tweetup of 150 NASA followers for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover liftoff is planned for Nov. 25 and a beta launch of an astrophysics game is expected in late 2012.

Do you think the game will get kids excited about space travel? Let us know in the comments.

More About: NASA, Tweetup, videogames