You don't need to move to Silicon Valley to be near a hub for tech jobs.

More About: careers, job hunting, tech jobs

 

Name: Joor

Quick Pitch: An online marketplace that connects fashion buyers with brands.

Genius Idea: Joor makes wholesale buying more like shopping at your favorite online store.

As a senior buyer for Ann Taylor, Mona Bijoor's job involved many back-to-back showroom appointments, spreadsheets and even a fair bit of paper and glue. "My husband would tease me about playing with paper dolls again," Bijoor recalls of the lookboards of apparel and accessories she made before placing orders every season.

In March 2010, Bijoor launched Joor, an online wholesale marketplace that connects retail buyers with designers and brands. Brands can upload their collections to Joor,…
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More About: b2b, fashion, joor, retail

There are half a billion people on the Internet in China, meaning the country has a significantly larger online population than the general population in the U.S. In China, broadband speed -- the rate at which devices can access data from the Internet -- appears to be significantly behind the country's rapid growth in online population.

According to the most recent Akamai State of the Internet report, the global average broadband speed is 2.6-Mbps. China is slightly below average at 2.07-Mbps, according to ChinaCache, a leading content delivery provider.

South Korea has the fastest average broadband in the world at 15.7-Mbps; the U.S. is currently 12th at 6.7-Mbps.

Despite its cu…
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More About: Internet trends, china, infographic, nationalized Broadband

In the best news yet for viral cat videos and pictures of babies hugging puppies, researchers at Japan's Hiroshima University found that people actually focus better shortly after they've been shown "cute" images.

Researchers performed three experiments where they showed subjects a variety of images that included food, people, and adult and baby animals.

In a fine-motor dexterity test, 48 subjects (all between the ages of 18-and 22 and all right handed) played a children's game very much akin to "Operation." For those unfamiliar with the game, you use tweezers to remove plastic body parts from metal-encased "cavities" without touching the edges and setting off a buzzer.

Subject…
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More About: Viral, kittens, puppies

We've seen Van Gogh's iconic "Starry Night" painting as both an iPad app and a domino run, but now an astronomy major has recreated it in perhaps the most apt way: with NASA photos of the cosmos.

Alex Parker, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, made the mosaic-style image out of publicly available downloads of NASA's top 100 images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Cloudy weather prevented him from working on a recent night at the observatory, so he came up with the idea of creating the image for Hubble's 22nd birthday.

If you want to check out the image at full resolution, it's here. A close-up of the top right section is below.

[via The Da…
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More About: Starry Night, Watercooler

As Apple deals with the backlash and criticism from the bumpy launch of Apple Maps, it's easy to forget that this isn't the first time Apple has stumbled with a new product.

While Apple Maps is far from the company's finest hour, it pales in comparison to what might have been the most problematic Apple launch of all time: MobileMe.

Launched in the summer of 2008, alongside the iPhone 3G and iOS 2.0, MobileMe was Apple's first real stab at a cloud services platform. MobileMe was the predecessor to iCloud and it offered many similar services, including:

Cloud-hosted email, contacts and calendars that sync between devices
The ability to track lost or stolen devices
The ability…
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More About: apple, apple maps, mobileme

Looking to save money on monthly electricity bills? The Wikoda Sunflower might be just the ticket you need.

Essentially, the device is a take-home heliostat -- a mirror that redirects sunlight to generate power.

It's shaped like a sunflower, with six mirror panels atop a metal pole. Users can plant the device in their yards and use the mirrors to point sunlight wherever they want -- into the house, towards a garden outside -- with 95% efficiency.

The reflected sunlight can reach up to 25 feet and generate enough power equivalent to 60 light bulbs -- ideal for dark rooms not usually reachable by natural light.

It's safe to leave outside,…
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More About: Newsy, solar power, videos

Sometimes it's better just to let a video do the talking -- or, in this case, the rapping. So, because nothing we write could ever compare to this bit of Internet epic-ness, please just click play above.

The mashup of Jay-Z's hit song "99 Problems" with snippets of Barack Obama audio was uploaded to YouTube on Friday and created by one Diran Lyons.

Warning: NSFW lyrics.

More About: Presdient Obama, Watercooler, viral videos

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday gave the first go-ahead to television broadcasters who want to voluntarily release wireless spectrum to be auctioned off to cellphone companies and used for expanding wireless data and Internet services.

In the incentive spectrum auction, which the FCC cleared via unanimous vote, those television companies would get a yet-undecided amount of the auction proceeds. Auction rules and other details will be sorted out in the coming months, the New York Times reports.

These incentive spectrum auctions have been in the works for years and are a priority of the current FCC chair, Julius Genachowski. Genachowski has previously argued the auct…
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More About: Mobile, US, Wireless, fcc, government, spectrum

The long, sad decline of Eastman Kodak continued on Friday as the company announced it was exiting the consumer printer business.

The company, which is in the process of submitting a restructuring plan to Bankruptcy Court, will "wind down sales of consumer inkjet printers" and focus instead on selling ink to its existing install base.

"Kodak is making good progress toward emergence from Chapter 11, taking significant actions to reorganize our core ongoing businesses, reduce costs, sell assets, and streamline our organizational structure," said Antonio M. Perez, Kodak chairman and CEO, in a statement.

Perez added that halting consumer printer sales "will substantially advance t…
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More About: Kodak, bankruptcy, printers

America's Finest News Source strikes again.

An Iranian media outlet, the Fars News Agency, published an article Friday morning that claimed the majority of white Americans prefer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Barack Obama. The only issue? The poll was from a fake article by satirical news organization the Onion.

The article, which has since been taken off Fars' website, quoted an ersatz poll from the Onion article -- almost word-for-word -- in saying that "77% of rural Caucasian voters ... would much rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Ahmadinejad than spend time with Obama."

It went on to say that 60% of rural whites at least respect that "Ahmadinejad…
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More About: Watercooler, humor, the onion, trending

It's the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and this video is the perfect way for your inner Trekkie to celebrate.

"Klingon Style" parodies the viral hit "Gangnam Style" by singing almost the entire tune in Klingon. They even have so-called "Klingon language expert" Felix Malmanbeck highlighted in the credits.

SEE ALSO: Bill Nye the 'Gangnam Style' Guy [VIDEO]

We're close to calling a moratorium on "Gangnam Style" covers, but this one is just too timely -- and it's sung in Klingon, people.

EDIT: We highly endorse the following tweet:

@stephlauren You missed the best part of the Oppa Klingon Style video... turn on Closed Captions!— Zachary…
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More About: Star Trek, Watercooler, gangnam style

See a restaurant you like on Foursquare? Instead of adding it to your to-do list, you can now make a reservation directly through Foursquare's mobile apps.

Foursquare has partnered with OpenTable to provide the service. It won't work with every restaurant -- just the 25,000 that allow online booking through OpenTable. Qualifying restaurants will have a "Make Reservation" button on their Foursquare pages.

The location-based app has been offering this service on its website since May.

The experience is seamless. Other integrations with OpenTable, like Stamped's, don't allow for in-app booking, instead sending you to OpenTable.com in your mobile browser to make a reservation.…
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More About: foursquare, opentable

Google just made your quest for a movie date a little more streamlined. You'll still need to find that special boy or girl, but at least now you can see movie trailers directly from the Google Search page for local showtimes.

When you type in a query such as "movies for San Francisco CA" or "showtimes San Francisco," a list of nearby flicks will show up along with an option to watch their official YouTube trailers without leaving the results page. Click a button labeled "trailer," to the right of the title, and a preview will pop up. If you get tired of it or deem the movie unworthy, simply click in the black space outside of the YouTube player for the video to disappear.

Here's what…
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More About: Google, google search

It's no great secret that Facebook is the hottest spot for social gathering since Studio 54. Since its launch in 2004, nearly a billion people have flocked to the site.

Facebook and other social media sites have enjoyed stunning popularity over the past several years. By users own reports, however, many don't seem to be unlocking the full potential of social media as a tool for both social and professional interaction.

SEE ALSO: Sorry, Marketers, You're Doing Facebook Wrong [REPORT]

A study of North American adults, conducted by Concept Metrics and sponsored by The Marketing Distillery, found people belong to almost two social networks on average. The same people who are rushing to…
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More About: COMMUNICATIONS, Facebook, Interactivity, Social Media

Portland Trail Blazers center Meyers Leonard has always had a special relationship with his brother Bailey.

The video above, which was first posted during March Madness, shows the strength of the brothers' bond. When their father passed away, Bailey became a father-figure for Meyers and the tough times they went through brought them closer together. "With hardship and getting through hardship," says Bailey, "that only helps bring people closer together."

SEE ALSO: Inside Adidas and Derrick Rose's Digital 'Return'

Meyer had to grow up without a father, and eventually, he had to learn to live without his big brother as well. In 2008, Bailey joined the Marines. "It was such a…
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More About: Watercooler, college sports, youtube videos

From a spinning merry-go-round. Off the wall. Off the other wall. From behind the wall. Off the corner of a curb.

It's safe to say you'll probably never see a better collection of basketball trick shots than this video, which was uploaded to YouTube this week. It comes to us via the sports site Grantland, which wonders if the astounding scores can even be real.

Who are these magicians of make? Just some dudes in North Dakota with a lot of free time. Check them out, and let us know what you think in the comments.

NBA Stars Before They Were Stars

More About: Sports, Watercooler, viral videos

Surpassing earthly boundaries, digital data storage has set up shop in the firmament. "The Cloud" is an increasingly popular term for remote data centers, usually with astronomical storage capacity, which people can access via the Internet using their various devices.

Attempting to mimic the convenience of cloud computing, new technology allows people to set up a "personal cloud" on their home networks. Let's backtrack and first take a moment to talk about the "public" cloud.

The Public Cloud

The cloud refers to anything from Dropbox, a storage space for personal files, to Netflix, a reservoir of movies and TV shows people can stream to their computers, tablets and phones. Inter…
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More About: BrandSpeak, Cloudhopper, Data Center, Dropbox, Personal Data, data storage

Apple is sorry about the iOS 6 Apple Maps debacle. Not only did CEO Tim Cook issue an apology letter to customers on Apple.com, the company is also highlighting alternative mapping apps in the App Store.

In iTunes and on the App Store for the iPhone and iPad, Apple has a new collection titled "Find maps for your iPad" and "Find maps for your iPhone."

The collection of 13 apps -- free and paid -- offer alternatives to Apple's own maps application.

Since its release two weeks ago, Apple Maps has been criticized for being inferior to its predecessor, Google Maps. The response to the new maps has been equal parts outrage and humor, and while the company has vowed to improve the …
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More About: apple, apple maps, iOS 6, maps

Jerry Seinfeld and Michael Richards -- best known as "Cosmo Kramer" -- reunited for an episode of Seinfeld's web series, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.

The reunion marks one of the few high-profile appearences Richards has done since his infamous racist tirade in Nov. 2006. Richards was performing at the famous L.A. comedy club the Laugh Factory when a heckler interrupted him. Instead of brushing him off and going on with the show, he started calling the heckler the n-word, aiming all kinds of racist epithets at him and eventually making most of the audience leave in disgust. Since then, and despite repeated apologies, he basically disappeared from the entertainment universe.…
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More About: Watercooler, jerry seinfeld

Apple's public apology over its maps application is just the latest admission of error. It has admitted mistakes in each of the past three months.

More About: apple, steve jobs, tim cook

Twitter announced another tweak to its nine-month-old "Discover" tab Friday morning. The new twist places an added emphasis on photos, articles and other media by taking advantage of another relatively recent addition, Twitter Cards.

Now, when you visit the Discover tab on Twitter.com, you'll get an updating stream of tweets already expanded to shows photos, videos or teasers for text articles. The tab will continue to show content deemed relevant to your interests and activity on the social network. The updated format "is rolling out gradually to everyone," according to a post to the official Twitter blog by product manager Sara Mauskopf.

The move is in keeping with Twitter's recent…
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More About: Twitter

CheapAir.com launched a new search ability on its website that lets users enter natural language to search for travel deals, the company announced on Friday.

Now you can type in where you want to go and which dates you'd like to travel in plain English -- similar to how you type things into Google Search. For example: "sfo jfk nov1 nov4 1 adult." This new feature is called "Easy Search." Users of CheapAir.com can still search for travel deals the typical way -- by using a calendar to select the dates and typing in the city, but Easy Search is another option to find travel deals, especially for those who find clicking through calendars and airport codes tedious.

CheapAir.com is one of…
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More About: airfare, cheap airfare, travel

This year's Mashable Media Summit is a conference you don't want to miss. From an inside look at Reddit's growth to demystifying data driven journalism, you'll learn about the hottest trends and hear the stories that matter, from the biggest leaders in digital media.

The Mashable Media Summit is a one-day conference that explores how new forms of technology are redefining media. The brightest minds in the industry will come together Nov. 2 at the TimesCenter in New York City to explore the latest innovations in the space and the future of journalism. Get your tickets now.

This Nov. 2, we'll be hitting on the biggest trends in media and what to watch for in 2013. The Mashable Me…
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More About: Conference, digital, event, mashable media summit

Starting Friday, Facebook pages are now integrated into your Klout score.

Klout estimates that a user with a score between 70-80 has an average of 13,000 users talking about their Facebook page. The new feature allows you to connect your brand or organization's page to your Klout account and then have activity for that page help grow your Klout score.

In August, Klout unveiled a completely new look and pushed out updated scores for all of its users. The new look and score showcase not only your score, but also the individual posts that got you there.

SEE ALSO: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Klout

"We went from about 100 variables that we were looking at to over 400,"…
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More About: Facebook, klout

1. Cravendale - Cats with Thumbs

"Why do cats stare when you're pouring milk?"

Click here to view this gallery.

Here at Mashable we enjoy well-made and witty commercials. We also like cats. Combining these two elements, we have scoured YouTube for the funniest cat commercials we could find.

From disco-dancing kitties to parkour pusses to cats that bark, we think you'll find something to make you smile in our selection of feline-themed advertisements.

SEE ALSO: 12 YouTube Clips of Hungry, Hungry Kitties

Take a look through the video gallery above for our humorous collection of witty kitties. Link us in the comments below to any other cat ads we haven't featured that you particularly like.

Thumbnail courtesy of schmollmolch and Wikimedia Commons

More About: Advertising, Video, Watercooler, animals, commercials, features, gallery, humor, viral videos

Elephant

"Elephants can move their skin to crush mosquitoes between their rolls of skin." via NAOMINATOR Image courtesy of flickr, wwarby

Click here to view this gallery.

Reddit user Frozen_Beer posed this simple question to the Reddit community:

"Horses can't vomit. What useless facts do you know?"

One day and nearly 7,000 responses later, our brains are bursting with incredibly useless, albeit oddly fascinating, trivia. We're sharing our favorites here for people who don't have time to sort through them all.

What is the most useless fact you know, that you didn't learn here? Share it in the comments below.

More About: Watercooler, reddit, trivia

 

Amazon may be trying its hand at the wine business once again, after having shuttered its efforts in that area three years ago.

The online retailer invited around 100 wineries to an event in Napa, Calif., on Monday, Terry Hall, a spokesperson for a regional trade association, told The Wall Street Journal. Derrick Peters, whose LinkedIn profile claims that he does business development for a "new group" at Amazon, reportedly told attendees that Amazon is preparing to launch a third-party Marketplace for wine sellers in the next four weeks. Wineries will be able to list their products through Amazon, but like other Marketplace sellers, must handle shipping and compliance on their o…
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More About: amazon

Apple sold a record 5 million iPhones the first weekend the phone was on the market. And unlike in the iPhone's early days, the latest Apple smartphones are not primarily being purchased by first time owners.

But did you ever stop to think about what happens to all those iPhone 3, 3GS, 4 and 4Ss now deemed out of date? While there are many recycling programs available, most smartphones are not efficiently thrown out.

Apple's iPhones is far from the only culprit -- most every smartphone, hard drive, hybrid car, satellite, MRI machine and GPS, along with dozens of other tech gadgets, are made from Rare Earth Elements.

This infographic, created by Vouchercloud takes a look at this tro…
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More About: Social Good, environment, infographics, sustainable technology, technology, trending

U.S. gold medalists Ryan Lochte and Conor Dwyer have gone from swimming pool water to campaigning for water rights with the launch of the latest Water For People PSA. The two Olympians have joined Water For People's $2 million challenge, Time Well Spent, raising money for women in the developing world.

In the minute and a half PSA, the two Olympians list everything they can get done in four hours -- the amount of time millions of women and girls around the world spend collecting water. In comparison, the two Olympians won their gold medals in less than a couple of minutes.

The time these women spend getting water could be spent studying in school or working to earn an income.

B…
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More About: PSA, Social Good, olympics, water