In the pre-technology days of the Wild West, voters had to use their nose to follow their party's candidate.

More About: 2012 presidential campaign, comics, humor

Some days kids just don't want to head off to school in the morning. Such was the case one day with Beth Blecherman's 13-year-old son. He wished he were somewhere else, and she knew that.

When he returned home after putting in his best effort in school, he did what he usually does; checked his Facebook account. One post in particular stood out among the rest.

"Feeling proud of my son for working hard today at school," his mom wrote on her wall.

When Blecherman updated her status, she did it intentionally. Knowing that her son would see it -- they are friends on Facebook -- the words were meant to encourage. Her son "liked" the update, then so did the boy's grandparents.…
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More About: Facebook, family & parenting, trending

Name: Zindigo

Quick Pitch: Create your own Facebook storefront.

Genius Idea: Sellers receive a 40% sales commission -- a powerful motivating factor.

Over the past year, a number of startups and established retailers have sought to monetize online influence, giving users sales commissions on products they link to on their blogs, social media accounts and in their own, dedicated online shops.

The cut that users receive for those sales is generally modest. The Fancy offers users a 2% commission of sales made by linking to product pages on its site. Amazon offers affiliates between 4% and 8% depending on product category. StyleOwner, a startup that encourages users to sel…
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More About: Facebook, fcommerce, zindigo

Want to experience rain without the inconvenience of getting wet?

RainRoom, an installation at London-based Barbican Art Gallery, lets visitors enter a space that recreates rainfall, but keeps them dry as they move throughout the exhibit. How does it work?

"As soon as you approach the installation, a cocoon of dryness is created around you. This leaves you able to wander freely through different areas of the space, surrounded by falling water, and yet to remain completely dry," according to RainRoom's official description.

Artist group rAndom International created the installation in 2010. It is on display at Barbican until next March.

To l…
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More About: RainRoom, rAndom International, trending

British singer Ellie Goulding, who performed at Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal wedding reception, will conduct what's being dubbed the world's "first digital album signing" in a Google+ Hangout Monday.

The group video chat coincides with the Oct. 8 release date of Goulding's new album, Halcyon. Fans can sign up for Goulding's Hangout by filling out a form to ensure the chat runs smoothly. The event starts at 3 p.m. ET.

The video above shows how the Hangout will look. Fans will get their signed albums after the Hangout.

BONUS: Ellie Goulding Tells Mashable About Her Instagram Music Video
Leading up to this month's album launch, Goulding unleashed a lyric video for Ha…
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More About: Entertainment, Google, Google Hangouts, Music, celebrities, instagram, trending, video chat

Social networks and mobile technology have transformed the way people communicate. This week, Facebook announced there are 1 billion active users, who have created 140.3 billion Facebook connections on the eight-year-old platform.

What do all those friendships look like on an interactive map? Watch the video above to see the interactive map shared by Facebook Stories -- a site dedicated to telling "thought-provoking stories" about the community.

SEE ALSO: The Most Important Facebook Number: 140.3 Billion

The interactive map by Stamen Design shows each country's closest friendships and possible reasons for the proximity. For example, Facebook u…
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More About: facebook stories, relationship, trending

Test-driving the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV through the winding roads of Napa Valley, I couldn't shake the sense that I was being set up for heartbreak.

For folks trained on combustion cars, trying out an all-electric vehicle can feel like taking a very fast, road-ready toy for a spin. Press the ignition button, and the car turns on without the telltale rumble of an engine bursting into action. Step on the gas, and the high-torque jolt of speed is surprisingly sudden. The untold story of the electric car revolution: These things are simply fun to drive.

For the RAV4 EV (photo below), the secret sauce comes from Tesla Motors. The vehicle is actually a collaboration between Toyota and Te…
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More About: Tesla, Tesla Model S, Tesla Motors, Toyota, electric cars, electric vehicles

Rihanna has knocked Eminem off the top spot as most-liked celeb on Facebook.

At press time, the Barbadian singer has 61,564,736 fans, while the rapper stands at 61,217,673, according to Starcount, a data aggregator that measures social-media popularity. Slim Shady reigned as king of the social network since surpassing Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson last February. MJ had previously been the most popular celeb since his death in 2009.

Rihanna's social popularity has surged in recent years; she dethroned Lady Gaga as the top female celeb on Facebook last July. Less than two years ago, Eminem had five million more fans than Rihanna, but that gap quickly closed -- likely thanks to Facebook'…
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More About: Facebook, Starcount, celebrities, trending

What if while you were discussing where to have dinner with a group of friends, your iPad instantly pulled up menus for the restaurants you were talking about? Or, when talking to a friend about what to do on your upcoming vacation, photos and websites for some of your friend's suggestions showed up on your screen?

That's the idea behind MindMeld, a new app from San Francisco technology startup Expect Labs. The company is working on a unique technology platform that merges real-time communication with state-of-the-art language analysis and information retrieval.

Available later this fall, the iPad app supports high-quality group calling, and analyzes the things said in that call…
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More About: Google Now, MindMeld, digital assistant, ipad, siri

The Best Word in the English Language

"She saying "YES" has been my nerve racking triumph!" -- Via Jonathan Nafarrete

Click here to view this gallery.

Today Instagram celebrates its second birthday. In just 24 months, the filter-filled photo-sharing service has gone from an iOS-only app to becoming Facebook's $735 million baby. It's now so popular that last month, Instagram passed Twitter in daily active users on mobile for the first time.

We looked to our readers to commemorate Instagram's big day. Because, after all, it's the users who catapulted the app to fame. Here's how you snapped, cropped, filtered, tilt-shifted and uploaded the last 24 months.

SEE ALSO: The Beginner's Guide to Instagram

Got another memorable Instagram shot from the past two years? Share it with us on Twitter at @mashablehq with the hashtag #MashPics.…
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More About: instagram, mobile photos, photo challenge

It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released every week. But you're in luck -- we take care of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of our favorite new and updated apps.

This week we found an app that will help you find your favorite beer while you're out on the town, and another that will help you find the polls when it's time to vote.

If your phone gets stolen, one of the apps we found this week can remotely access the forward-facing camera on your smartphone and take a "Mugshot" of the thief.

If you love movies, another app will help you go to all the movies you want in a month -- for a single price.

Check out the gallery above for a look at this week…
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More About: App, android, apps, iOS, trending, weekly app roundup

The season two premiere of Dance Showdown, a web series that pits popular YouTube acts against each other in a rhythmic showdown for $100,000, boogied its way online Friday.

Judges on board this season are former NSYNC member Joey Fatone and Emmy-nominated choreographer Laurieann Gibson. YouTube famous Ryan Higa, Dave Days and Shane Dawson are guest judges.

"It gives people an opportunity to be seen by the world," Fatone, who is also on this fall's Dancing With the Stars all-star cast, tells Mashable. "I think it's great and there is a lot of talent out there still to be seen."

Episode one (watch above) introduces viewers to the 12 eclectic contestants, who among other things…
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More About: Entertainment, TV, YouTube, celebrities, comedy, dance, social tv, web series

The presidential candidates aren't the only ones debating lately -- now Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly are getting into the act, facing off Saturday night in a live 90-minute debate branded as "...an entertaining and comedic approach to today's pressing political issues."

You won't catch this on Fox News, where Bill O'Reilly regularly holds forth with his punditry, or on Comedy Central, where Jon Stewart dazzles the world with his satirical brilliance. Nay, you'll have to pay -- $4.95 to be exact -- to watch the live stream.

The good news is, you can go beyond your computer, smartphone or tablet and view tonight's shenanigans on your big screen u…
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More About: Comedy Central, Stewart, debate, fox news, live streaming, o'really, trending

It may not have been a good week for Big Bird, but it was a good one for Detroit Tigers infielder Miguel Cabrera, who won the first Triple Crown since 1967. Over the past few days we've witness the beginning of debate season and the end of baseball's regular season.

With all that going on, it's understandable if you lost track of what's happening in the social media and tech world. To get you up to speed, we've rounded up all our best feature stories from the past week.

The Lifestyle section was particularly active with resources that could help improve your ever-important quality of life. You can also start crossing names of your holiday shopping list with gift ideas such as geeky…
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More About: Business, Features Week In Review, Social Media, Tech

Sunita Williams

Captain Williams is a NASA astronaut who recently completed the first triathlon in space.

Click here to view this gallery.

Can't get enough photos from the Curiosity rover? Dying to know what's happening on the International Space Station? Interested in how NASA astronauts train? These Twitter accounts are for you.

We left out the obvious accounts like @NASA, but we did include some other official agency accounts you may not yet follow. A handful of astronauts also made this list, but if you want a full feed of all the NASA astronauts, follow @NASA_Astronauts, who wins our honorable mention today.

SEE ALSO: Curiosity Rover Makes First Foursquare Check-in on Mars

This list is filled with tweeps who put a human voice on the vast universe beyond our planet Earth. But perhaps most importantly, they all pr…
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More About: Curiosity, Mars, NASA, Twitter, astronauts, space, trending

This week in tech was filled with shiny and exciting gadgets, and we got our hands on the best of them. Check out our gallery and the read the full stories, right here on Top 10 Tech.

More About: Top 10 Tech, amazon kindle, iPhone 5, iphone, logitech, samsung galaxy, sim city, trending

Call it self-marketing, personal branding, professional development, or any other buzzword you'd like. In any case, both finding a job and climbing the career ladder are all about investing in the business of you.

As a professional, you are a brand unto yourself. The target market for the unique value you provide are employers who are constantly bombarded with messages from your competitors (read: other industry professionals) and also always on the lookout for innovation. Develop and market your personal brand effectively by using traditional marketing techniques.

The 4 Ps of Traditional Marketing

Though the boundaries of traditional marketing no longer exist due to online…
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More About: Social Media, branding, features, job search series, mashable, trending

CPR makes you undead -- that's the message behind this brilliant PSA from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

The video was created to raise awareness about the basics of CPR. A horde of zombies stopped chasing a woman to perform CPR after she suffered a heart attack, seemingly out of fear.

SEE MORE: Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse With 'Map of the Dead'

"The goal of the campaign is to raise public awareness and promote hands-only CPR," said Mark Holland, Director of Health Promotion and Public Affairs of the Heart and Stroke Foundation in a press release. "In Canada, the survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests barely exceeds five percent. We must do…
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More About: Watercooler, viral videos, zombies

Pop star Carly Rae Jepsen will take part in a Facebook Live chat Oct. 6 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the viral success of "Call Me Maybe" and also her new album, "Kiss."

More About: Call Me Maybe, Carly Rae Jepsen, Entertainment, Facebook, Live Chat, Social Media, celebrities, trending

The Facebook Commercial Is All Kinds of Wrong

Reader Sandeep Gill had an insightful critique of Facebook's new ad.

Click here to view this gallery.

This week, Facebook launched its first-ever commercial, which compared the social network to many things, among them chairs, doorbells and the universe. The common thread between these things, from what we gathered, is that they connect us. This week at Mashable reminded us of the connections we share and how quickly the ways we connect have changed thanks to the power of social media.

It's not every day you reach one billion active users, so perhaps we were too harsh on Facebook's new ad. It was fun to create our own spoof of the "chair" commercial, and also interesting to consider not just the number of users but the number of friendships populating Facebook: over 140 billion.

The p…
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More About: Facebook, top comments

There's nothing like a bear hug from a loved one at the end of a long day. But if you live far away from your family, you now have a man-made alternative. Scientists at MIT have created a vest that inflates when your Facebook friends "Like" your posts, mimicking the sensation of a hug.

Dubbed "Like-A-Hug," the puffy vest inflates so its wearer can "feel the warmth, encouragement, support or love that we feel when we receive hugs," according to designer Melissa Chow's website. To return the hug, the wearer wraps his or her arms around the shoulders to deflate the vest, symbolizing the act of sending the hug back.

This isn't the first time fashion designers have incorporated the…
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More About: Facebook, fashion, like, trending

As social media continues to evolve, it's important for us to keep up with the changes. Back in 2009, Mashable published one of the first articles about what to include in a social media policy. It is still relevant today, but social media has changed.

This year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued three reports regarding social media in the workplace. The last one was specifically focused on social media policies.

What the Reports Say

Jon Hyman, partner in the labor and employment group of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz P.L.L. and author of the Ohio Employer's Law Blog, provides a brief overview of these three NLRB reports. "The first two reports focus…
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More About: Social Media, employee, features, hr, mashable, open forum, policy