Google's Senior VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra was asked not to tweet again after he posted a tweet which critiqued Nokia's deal with Microsoft.

Gundotra revealed this himself in a recent interview, which you can see in the video above (the interesting part is at 1:01:37). Responding to a question why he has stopped tweeting, Gundotra said "I made one tweet, and then I was asked not to tweet again (...) by my boss".

The offending tweet was posted right after the Nokia-Microsoft deal was publicized in February 2011. It said "Two turkeys do not make an Eagle," quite obviously referencing the Finnish mobile giant and Microsoft's Windows Phone platform which Nokia had embraced.

A…
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More About: Google, Nokia, Vic Gundotra, microsoft

Google no longer offers a free version of Google Apps for businesses.

Instead of having a choice between a free and a premium version, businesses wishing to use Google Apps now have to pay $50 per user, per year.

This version gets them 24/7 phone support, a 25GB inbox, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

The reasoning behind the change, explained in an official blog post, is that businesses "quickly outgrow" the basic version. While this may be true, we can easily imagine many micro-sized businesses who are doing just fine with the free version.

On the upside, things won't change for existing customers, i.e. they'll still be able to continue using the free version.

Furthermore,…
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Former Google advertising scientist is behind a service that matches people across devices to serve more targeted advertisements.

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Hoppit lets users search for restaurants based on their current mood and the people they are with at that moment.

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Japanese hobby researchers at Brave Robotics have developed a functioning, entirely 3D-printed robot inspired by Transformers.

The remotely controlled bot can turn into a car and vice versa in just a few instants and has a slew of impressive features, including Wi-Fi camera, headlights and it can even shoot little darts. The "Transform robot" is the result of 10 years of work and several iterations. The robot went from a rudimentary pair of legs that barely moved to this impressive version, which looks like it could have been featured in a Transformers movie.

SEE ALSO: 10 Amazing Robots We Met in 2012

The latest version, the 7.2, is entirely…
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More About: 3D printers, popular science, robots

The device sitting on the center of your company's meeting room table connects you to your colleagues around the world. In fact, virtually every Fortune 100 company uses the video conferencing solution from Polycom, but implications for the video- and tele- conferencing device are more widespread than just corporate boardrooms.

Recently, 1,400 researchers stationed in the South Pole didn't have to wait-out the brutal six month winter to speak with a doctor. Those who needed the advice of a physician could do so on a "telemedicine" network operated by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and powered by Polycom.

In fact, Polycom powers a number of telemedicine services ar…
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Meet Ping Pong Cat. He (or she) somehow really good at ping pong. And -- obviously -- really, really cute.

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It's been more than a year since YouTube underwent a major redesign -- tweaking colors and layout, adding Google+ integration, and most importantly, adding channels you could subscribe to as easily as getting a season pass to a hit show on your DVR.

One year on, and the service is getting another upgrade. What's it all about this time? A subtle but important change in positioning video titles, as well as making that channel guide follow you around the site, suggesting shows you might like to subscribe to and videos you should be interested in based on your browsing history.

"Those of you who use YouTube most have learned the secret to making it even better—find the channels you love…
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Your kids are more likely to initiate friending you on Facebook when they're young, suggests a new study from Facebook. Data gathered by the social networking giant shows 65% of 13-year-olds initiate of friendships with their parents on the social network. That figure drops to about 40% by the time they reach their early to mid-twenties. You'll have to wait until your kids are in their early forties before they start to friend you first (50%) again on Facebook.

Parents and kids comment about the same amount when kids are young. As the child gets older, parents comment more often -- perhaps this is because younger people post more often than their parents, writes Moira Burke, an analyst i…
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More About: Facebook, Families, friending

Cal's new head football coach has surname that might trip up some 12-year-old boys -- or, apparently, at least one sports site's auto-filter.

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The following is the first in Mashable's "Social Media Eye for the Small Business Guy" series, which will look at how small businesses navigate social media marketing. If you're a social media consultant or a small business owner looking to take part in future installments, please contact us on our Mashable Business Facebook Page.

If you ever find yourself in the Bucktown section of Chicago and have a hankering for homemade sausage, then you might want to check out Sterling Goss, the kind of old-time butcher that the Food Network is always celebrating.

Until recently, though, you would pretty much have to be walking by the butcher's storefront to realize that it exists. On the Interne…
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Some of the biggest coral die-offs in recorded history happened in 2004 and 2005, after massive earthquakes in Sumatra, off the coast of Indonesia.

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Design company Frank & Jan's got a web-themed spin on the new Brooklyn Nets logo.

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Whether you're a fan of Tolkien myth lore or not, everyone can agree that the backdrop alone is worth sitting through The Hobbit.

How does director Peter Jackson and his crew select the perfect location? Is all of New Zealand really that stunning?

The mini-documentary shown above, provided by Air New Zealand, shows Jackson and his location scouts in helicopters, seeking brand new scenery to take your breath away.

Jackson is no stranger to location in New Zealand, having filmed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy there too. The director chose almost completely different spots for The Hobbit.

SEE ALSO: 'The Hobbit' Will Debut With New 3D Tech

The scenery is not only impor…
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Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour ($6.99)

As iPad shooters go, it doesn't get more intense than the latest installment in Modern Combat, Gameloft's Call of Duty-inspired franchise for mobile. Many of the graphical details -- such as smoke, motion blur and gunfire -- look eerily realistic, even if there are a few jagged lines in the scenery (the designers' notes say the game is optimized for the iPhone 5). With so much potential, it's good the controls are customizable, and the game gets even more immersive in gyroscope mode, which changes your point of view as you move the tablet. If you get too into it, you might have to switch to playing it on Xbox Kinect.

Click here to view this gallery.

When we reviewed the fourth-generation iPad last month, we judged its A6X processor to be a workhorse. Compared to the A5X in the previous iPad (which has the same retina display), the iPad 4 ran more than twice as fast -- making it easily the best-performing mobile product Apple has ever built.

Too bad there aren't many apps that can take advantage of all that processing power. As with most platforms, the apps that tax your iPad's system the most are graphic-intensive games -- precisely why the A6X has a quad-core design for its GPU (the main difference between it and the iPhone 5's A6 chip).

All existing retina games were designed to run on the iPad 3, so seriously taxing your iPad 4…
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The Washington Post may join the slew of newspapers implementing paywalls for content, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Citing unnamed sources, the Journal says the Post is "considering" the option, adding that it is also looking into increasing the paper's newsstand price.

The New York Times successfully began a "metered" paywall system -- customers are allowed a certain number of free articles before being prompted to subscribe for content -- two years ago, after which several newspapers looking for ways to increase revenue have followed suit. The Journal reports its sources hinted that the The Washington Post would also implement such a metered system.

The change will take pla…
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Netflix and its CEO Reed Hastings are in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission over a post Hastings made on Facebook.

Back in July, Hastings posted a small blurb to his Facebook page, noting that Netflix had exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time. Hastings has nearly 250,000 Facebook subscribers and his 1 billion hour statement was re-reported by dozens of news outlets (including Mashable).

While that might seem innocuous on the surface, the SEC says it constitutes a violation of Regulation Fair Disclosure, specifically section 13(a). In other words, Hastings's Facebook post violated disclosure rules intact for a public company.

The SEC says it intends to eithe…
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We've had a lot of interesting moments at Mashable in the past year -- and luckily, we also happened to be filming many of them. In 2012, we followed an Internet celebrity singing with a turkey leg, talked to folks who lined up for the iPhone 5 for a week, and a tracked down a filmmaker who did documentaries for the Arab Spring. We also peered into Martha Stewart's bag and survived a takeover attempt from Conan O'Brien.

1. Conan O'Brien Buys Mashable, Ousts Pete Cashmore as CEO

In an April Fools' Day prank, TeamCoco and Mashable got together to create a zany story line that includes Conan buying the site and ousting founder and CEO Pete Cashmore. The Conan O'Brien takeover launched a…
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More About: Martha Stewart, Nicole Westbrook, Year End 2012, comic-con, conan o', conan o'brien, grumpy cat, iPhone 5, thanksgiving, viral videos

A new study asserts that the more you multitask using multiple screens, the more likely you are to feel depressed or anxious.

More About: health, multitasking, second screen

Struggling to think of the perfect gift for the entrepreneur in your life? Try one of these budget-friendly alternatives, sure to please any hard-working, enterprising small business owner on your gift list.

More About: Gifts, Startups, contributor, features, holidays 2012

Michelle Peluso, global consumer chief marketing and Internet officer at Citigroup and Gilt board member, is taking on the role of CEO at Gilt Groupe, the company announced Thursday.

Word that the online retailer was looking for a replacement for co-founder Kevin Ryan, who has served as CEO since Gilt's inception in 2007, surfaced in the Wall Street Journal early last month.

According to the Journal, the company's board felt that Gilt's expansion into new verticals like food and full-price men's retail had not performed well, and that Ryan's attention was spread too thin among his responsibilities.

Peluso, who has been on Gilt's board of directors for three years, will officially ta…
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In a series of tweets, Justin Bieber's manager Scooter Braun expressed his strong disapproval about Bieber not earning any Grammy nominations.

More About: 55th Grammy Awards, Entertainment, Music, Scooter Braun, Twitter, grammy awards, grammys, justin bieber

Spotify has plans to make music discovery more personalized and more social.

We've always classified discovery as Spotify's Achilles' heel. Because Spotify's catalogue is so large, finding new music or rediscovering old favorites is difficult.

For a time, Spotify was happy to relegate discovery details to the service's desktop apps. And while Spotify will continue to leverage those apps in helping users find new music, discovery will now be an intrinsic part of the Spotify service on all platforms.

The new features -- which will start rolling out in January -- are the most significant product upgrades that have hit Spotify since the service l…
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State lottery directors are in town this week to lobby against Internet gambling legislation that states worry could limit their ability to expand their games online.

Lottery officials this week are meeting with members of Congress to urge them to reject a draft bill crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. Their bill would legalize online poker while outlawing other forms of online gaming. It was drafted in response to a decision from the Justice Department last year to reinterpret the 1961 Wire Act, saying it only applies to sports betting and not other forms of online gambling. Both supporters and critics of gambling say the decisi…
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John McAfee, computer programmer, entrepreneur and person of interest in the death of his Belize neighbor, was rushed to a Guatemala hospital Thursday afternoon after reportedly suffering two mild heart attacks.

McAfee's lawyers gave details of his medical condition to Reuters witnesses.

ABC News' Matt Gutman, who has been closely following McAfee's flight from Belize, tweeted harrowing photos of McAfee in apparent distress. Gutman also said that McAfee was complaining of "chest pains" just before being taken to the hospital.

McAfee appeared in Guatemala earlier this week, shortly thereafter requesting political asylum from the Guatemalan government. That request was denied…
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Doug Ludlow, founder of Hipster, talks about how his company changed after it was acquired by AOL.

More About: acquisition, aol, startup, valleygirltv

The search is on for the hacker who targeted a website associated with the Dalai Lama's YouTube account.

More About: Dalai Lama, Tibet, china, hacking

This year has been a factory for the viral song sensation. Whether you were reminding yourself you were beautiful, or that you were young or begging for a date via phone call, you can't deny you had a catchy theme song available as inspiration.

But daft lyrics have been criticized since the dawn of pop music. What happened to the croons of Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday? Why do we now sing songs in autotune and make statements like Swag swag swag, on you / Chillin by the fire while we eatin' fondue (thanks for that, Bieber)?

SEE ALSO: Relive All of 2012's Pop Hits in One Mega-Mashup [VIDEO]

So if you are sick of turning to UrbanDictionary.com to decode the lingo of the mille…
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The soundtrack to the beautiful indie game Journey has been nominated for an award for the 2013 Grammys, the first for a video game soundtrack.

Thatgamecompany's PlayStation 3 game has been been praised for its innovative gameplay, art and score. Composer Austin Wintory was nominated for "Best Score Soundtrack from a Visual Medium" Grammy.

Wintory tweeted, "Well I don't really have words right now .... I just got a Grammy nomination for Journey."

Journey's soundtrack is up against the soundtracks for The Dark Knight Rises, The Artist, Hugo, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and The Adventures Of Tintin - The Secret Of The Unicorn.

This is the first time a video game soundtrack ha…
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When girls don't get Sex and the City references, it's like not being on Facebook.

At least according to Shoshana Shapiro, one of the main characters on HBO's hit show Girls and a ubiquitous 20-something female who can quote Carrie Bradshaw in her sleep.

The Shoshana-ism has been turned into an animated GIF, and is among the handful of inaugural GIFs to grace HBO's "What Should We Call Girls" Tumblr, launched Thursday.

SEE ALSO: How to Respond to Any Situation With an Animated GIF

The hit HBO show embraced the popular "What Should We Call Me" phenomenon in the launch of its first official Tumblr.

"We will be your GIF spirit guide," the blog says in its subheadline. "We're shar…
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