BARCELONA -- LG and China Mobile have successfully demoed a TD-LTE-capable smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The demonstration was conducted using a modified LG Optimus G smartphone.

To most mobile phone users, the acronym LTE (Long-Term Evolution), simply means "fast mobile internet." So what is this TD-LTE witchery LG and China Mobile are talking about?

Well, TD-LTE or Time-Division Long-Term Evolution is a different standard from the widely adopted FD-LTE (Frequency-Division Long-Term Evolution). The two standards differ in the way data transmission between the phone and the cell tower occurs: with the FD-LTE, two frequencies are allocated for transmitting and re…
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More About: LG, LG Optimus G, MWC, MWC2013, TD-LTE

After widespread criticism of Yahoo's decision to ban employees from working at home, the company has addressed the controversy in a vague statement.

"This isn't a broad industry view on working from home," it said. "This is about what is right for Yahoo right now."

A spokesperson for Yahoo declined to elaborate on the matter, telling the New York Times, "We don't discuss internal matters."

But several anonymous employees said Yahoo's move to abolish telecommuting indicates that Marissa Mayer, who became company CEO last July, is "in crisis mode." They told the Times that Mayer believes the policy is necessary rejuvenate Yahoo, which has seen a years-long decline.

An internal co…
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We often think technology is a silver bullet -- it solves problems. Bored on the bus? Done. Need help to quit smoking? Done, too. How about medical breakthroughs? One size fits all.

But what about mass shootings? The tragedy in Newton, Conn., the latest in a string of incidents, highlights the complexities of the problem. Law enforcement and legislators, community members and advocacy groups, are all debating legal remedies, but tech has yet to play a role in the conversation. Nobody expects innovation to curb the mass shootings. But it can help to prevent and solve some aspects of the problem.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, touched on "common sense initiatives," s…
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More About: gun, guns, newtown, shooting, Violence

It's like harnessing the Force: A new armband uses the electrical activity in your muscles to let you wirelessly control digital devices.

Called the Myo, the armband was developed by Canadian startup, Thalmic Labs. Sensing the wearer's muscle movements and motions, it detects changes in hand gesture "right down to each individual finger," as well as "subtle movements in all directions," according to the company. Indeed, the Myo even accounts for accidental input.

The armband connects with most devices via Bluetooth, enabling users to control presentations, browse the Internet, play video games and edit audio, among other tasks -- entirely hands-free. Thalmic says Windows and Mac OS wi…
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From dishwashers with digital interfaces to apps that manage the home, a shift in home appliances will need as much TLC as a web app.

More About: interface, smart appliance, smart home, user experience, user experience design, user interface, UX

Apple "less arrogant" under new CEO Tim Cook, according to the CEO of a major European telecom operator. But is that a compliment -- or a slight?

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Publishing giant Pearson launched an incubator program for edtech startups, following in the footsteps of other educational companies like Kaplan.

Pearson Catalyst, the new program, will match educational startups with Pearson brands and resources. The company's vast amount of content will be available to participants who can further develop their products to target and personalize online learning.

Sharing industry insight and connecting with new companies will allow Pearson to promote learning and take advantage of new ideas, says Diana Stepner, head of future technologies.

"We realized the world of education has changed," Stepner tells Mashable. "People have new approaches to l…
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More About: Business, education, Lifestyle, startup incubators, Startups

8th grade football star Dylan Moses is still in middle school but his YouTube highlights are some grown man stuff.

More About: college sports, Sports, Watercooler

This is pretty much an epic faceplant at pretty much an inopportune moment.

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What if there were a forecast for your great ideas?

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Google is building a new headquarters. Located near its current HQ, the 1.1 million square foot "Bay View" complex is being built in Mountain View, Calif., and it's like nothing you've ever seen before.

A watercolor drawing created by the architects at nbbj shows off Google's plans for the building, which include a place to jog, bike, and ride scooters -- all on the roof. Rooftop yoga is also an option at the new headquarters, as is working outdoors in one of the company's numerous outdoor seating areas.

Want to spend the night? The artist's rendering also shows some pitched tents on the roof, presumably where Googlers could take a little siesta.

The project is expected…
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We don't know who this kid is or where he comes from. We just know he's strong as hell and his man-grunt is something to behold as well.

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Two days after the political thriller Argo snagged best picture honors at the Oscars, one of the hostages whose experience inspired the film felt the urge to react to the big win on Facebook.

"The substance of what I wrote really just came to me this morning," Mark Lijek (played by Christopher Denham in Argo) told Mashable. "I was excited Argo won best picture."

Argo is loosely based on the hostage crisis during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when militants held 52 Americans inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Argo details the tale of six of them who escaped and hid in the Canadian ambassador's home.

Lijek (pictured in the black tie above) and his wife, Cora, were two of those wh…
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More About: 85th Academy Awards, academy awards, Argo, Entertainment, Entertainment News, films, Movies, oscar, Oscars, US

Pleiadian

Images courtesy of Bill Gekas.

Click here to view this gallery.

Everyone thinks pictures of their kids are the most beautiful things in the world and, if it were possible, would hang them in museums for public viewing (instead, they just subject us to Facebook viewings). But photographer, and father, Bill Gekas can actually make the claim that the pictures of his child are true masterpieces.

Modeled after classic European paintings, Gekas' series of portraits of his daughter are stunning. The pictures would have us imagining that his daughter was posing for oil paintings instead of in front of a digital camera.

The Melbourne, Australia-based photographer began the project in 2010.

"A little time went on, and I was still photographing her, and…
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Like watching TED talks? You're not alone.

Every month the intriguing series of 15-minutes-or-less talks from experts get another 60 million views. Since 2006, when the nonprofit-owned TED organization started putting its talks online, they've garnered a grand total of 1.1 billion views.

That's not just a great educational resource; it's a tremendous data set for researchers.

Using transcripts and data tags from TEDx events around the world, Eric Berlow of Vibrant Data Labs and Sean Gourley of San Francisco-based Quid software created this visualization that divides the entire body of talks into distinct categories and subcategories, and figures out how each of their subjects ove…
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TED comes back this week to inspire, delight and make people clap at Power Point slides.

Twitter celebrated the return of inspiration seekers' favorite conference with a 2013 version of the hashtag "Five Word TED Talks." Why bother listening to an entire TED talk when you can get the basic gist in a couple seconds? Answer: Don't bother.

SEE ALSO: Why We Can't Get Enough TED Talks

Peruse 12 of our favorite #FiveWordTEDTalks below.

1. Think it's this? It's THIS. #fivewordTEDTalks— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) February 26, 2013

2.Like Kickstarter but for Africa #FiveWordTedTalks— Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) February 26, 2013

3.How bad science solves everyt…
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You can access plenty of service online when learning to code: Codecademy, Skillshare, Treehouse, Code School, Learn Code The Hard Way, Udemy, General Assembly, Udacity and the list goes on. Some charge per class or by monthly membership, while others are free or accept donations.

But still, learning anything outside traditional education requires personal initiative. For many people, it will involve setting aside time outside of a regular day job in which you do something other than programming. But as our world is more and more influenced by what we're able to accomplish with code, being a maker of such programs gives a person an advantage in nearly any industry.

SEE ALSO: Non-Tech…
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Chuck Hagel is confirmed as America's new Secretary of Defense, but the road leading here was long. Here it is in 90 seconds.

SEE ALSO: Obama Defense Nominee Chuck Hagel Targeted by Smear Website

Homepage image courtesy NowThisNews

More About: barack obama, Department of Defense, US Government, US politics

Huawei, which was recently deemed the world's number three cell phone maker, by volume, is attempting to raise its profile with a global branding campaign themed, "Make It Possible."

The ad above is the first in the campaign, which does not feature any of the company's phones or devices. Instead, the ad might be mistaken for a series of self-help affirmations. The script:

They tell me the road ends here. But not my road. I define where my road will take me, where my journey ends. Sure, challenges await me. Obstacles will stand in my way. And moments of doubt will appear. But I will never stop believing. Magic can be created. Dreams can be made true. Through determination and pers…
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U2 frontman and global anti-poverty activist Bono says that "extreme poverty" -- that is, the number of people around the world living on less than $1.25 a day, counting inflation -- is "on a trend line to vanish" by 2028.

"This isn't Pollyanna-ish rockstar nonsense, it's real," Bono told a small gathering of press at TED 2013 in Long Beach.

During his TED talk Tuesday morning, Bono displayed a number of graphs of leading global poverty indicators -- including, most tellingly, child mortality -- that are all heading towards zero before 2030.

"Think about it," he said. "That's only three Rolling Stones farewell concerts away. There are so many benefits -- for one thing, you won't…
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Thirteen-year-old Kenyan Richard Turere faced a serious problem: Hungry lions were attacking his family's precious herd of cattle. So the enterprising boy came up with an ingenious, low-tech solution to keep them away.

SEE ALSO: Lions Captured in the Wild by 'BeetleCams'

Lions are a constant threat to farmers around Nairobi National Park in Kenya. Cattle were their preferred late-night snack. Turere, 11 years old at the time, was charged with protecting his family's cows, sheep and goats. He noticed that the lions stayed away when he moved around at night with a flashlight, CNN's Teo Kermeliotis reported.

A few weeks later Turere came up with a low-cost solution that came…
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More About: africa, Inventions, kenya, Kids, TED Talks

Many of us check our email constantly, but when it comes to snail mail, our inbox gets a little neglected. A company called Outbox is looking to change that, turning the traditional mail you receive in your mailbox into a digital format you can read anywhere.

Here's how it works: Once you sign up for Outbox, the company will visit your mailbox three times a week and collect your mail on your behalf. Once it gets your mail, it then sorts it, scans it, and sends you digital versions that you can access from a smartphone app or a website on your computer.

You can request the physical copy of mail you want. Outbox will then package it and deliver it back to your mailbox within two days.…
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Are flexible work arrangements a discretionary perk or the backbone of a modern company? How should productivity be measured? And how should it be balanced against less tangible priorities such as innovation and collaboration?

These are just some of the issues bubbling to the surface in the wake of news that struggling media company Yahoo is eliminating its work-from-home policy.

First reported Friday by All Things D, the leaked internal memo emphasized the spontaneous interactions between employees that occur in an office and that that all remote workers will be required to report to an office. The new policy has sparked a vociferous debate about the importance of telecommuting and w…
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More About: marissa mayer, productivity, telecommuting, Yahoo

Dell's "Annie"

Brand: Dell Agency: Y&R New York

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TED, the non-profit organization known for showcasing "ideas worth spreading" through its set of global conferences, announced the winners of its annual Ads Worth Spreading challenge Tuesday. The challenge highlights 10 advertisements that go beyond creativity by establishing meaningful connections with their audiences.

SEE ALSO: Why We Can't Get Enough TED Talks

The winners of this year's challenge include Dell, Coca-Cola, The Rainforest Alliance and Expedia. You'll most likely remember some of the videos, such as Dodge Ram's "The Farmer," which made waves during this year's Super Bowl, and Melbourne Metro Rail's adorable yet important animated ad, "Dumb Ways to Die."

In order to d…
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More About: Advertising, Business, features, Social Good, TED, Video

The man who coined the name "iMac" and created Apple's "Think Different" ad campaign believes Samsung is gaining momentum in the ad war against Apple.

"While you can still argue that Macs and i-devices have a ton of appeal, you can't argue that Apple is still untouchable when it comes to advertising," Ken Segall, a former creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day who worked with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs for more than a decade, wrote on his blog Monday. "The fact is, it is being touched — often and effectively — by none other than Samsung."

Samsung, as Segall points out in his post, spends significantly more on advertising than Apple and has proven to be quite successful at shaping t…
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In the late 1940s, the executive mansion was in a condemnable state. To save it, everything had to go.

More About: Archives, history, pics, President, the white house, US Government, Washington DC

Samsung will announce its next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S IV, next month on March 14. We know this because the company said so -- an act simultaneously like and unlike the approach by its chief mobile rival, Apple.

Apply typically doesn't say anything about what it's going to unveil, preferring instead to shroud its events with false mystery -- false because everyone always knows what Apple products are coming through rumors and leaks, even if they don't know the details. And Apple may tease (it did so with the iPhone 5, sending invites with a large "5" on them), but almost never pre-announces anything.

That's why Samsung giving the name of the product in advance isn't like Appl…
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More About: android, apple, Galaxy S IV, iPhone 5, samsung, Samsung Galaxy S IV

Federally-funded research and development could lose hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade if Congress fails to strike a deal avoiding the deep spending cuts scheduled to hit Friday as part of the budget sequester, according to a study.

The sequester deal calls for $1.2 trillion in federal cost cutting from 2013 - 2021. A slice of that sequestration pie -- $12.5 billion -- will come from cutting R&D spending by 8.7% in 2013 when compared to 2011 levels, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

ITIF went a step further by projecting the overall economic cost of the sequester's reduction in federally-funded research: somewhere between $203…
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Facebook is reportedly experimenting with a new way to determine if your friends need a gift: analyzing their status messages.

Facebook Gifts is built off of a service called Karma, which it acquired last year. Karma had a built-in language processor that would read through your friends' status updates and suggest you send a gift when it detected your friend had something to celebrate or needed a pick-me-up.

Facebook has already integrated the gift button for birthdays, so it makes sense that it would take advantage of some of Karma's other features and offer gifts for other important moments as well.

According to Inside Facebook, the social network has started rolling out gif…
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The 2013 Oscars saw an uptick of almost 200% on social media over last year, propelling the ceremony to the top of the weekly social charts with room to spare.

Viewers took to social media in droves, registering more than 14 million comments -- 13 million alone on the day of the awards show. Compare that with last year's Oscars (a measly 5 million mentions), or this week's second-most popular broadcast event, the Lakers-Mavericks game (1.5 million). This makes the Oscars the third-most social TV event of 2013, behind the Super Bowl (52 million mentions) and the Grammys (17 million).

SEE ALSO: Instagram Photos Capture Oscars' Intimate Moments

Sunday was apparently ladies' night on…
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More About: Entertainment, features, infographics, Oscars 2013, Social Media, social tv, social tv charts, Trendrr, TV