Ever wish you could look into a crystal ball and know what a mobile app will be worth in the future?

Mobile app Marketplace Apptopia thinks it has discovered the secret formula, and in the process created the perfect brokering company for the sale and acquisition of mobile apps.

Launched a year ago, the company announced Wednesday that it’s reached over $1 million in sales over the course of year, $850,000 of which have been paid out to developers.

Now the company is relaunching its website with a shift toward a more investment/ROI-focused model, specifically how an app’s current activity in terms of downloads, reviews, and ratings can be monetized to make a return. Read more...

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On April 3, 1973 — exactly 40 years from today — Motorola employee Marty Cooper made the first mobile phone call

Marty used a Motorola DynaTAC to call Bell Labs (then a division of AT&T), reportedly saying "I'm ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end."

The device that Marty used to place the call was a prototype which would later become the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x. It was the first commercially available mobile phone, and despite its meager specs for today's standards — it weighed 2.5 pounds and only had a one-line, text-only LED display — it cost a whopping $3,995

The DynaTAC phone can be seen in action in several Hollywood films, including "Wall Street," where Gordon Gekko uses it to place a call from the beach, and "American Psycho," with Patrick Bateman using it to place a fake dinner reservation call Read more...

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Last week, the Daily Dot and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture explored the detrimental effects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) on artists, creators, teachers, fans and other participants of online media

Hard on the heels of that discussion, Slate draws attention to another chilling effect of the restrictive U.S. copyright law: abiding by the DMCA could be actively harming your computer.

Let's say the CD you just bought has interactive computer content. You put it in your computer, the software installs... and you suddenly have a computer full of security flaws and invisible malware. Read more...

More about Research, Dmca, Copyright, Apps Software, and Dev Design

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And Baidu, a Chinese-language search engine, has taken the phrase to heart, producing Google Glass-like eyewear

"Baidu Eye," is the internal code name for a wearable device that features speech recognition for Mandarin, as well as image search, which pulls up relevant information based on a photo. Baidu's director of international communications, Kaiser Kuo, confirmed its existence to Mashable Wednesday, after several reports about Eye emerged on Chinese tech sites over the last few days.

While Kuo said Eye is a different product from Glass in terms of functionality, he admitted it's similar in that the device is also an "ocular wearable interface." For its part, Glass is a pair of augmented-reality glasses that includes a heads-up display, works through voice command and can take pictures. Read more...

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Although online readers sometimes complain that printed news is yesterday's news, there's something nice about the holistic view a daily paper casts on the last 24 hours of events — a view Financial Times readers say they want alongside the live-updating experience offered by the FT.com and its apps for mobile and tablet devices.

Come Wednesday, that's exactly what readers of the FT's web app will get. An update to the iPad version of the app now allows readers to toggle between two modes, "Live" and "Morning," via a bottom navigation bar. The former mirrors the frequently updated arrangement of the website; the latter, the static structure of the morning paper. Read more...

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Google plans to launch a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet in July 2013, Reuters reported, citing sources with knowledge of the new product.

The new Nexus 7 will be built by Asustek. It will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and have a thinner bezel, as well as a higher screen resolution, sources said

The original Nexus 7, also built by Asustek, was powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor; it had a screen resolution of 1280x800 pixels

Google reportedly plans to ship up to 8 million units of the new Nexus 7 in the second half of 2013. Its main competitors would be Amazon's Kindle Fire and Apple's iPad mini Read more...

More about Google, Tech, Gadgets, and Nexus 7

During an invite-only developer event Tuesday, Twitter Cards unveiled several updates, adding the ability to share even more information on Twitter within a single tweet.

Currently used by over 10,000 developers, the update adds mobile app deep-linking in Cards, which allows users to tap a link on Twitter to view content directly within an app if they have it installed. If they don't have the app, however, they’ll be prompted to download it after clicking on the link

Twitter also added three new types of Cards: App, Product and Gallery.

• App Cards will show information about an app — specifically its name, icon, price and rating — directly from the App Store or Google Play.

• Product Cards will show an image and its description, along with two other fields that can be customized, such as price or rating information, depending on a particular developer’s needs.

• Gallery Cards will show an album or collection of photographs through a preview of the photo gallery.

For developers, Twitter has revamped how Cards are created and delivered to make it easier to add new types of Cards in the future. If you’re a developer who has already integrated Cards, the old system will continue to work even though Twitter has debuted new Cards. Read more...

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You may not have heard of Sanook, but by Internet standards, the company is a grizzled veteran in Thailand, founded by Poramate Minsiri in 1998. Over the years it has expanded to offer a number of services and products, including e-commerce, games, news content, advertising and mobile applications. Today, it is the largest web portal in Thailand.

The company's e-commerce arm includes Dealfish, a C2C e-commerce marketplace and Sabuy and B2B2C e-commerce site. This division is led by managing director Tiwa York. The Internet portal section and other divisions like mobile, games and advertising are led by Krittee Manoleehagul, the managing director at Sanook Online Limited. Read more...

More about Thailand, Asia, Web Portal, Tech, and Dev Design

Three days ago, Kevin Ware snapped his right leg in half. Today, he's able to walk with crutches, and inspires his exponentially growing number of Twitter followers with a heroic showing of optimism and resilience

Ware, a guard for the Louisville Cardinals, suffered his gruesome injury during the team's win over Duke on Sunday to gain a berth in the Final Four. He jumped to contest a jumpshot in the first half, then collapsed in a heap in front of the Louisville bench. His right tibia jutted out of his skin, as his ankle and foot hung lifelessly from the snapped bone. Teammates, coaches, opponents, media and fans alike reacted in abject horror, some bursting into tears as Ware was carted off the court. Many consider it the most horrifying sports injury ever seen on live TV Read more...

More about College Sports, March Madness, Entertainment, and Sports

Hadouken hasn't even had its full 15 minutes of Internet fame, and another meme is already moving in. Enter: Vadering

It features one person using the Force Grip on a hapless victim, who appears to float in mid-air while choking. Classic Darth Vader

The photo meme has taken over the interwebs, gaining steam on Reddit and Twitter — including a mention on one notable account:

Planking is so last year. Try #vadering. RT @broccoli_robb7m: Newest craze!! twitter.com/Broccoli_Robb/…

— Star Wars (@starwars) April 1, 2013

Check out the gallery, above, for more Vadering photos

Which meme will reign supreme in 2013 — Vadering, Hadouken or something else? Give us your take in the comments, below Read more...

More about Photo, Meme, Star Wars, Gallery, and Watercooler

If you needed any more confirmation that online streaming is the future of live sporting events, we've got some pretty impressive stats to show you from March Madness

Through the NCAA Tournament's first two weekends, streaming stats through the official March Madness Live service in 2013 have obliterated last year's numbers

The tournament has totaled 45 million video streams so far this year, according to Turner Sports, which carries March Madness and sponsors the app. That's a 158% increase over last year's numbers at this point in the 2012 tournament. A record 12.6 million hours of live-streaming video have been watched so far this year, for a 201% increase over this point last year Read more...

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The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Goldbely

One-Liner Pitch: Goldbely delivers iconic regional dishes to your doorstep.

Why It's Taking Off: The craftmanship that goes into creating amazing dishes can't be copied, but Goldbely helps you find great foods from across the country and have them delivered to your front door.

When foodies travel, the itinerary is often designed around meals. In Chicago, there's deep dish pizza on the schedule, and in San Francisco, it's clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. Read more...

More about Startups, Y Combinator, Business, The Launchpad, and Edit Thelaunchpad

Our computers rarely run as fast as we want or expect them to. Whether you're a Mac or Windows user, it's maddening to sit in front of a taunting hourglass or spinning circle of death, especially when you have work to do

In the spirit of spring cleaning, we invite you to clean the dust bunnies out of your PC (literally and digitally). Here are five easy ways to get started

1. Organize Everything

Your computing experience could seem slow if you spend eons clicking through endless subfolders or waiting for search to retrieve files. The first step toward a smooth-running PC is to remove human error Read more...

More about Video, Features, Tech, Mac, and Pc

Taylor Swift makes 22 look pretty irresistible in her latest music video. Everyone wears cat ears, makes fun of their exes and eats breakfast at midnight. They are happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time

It sounds kinda stressful, but this parody of the song from fuse makes 22 seem like a flippin' party compared to 32 — that's when all those emotions from your twenties turns into alcoholism

All that socializing a decade prior has made you want to don your sweatpants and go into hiding. It's an age when acne mixes with wrinkles, and you're broke from spending all your money on hipster sunglasses in your twenties Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Taylor Swift, Parodies, Share As Post, and Watercooler

A good book can move you, enlighten you and bring you all kinds of joy. It's only natural to want more, but it can it get overwhelming taking in all those stray books

In this comic, Grant Snider of Incidental Comics illustrates the ups and downs of "adopting" literature. Do you have more books than you can handle, or do you welcome bookcase-lined walls?

Snider's comics are available as prints through his poster shop.

Comic illustration by Grant Snider, Incidental Comics. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

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Many fitness trackers count steps or monitor your sleep, but few interpret how much hangtime you catch on a motocross jumpLIT, an activity tracker from NZN Labs, measures movements from action sports while encouraging social sharing and competition

While LIT monitors everyday activities like running or walking, it's optimized for action. Skiing down a mountain slope or extended air time translates into points, which are wirelessly fed to an app on your smartphone or tablet

"We want to do with activity monitors what GoPro did with digital cameras," says product and brand design founder Ricardo Camargo Read more...

More about Fitness, Lifestyle, Health Fitness, Sports, and Health And Fitness

Video surfaced on Tuesday of Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice shoving players, throwing balls at them from point-blank range and denigrating them with gay slurs during practices this season

Originally aired on the ESPN show Outside the Lines and later shared widely online, the disturbing footage triggered a deluge of outrage among fans, basketball players and even non-sports nuts on Twitter.

Here's the video:

You can count world's best basketball player, LeBron James, among the outraged. Here's a tweet James posted on Tuesday afternoon:

If my son played for Rutgers or a coach like that he would have some real explaining to do and I'm still gone whoop on him afterwards! C'mon

— LeBron James (@KingJames) April 2, 2013 Read more...

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Hey, bosses who block employees from using social media at work: You're doing it wrong

That's one conclusion that can be drawn from new data on the workplace by Evolv, a startup that monitors hundreds of metrics from Fortune 500 companies

Not only has Evolv determined that hourly employees who use social networks are more productive in general, but it seems the more social networks you use, the more productive you are

Hourly employees who regularly used up to four social networks — such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn — made more sales or handled customer service calls faster than those who weren't on any social networks Read more...

More about Social Networks, Workplace, Social Media, and Work Play

Scotland's first satellite will soon find a home in orbit around the Earth — a forerunner of things to come under a collaborative, national nanosatellite program in the United Kingdom

Dubbed UKube-1, the small, novel CubeSat spacecraft has been constructed by Clyde Space in Glasgow and is completing final testing for launch later this year onboard a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The advanced UKube-1 nanosatellite has been designed and manufactured by Clyde Space at their high-tech facility at the West of Scotland Science Park.

The petite but powerful spacecraft is chock full of payloads that include the first GPS device aimed at measuring space weather in Earth's plasmasphere — the inner-most layer of the planet's magnetosphere. The satellite also comes equipped with a camera that will take pictures of the Earth from space and test the effect of radiation on space hardware using a new generation of imaging sensor and an experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of using cosmic radiation to improve the security of communications satellites and to flight test lower cost electronic systems. Read more...

More about Space, Scotland, Us World, and World

If you are a Tibetan activist, it looks more and more like you probably shouldn't use Android phones. Last week, Kaspersky Labs uncovered the first Trojan virus targeting Tibetan and Uyghur activists. On Monday, another report points to state-sponsored Chinese hackers spying on Tibetans using a compromised version of a mobile messaging app and probably some help from the Chinese government.

According to a report by cybersecurity researchers at Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Tibetan activists are the target of an attack that steals the victim's contacts and messages as well as tracks his or her location. The modus operandi of the attack is strikingly similar to the one uncovered last week, although at the technical level at least, the two attacks can't be linked, the researchers said. Read more...

More about Security, Android, Malware, Hackers, and Cybersecurity

You woke up Easter morning with a basket full of Peeps again this year, didn't you? You told Aunt Gertrude you hated them but, regardless, there they were, hatched and ready to be eaten

Your only choice? Execution by firing squad. Line those pastel bunny-bird things up and let this guy with a .50-caliber rifle have a go

It's a messy, gooey death, but it must be done. Or, if watching this is too violent for you, remember that you can still save all those Peeps. Their lives are in your hands

This guy also shoots at Cadbury Eggs, but we curse him for wasting so much chocolate Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Strip Tease, Easter, Slow Motion, and Share As Post

If touchscreen QWERTY drives you nuts and you prefer writing notes by hand, you don't always have to carry around that little Moleskine. Instead, a popular app makes it easier to take notes on your iOS device with the convenience of your own hand.

While it's similar to other note apps out there, Use Your Handwriting GOLD lets you take advantage of your iPhone or iPad screen's real estate as you write with your fingers. The app allows writing in landscape orientation and has the option to auto-scroll as you reach the end of the note, as shown in the video above.

More about Apps, Task List, Note Taking, Notetaking, and Note Taking Apps

Welcome to the McDonald's All American Game, where high school kids become worldwide Twitter trends, burgers are the last thing on anyone's mind and sports fans across the country get an early look at tomorrow's NBA stars

Now, we're not saying Andrew Wiggins or Aaron Gordon would beat the NBA's Terrence Ross in a dunk contest — we're just saying they might. Ross won this year's NBA dunk contest by jumping over the son of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, but that was nothing compared to the show McDonald's All Americans Wiggins and Gordon — a pair of high school seniors — put on in Monday night's pre-game dunk contest Read more...

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Almost as quickly as the third season of Game of Thrones premiered, HBO renewed the hit for a fourth season. Judging by the number of submissions our Game of Thrones meme contest received last week, we can't say we're surprised that the fans want more.

Last week, we asked fans to send us their best Thrones memes using the hashtag #GOTMeme. We received many submissions and, from those, we selected 10 of the most on-point memes. The contest winners are receiving a hand engraved Game of Thrones chest containing the show's first two seasons on Blu-Ray DVD. Check out the winning entries, but proceed with caution: Some of these memes contain spoilers for the events of seasons one and two Read more...

More about Community, Memes, Entertainment, Tv, and Game Of Thrones

Apple reportedly plans on starting production on its newest iPhone this quarter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the phone will look and feel similar to Apple’s iPhone 5, with small spec bumps under the hood. The Journal also claims Apple is working on a lower-cost iPhone, made of a different — perhaps colored — material than the current iPhone.

WSJ sources claim that the next phone will launch this summer. The iPhone 5 launched in September of 2012, which would put the next phone’s launch right around the one-year mark for that device.

On Monday, the San Francisco Examiner reported that the next two iPhones released by Apple were developed under the guidance of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Read more...

More about Iphone, Apple, Ios, Tech, and Mobile

Who would you invite to your dream poker game?

If you're a gamer and a geek, your picks for this list probably include some fictional characters. Luckily, some of them might appear in Telltale's upcoming Poker Night 2, announced Monday.

In Poker Night 2, you join a poker game with Claptrap, the sassy robot from Borderlands 2, Ash Williams from horror film Army of Darkness, Brock Samson, the infamous bodyguard from Venture Brothers, and "freelance police" canine Sam from the Sam and Max point-and-click games and comics

The whole game is dealt by GLaDOS, the murderous villain robot of Portal and Portal 2. All the licensed characters have a lot of recorded dialogue as you play and, judging from the original game, it will probably be pretty funny. Read more...

More about Gaming, Entertainment, Borderlands 2, and Youtube Video Lead

After teasing a major announcement Tuesday, electric carmaker Tesla revealed its first leasing arrangement for its top-of-the-range Model S sedan. The company claims the cost amounts to a payment of $500 a month.

But as anyone who's spent a lot of time negotiating at car dealerships knows, you have to look at the fine print to find out what's really going on

The real lease payment is actually $1,200 a month, assuming you get a 2.95% APR (which seems a little low to us). Tesla was factoring in tax incentives, assuming you drive for business, and overestimating the price of gas. But that's not all Read more...

More about Elon Musk, Tesla, Tesla Model S, and Tech

Most of us have experienced Star Wars (if you haven't, then stop reading this and get on that), but here's a whole new take on the epic galatic tale

Bored Shorts TV asked kids to retell the crucial, and intense, scene from the film when the Rebel Alliance escapes from the Death Star. Then they had adults dress up and act it all out with the revised lines. Needless to say, the kids' version isn't the most eloquent version of events, but it really gets straight to the point

In this rendition, Leia is a whiny spoiled brat, Han Solo is a worry wort who keeps proclaiming that "we all die" and no one lets Luke fly anything. And Chewbacca sounds like a dog. Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Star Wars, Cute Kids, Film, and Share As Post

Today's life lesson: YOLO will seriously screw up your life.

A Texas teenager learned that lesson recently when he was dealt a four-day suspension for scribbling the acronym on a state-required standardized test. Arlington High School junior Kyron Birdine snapped a photo of the cheeky essay answer and tweeted the image to the Texas Education Agency and the Arlington school district

According to WFAA, Birdine defended the YOLOing, saying: "It wasn't for a grade. Colleges don't see it. It didn't benefit my personal life at all."

Read more...

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Trending topics hit Twitter every day. One of today's trending topics, #GBSB, is less on the digital side of things and more so — well, domestic

The Great Britain Sewing Bee, or #GBSB, is a four-part reality sewing competition that premiered on BBC 2 Tuesday night. The show aims to find some of the United Kingdom's most talented stitchers through timed competitions

The Women's Institute, where the show's co-host May Martin works as a tutor, tweeted the hashtag earlier Tuesday

Don’t miss the first episode of Great British Sewing Bee on BBC2 at 8pm, with WI tutor May Martin as a judge #GBSB tinyurl.com/cdgplgg

— Women's Institute (@WomensInstitute) April 2, 2013 Read more...

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