Cell-phone users are all too familiar with that sinking feeling you get when opening up an extravagant bill.

Hidden fees and additional charges can rack up, especially when you're not keeping track of expenses. But now, wireless customers have a solution to "bill shock." Back in 2011, major U.S. wireless service providers agreed to send free alerts to subscribers whenever they incur roaming fees, as well as when they approach or exceed limits on voice, data and text usage, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The alerts, which apply to current and future mobile-phone plans as of Oct. 17, 2011, aim to help subscribers avoid unexpected charges, and better monitor use of their phones. Check out the video, above, for more details. Read more...

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You may want to be Facebook friends with your doctor, so you can ping him or her a quick question or maybe an image of a bug bite for an online diagnosis. But the question being asked by the medical community is, should your doctor be Facebook friends with you?

The American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Federation of State Medical Boards issued a policy statement in the Annals of Internal Medicine addressing best practices for physicians in the digital environment

As more doctors are using social media in both their personal and professional lives — and more patients want information in a digital minute — there hasn't been formal guidelines for how this online relationship should proceed, until now Read more...

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Citizen, a mobile tech company in Portland, Ore., has taken its health and wellness programs in an interesting direction. The company encourages its employees to submit health and fitness data such as what they eat, how much they exercise and how many hours of sleep they get

The employees upload their results to a central server as part of a wellness program to determine whether healthy employees are indeed happier or more productive.

The system, called C3PO (Citizen Evolutionary Process Organism), takes a cue from the quantified self movement, which is basically self-tracking your well-being with statistics. Read more...

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As the tragic events of this week unfolded, many of us across the country sat glued to our TVs, news sites and Twitter feeds hungrily searching for updates about the Boston Marathon bombing, or the Waco, Texas explosion. In times like these, we are all forced to reexamine our priorities and come together as a nation.

If you want a quick update of the news in the tech and social media spaces, we've gathered the most newsworthy announcements and changes for you here. Read on for details about Facebook's new Chat Heads for iPhone and some new apps to help make your life easier

So sit back, relax, and enjoy this week's digital media download Read more...

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Oh, cats. Is there anything they won't lick? Apparently not, as this video — starring an unnamed Russian kitty — demonstrates

Evidently lured in by something tasty on the edge of a powered-on vacuum cleaner hose, this fearless feline gets a surprise when the hose attaches itself to its face — and decides he wants more of that. In the end, the cat looks more like a college student with a dorm-room bong

Remember, folks (and pets), don't try this at home

Posted on Thursday, this clip has already racked up an impressive 2.2 million views on YouTube — which means it's got a shot at getting into the pantheon of all-time most-watched cat videos. Read more...

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It was another exciting week in tech. And if you missed it, worry not — that's why we're here with Top 10 Tech

In a week with few product announcements, the biggest was perhaps the long-awaited Twitter Music launch. Surprisingly, in an online world full of music services, this one still stands out, earning our vaunted Mashable Choice. Speaking of music, there's now an app that allows you to touch and pluck strings simply by waving your hands in mid-air.

In Japan, meanwhile, Sony announced the deployment of what will be the fastest home broadband service in the world, running a speed of 2 GBps Read more...

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Chona Kasinger is a freelance photographer and writer based in Seattle. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, MTV Hive, Marie Claire and The Huffington Post. View her website at chonakasinger.com.

Animals Talking in All Caps is exactly what it sounds like: photos of animals paired with tongue-in-cheek dialogue. Capitalizing on the virality of Tumblr, Justin Valmassoi, runs ATIAC for its audience of well over 100,000 followers.

Occasionally relatable and always witty, ATIAC appeals to both animal lovers and Tumblr users in search of a hearty chuckle. Essentially more refined versions of the Lolcat meme, Valmassoi’s posts often mock societal norms. Sheer silliness and carefully curated photos has proved a winning combination, earning him both a small army of fans and book deal. Read more...

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Forget haptic feedback. When combined, two pieces of virtual-reality tech offer an immersive gaming experience that puts you in the middle of the action

Texas-based startup Virtuix posted a YouTube video Thursday that demonstrates Omni, its treadmill-like "natural motion interface for virtual reality applications" that enables a user's in-game avatar to mimic his or her real-life movements. The video shows it being used along with the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset

The result? Rather than sitting on the couch and clicking buttons on a controller, users must physically run and blast enemies with a gaming gun while playing, for example, a first-person shooter. They can walk, run, jump, step sideways and crouch (by bending over) in any direction on Omni's circular treadmill. Check out the video, above, to see the immersive action. Read more...

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We’d have really slow moving Disney films, but those princesses would be 10 times cuter

"A Facebook conversation occurred...I needed a break from finals...and this happened,” writes Phillip Light of this unique art pairing

Check out what Snow White and Belle would look like as sloths. Who's your favorite sloth-princess? Tell us in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Tumblr, philliplight Read more...

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

This week we found an app that helps you voice your opinion about different topics, and another that will help you get where you're trying to go.

Yahoo launched two new and exciting apps, and Twitter finally launched its rumored music service.

Check out the gallery above for a look at this week's highlights.

Still looking for more? See last week's Apps You Don't Want To Miss for more great software worth a look Read more...

More about Iphone, Android, App, Tech, and Apps Software

The New York Knicks have launched an Instagram-specific microsite to collect fan photos from Madison Square Garden and around the world during the team's 2013 playoff run

Found at Knickstagram.com, the site will aggregate and post all Instagram fan photos that include the #Knicks and #KnicksTape hashtags, which are popular among fans of the team. The photos will also be displayed on a digital map letting fans see where others are posting from in New York City's five boroughs and beyond

Additionally, Madison Square Garden's in-house videoboards will show #KicksTape-tagged photos during breaks in the action at home games Read more...

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Film projects on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter have raised $127 million in pledges since April 2009, Kickstarter's Stephanie Pereira announced onstage at TFI Interactive. The $127 million figure has now increased to $128 million on Kickstarter's live stats page

More than 1 million people have pledged money to help fund one of 9,700 independent films, features, documentaries, shorts, web series or other video projects, said Pereira, director of art programs at Kickstarter, on Saturday at the Tribeca Film Institute event in New York

Several of the finished projects have earned accolades at awards shows, praise at film festivals and airtime on such networks as HBO, PBS and Showtime Read more...

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Who's got the time and money for dance clubs when you can keep the party at home with FlashFlow?

A Kickstarter project is currently raising funds for FlashFlow, a gadget that syncs your lights — lamps, string lights or whatever else you've got — to your music playlists. According to its creator, the device listens to whichever song is playing and reprograms itself in real-time to flash the lights it's connected to based on the volume, tempo and frequency of the audio

The gadget, pictured below, has outlets and jacks on both sides to connect your lights with your music device, and can power up to 150 40-watt light bulbs. It also syncs to video game audio — in the project's Kickstarter video, Call of Duty is played as the lights in the room flicker on and off with each explosion and gun shot Read more...

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It wasn't so long ago, really, that Twitter became the go-to platform for sports stars looking to connect and interact with fans in new ways. Opinions, news, photos — athletes could share their lives with fans as never before

That's still the case, but a comparison of photos posted by some of the sports world's biggest names reveals that onetime Twitter ally Instagram now dominates in photo-sharing engagement

It sounds logical, given that Instagram is a photo-specific platform — and may have something to do with side effects of the two companies' increasingly hostile relationship. But a look at the data gives insight into the ever-evolving world of social media for big names Read more...

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Massachusetts State Police released five images taken of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's hiding spot after he was discovered in a boat parked in a Watertown, Mass. backyard. The boat's owner was the first to find Tsnarnaev in the boat, calling police to report his discovery shortly thereafter.

The first three images were taken using thermal cameras, which are designed to pick up the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Such technology is often used by police to locate suspects and by the military to isolate targets, as human body heat is particularly recognizable when juxtaposed with objects that aren't giving off nearly the same amount of heat. Read more...

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Antares, a new American rocket designed to fly cargo missions to the International Space Station for NASA, is poised to make its launch debut from the U.S. East Coast today (April 20) after a three-day delay.

The private Antares rocket, built by the commercial spaceflight company Orbital Sciences Corp., is set to launch from a new seaside pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va.. The critical test flight has been delayed since Wednesday (April 17). Liftoff is set for 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT).

You can watch the Antares rocket launch live on SPACE.com beginning 4:30 p.m. ET (2030 GMT), courtesy of a NASA TV webcast. Weather permitting, the rocket's ascent toward space may even be visible from a wide swath of the U.S. East Coast from Portland, Maine, to Charleston, S.C., according to an Orbital visibility map Read more...

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Everyone sees the world differently

While the countless photos of historic landmarks may seem redundant, they represent something more to travelers: an experience. And sometimes the most exceptional photos of the world are the most unexpected.

For this week's Mashable Photo Challenge Guest Series, we're asking for your most memorable photos from far, far away. These could be shots you snapped while on a globetrotting vacation or a brief road trip across your state or province. Send us your picture by following the steps below and be sure to let us know where it was taken. Our guest curator will pick some of the most inspired submissions to feature on Mashable Read more...

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“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I heard those words early in my journalism career. Reporters are trained to verify information they receive by confirming with a trusted source, but the media landscape has changed, even since I first heard that adage.

With social networks like Facebook and Twitter, news flows faster than ever. And the news is no longer centrally controlled, making it potentially less trustworthy. Reporters have more access to information through social media, but it’s no longer just journalists delivering that information. The power of information-sharing now rests in the hands of everyday people — that means you. Read more...

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This map, created by a Syracuse University professor and student, shows approximately 200 tweets sent from the scene of the Boston Marathon with the #BostonMarathon hashtag during the hours immediately following Monday's bombing.

Andrew Bauer, a student working on the project with Professsor Anthony Rotolo of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, told Mashable his team collected more than 500,000 tweets with the hashtag, then whittled down the number to those geotagged in the Boston area

The project is part of the school's New Explorations in Information and Science, or Nexis, a lab dedicated to data analysis and other Internet research. Read more...

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As with humans, some cats just have "it" — that mysterious quality that somehow sets them far apart from lesser kitties

We have found 10 such kitties that are almost certainly more awesome than the average mog

Take a look through our photogenic pool of cool cats in the image gallery above. If you think your cat can compete with this classy collection, link us to a pic in the comments section below

Image courtesy of Flickr, Pete Coleman Read more...

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What do Dove soap, Korean pop star Psy, and BASE jumping all have in common?

They all scored viral video hits this week and were the subject of some of our most-discussed stories.

In this week's Top Comments, readers debate the motives behind the viral video ad that Dove released on YouTube this past Monday

In the video, a former forensic artist for the San Jose, California police department sketches two portraits of women without knowing what they look like. The first sketch he creates based on how the women describe their own features

The second, based on someone else's description. The results are extremely powerful, and the video spread like wildfire across Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon Read more...

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Suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might have a social media presence on Russian site Vkontakte and on Twitter, but finding him on Facebook is harder than you might think.

It's become a trend that pages in support of criminals show up on Facebook within days. That was the case with Christopher Dorner, the former Los Angeles police officer who went on a killing spree in February 2013, and with Aurora, Colo. shooter James Holmes.

You can add Tsarnaev to that list, though it appears that Facebook is making it difficult for its users to look him up.

A Facebook search of the suspect's name did not yield any profiles, pages, or groups. By entering Facebook URLs that included the name "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev," we found a fan page with 43 likes that actively mocks the authorities for their inability to catch him, as evidenced by the banner image seen below. Read more...

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After Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston bombing case taken into custody last night, was discovered in a boat parked in a Watertown, Mass. backyard by its owner Friday, police enlisted the help of a robot to safely remove the tarp from the boat. While authorities did not specify exactly which robot was used to pull said tarp, Mashable has identified at least one robot that was on the scene

In this photo, taken by an eyewitness near the house where Tsarnaev was hiding from police, a robot appears to be investigating a car authorities deemed suspicious. The car matches the description of a Honda which authorities were searching for Friday, but that alert was later canceled Read more...

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Kristina Anderson was shot twice in the back and once in the foot on April 16, 2007, when a gunman massacred 11 members of her Virginia Tech French class. Thankful to have made a complete physical recovery since age 19, Anderson has since dedicated herself to starting a non-profit that promotes campus safety and speaking around the country about her experience.

"In the past year and a half, I've become more outspoken about what happened and the importance of campus safety," Anderson tells Mashable. "I didnt think more shootings would keep happening, but as they have I've become more involved." Read more...

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Ever wonder why you procrastinate, even when you know you have to finish something important? Well, there may just be a magical reason behind it all.

In this comic, Josh Mecouch of Formal Sweatpants introduces us to Trolley, the procrastination troll. This explains everything.

Comic illustration by Josh Mecouch, Formal Sweatpants. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

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Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) posted a statement to Facebook Saturday morning urging the Obama administration to consider labeling Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston bombings who was apprehended alive Friday night, an enemy combatant. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) joined Graham's statement.

Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11 of last year.

Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11 of last year. Declaring him an enemy combatant would allow the government to interrogate him for intelligence beyond the degree allowed under normal circumstances. It would also move his case out of the domestic American legal justice system and most likely into a military tribunal. Read more...

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The Pentagon has for the first time detailed $30 million in spending on Air Force cyberattack operations and significant new Army funding and staff needs for exploiting opponent computers.

Since 2011, top military brass have acknowledged the United States has the capability to hack back if threatened by adversaries in cyberspace. Now, the Defense Department is providing lawmakers and taxpayers with evidence of network assault programs to sustain funding, budget analysts say.

The Air Force in fiscal 2014 expects to spend $19.7 million on "offensive cyber operations," including research and development, operations, and training, according to budget documents circulated this week. Read more...

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A 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck a rural area of southwestern China Saturday, claiming at least 100 lives and injuring approximately 2,000. The earthquake also happened to interrupt the marriage ceremony of a Chinese journalist, who got right to work reporting from the scene — still donned in her wedding dress and veil.

The reporter has been identified by the South Morning China Post as Chen Ying, an anchorwoman at a local news network. The footage has since gone viral on Chinese social media service Weibo, where users are praising her "professional spirit," according to the Post.

Many of those affected by the earthquake, news networks and official government agencies have also turned to Weibo to share news and photographs of the event and its aftermath: Read more...

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Alan Carniol is the Founder of InterviewSuccessFormula.com and author of Top 10 Interview Questions You Must Know How to Answer, a free report available here. Follow Alan and Interview Success Formula on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Job seekers, listen up! Your interview doesn't begin when an employer calls you. It doesn't begin when you walk into an office. And it certainly doesn't begin after you've done all the talking

It likely begins before you even know it, through a simple online search to check out your presence. Essentially, you’re being “interviewed” online through your social networks — before the background check, before the phone call and before you have any sort of conversation with a potential employer Read more...

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