Police were called to calm Star Wars and Doctor Who fans at a science fiction convention in Norwich, UK, after the two groups got into a heated argument, the BBC reports

A Norfolk Police spokesman said the police responded to claims a man was assaulted at the convention, held at the University of East Anglia, organized by the Norwich Star Wars Club

The trouble started brewing after Doctor Who fans came to get autographs from two Doctor Who actors at the convention.

"After a lengthy investigation, talking to witnesses and reviewing good CCTV footage, it was confirmed that there was no assault," he said. Read more...

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You are your Facebook account. Public or private, its contents define you in a professional, commercial and social nature. Your photos are keepsakes, and personal messages can be confidential exchanges. Either way, it's an identity you want to protect.

But you probably aren't doing everything you can to secure your account. You can carry Facebook everywhere on your phone, but is it safe? Facebook Mobile leaves you more susceptible to attempted hijackings and identity theft

Here are five ways to make sure there's more than a phone case between you and a potential intruder Read more...

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Our rapidly changing universe has been perfecting itself for more than 13 billion years, and the proof is just above your head.

Sure, you learned about the Big Dipper as a kid, but can you name the other constellations or point out visible planets on a crystal-clear evening? We found eight astronomy apps that not only map out the stars, but also let you explore beyond our solar system and uncover facts you never knew about space

Download these stargazing apps, tilt your head back and watch the universe tell its story.

Homepage image courtesy of NASA/Babak Tafreshi Read more...

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It's official: Gran Turismo 6 will be arriving this holiday season, with the first demo becoming available this July

At an event held to celebrate 15 years of the popular racing series, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi revealed that 70 million copies of GT have been sold so far

"I'd like to announce today that we are developing GT 6 for the holiday season this year on the PlayStation 3" #GT6isComing #15YearsOfGT

— PlayStation Europe (@PlayStationEU) May 15, 2013

The next installment in the series will feature all the cars and tracks from Gran Turismo 5, as well as many new cars, bringing the total amount of cars available to a whopping 1,200 Read more...

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Mixing a perfect drink is usually left to skilled bartenders, but a new device and app combination may help regular folks become cocktail-creating experts in no time

After placing a glass on the Barman, a drink-mixing platform, users must pick the drink they want to make and select their drink size. The device then tells them what to pour, and when. Its "progress indicator" shows users how much of each component they have left to pour, and the drink glass changes from blue to red when they should stop pouring, according to the Barman's Kickstarter page

An accompanying app features hundreds of popular drinks, and can also store new recipes. Users can tweak a drink to their preference, and save the formula to their "personal drink library." Read more...

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In addition to all the announcements and new features Google has shown us at Google I/O, the company is also continuing its spring cleaning of features and products that don't perform. Next up on the chopping block is Google+ Games, which are going into early retirement

Google launched Games for Google+ in August 2011, offering titles from publishers such as Zynga and Rovio

"If you’re not interested in games, it’s easy to ignore them," Google said at the time. It seems that many people did just that, as the company is now shutting the service down, effective June 30

SEE ALSO: Everything You Need to Know About Google's Big Announcements Read more...

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Gmail unveiled what it calls "quick action" buttons on Wednesday, helping users respond to certain types of emails without ever having to open them.

In a blog post, Google product manager Shalini Agarwal says the buttons are meant to "tackle your digital to-dos as quickly as possible."

They show up next to specific messages in your inbox that can be addressed with little effort — for example, RSVPing to a party invitation or rating a restaurant.

What's more, Gmail is making it easier for travelers to quickly find essential information about their flights. Rather than having to scroll through long confirmation emails, basic flight info — including connection time and whether a plane is on-schedule — is displayed at the top of the inbox Read more...

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Hands up if you've ever been in this situation: You start a conversation with a friend or family member at your desk on Instant Messenger. Away from your desk, you send them a text. Later on, you decide it makes more sense to speak face-to-face on Skype

All of a sudden, you've got a balkanized conversation. And it's far, far worse if you're trying to involve multiple people. You quickly get to the point where you can't remember who said what to whom on what service on what device

Wouldn't it be easier if it was all unified — if there was one conversation app to rule them all, on PC, tablet and mobile? Where you could pick up the conversation whenever, no matter what the platform, no matter what the year? Read more...

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It's a problem everyone's encountered before: Just when we need to hunker down and focus the most — studying for an exam or completing a project, for example — our minds begin to float away, and our brains become mush.

A high-tech headband and mobile app aim to combat this problem by tracking and, in the process, helping users improve their focus by determining how it's affected by their environment

Called the Melon, the headband is a wireless brain-sensing device that uses EEG to measure brain activity. It detects a user's focus, and based on that data, provides personalized feedback on how to improve. Read more...

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Like Google Glass, but concerned that your activities might be too extreme for it to handle? Take a look at the Recon Jet, a Glass-like device aimed at the sports crowd. Not only is it made to be more durable, but the information shown in the head-mounted display is sports-related.

For example, when I donned the Jet at a hands-on (eyes-on?) at Google I/O 2013, the heads-up display — which is almost identical in size to the one on Glass — showed me statistics of my speed and altitude. Although company reps weren't specific about which sports the Jet is suited for, I can think of at least two that could use those stats: skydiving and skiing. Read more...

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Google unveiled a brand new look for Google Maps on Wednesday. Redesigned from the ground up, the new Maps can take you from space all the way inside a building, and everywhere in between.

The new Google Maps will be available for the general public starting Thursday morning (you can sign up to request an invite to try it out, here). Along with other I/O attendees I got access to the updated version of Maps on Wednesday, and took the service on a test drive.

A Whole New Look

You can tell there’s something a little different about Google Maps from the moment you visit the page. The map itself is full screen, with a number of small thumbnails at the bottom. Read more...

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If you've been keeping up with Google Glass, you've probably seen Steven Yau. He's the man in one of the most widely circulated press photos of Glass. Before the headset became a real object that people could touch, Yau's photo — which has him wearing both Glass and a big grin — was the lead image for many articles about Google Glass, including on Mashable.

Yau's photo is one of the most-often used for Glass, and it's easy to see why. His winning smile is emblematic of the unbridled enthusiasm that Google and its developer base has for Glass. And that enthusiasm happens to be genuine: Yau isn't a model — he's a programmer on the project. Read more...

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Traditional board games can still be fun, but really, who wants to read all of those instructions?

In this comic, Scott Johnson of ExtraLife shows us a very common experience: opening the box, reading the directions and ultimately resorting to electronic games. Has the same thing ever happened to you?

Comic illustration by ExtraLife. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

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Tax-season gripes regarding the Internal Revenue Service are about as American as baseball and apple pie. But we bet you've never expressed your frustration quite like NFL player Evan Mathis did on Wednesday

The Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman posted the photo you see below to Instagram. As one can't help but notice, he appears to be taking a leak on something that's obviously IRS property. Please take special note of the "audit this" caption

Image courtesy of Evan Mathis

Just what precisely Mathis is so pissed off about — other than just like, taxes in general, man — isn't quite clear. But one thing is obvious: He's not exactly having guilt pangs over the stunt: Read more...

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Golf pro Ben Crane decided to give his regular caddie the day off on Wednesday at the HP Byron Nelson Championship Pro-Am in Texas. So where'd he turn to find a replacement? Twitter, of course — and things seem to have turned out pretty well

Crane announced his plan — and a challenge — to his 100,000 followers in a series of tweets late Tuesday afternoon:

Thinking of giving my caddy @joelstock the day off tomorrow at the HP Byron Nelson Champ ProAm. Anyone want to carry my bag for the day?

— Ben Crane (@bencranegolf) May 14, 2013

If you're interested hit me back on Twitter w the reason why it should be you. Use #caddyforcrane. I'll try to pick the best good one.

— Ben Crane (@bencranegolf) May 14, 2013 Read more...

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A lawsuit filed in California accuses the Internal Revenue Service of illegal seizure of 60 million electronic health care records belonging to 10 million Americans.

The suit filed in the Superior Court of San Diego by Robert Barnes, a Malibu lawyer representing a corporate client named John Doe Co., charged that IRS agents raided the company on March 11, 2011, in a tax case and seized the medical records.

Barnes alleged in the suit — which was filed March 11, 2013, and surfaced Wednesday — that the “medical records contained intimate and private information of more than 10,000,000 Americans, information that by its nature includes information about treatment for any kind of medical concern, including psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual or drug treatment, and a wide range of medical matters covering the most intimate and private of concerns.” Read more...

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Not everyone is born with a parental sense of intuition. Being responsible for the needs of a living, breathing, pooping creature of any size isn't exactly a walk in the park — it's a flat-out chore

If you've ever neglected to feed the dog, left the window open while bird-sitting your best friend's parakeet or — heaven forbid — been responsible for a cat funeral, take a look below at alternative pet options

They vary in type — and maybe even "pet-ness" — but they all share one undoubtably important detail: a total lack of pulse and biological needs. So you can love them when you want, but also feel free to forget about them once in a while. (Or, if none of these options suit you, you can always throw a pair of googly eyes on a household object and call it Otis. Your choice.) Read more...

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The bar was set high for the annual Google I/O Developer's Conference in San Francisco following a whole series of product announcements and surprises in 2012, and although no one jumped out of a plane wearing Google Glass this year, we were treated to some cool new products.

The keynote was packed with announcements of enhancements to Google services. For example, Google Maps now shows clouds hovering over the world in real time and displays how Earth looks in the Milky Way as the sun sets. Google+ has 41 new features. The company announced impressive stats about the popularity of its applications, and there was even a rare Q&A session with Google CEO Larry Page. However, we didn't see a new Android tablet launch, an operating system update or more details surrounding Google Glass Read more...

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I’m still digesting Google’s 3.5 hour Google I/O 2013 keynote, but I can’t shake the notion that Google is now the world’s most powerful and important company.

I’m not saying that it has the world-beating products in every category. No, it’s more about the vast number of technologies and, mostly, data Google has at its fingertips and how, perhaps for the first time ever, it’s leveraging it all for an increasingly unified set of products and services.

There was no sky-diving moment, but I contend the 180-minute-plus presentation was no less momentous. Each time Google showed us a new product or service, it was leveraging all Google already knows about us and our world. Read more...

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Internal medicine and infectious disease specialist Isaac Bogoch and his colleagues turned an iPhone 4S into a fairly accurate microscope by attaching an eight dollar, three-millimeter ball lens to the smartphone's camera lens using double sided tape.

The DIY microscope was tested with 200 slides of stool samples from school children with different types of parasitic worms in Pemba Island, Tanzania. The slides were covered with cellophane strips and then placed up against the lens. A simple flashlight illuminated the slides from below. The doctors took photos of the samples and assessed them on the iPhone screen. Read more...

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Got an email this morning from a "Tobias Funke," the "analrapist" (that's analyst/therapist for the uninitiated) and dilettante extraordinaire of Arrested Development fame. Seems the good doctor, in anticipation of the show's Season 4 release on May 26, is really pushing his film career.

The video above is a demo reel for Funke's "Insert Me Anywhere" campaign, in which he wants fans to add his smiling visage to videos all over the Internet. Whether it's actually worth taking the time to check that out is up to you, but the promo clip is pretty funny, so check it out for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments Read more...

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Today, most online display ads are sold by the number of impressions or by click-throughs, metrics that favor sites that generate lots of pageviews, perhaps through short articles, sensationalized headlines or slideshows. What those metrics don't favor is long or engaging journalism — that is, truly interesting content that people spend a lot of time with.

Chartbeat, a real-time analytics platform for publishers, is out to change that. After helping publications like Time and The Wall Street Journal track how visitors are interacting with editorial content on their websites for the past few years, the company announced Wednesday a new product called Publishing for Ad Sales that extends those capabilities to ad units. Publishers can now see not only how many seconds visitors are spending with different parts of a page and at what point they tend to stop reading, but also how long advertisers' messages are in view. Read more...

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Google tacked another announcement onto a day full of them with an update to Google Wallet that lets you send money via Gmail.

As the video above explains there will be a dollar-sign icon for Gmail attachments. Click it and you can transfer cash via Google Wallet. The recipient doesn't have to have a Gmail address and you can receive money as well. You can also pay using your credit and debit cards for a fee of 2.9% per transaction (minimum $0.30.)

Google claims the transactions are encrypted and stored on secure servers. Transactions are also monitored to preempt fraudulent activity. Google Wallet Purchase Protection also covers 100% of "eligible unauthorized transactions." Read more...

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In 2008, the NBA's Seattle Supersonics left the Emerald City to become the Oklahoma City Thunder. They've since gone on to become one of the league's hottest young teams, powered by superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Seattle sports fans, meanwhile, have been left team-less, and many of them are still bitter over the move

You can count hit-making rapper Macklemore among the angry. Macklemore, a Seattle native, took to Twitter this week to express some beef over the Thunder using one of his songs as an in-arena pump-up jam. Oklahoma City's been playing his big single "Can't Hold Us" during its playoff run, and here's Macklemore's reaction: Read more...

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Remember that amazing/weird/hilarious/musical local auto ad that set the web on fire a couple weeks ago? The guys who made that, YouTube duo Rhett & Link, are back with a follow-up ad for another local L.A. business

This time it's the Ryan Lee Chiropractic Center that gets the duo's bizarre treatment. The super awkward spot, embedded above, features Dr. Lee earnestly addressing the camera while performing a series of wince-inducing adjustments on prone human models. At one point he even sticks his finger in a woman's mouth, but we're not quite sure what that's about

Anyway, take a look at Lee's ad — which has been viewed nearly 80,000 times in one day on YouTube — for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments. Read more...

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The planet-hunting days of NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,700 potential alien worlds to date, may be over.

The second of Kepler's four reaction wheels — devices that allow the observatory to maintain its position in space — has failed, NASA officials announced Wednesday.

If one or both of those failed wheels cannot be brought back, the telescope likely cannot lock onto target stars precisely enough to detect orbiting planets, scientists have said

Staring at Stars

The $600 million Kepler spacecraft spots exoplanets by flagging the tiny brightness dips caused when they pass in front of their host stars from the instrument's perspective. The mission's main goal is to determine how common Earth-like alien planets are throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Read more...

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There’s a lot that goes into making an exceptional cake. Sure, you can use the best ingredients, mix it perfectly, neatly put it into pans and pop it into your oven for the allotted time. But if you’re not paying close attention, you may not realize that your oven is cooking unevenly. The result? A woefully slanted cake, overbaked in some areas and underbaked in others.

First person sci-fi shooter Metro: Last Light is a slanted cake. While there is an intriguing concept and some flashes of great gameplay, a large portion of the game is wildly inconsistent — and practically nothing can be praised all the way through. Read more...

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So you think you're saving around $100 every month by cutting the cable cord. That may be true today, but streaming could get a lot more expensive as companies launch pay-per-view channels.

Last week, YouTube, the largest source for free video entertainment, unveiled its first paid channels. And a number of companies, whose owners believe their content is attractive enough to get people to pay for it, jumped on board, too. In less than a week, available channels climbed from 30 to more than 50, ranging in price from $0.99 to $9.99 per month (the latter a package that includes seven channels). Read more...

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Northrup Grumman's X-47B drone has made aviation history as the first autonomous aircraft to take off from an aircraft carrier at sea. Carrier takeoffs are among aviation's most complicated and dangerous operations and, until now, required a human pilot

The X-47B, however, shares a problem with the legendary Indiana Jones: It can't land — on carriers, at least. Tuesday's test flight began on the deck of the U.S.S George W. Bush and ended with a smooth arrival at a base in Maryland

If taking off from a carrier is one of the hardest maneuvers in aviation, then landing on one is probably the hardest. Carrier landings require Navy pilots to compensate for the movement of their aircraft, the ship's ever-moving deck, wind speed and wind direction to (hopefully) connect their aircraft's tailhook with one of several steel arresting wires. So it's no surprise the technique is still beyond drones' capabilities Read more...

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The best part about Minor League Baseball isn't necessarily the quaint stadiums or getting an up-close look at future MLB stars. It may just be the wild, mouth-watering and somewhat frightening roster of over-the-top ballpark snacks

To celebrate minor-league ball's major-league eats, MLB kicked off a social contest called #FoodFight on Wednesday morning. The contest selects 64 offerings from across the 160 minor league ballparks, and encourages fans to vote for their favorites via Twitter (using the hashtag #FoodFight and team or dish name) or MiLB.com. A national champ will be announced on June 6, while every voter is entered into a drawing to visit the winner's ballpark for an in-person taste Read more...

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