Samsung Galaxy S 4 is on track to pass 10 million in sales next week, which would make it the fastest-selling Galaxy S device in history

The not-very-precise figure comes from Samsung CEO J.K. Shin, who told it to reporters in South Korea

“We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3,” said Shin

According to Shin, the S 4 is on track to become Samsung's "first 10 million seller device less than a month after its official debut

For comparison, it took 5 months for Samsung to sell 30 million Galaxy S III devices. On March 14, a little over a year since the device was launched, Samsung announced it has sold 50 million S III devices Read more...

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It's hard to believe how long we've been instant messaging. The formerly ubiquitous AIM launched in 1997, and you've probably used a handful of services since registering your first screen name

For many of us, Google Talk, more affectionately known as "Gchat" has become the standard — especially if both your work and personal email accounts are on Gmail. While Gmail has its perks, such as the ability to search for conversations among your archives, having your chat windows stuck to your inbox can be quite distracting.

We rounded up seven instant messaging clients you can use instead of Gchat, each with its respective perks. Many of these clients will merge your buddy lists from other chatting services, including ones you probably haven't used in a few years (does anyone still use MSN Messenger?). Read more...

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Solar energy sounds like a dream, but buying and installing the equipment necessary to harness the power of the Sun can be expensive. But what if you could print your own solar panels?

The researchers at Australia's Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) — a collaboration between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the University of Melbourne, Monash University and industry partners — have managed to print photovoltaic cells the size of an A3 sheet of paper

"There are so many things we can do with cells this size. We can set them into advertising signage, powering lights and other interactive elements. We can even embed them into laptop cases to provide backup power for the machine inside," said CSIRO materials scientist, Dr. Scott Watkins Read more...

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A new material could potentially be used to extract uranium from seawater more efficiently, new research suggests.

The world’s oceans contain nearly a thousand times as much uranium as conventional reserves, and researchers have spent decades trying to develop an efficient way to extract it. Experts say it is important to develop such technology because it could serve as insurance in case supplies of uranium for nuclear reactors ever become scarce.

The most advanced system today employs plastic fibers with uranium-binding chemical groups grafted onto their surface. Now, researchers led by Wenbin Lin, a professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have designed a metal-organic framework (MOF) to collect common uranium-containing ions dissolved in seawater. In lab tests, the material was at least four times better than the conventional plastic adsorbent at drawing the potential nuclear fuel from artificial seawater. Read more...

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Google engineers sometimes like to say the Star Trek computer is the ideal search engine. You can talk to it like it were a person, ask it anything, and it'll tell you the answer — verbally. During the keynote at Google I/O developer conference, the company demonstrated how it's bringing exactly that technology to the Chrome browser.

Although the upgrade isn't available yet, Mashable got some hands-on time with it at the I/O. To be clear, Chrome already has voice search (that's what the little microphone is in the Google.com search box), but Google will soon be augmenting it with a new user experience that includes the ability to speak back to you. Read more...

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Hey sports bloggers, time to meet the man — er, boy — you'll all be working for one day

While most kids his age are preoccupied with Grand Theft Auto or first kiss fantasies, 14-year-old Matt Nadel of New Jersey is busy building a miniature baseball blogging empire. He writes for a total of 10 publications online and off, including his main project — a baseball history blog called Baseball With Matt

The magazine New Jersey Baseball pays him $100 for two articles per month. A Cuban site called Universo Béisbol translates his work into Spanish. And he's the youngest writer in Major League Baseball's official Pro Blogger network, as well as the youngest member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance Read more...

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These days, even lamps in your house can be programmed via Arduino.

A Canadian design company called Fabule has developed Clyde, an LED desk lamp that can be programmed with personality modules in its "brain." It's compatible with Arduino, an open-source electronics program.

For example, when Clyde is in "afraid of the dark" mode, he can light up depending on how dark a room is. In "touchy feely" mode, Clyde cycles through different light colors when you touch his jellyfish-like legs. Inside his head, there are sensors that make it all work.

The personified LED lamp emits soft, ambient lighting, and you turn it on and off by touching Clyde's squishy silicone "eye." Read more...

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Infamous hacker and Internet troll Andrew Auernheimer, better known as Weev, said he wasn't afraid of going to prison. But he is now being held in "administrative segregation," which is a euphemism for solitary confinment

His lawyer and supporters claim he's being punished for tweeting and posting messages to SoundCloud from behind bars. But, is that really why he's locked alone in a cell for 23 hours a day?

Auernheimer was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison for getting his hands on the email addresses of 114,000 AT&T iPad 3G customers — which were stored on openly accessible URLs — and later sharing this information with Gawker. After the sentencing, he was put away in a detention center in Brooklyn, N.Y., before being tranferred to a federal low-security prison in Allenwood, Pa Read more...

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In a deal that would vault Yahoo into the premiere league of social media, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is said to be closing in on a $1 billion acquisition deal with David Karp, the CEO of New York-based Tumblr

Details of the talks leaked out earlier Thursday via AllThingsD, a site which prides itself on its Yahoo sources in particular. A later report in AdWeek, via its own sources, cited $1 billion as the figure currently under discussion. Coincidentally, that is said to be the valuation Tumblr was going to get at its next funding round.

Both sites were cautious to emphasize that the talks could come to naught. Mayer is clearly interested; she's known and admired Karp's New York-based site for years. Tumblr and its 107 million microblogs would add another 15 billion pageviews a month to Mayer's hoard. Most important of all, it could make Yahoo look cool again Read more...

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Even non-soccer fans know how hooliganism can quickly turn a harmless match into a veritable war zone, full of riots, stabbings, even death. To help keep the peace at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, FIFA has decided to go high-tech by enlisting military robots for security.

iRobot recently announced that it will outfit Brazil with 30 PackBot robots, units similar to those that have been deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and inside Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Each PackBot is camera-equipped and remotely controlled to allow operators to examine suspicious objects and explore threatening environments. The robots will work in tandem with thousands of soldiers who will be patrolling the 12 host cities in Brazil. Read more...

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Technology has changed the way we do things. Yes, that's probably the "duh" statement of the year. But take a moment to flash back to the olden days (like 1992) and think about how you shopped, flirted and planned for world domination. Not a computer in sight, right?

In this comic, Doghouse Diaries lays out all the tasks that have changed because of computers and the Internet

Comic illustration courtesy of Doghouse Diaries. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

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The viral Internet star known as "Kai the Hitchhiker" was arrested and charged with murder on Thursday afternoon following allegations that he beat a man to death in New Jersey, according the Associated Press

Kai — less frequently known by his given name of Caleb McGillvary — was apprehended at a Philadelphia bus terminal and is being held on $3 million bail

He's charged with killing Joseph Galfy, Jr., in the 73-year-old lawyer's Clark, N.J., home after the two met in New York City. Galfy was found dead on Monday. Authorities classified Galfy's cause of death as blunt force trauma.

The details of the two men's encounter are currently unknown, but McGillvary posted an explicit message to his Facebook page on Tuesday, a day after Galfy was found dead and before his alleged murder became national news Read more...

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Attention Trekkies: vaj Date Hov trek vaj DartlhneSS vIlegh DurIngh Hogh openIngh vIvut legh vIvoqHa' qaStaHvIS paQDI'norgh luchenmoHmeH law' De'wI' pagh mobIle jan In tlhront otlh ghewmey vaj mangghomDajDaq bImejnIS.

If you could understand that Klingon, you'll definitely want to read on. (English translation for all other fans of the Starship Enterprise: If you'd like a date to see Star Trek Into Darkness during its opening week, you don't necessarily need to look any further than the computer or mobile device in front of you.)

As reported by The Daily Beast; turns out there's an entire subculture surrounding online dating for Star Trek fans Read more...

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If you think Google Glass looks a little weird now, take a look at how it got its start

During a Fireside chat at Google I/O Thursday Senior Industrial Designer at Google on the Glass team Isabelle Olsson showed off how Glass looked originally: a scuba mask with a computer board attached to it.

She also spoke about the development process for Glass, and what went in to creating the model that we’re seeing on the street today.

“We took a reductionist approach. We removed everything that wasn’t absolutely essential,” says Olsson. That meant taking a lot away from that original clunky prototype. Read more...

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Electric cars are great for the environment, right? Well, yes, but their carbon footprint isn't exactly zero. You're still drawing that electricity from somewhere, mostly coal-fired power stations

How about a solar-powered vehicle, then? There aren't a lot of those around — for cars, the physics don't quite make sense yet. There's a solar-powered plane, though that's hardly practical for the average commuter.

But you can now at least buy a solar-powered scooter — one where the platform itself doubles as a solar panel.

The Solar Electric Scooter, an ingenious design by a small southern California startup, will go 20 miles on a single charge. If the day is too cloudy, you can still pull out the battery and plug it in. Its top speed is 15 miles an hour, but the scooter will take you there with tremendous torque, in 3.7 seconds. Better hold on Read more...

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Republicans are promoting their 37th attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act — otherwise known as "Obamacare" — with the Twitter hashtag #ObamacareInThreeWords. Democrats all the way up to the White House took the hashtag and spun it in favor of the bill, turning it into a full-blown Twitter spat.

While House Republicans often attempt to repeal the ACA, such a move is an absolute non-starter in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

"We’ve got 70 new members who have not had the opportunity to vote on the president’s health care law. Frankly, they’ve been asking for an opportunity to vote on it, and we’re going to give it to them,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week. Read more...

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Microsoft's Bing search engine just got even more inventive, creating a strange new world where no web geek has gone before. To take a unique trip, simply type "beam me up" in the Bing search engine, and see what happens.

Once you've been beamed up, click on any of the designated hotspots. You'll hear realistic Starfleet-regulation sound effects as you're transported to a variety of locations throughout the universe. Each of those destinations offers links to Star Trek trivia, clips from the series and a lot more

As we suspected, Bing designers are "huge Star Trek fans," according to Stephanie Horstmanshof, Bing's senior lead managing editor. "We really looked at this project as a love letter to Star Trek fans," she told Mashable. "We had so much fun brainstorming ideas for the various levels of the experience." Read more...

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At the 2013 European Arm Wrestling Championships, one competitor relied on more than just her biceps to intimidate an opponent

A competitor from Lithuania used eardrum-shattering yells and horror movie-style faces in a fierce bout with an arm wrestler from the Ukraine. The woman's unusual technique couldn't help her get an upper hand — err, arm — in the tournament, but she might at least have a future on the Internet.

Now you have the perfect reaction GIF for the next time you want to tell your coworkers "Darn skippy, suckers." You're welcome, GIFers.

Image courtesy of YouTube, drogennews Read more...

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Thanks to a recent stock surge, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is once again the world's richest man, a title he hasn't held since 2007, according to Bloomberg.

Gates' fortune is now worth $72.1 billion, according to Bloomberg, putting him about $550 million ahead of the former No. 1, Mexico's Carlos Slim. Gates' wealth has jumped 10% this year as Microsoft's shares have risen

On Thursday, the company's stock price hit a five-year high. Slim's wealth has fallen $2 billion this year as Mexico's Congress passed a monopoly-busting telecom bill that threatens his company America Movil SAB's commanding position in the market. Read more...

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After nine long years, The Office is coming to an end Thursday night. And while there are plenty of things we'll miss — Jim and Dwight's pranks, Kevin's one-liners, and all the Andy drama — no one will ever replace the man who started it all.

In honor of the show's finale, we decided to review the management stylings of Michael Scott and share a few nuggets of workplace wisdom we’ve gained from him over the years.

1. After sitting at your desk all day, sometimes you just need to move.

Image courtesy of What Should BC Call Us

2. Bring snacks, and you’ll instantly make friends at the office.

Image courtesy of Daily Dose of Memo Read more...

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ESPN's "embrace debate" show First Take has gained a reputation for its commentators blowing hot air, but this takes things to a whole new level

With host Cari Champion and pro bloviators Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith heading to commercial during Wednesday's episode, somebody — as you'll see in the video above — just lets one rip (or at least it certainly sounds that way). The video is now a mini sports Internet source of glee

Many Internetters have pinned Bayless as the prime suspect, thanks to his squirmy pre-fart-noise posture. But could it have actually been Smith or Champion — or perhaps someone off camera but somehow near a live mic? We'll probably never know, but Deadspin reports that ESPN edited the sound out of the episode when it re-aired later on Wednesday Read more...

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There's a new rifle in town, and it's not a simple new weapon. It's a high-tech smart rifle that allegedly makes even novice shooters very accurate. With its lasers, built-in computer and color graphic display, you could say it's a rifle with its own brain and eyes.

"Think of it like a smart rifle. You have a smart car; you got a smartphone; well, now we have a smart rifle," Jason Schauble, president of TrackingPoint, the Texas startup who built the gun, told NPR

For him, this is the rifle for the new, always-connected, social media generation — yes, this is the rifle you want if you're into Twitter, Facebook and YouTube Read more...

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Think you have the perfect idea of a Google Glass app, but don't have the high-tech specs (or perhaps the technical expertise) to make it happen? Now you can create your own Glass apps without having Glass or any coding experience. Well, sort of.

Glass Sim is a prototyping tool for Google Glass that lets you create a quick visualization of what the app of your dreams might look like if it ever became a reality

"The countless Glass app ideas are just scratching the surface of what can be done with this technology and the myriad similar form factors that are inevitably on the way,” says Sam Gaddis, co-founder of Mutual Mobile, the creator of the simulator. Read more...

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Days after the worst Kitchen Nightmares on Gordan Ramsay's show had a series of public meltdowns, one of their victims is having her moment in the spotlight—on Reddit, one of the places currently on the "most loathed" list for Amy's Baking Company

Katy Cipriano (a self-declared alias) was a waitress whose mistreatment at the hands of her employer, Amy Bouzaglo, was shown on this week's episode of Kitchen Nightmares. The show ended with Ramsay throwing up his hands and walking away from the whole project before he even started. The episode showed Cipriano walking away, too — quitting after Bouzaglo tells her she has an attitude problem for double-checking an order. Read more...

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Everyone's favorite dysfunctional family, the Bluths, are making a highly anticipated return to a Netflix-screening device near you. But first, we remember all the antics that made the Arrested Development gang so entertaining for three seasons.

Antics like Lindsay Bluth Funke's erratic, yet passionate, devotion to various charities is a fan favorite (can anyone say "Neuter Fest '98"?). Lindsay's shenanigans prompted Shutterstock to wonder what causes the other members of the Bluth family would support. The company created posters for each of the characters based on their, let's just say unique, interests Read more...

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As I wrapped up the last interview with Intel's outgoing CEO, Paul Otellini, for my feature on his legacy, he strode over to the whiteboard in the conference room. As he began to draw, he joked that he was showing me the "history of the computer industry in one chart." (I'm not sure if he knew 'in one chart' posts are one of our specialties.)

He'd shown this chart to Intel's management in 2005, two years before the iPhone, and long before smartphone ubiquity. And yet it describes the movement of computing devices from expensive machines ($10,000) to very cheap machine ($100). It was a call for Intel to understand that it would have to do very different things to succeed in a $100 computer world than in a $1,000 computer world. Here's how I described it in the story:
Read more...

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Google's first video promo for Google Play Music All Access, which launched Wednesday during Google I/O, walks us through the new subscription service's features with help from the world's most famous vampire, Dracula

Craving for the perfect music to best suit his taste, Dracula picks a song, turns the song into a radio station of related tracks and uses the unlimited skip feature until he finds something he likes. He then creates a playlist titled "Night Beatz," moves his discovery into its queue and continues to add more songs. Happy with his creation, he decides to share the playlist with his magical friends on Google+ Read more...

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Two weeks ago, Instagram announced users could begin tagging themselves and others in photos through Instagram's iOS and Android apps. Those photos have been quietly filling up a hidden profile section called "Photos of You," which goes public for the first time Thursday.

You can now pull up the profile of almost anyone on the service — anyone who doesn't have a private account, that is — and browse photos he or she appears in. Only the person who publishes a photo to Instagram can tag people in it

If you don't like the idea of others browsing photos you're tagged in, you can adjust your settings so photos don't appear in that section until you approve them. Read more...

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Google Glass is about to get even more apps, from Facebook and Twitter to Tumblr and CNN.

During a “Developing for Glass” session during its Google I/O conference on Thursday, Google announced several big-name apps for the high-tech glasses, representing a vote of confidence for the technology from a number of the industry's largest players.

“We are all collectively figuring out what the best experience is with Glass,” Google's Senior Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan said during the event

Jordan talked a bit about best practices for creating apps for Glass, before showing off some new ones launching today that the company has been working with to enhance the experience Read more...

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Everyone's favorite smart watch — the Pebble — just raised $15 million in Series A funding. The company also released the next evolution of its official SDK, now known as the PebbleKit.

Led by Charles River Ventures, the $15 million Series A isn't the biggest amount of funding we've seen in the hardware space, but it's impressive when you consider the context of the round — and Pebble's crowdfunding roots.

Pebble remains one of Kickstarter's most endearing stories. More than 68,000 backers pledged over $10 million to make Pebble the most successful Kickstarter project in history.

A year later, watches are slowly but surely making their way to backers, and the developer community around the watch is heating up. Read more...

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