Among today's modes of online communication, we’re well-versed in the use of text, images and video. But what about dance?

In a campaign for its new Sync fragrances, Puma is proposing a new form of digital expression through movement rather than words. The sportswear brand has set up an interactive platform dubbed Dance Dictionary, where users can communicate with each other by encrypting specific sentences into physical dance moves. Its slogan: “Don’t say it, move it."

Phrases like "Will you be my girlfriend?" or "Mondays make me want to scream" are translated into a series of choreographed gestures by 25 of the world’s better-known dancers, including Storyboard P, King Charles, PacMan, Ron Myles AKA Prime Tyme and Krumpers Big Mijo, Outrage and Worm, and LA choreographer Super Dave. Each word has a different move. Certain words in each sentence are interchangeable (try swapping 'be' for 'retweet,' and 'girlfriend' for 'cat' for amusement), resulting in 10,000 different combinations by Puma's count. Read more...

More about Fashion, Advertising, Marketing, Business, and Puma

The Nokia Lumia 928 is essentially the Verizon iteration of the landmark Lumia 920. That's the short version of this review. If you liked the Lumia 920 but wanted it on Verizon, this is the phone for you. Yes, there are a few differences — the Lumia 928 has a different screen, better camera, more enhanced microphone system and a slightly different design — but at its core, its the same phone.

This isn't a bad thing. The Lumia 920 remains a great phone and continues to have one of the best smartphone cameras on the market — particularly with low-light photography. With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft continues to eschew the specs race game. It can't match the high-end Android phones on the market, which typically have a quad-core processor (or even octo-core with some regional variants) and at least 2GB of RAM. Many are even pushing the pixel densities into the stratosphere with 1,920 x 1,080 full resolution screens. Read more...

More about Verizon, Reviews, Windows Phone, Tech, and Gadgets

Planning a meeting can be a hassle — between finding a meeting time convenient for everyone and sending out invites and follow-up notes, everyone could use some tools to make it easier

We found some of the best apps and websites to help simplify the meeting planning process. Read on to learn about some valuable, time-saving tools. Because your time is better spent preparing for the meeting than setting it all up, right?

1Mightybell

With a variety of beautifully designed features, Mightybell can help plan your next gathering. You can quickly poll everyone involved for available dates and times, then seamlessly schedule the meeting and send out invites. You can even create a Mightybell circle if you consistently schedule meetings with the same group of people. And all members can use the tool to organize future meetings, post relevant information or simply chat with each other. Read more...

More about Apps, Productivity, Office, Features, and Business

Despite official claims to the contrary, HTC will be releasing a variant of HTC One with stock Android, Geek claims citing unspecified sources

HTC's flagship smartphone without the company's Sense UI should be announced "within two weeks," with a full release in the summer

Sources claim the device would first become available in the U.S., and a launch under Google's wing — similar to the Galaxy S4 Google Edition — is also a possibility

Though many users are excited about the idea of a Sense-less HTC One — it would, after all, be one of the most powerful devices with stock Android you can get — we'd take any HTC-related rumors with a grain of salt. With the recent staff departures and reports that the company is in disarray, anything can happen Read more...

More about Sense, Tech, Mobile, and Htc One

When Justin Bieber tweets, 39,361,876 people (and counting) immediately jump to attention. But when one of those nearly 40 million people tweet, does the Beebs see it? Does he react at all?

Communication among terrorist cells works much in the same way as Justin Bieber's Twitter account, according to mathematicians from Ryerson University in Toronto who have built a mathematical model of the way information spreads through these hierarchical networks. Their approach may give counterterrorism agents insight into terrorism hierarchies and allow them to predict terrorist attacks and sabotage networks before the attack plans can be carried out. Read more...

More about Terrorism, Big Data, Tech, Apps Software, and Dev Design

The Guardian's international editions are proliferating, but before the newspaper launches an online edition in Australia later this year, it's uniting all of its websites under a single domain, theguardian.com.

Currently, The Guardian operates three websites. The primary one is guardian.co.uk. It has a second URL for its U.S. operation, guardiannews.com, which redirects to guardian.co.uk on section and article pages. It has a third subdomain for mobile, m.guardian.co.uk.

The Guardian describes the move as a symbolic one. "As we set out on our mission to become a unified, global [organization], we now have one domain we can rally behind," Guardian U.S. CEO Michael Bloom said in an interview with Mashable last week. "[And] it will be much easier for users and partners," he added. Read more...

More about Media, Newspapers, The Guardian, and Business

Scientists at Princeton University have designed a bionic ear that can hear better than human ears. And get this: It was printed using an off-the-shelf 3D printer.

We've heard of 3D printers someday building human organs before, but what's noteworthy about this project is this printed ear intertwines embedded electronics. These Princeton researchers basically 3D-printed cells and nanoparticles, and then combined a small coil antenna with cartilage to create this "bionic" ear, according to the university.

The result was a fully-functional organ that can hear radio frequencies a million times higher than our human ears, lead researcher Michael McAlpine told Mashable. Read more...

More about Hearing, Biotechnology, 3d Printers, Bionic, and 3d Printer

Samsung may sell more smartphones, but a new Apple ad claims that more people listen to music on their iPhones than any other phone

The 60-second ad, which broke Thursday night, is a bit of a stylistic departure for the brand. The music is downbeat — even somber — the visuals are grainy, even a bit gritty. Images show people grooving to music on their iPhones while practicing their dance moves, studying and even coming out of the shower

It's not clear where Apple got its stat. The company recently claimed that 25 billion songs have been sold through its iTunes music store. However, there are other ways to listen to music on the device, including via apps like Spotify and Pandora Read more...

More about Business, Advertising, and Marketing

A group of students in France crafted wooden, energy-producing stationary bicycles from trash. These novel bikes were recently used to power a film festival screening in St. Étienne.

The whole thing started last year when a group of green-minded engineering students at the School of Mines in Saint-Étienne started an “eco-projections” initiative to show documentary films powered by electricity-generating bikes. They formed a collective called Open Sources and developed several plastic bike prototypes in collaboration with a local design firm.

Read more...

More about Bike, Recycling, Film Festival, Tech, and Dev Design

Vials of moon dust brought back to Earth by the first men on the moon have been found inside a lab warehouse in California after sitting in storage unnoticed for more than 40 years

The samples — collected by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — were rediscovered last month by an archivist who was going over artifacts tucked away at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"We don't know how or when they ended up in storage," Karen Nelson, who made the surprising discovery, said in a statement from the lab.

Nelson came across about 20 vials with handwritten labels dated "24 July 1970," packed in a vacuum-sealed glass jar. Accompanying the jar was an academic paper published in the Proceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference in 1971, titled "Study of carbon compounds in Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 returned lunar samples." Read more...

More about Space, Nasa, Moon, Apollo 11, and Astronauts

The cicada swarms are coming, and there is nothing you can do to stop it

You will step on a cicada shell, one will fall in your hair and that buzzing drone will haunt your entire summer. But instead of fearing the creepy crawlers, appreciate this miraculous act of mother nature with a time-lapse by filmmaker Samuel Orr

Orr is determined to change the bad rep these bugs have gotten with this video he's been producing since 2007. He says he became interested in the insects as a child when he found them "scary and mysterious," but changed his perspective after learning more about their lives

"When you find out they can't bite or sting and have no defenses, and live their entire lives underground except for the last few weeks when they come up, it's a little sad," Orr tells Mashable. "All that time waiting, and then the dog eats it, or somebody steps on it. These are amazing animals; just stand back and admire them, and let them live out the last few days they have." Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Bugs, Time Lapse, Timelapse, and Watercooler

It's prom season — for the planets

Every couple of years, give or take, planets get together in the night sky in such a way that they seem to be aligned with each other. They seem to be, really — from Earth's perspective — shyly approaching each other, asking each other to dance. This planetary mixing-and-mingling is scientifically known as "planetary conjunction" ... but it's colloquially known, probably because of the corsages and the limos and the awkward dancing, the "Dance of the Planets."

We're about to have an especially rare and wonderful version of that dance. The night skies this week, provided they're clear, will reveal, yep, a triple conjunction — a planetary crossover featuring the three brightest planets as seen from Earth: Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. Between May 24 and May 29, the celestial trio will fit within a circle whose diameter is less than 5 degrees wide on the sky's dome. They'll dance around each other (as, ostensibly, "Feel This Moment" plays in the background). Read more...

More about Space, Nasa, Science, Astronomy, and Moon

What if you could have your smartphone greet customers while they’re shopping in your store or have a tablet work as a babysitter?

That’s the idea behind R.bots Synergy SWAN, a telepresence robot with that works with any Android or iOS device. To make the robot work, you attach your smartphone or tablet. The device charges while its docked, and the robot interacts with the world around it.

The robot is still a prototype, but R.bots was able to show me a few use cases for the device on the show floor at CTIA Wireless conference this week in Las Vegas

The robot was able to see that I was there and interact with me in a pretty minimal way, much like you might interact with Siri. The difference here, of course, is that you’re interacting with something that looks like a robot with a digital human-like face. Read more...

More about Smartphone, Robots, Tablet, Ctia, and Tech

What kind of experience do you have in the field? Who are your references? What's your Facebook password?

If the Password Protection Act becomes law, it would make it a crime for employers to ask that third question.

The PPA was introduced in the House of Representatives Wednesday by Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.). It would make it illegal for employers demand current or prospective employees hand over access to their social media accounts

"People have an expectation of privacy when using social media like Facebook and Twitter. They have an expectation that their right to free speech and religion will be respected when they use social media outlets," said Perlmutter in a statement on the bill Read more...

More about Congress, Password, Us World, Politics, and Us

What's it like to drive a snowmobile off a cliff? Thanks to B.A.S.E. (Buildings, Antennas, Spans and Earth) jumper Erik Roner and his trusty trio of GoPro cameras, we get to experience just that without having to risk our necks.

Roner performed this exhilarating jump in honor of his late friend, Shane McConkey, who suffered a fatal accident while ski-B.A.S.E. jumping in 2009. That's Shane's snowmobile you see getting this grand sendoff, with a GoPro camera mounted on board that somehow survived the plunge from such a dizzying height.

Read more...

More about Videos, Gopro, Watercooler, and Skydiving

The Boy Scouts of America's governing council voted on Thursday to allow openly gay scouts to join local troops for the first time in the organization's 103-year history. Gay adults still can't serve as troop leaders, but many see the decision as a significant step for forward for gay rights in America

As with many issues surrounding gay rights, online reaction to the decision was passionate and divided. Big name celebrities and ordinary citizens alike took to Twitter to voice their support or opposition to the decision — as well as, of course, to crack jokes. We've collected a handful of responses from around the Twitter web here Read more...

More about Us and Us World

Are the images in your Pinterest feed not quite manly enough for you? If you think the virtual pinboard site is a little too feminine, you’re not alone

In a recent Pew study of social media users, 25% of women said they used Pinterest, compared to a meager 5% of men.

Since Pinterest’s creation, a number of similar websites have popped up that offer pins in what they consider manlier topics. While the men who use these sites abandoned Pinterest because of what they saw as a lack of subjects they could relate to, a number of Pinterest’s power users are actually men.

If you look hard enough, you can find everything from power tools to men’s fashion on Pinterest. Some of the site’s most popular categories, like food and drink, also have broad appeal across genders. Read more...

More about Social Networks, Photos, User Generated, Bacon, and Pinterest

It's World Turtle Day, hooray! Today, we finally get to celebrate the awesomeness of the shelled reptiles of the planet. These chill dudes really don't get the recognition they deserve, constantly being out-cuted by puppies and cats and singing goats

But we know what's up — turtles are just swell with their rock-hard shells and affinity for helping lost fish

Image courtesy of Tumblr, 50-shades-of-sassiness.

Throughout time, several things have tried to imitate the greatness of the turtle but have failed miserably. Here are 10 things masquerading as part of the turtle genealogy that really can't live up to the reptile. Read more...

More about Cute Animals, Turtles, Watercooler, and Pics

Can an airplane flying during the day and night really cross the United States running only on solar power? The team at Solar Impulse is setting out to prove it's possible — and Mashable spoke with one of the pilots live as he flew from Phoenix to Dallas.

Solar Impulse pilot André Borschberg talked with us via in-cockpit satellite phone about keeping focus during the approximately 18-hour stretches of flight. We also chatted about the alternative power revolution that he and fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard want to inspire with their potentially record-setting aeronautical quest.

Borschberg landed in Dallas-Fort Worth Thursday morning after an 18 hour, 21 minute flight from Phoenix, Ariz. The 832-nautical-mile trip was the second in Solar Impulse's five-leg odyssey from California to New York. Read more...

More about Aviation, Solar Impulse, Us World, and Us

Millions of online activists, signing some 124 different petitions, helped to end the Boy Scouts of America's century-long ban on gay members.

According to online petition platform Change.org, 1,866,000 signatures were collected on petitions advocating the Boy Scouts change its policy. To celebrate this milestone, Change.org created this infographic, which is a timeline of the advocates work leading up to the milestone decision.

The largest petition, garnering nearly half a million signatures, was started by Karen Andresen, the mother of a 12-year Boy Scouts member who was denied his Eagle Scout badge for being gay. Read more...

More about Social Change, Social Good, Change.Org, Infographic, and Boy Scouts

Google is now making it easier for users to find their own photos using Google Search.

On its Inside Search blog, the company explained that users can now search for and through their photos hosted in Google+ Photos.

Searching for the query "my photos" offers up this result, personalized with your own Google+ photographs.

But it gets better. The system actually uses machine learning so that you can target your queries to be more specific. Searching for "my photos of food" or "my photos from Orlando" will provide results tailored for those specific instances

You can also search these photos directly from Google+ Photos. Read more...

More about Google, Search, Gmail, Google Photos, and Tech

Actor and prominent startup investor Aston Kutcher took the stage at CTIA Thursday to talk about mobile, and specifically mobile apps.

During a fireside chat at the wireless trade show Kutcher talked about how he discovers the apps that he uses and invests in, as well as how he currently sees the wireless industry.

“Most of the apps that I discover come from founders of companies I've invested in, or from being at conventions, or personal social networks,” he says.

Some of Kutcher’s favorite apps include Spotify, Flipboard, Couple and Path. Kutcher is an investor in the last three, making those pretty obvious choices. He also admits to being a heavy user of Facebook and Twitter. Read more...

More about Mobile, Ashton Kutcher, Tech, and Apps Software

The Solar Impulse made the 958-mile trip from Phoenix to Dallas in about 18 hours.

It is the second leg of the plane's historic trip across the United States, from California to New York. If all five legs are successful, the trip will be the first cross-continental, solar-powered flight, with travel occurring during both daytime and nighttime.

Solar Impulse CEO André Borschberg piloted this leg of the journey. Weather permitting, the plane's next stop will be St. Louis at the end of the month.

Homepage image courtesy of NowThis News Read more...

More about Planes, Aviation, Airplane, Solar Impulse, and Solar Power

Chevy just attached a price tag and delivery date to the 2014 Spark electric vehicle on Thursday, and it's looking good. General Motors announced lease pricing of the Chevy Spark EV at $199 per month for 36 months. Add to that the $999 upfront fee, and you can drive away with a Spark when the vehicle first rolls out in June (2013) — if you live in California or Oregon.

Buying the Spark turns out to be a good deal, too. Th car's retail price starts at $27,495, Chevy says — just keep in mind that you'll probably want to add a few options to that base price. After subtracting the maximum federal tax credit, which can range from $0-$7,500, the final cost is $19,995. California residents can whittle down that price down even further by applying state and local tax credits and incentives, resulting in a rock-bottom $17,495 for the car. Read more...

More about Electric Car, Tech, Gadgets, Mobile, and Chevy Spark

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine star in a new film called Now You See Me. So they are, as one does, making the press junket interview rounds to hype the release

The dynamic duo recently appeared on Tacoma's Fox affiliate Q13 for an interview session, but Freeman had seemingly reached the end of his rope. Watch the beginning of the video below to see him peacefully nod off, then perk up and try to appear interested in whatever dear old Michael Caine is prattling on about

Hopefully Freeman's grogginess here doesn't foreshadow audiences' reactions to the film. Either way, though, Now You See Me will be the source of least one awesome moment. Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Films, Movies, Film, and Watercooler

Sometimes, people are strippers. And sometimes, strippers have a hard time convincing people that stripping is their chosen profession, apparently — as we learn from Jennifer Aniston's skin-baring character in the funny new We're the Millers trailer

Aniston plays Rose, whose neighbor David (Jason Sudeikis) needs help completing a mandatory drug deal. While on the mission with two kids the couple pretends are theirs — Kenny (Will Poulter) and Casey (Emma Roberts) David — Rose is asked to prove she's "just a cheap stripper."

Oh, and Kenny closes the trailer with a spot-on version of TLC's "Waterfalls." Read more...

More about Films, Movies, Trailers, Jennifer Aniston, and Movie Trailers

Two months ago, Google entered the same-day delivery business with a pilot program for a service called Google Shopping Express, which many billed as an attempt to compete with the likes of eBay Now and Amazon Prime. Now, Google plans to expand availability of its service for the first time since launch.

A source familiar with Google's plans told Mashable that Google Shopping Express is about to roll out to the entire Bay Area, filling in many of the suburban areas outside San Francisco that Google initially left out at launch. Google will start accepting sign-ups for beta testers in the additional neighborhoods later this week or early next week. Read more...

More about Google, Amazon, Business, Small Business, and Google Shopping

Well, this is disgusting, and it may make you think twice before ordering a snack from one of those stadium vendors next time you're out at the ol' ballgame

A roving snow cone salesman at Major League Baseball's Minute Made Park in Houston was fired after a fan used his cellphone to film the vendor setting down a tray of the icy snacks on the floor of a bathroom stall while he sat down to use the toilet during an Astros game

The grossed-out fan then shared the video with Houston's local NBC affiliate. We've embedded the clip below:

In addition to serving as the Astros' home ballpark, Minute Made Park hosts other entertainment and sporting events. Its food concessions are handled by the company Aramark, which told the Associated Press the incident is "a clear violation of our food safety practices and are not reflective of our standards." Read more...

More about Mlb, Entertainment, and Sports

Building on our long-standing commitment to social good, Mashable is thrilled to announce our next event, WomenDeliver+SocialGood.

This summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 27 at 7 p.m. MYT, will address how digital tools can address the challenges women and girls face across the world.

WomenDeliver+SocialGood is being held on the eve of the  Women Deliver conference, the largest women's health and empowerment conference to date. Women Deliver will gather more than 5,000 global leaders, advocates, civil society members, media and more. Make sure to RSVP here if you can attend.

To address the world's biggest problems, we need to think beyond today and focus on the future. Therefore, speakers will be reflecting on the following question: Read more...

More about Events, Announcement, World, Social Good, and Us World

The Internet's favorite astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield may no longer tweet from the International Space Station, but that doesn't mean he's giving up on social media outreach

NASA hosted a Google Hangout Thursday with Hadfield and fellow astronauts Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn

The team took questions from around the web about everything from alien life on other planets to eating asparagus on the ISS (which, according to Hadfield, is one of the most high-demand foods on the station). One of the first questions Hadfield answered was about that delicious-looking sandwich he devoured when he landed. Read more...

More about Space, Nasa, Astronauts, Us World, and Us