Happy Star Wars Day! May the fourth be with you.

The epic big-screen battle between good and evil set in a galaxy far, far away influenced generations of young Jedi wannabes. Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi instilled values of discipline and loyalty, while Darth Vader served as a cautionary tale to anyone tempted by the dark side of life.

To celebrate May 4th and honor all the wisdom bestowed by Luke, Leia and that feisty furball Chewbacca, we gathered 10 life lessons from Star Wars. Learn from it, you will.

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Instagram added the ability to tag photos this week. Similar to photo tagging on Facebook, your friends can now tag you in their Instagram photos so that the image shows up on your profile as well.

It’s a fantastic feature if you want to share those photos with the world, but what if your friend adds a picture of you that you’d rather people not see? Luckily, there's a quick and easy way to remove a tag, as well as a way to make sure no photos make it to your profile without your permission.

Much like how it’s handled on Facebook, when you’re tagged in a photo on Instagram the app sends you a notification. Tagged images are added to a “Photos of You” tab on your profile page 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: Routehappy

One-Liner Pitch: Routehappy helps you book the best flights based on the in-flight experience, rather than just by the price and schedule.

Why It's Taking Off: The startup has a team of dedicated data experts who have put together a comprehensive database to find out seat layouts, plane types, travel time and amenities for any flight in the world.

There's no shortage of websites to compare prices and schedules for flights, but what if you want to go beyond that and compare factors like the amount of legroom or whether there's Wi-Fi on the plane? You might have been able to find some of that information spread across different travel sites, but it hasn't all been available in one place until now. Read more...

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From hotel towels to soccer jerseys, just about everything seems to be tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips these days. Now scientists have developed a way to embed these chips in paper, which could pave the way for so-called smart money.

Developed by a team of researchers from North Dakota State University, the RFID-equipped smart paper could potentially be used in legal documents, tickets, package labels and banknotes. Researchers say the technology could help prevent fraud and counterfeiting.

While RFID-equipped paper already exists, other versions on the market rely on thicker chips, resulting in bulky and bumpy paper that can’t be printed. However, researchers at North Dakota State developed a process called Laser Enabled Advanced Packaging that creates ultra-thin silicon chips that can be seamlessly embedded in paper. Read more...

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Apartment hunting can be a seriously traumatizing experience

Find an apartment you love and you can't afford it or find an apartment you can afford and your roommates have antennas (or worse, rabies). Not to mention, there's worrying about neighborhood, access to public transportation and whether or not you can bring Fluffy along.

Illustrator and comedian Teddy Hose makes the apartment hunting experience easier with an honest guide to classifieds lingo. For example, "cozy" might sound like a comforting adjective, but it roughly translates to "your toilet is in the kitchen." Read more...

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Google Glass has its first YouTube app

Fullscreen Labs released Fullscreen BEAM Friday, the first YouTube app for the high-tech glasses.

“Our engineering team loves building better experiences for digital video creators every day and hacking on new initiatives and passion projects into the night,” Drew Baumann, Founding Engineer at Fullscreen said in a blog post announcing the app.

“We host monthly hack days in the office to sharpen our creativity and coding chops….so it’s not surprising that when Google released Google Glass, their foray into wearable technology, our immediate thought was, 'How can we build a seamless experience for YouTubers to capture and share life’s moments?'" Read more...

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You can add it to a motion detector. You can add it to a security camera. Heck, the creators of a tiny new Wi-Fi board even joke that you can add it to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The Spark Core board, from Spark Devices, can make any of your projects Wi-Fi-enabled and thus connected to the Internet, as explained in the video above.

For techies and do-it-yourselfers out there, the Core board features a 72 MHz ARM Cortex M3 processor, a Wi-Fi module, wireless programming, pin outs and peripherals. Best of all, the board is Arduino-compatible and you can even code wirelessly. To set up the Core, you use a companion app for Wi-Fi configuration. Read more...

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Even when you're using a fake name on a social media site, your comments can come back to haunt you. Just ask notorious Redditor violentacrez, who was unmasked last fall by Adrian Chen, a reporter for Gawker.

Is it possible to protect your privacy online? Some say no.

"Trying to take something off the Internet is like trying to remove pee from a swimming pool," wrote Redditor steste.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others, Reddit asks for no personal information to create an account. However, it still records and retains the IP address from which the account was made, which can be enough for law enforcement to help establish a user's identity. And in the case of violentacrez, an ambitious reporter could find his identity through his comments and associations with other Redditors Read more...

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The word Photoshop has evolved to function as a noun, adjective and verb. The Adobe program has become an essential tool for photographers looking to tweak and manipulate their images.

Jerry Uelsmann is a photographer of the old school who modifies his work not on the computer, but in the dark room. Uelsmann crafts his surreal photographs by combining and layering images to create a single composite. Three separate photos meld together to create something Uelsmann hopes will trigger an emotional reaction in those who see it.

Read more...

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If you're tired of sitting around waiting to get bitten by a radioactive spider or for Batman to retire and leave you his Batmobile (and hopefully Alfred), then take matters into your own hands — build your own hammer that could rival Thor's

In this video Hackaday teaches us how to trick out a hammer to superhero proportions. It may not actually summon lightning like Mjölnir does, but this one is powered by 80,000 volts

Unfortunately, the hammer probably won't defeat all your archnemeses, but come Halloween-time you'll have a pretty bangin' costume on your hands Read more...

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Iron Man 3 opens today in North America, but it’s been playing in Chinese theaters since the May Day holiday and has already made a killing, bringing in a record-breaking $21.2 million on its first day alone.

And it’s not just records: Marvel and its Chinese partner, DMG, are setting new standards for foreign movies looking to earn government clearance in China. To curry favor, the company added four minutes of footage just for the mainland, including throwaway parts for Chinese A-list actors Fan Bingbing and Wang Xueqi, and a ham-handed milk drink product placement.

Also new is the aggressive outreach to Chinese audiences by Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. Not only did he visit China for the first time in his life to talk up the film, but Downey also set up a personal account on Sina Weibo: Read more...

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Entertaining distractions for kids have come a long way since the early days of Concentration and Connect the Dots. That’s especially true if you’re an iPad user

Take a look at these masterpieces that highlight some game-changing graphics interaction and even how you buy them. You'll find apps that create a full TV-like interactive channel, encourage parents and kids to build and share games, use augmented reality and are produced by animators with award-winning pedigrees, heralding a new generation of kids' apps

They might cost you as much as a Starbucks latte, but they are much more satisfying. What are your kids' favorite apps? Read more...

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In Disney's fairytale world, princesses chat with birds, sing with dwarves and swim with talking flounder. The biggest worries of these ladies are evil step moms or horrid octopus women. But once their prince comes along, it's sunshine and daisies for these leading ladies

Unfortunately, the real world is not always as sweet as anything Disney could drum up. A series of artwork by Alana Mays shows us what kind of lives the princesses would have without the magic and glass slippers — trust us, it's not pretty.

Mays reversed the movies' gender stereotypes to create harsh real-world effects. Mays tells Mashable that she applied a critical eye to the "body image" and "male dominance" themes, and used her digital paintings to parody those scenarios Read more...

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NASA has Twitter down to a science. The agency knows the ins and outs of YouTube. It even even makes Google+ look cool

But what you may not know is that NASA has plenty of forgotten features all over its websites, just waiting for geeks to uncover. Here are six of them.

1. Your Own Mission Control

Just what are astronauts in space doing at this exact moment? NASA's International Space Station Live lets you monitor everyone's daily tasks in real time on the ISS, from Chris Hadfield to Roman Romanenko

The site features a timeline of each crewmember's activities, like performing science experiments, extravehicular activities and the more mundane eating, exercising and sleeping. Read more...

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With humans engaging in a mega-violent battle against flesh-eating zombies in a post-apocalyptic hell-scape, AMC's The Walking Dead could definitely be classified as weird. But it's not exactly what you'd call funny.

Dub in some ridiculous dialogue, however, and the show suddenly becomes both hilarious and more strangeYouTube channel Bad Lip Reading takes The Walking Dead from weird to weirder with a few tweaks to the show's audio

It's understandably popular, with nearly 500,000 views since going online Thursday. Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments Read more...

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Facebook announced earlier this week a new feature called "trusted contacts" to help you get back into your account when locked out. Although it's intended to make life easier by leaning on a few friends when you're in need of re-entry (think lending out your spare house keys), the concept is a handful. In fact, you'll need a special code from each of your trust contacts (about three to five people) to get back into your account

In theory, this sounds like a strong way to triple-lock your account and prevent anyone from entering, but how is this any better than remembering the answer to a few security questions or using Facebook's existing two-factor authentication feature? Read more...

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With Google Glass slowly but surely making its way into the hands of the general public, we're beginning to learn a lot more about the exciting wearable technology

Mashable got an extended hands-on with it, and we've also seen some new apps and interesting demos emerge recently.

But ye query, loyal sports fans: "What about the games we love?"

Well, two new videos posted to YouTube this week give a us cool sneak peek. Apparently some of the earliest Google Glass adopters are amateur athletes, as well, and they've been kind enough to give the rest of us a Glass-eye view of what it's like to play basketball and hockey with the futuristic headset Read more...

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There’s something about being able to chat with someone while showing him or her photos from your last vacation, or a video of your child’s first steps, that makes the experience as a whole a lot more personal. Meet DabKick, an iOS app that attempts to recreate the experience of sharing media with friends in person using your smartphone.

Frustrated that he couldn’t find a good way to share media with friends and family, DabKick founder Balaji Krishnan created the app as a way to foster a more natural method of remotely sharing media.

The iOS app lets you share photos, video and music with friends — either through the app or on the web using HTML 5 — in real time, so what you see on your phone’s screen is what your friend sees as well. Read more...

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The thermometer is a timeless medical device, but you often need to be familiar with common symptoms and what to do if you have them for it really come in handy. The Kinsa Smart Thermometer offers a new way of taking the effort out of diagnosing and dealing with everyday illness.

Its design is straight-forward. There’s no battery, processor or display in the device itself. You just plug it into your iPhone headphone jack, and the Kinsa app will display the patient’s temperature.

It can also provide treatment advice and what to watch for when it comes to more serious symptoms. If you feel your condition is dire, the app can even call your doctor or book appointments at your local medical clinic. Read more...

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Ender's Game director Gavin Hood, producer Bob Orci and actor Asa Butterfield will unveil the science fiction movie's first teaser trailer in a Google+ Hangout on May 7.

The live video chat begins at 4 p.m. ET. The trio will discuss and answer viewers' questions about the flick, which is based on Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game book.

Butterfield, who plays Ender Wiggin, and Harrison Ford, who assumes the role of Colonel Hyrum Graff, give a sneak peek of the teaser trailer in this new video. It features the first footage posted online of the film (starting at 0:30)

Ender's Game isn't the first movie to premiere its trailer in a Google+ Hangout. A trailer for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln was the first back in September during a live chat with Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Read more...

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It would be an understatement to note that there is hype surrounding Google Glass. In a recent op-ed, Mashable's Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff called Google Glass the future of technology, and many businesses are already making moves to get their services on the product.

We've had a pair of Google Glass in the office for the past week, and as more information has been released about the wearable computing device, the more questions and feedback we get from our community

To help answer some of the many questions we've received, we will be hosting a live Q&A-style Google+ Hangout today at 3 p.m. ET on the Mashable Google+ page. Join Mashable Tech Editor Pete Pachal and Senior Tech Analyst Christina Warren as they discuss their experiences with Google Glass so far and answer questions from our community. Read more...

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Ever wish you could answer a call on your iPhone even though your hands are covered with spare rib sauce? It happens. Yet with Samsung's would-be iPhone 5-killer, the Galaxy S4, that's not an issue.

Hands-free control is one of the features highlighted in this 90-second ad, which broke Thursday night during Conan. Another is the ability to interact with TVs and S-Beam, Samsung's name for its NFC capability

The bells and whistles are presented in an offhand fashion, the way consumers might actually use them, in this spot called "Pool Party," which takes place during what looks like a high school graduation party Read more...

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The latest big Marvel movie, Iron Man 3, opens today. It's getting decent reviews, but it might have a tiny technical impairment holding it back: With two prior movies, plus a little tie-in called The Avengers, how can everyone stay up to speed on the hero's story?

We're here to help the nerd-challenged among you catch up in the best way we know how — through the teaching power of GIFs

So strap on up your repulsor boots and suit up. All systems are go.

This is Tony Stark.

Image courtesy of gifday

He's a complicated guy, so we'll let him describe himself.

Image courtesy of Tumblr, takemyhandvictoria Read more...

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Vines, subtweets and over-the-line insults. This Knicks-Celtics NBA playoffs series was made for the Internet

Players talking trash on the court, or even Twitter, is obviously not unheard of. But players wives talking smack to opponents via Twitter? That's next level.

Here's our dramatis personae for this entertaining bit of beef between the Knicks and Celtics, who meet again for the sixth game of their series on Friday night:

• Carmelo Anthony: Knicks star. Big ego.

• La La Vazquez: Anthony's wife. MTV personality and reality star.

• Jordan Crawford: Celtics benchwarmer. His ego outpaces his talent.

• Kevin Garnett: Aging Celtics star. Fierce competitor and major trash talker. Read more...

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North Korea is expected to mooch off other nations for cyber offensive tools because it is not plugged into the global web, according to the Defense Department’s first report to Congress on the regime's military might.

These are some of the spare details describing Pyongyang’ network operations found amidst a larger discussion of the regime's antagonism with South Korea and pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"As a result of North Korea’s historical isolation from outside communications and influence, it is likely to employ Internet infrastructure from third-party nations," states the 26-page report, which Defense Department Secretary Chuck Hagel released on Thursday. Read more...

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OK math nerds, hold on to your protractorsGoogle Maps has just added Street View imagery of Russia's Seven Bridges of Köenigsberg — the landmark behind the classic mathematical problem that has had people scratching their heads for centuries

As a part of an effort to roll out more map coverage of Russia, the Street View team landed in the seaport town of Kaliningrad (the the modern name for Köeningsberg). The town is home to seven bridges made famous in the 1700s by mathematician Leonhard Euler, who was recently featured in a Google Doodle.

Euler believed there was no possible way to go over each of the seven bridges once... and only once. Google sums up the challenge in a blog post: "find a route through Kaliningrad—which was once separated by the Pregel River—by crossing each of the seven bridges in town. The catch? One could only cross each bridge exactly once." Read more...

Intel's new chief executive must reverse the last decade of declining market share.

Intel's new CEO Brian M. Krzanich, elected by the board this week to replace retiring chief executive Paul Otellini, is a longtime Intel insider whose vision must now guide the company through a time of tumult in the computing industry.

The world's largest chipmaker faces challenges due to slumping PC sales, and has made only small inroads into the mobile computing world so far. The vast majority of smartphones and tablets use ARM-based designs, and as a result, Intel's market share for all CPUs shipped has dropped dramatically over the last few years (see chart below). Read more...

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They were supposed to discuss their new movie Star Trek: Into Darkness, but J.J. Abrams and actor Simon Pegg can't resist geeking out about their shared passion for Star Wars in this just-released video

Pegg, who plays Scotty in Abrams' rebooted Trek franchise, makes a rather pointed compliment about Abrams and Star Wars: "I feel like it's in safe hands now ... you get it. You get it like a Star Wars fan gets it." Translation: the guy who directed the last three movies may not necessarily have gotten it the way a fan gets it.

And in case Pegg's take on the Star Wars prequels isn't clear, this scene from his UK comedy show Spaced might give you a clue: Read more...

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One morning you might wake up, roll over, grab your phone and flip through the pictures from last night, from yesterday. "Was it really that great of a time?" you ask, and you've got a stream of photos to help you answer, the ones you want to delete from memory and the ones you'll frame on the wall, or at least post to Facebook.

An iOS app released Friday called Days, built by TechStars company Wander, aims to replace your phone's camera roll, with a twist: Instead of deciding which photos to share, you'll decide which to remove (but photos are also saved to your phone, so you don't lose them completely). The photos you share will be grouped into a 24-hour set, from 5 a.m. to 5 a.m. on your local time zone, what founder and CEO Jeremy Fisher calls "the folk definition of what a day is." Read more...

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Staples just became a little more cutting edge.

The office supply chain announced Friday that it is now selling 3D printers through its website and will start selling 3D printers in select stores by the end of next month. Staples is touting itself as the first "major U.S. retailer" to sell the product.

Staples, which announced in November that it planned to bring the devices to its European stores, will be selling the Cube 3D Printer from 3D Systems for $1,299. The printer has built-in WiFi and comes with more than two dozen 3D design templates, with more available to download online. Staples will also sell accessories for the 3D printers like plastic cartridge refills. Read more...

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