Nokia may be bringing the Nokia PureView 808, the smartphone with a mammoth 41-megapixel built-in camera, to the United States.

Announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, the phone combines a high-resolution sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia-developed algorithms to create a smartphone camera like no other out there.

While the 41-megapixel number certainly sounds impressive, what's really fantastic about the Nokia PureView 808 is what it does with those pixels. The 808 uses a new pixel oversampling technology that captures seven pixels of information, and then condenses all seven into one single pixel. The result is an exceptionally sharp 5-megapixel pictu…
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More About: microsoft, Nokia

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Budgetable

Quick Pitch: Budgetable gives you deals for the stores you shop at most.

Genius Idea: A free tool that helps you save at your favorite stores, manage your money and see which purchases you're wasting money on.

Are you tired of receiving deals for stores that you don't even shop at?

Budgetable, a free money management tool, offers you personalized deals from only your favorite stores. By connecting to your credit and debit cards, the site detects which…
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More About: bizspark

The NHL's Los Angeles Kings paraded through downtown L.A. on Thursday to celebrate the franchise's first Stanley Cup championship. But the team didn't just win on the ice -- they whooped the rest of the NHL in the Twittersphere, too.

Over the course of the playoffs the Kings were mentioned in 1.4 million tweets. Which team had the second-most mentions? The Boston Bruins, at a lowly 830,000.

There's a pretty simple lesson here: Combine the most improbable playoff run in NHL history with a departure from pro sports teams' typically staid social media approach to dominate the digital conversation.

A first round tweet from the official @LAKings account -- reading, "To everyone in Can…
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More About: infographics, sports, Twitter

Speaking at a F.ounders event today Tumblr CEO David Karp announced that the company will be releasing an updated iOS app next week.

While Tumblr currently has an iPhone app available, Karp made it sound as though the new version would be a complete overhaul of the product.

Following in the footsteps of its current Android app, the Tumblr iOS app will offer a number of the features currently available on Tumblr, while customizing that experience specifically for a mobile environment.

"I'm incredibly proud of our Android development today," Karp said at the event. "I think that app is worlds beyond a lot of the stuff going on on that platform today, and I think its an incredibl…
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More About: android, iphone, tumblr

Whether you count yourself as a "Belieber" or simply a fan, YouTube is giving you the chance to ask Justin Bieber a question.

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Bieber posted a video (above) on YouTube's blog on Friday asking fans to tweet Justin questions using the hashtag #AskJustin, or by visiting youtube.com/kidrauhl and clicking the "Ask Justin" tab. Tweet the questions before Bieber's album release date next Tuesday, June 19 and Fallon just may choose to ask Bieber one of those questions for an interview that will be live streamed on YouTube Presents on June 21 at 7:15 p.m. ET.

YouTube users can also vote on which questions they like, in addition to submitting their own. As of this wr…
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More About: Beliebers Unite, jimmy fallon, justin bieber, YouTube

1. Cry Me a River

Strange but beautiful.

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The first-ever animated GIF image was released to the public 25 years ago, marking a quarter of a century that the animated file format has been delighting web surfers.

Despite the tech sector's ever-changing nature, the GIF file format has some serious staying power.

On June 15, 1987, CompuService, the first major online commercial service in the U.S., introduced the graphics interchange format (GIF). According to a recent Daily Dot article, the first-ever GIF pictured an airplane.

Now, 25 years later, the Internet still can't get enough of GIFs. In fact, an art gallery in London is currently featuring a project called "Born in 1987: The Animated GIF," which showcases more than 4…
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More About: features, GIF, memes, viral

Just because Draw Something has waned in popularity doesn't mean it wouldn't make a great TV show.

Sony Pictures Television, Ryan Seacrest Productions and Embassy Row are developing a primetime version of the hit Zynga game. Teams made up of celebrities and regular users will play the game in front of a studio audience for cash and prizes. The show will also have a play-at-home element.

Now, Variety reports that CBS has won a bidding war on the project. Although the network hasn't made any on-air commitments, it's expected to fast-track the project.

Draw Something seems like a natural fit for television. Game show aficionados will remember the syndicated version of Pictionary -- as…
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More About: cbs, Draw something, game shows, social games, social tv, Zynga

Apparently there's a famous hot dog shop in Chicago where part of the charm is a verbally abusive staff that M-F's you while you try to order and invites you to dish the abuse right back. So what does onetime Mashable CEO and erstwhile late night host Conan O'Brien do?

He sics 30 Rock star Jack McBrayer and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on the place. First, McBrayer goes in and the staff pretty much eats his lunch, so to speak. But when McBrayer returns with Triumph, the hilariously hateful hound lays the smack down in a major way.

Words can't do the ensuing confrontation justice, so just trust us and press play.

More About: conan o'brien, viral videos

A group of UC Berkeley scientists has turned their research about battery life into a handy app that can extend yours.

Carat, which is available for iOS and Android, measures your phone's energy use and suggests actions that will make it more efficient.

It tells you which of your apps are using the most battery and which may have energy-hogging bugs that can be fixed by re-downloading them. Carat also tells you how your average battery life compares to that of other users.

What is hogging battery life on your phone? Let us know in the comments.

More About: App, Carat, UC Berkeley

Neil Munro, White House correspondent at online news organization The Daily Caller, broke with protocol to interrupt President Obama during a Friday morning press briefing about immigration reform.

A statement released by the Caller claimed Munro wasn't trying to heckle the president, but rather was trying to time his question to arrive at the end of Obama's remarks.

SEE ALSO: Obama Takes on Heckling Reporter [VIDEO]

But what, exactly, is The Daily Caller? We're glad you asked.

The website was launched by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel in January of 2010. Patel formerly served as chief policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Carlson is a journalist who formerly worked…
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More About: 2012 presidential campaign, barack obama, News, Politics, US

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor is planning to leave the company for more entrepreneurial pursuits, Taylor announced Friday afternoon.

In a note posted to his Facebook page, Taylor said he was eager to begin work on another startup with his friend Kevin Gibbs, a senior staff software engineer at Google, on a yet-unnamed project.

"I had always been upfront with Mark that I eventually wanted to do another startup," he said in an interview with AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, which was published at the same time as Taylor's Facebook note. "And we felt it was the best time after the IPO and the launch of some recent things for me to do that."

Taylor has overseen Facebook's platform and mobil…
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More About: bret taylor, Facebook

Startup GoPollGo has become the first polling company to integrate with Twitter's newly launched expanded tweets feature. Now entire polls can be viewed in the details of Tweets.

"Before, you tweeted out a question and didn't have space for all possible options," Ben Schaechter, founder of GoPollGo, tells Mashable. Now, "GoPollGo will give users a preview of all the options."

Seeing those options have increased clicks to companies' polls hosted on GoPollGo. "The people who are running the polls typically see three-to-four more times engagement," Schaechter said.

The startup's clients include ESPN, AppleInsider, The Weather Channel and Hotels.com.

Schaechter highlights the…
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More About: analytics, GoPollGo, Twitter

A jaw-dropping photo of a "collapsed shark tank in Kuwait" has been virally circling the web for the past 24 hours.

Normally the fear of sharks doesn't leave the beach, but in this case, Internet users might believe that a shark attack could happen anywhere.

Fortunately, the photo is not real.

SEE ALSO: 15 Photoshopped Transformations of Celebs and Models

In fact, the photoshopped picture is not in Kuwait at all, it's in Toronto. According to Globe and Mail, the flooded shopping center is real, however there were no sharks at the original scene.

Update: Jamie King, who photoshopped the sharks into the image, has also confirmed that it's a fake.

@christerickson The sha…
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More About: image, Photoshop, pics, trending, viral

Want to watch a YouTube video in Spanish, but don't speak the language? The company has rolled out automatic captions in Spanish with the ability to translate the subtitles to about 50 languages, from English and French to Arabic and Afrikaans.

Adding to its existing lineup of automatic captions in various languages including English, Korean and Japanese, YouTube announced on Friday that its voice-recognition software now supports a fourth language, Spanish. The auto-captions feature, which was first added in 2006, aims to make the site more accessible for everyone, including the hearing impaired.

SEE ALSO: YouTube Improves its Automatic Captions [VIDEO]

Here's how the auto-cap…
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More About: Google, Video, videos, YouTube

"An otter was following me on Twitter," recalls agent Brooks Sherman with FinePrint Literary Management. The otter was a character whose Twitter account was managed by a British illustrator. Sherman's interest spiked when the character, appropriately named Otter, unfollowed him. He decided to view the illustrator's profile, and was impressed by his several thousand Twitter followers, some of whom were notable illustrators, and even more impressed after viewing the man's online portfolio.

Sherman found the author's e-mail address and contacted him. "The other day an otter started following me on Twitter and I did nothing of it than remark on the oddity," he wrote. "Sad…
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More About: contributor, features, Marketing, trending, Twitter

President Obama was in the middle of a press briefing announcing his revised immigration policy Friday afternoon when he was interrupted by a heckling reporter.

"It is the right thing to do," insisted the president after the reporter's interruption. "Excuse me sir, it's not time for questions sir. Not while I'm speaking."

"And the answer to your question, sir, and the next time I prefer you let me finish my statements before you ask that question, is this is the right thing to do for the American people," added Obama at the end of his prepared remarks. "I didn't ask for an argument, I'm answering your question," he said, after the reporter tried to engage the president in a debate.…
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More About: 2012 presidential campaign, barack obama, Politics, trending, US, Video, viral, YouTube

1. @JeffreyCampbell

Click here to view this gallery.

You might have noticed a worldwide trending topic on Twitter today. Yeah, that was us.

More About: comedy, Entertainment, hashtags, humor, Music, Tech, Twitter

Does Apple's freshly announced iOS 6 have you hankering for an upgrade? Instead of letting your old iPad collect dust on the shelf, you might consider donating it to Reach for the APPs.

Reach for the APPs, a non-profit organization that launches today, is partnering with school districts nationwide to provide children on the autistim spectrum with access to iPads.

Apple has long touted its device's assistive technology as a powerful tool for the educational development of physically and mentally disabled children. The iPad's touch screen makes it easier to manipulate than more traditional educational tools.

For children with autism, "the iPad is not a toy, but a tool that work…
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More About: apple, autism, charity, donation, ipad, non-profit, reach for the apps

If you like physics-based puzzle games that are both fun and challenging, be sure to check out the new Kickstarter project for the upcoming iOS game Bumpin' Uglies.

This is how the team describes the game:

In Bumpin' Uglies, players design their own Ugly, a hapless, adorably ugly little creature with the intellect of a block of wood, and fling it head first into the gene pool. Players use skill, logic and luck to navigate their Ugly through worlds of quizzical physics-based puzzles, all so that they can "bump" with the Uglies at the other end of those worlds. When they do, magical things happen and they get a gaggle of little Bumplings that blend their Ugly's physical traits…
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More About: Bumpin' Uglies, indie games, indiegogo, iOS games, kickstarter, trending

1. Mad Ruse - Pong Tournament

Candidate: Mad Ruse Game Name: Pong Tournament Description The object of the game is to steal energy to buy defensive upgrades and special abilities. Energy is stolen by breaking through your opponent's defenses and blocking attacks.

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Pong is a 40-year-old arcade classic that has some of the most simple graphics and controls in video game history. But 15 different developers want to make something old new again.

As part of Atari's Indie Developers Challenge, game devs are thinking of creative ways to reinvent the two-paddles-and-a-ball mechanic that was the grandfather to today arcades and consoles. Out of 87 that entered, 15 finalists have been chosen to try and recreate Pong for iOS devices.

The developers were tasked with also making trailers for their games, which you can view in the gallery above. Along with competing for glory and a chance to win up to $100,000, they'll have the opportunity to score a publishi…
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More About: atari, Entertainment, Gaming, pong, Video

Vizio just jumped into the PC market in a big way. As it had promised, the TV manufacturer officially launched its line of Windows machines: a laptop, an all-in-one desktop model and an ultra-thin notebook. And they all sport the silver finish and beautiful modern lines that are the big design trend in laptops today.

Vizio says it applied its experience with TVs to the screens on these machines, giving them the best contrast and viewing angles it possibly could. Almost all of them sport full-HD monitors with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution (the one exception is the smaller "Thin+Light" laptop, whose 14-inch screen is 1,600 x 900).

While that's no Retina display, full HD is more than enoug…
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More About: All-in-One, intel, laptops, trending, Ultrabooks, vizio

One billion data records have been compromised in the last eight years -- costing companies about $48 billion -- but not all small businesses are concerned about how a security breach could actually impact them, according to a new infographic.

On the heels of the news that nearly 1.5 million passwords were compromised from LinkedIn and eHarmony, information security firm Shred-It released an infographic that looks at how companies view both paper and electronic data breaches.

Shred-It conducted a survey among 1,136 U.S. small business owners with companies of fewer than 100 employees, and 100 corporate-level executives who work for companies with a minimum of 500 employees. It's import…
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More About: linkedin, security

Keeping babies and toddlers safe is a top priority for driving parents. TOMY International is unveiling a new car seat that will send cellphone alerts when the car seat is installed improperly, if the child becomes unbuckled and when a child is accidentally left behind.

The smartphone-connected car seat is called The First Years Convertible Car Seat with iAlert. It's designed to help parents avoid auto-related disasters that claim the lives of thousands of children every year.

From within the downloadable app, parents can see if the car seat is placed at optimal angles. A "check seatbelt" warning will flash if a child is unbuckled while the car…
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More About: android, application, iphone, parents

Facebook is reminding users how to make video calls via the social network by testing a "Call" button on member Timeline pages.

The button, which was first spotted by TechCrunch, is located next to the "Message" option on Facebook Timeline's layout. The "Chat" button would replace the subtle video-camera icon now used to start an online video chat.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Mashable that the button is only a test, so it's unknown at this time if it will become a permanent part of Timeline. In the meantime, some members using a desktop version of Facebook will be able to test the feature.

Although Facebook partnered with popular online chat service Skype nearly a year…
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More About: Airtime, Facebook, Google, Google Hangouts, Skype, trending

With so many social networks, online portfolios, digital resumes, and video channels to showcase your work, the traditional business card has basically become obsolete. As a result, many people are turning to personal branding websites to have one place where they can build their online professional persona. But how do you decide which site to use?

Here are four top personal branding sites and the pros and cons to each.

1. About.Me

With design features like drag-and-drop elements, simple font and color selection and a screen-filling background photo, About.Me is one of the easiest and most professional personal brand options available. The ability to add as many social networks and…
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More About: brands, contributor, features, trending

Wikipedia is a valuable research tool, containing more than 22 million articles. But how many times have you looked up a particular topic, like the Revolutionary War, only to find yourself researching the entire history of ska music? (Not that that's happened to me.)

SEE ALSO: Hit Tumblr Mocks Wikipedia's Most Ridiculous Claims

The Gregory Brothers, famous for autotuning the news and introducing the world to Antoine Dodson's "Bed Intruder Song," have made a scavenger hunt out of Wikipedia's vastness.

"WikiWars," as they call it, require the participants to begin on one specific topic page, then only use links within the article to get to the final designated topic page. For e…
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More About: viral, viral videos, wikipedia, YouTube

Twitter town halls have become a popular campaign tool during this presidential election season. That's why campaign strategist David Axelrod followed President Barack Obama's economic speech in Ohio yesterday with a power-packed Q&A, sending 28 tweets and re-tweets through the @BarackObama account in as many minutes.

Certainly, an endless stream of presidential and congressional candidates have tried their own variations of this medium, but Axelrod's was the most effective execution to date. Here's why.

1. Created a Controlled Venue
Most town halls fail by not taking the reader's viewpoint into account. Where are users supposed to be watching the town hall's tweets?…
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More About: barack obama, contributor, features, Social Media, Twitter

Greeks are heading to the polls this weekend to cast their ballots in a vote that could have big consequences for the global economy. Major political parties have framed the election in pro- or anti-bailout and Euro terms, turning the election into a referendum on debt-laden Greece's economic future.

Official opinion polls are banned for two weeks leading up to elections in Greece, but unofficial polls indicate a rising support for pro-bailout parties. However, social media-using Greeks say just the opposite.

Social media analysis firm Crimson Hexagon looked at almost 33,000 opinions posted by Greeks on Facebook and Twitter about the elections, bailouts and the Euro in general from May…
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More About: economics, elections, Euro, europe, eurozone, Facebook, greece, Social Media, Twitter, World

An online magazine editorial, portraying female victims of violence, is receiving a huge backlash on the Internet. Online Bulgarian magazine 12's latest beauty editorial called Victim of Beauty shows photos of models with a black eye, slit throat, severe burn and torn flesh.

In Bulgarian -- a warning for the online photo spread translates: "Recommended Parental Controls: pictures are not recommended for persons under 16 years. And for the faint hearted." The editorial was shot by photographer Vasil Germanov. Makeup on the six models was by Daniela Avramova.

Angry viewers are taking to the website's comment section, Twitter and other outlets to voice their dismay with magazine.…
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More About: magazine, Social Media, Twitter, viral, women

Viddy is the popular video app that is often called the Twitter equivalent for sharing video because of the 15-second time limit placed on each video. The app has quickly grown to 30 million users, which presents an opportunity for brands to interact with a new audience by utilizing a familiar form of media in an innovative way.

There are many brands utilizing the Viddy platform using a variety of strategies. Here are a few of the best methods that will help to gain more followers, bolster engagement, and utilize your video content to its fullest.

1. Offer a Behind-the-Scenes Look

Getting a look at the inner workings of a company, brand, or celebrity is one of the many del…
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More About: brands, contributor, features, Marketing, viddy