If you carry a radio-frequency identification card, this iPhone case is for you.

The HEX Stealth iPhone 4/4S case, released this week, has a special compartment for tap-and-go cards. The protective case is optimal for one or two cards, which keeps your phone sleek and slim. Feel free to store extra cash or an office key card here, too.

The product's biggest differentiator from other carriers on the market is its shielded internal storage flap, which keeps iPhone and RFID card signals from crossing. RFID cards usually consist of a small chip or tiny antenna, which store key information including credit card numbers, expiration data and security information.

SEE ALSO: Apple Wins…
Continue reading...

More About: Mobile, apps, iphone

When you're feeling under the weather do you rush to the hospital? Google frantically?

Now, a web app provides a middle ground solution, offering the guidance of medical professionals with the ease of an online search. When you tell SymCAT your symptoms, it shows you the likelihood of different diagnoses. Think of it like a cross between a search engine and a symptom checker.

SymCAT was created by two Johns Hopkins medical students with backgrounds in engineering, Craig Monsen and David Do, who were frustrated that patients with common symptoms felt the need to go to the emergency room.

"It occurred to us that it could be useful for patients with minor conditions like back pain…
Continue reading...

More About: doctors, health, lifestyle, medicine

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories.

How Nokia Dropped the Ball on Smartphones

Through a series of interviews with key executives, the Wall Street Journal has taken a look into Nokia's history, revealing how Nokia almost caught the touchscreen smartphone bandwagon, but ultimately decided to take a different course.

Probably the most revealing quote in the story comes from Nokia's chief designer Frank Nuovo. Looking at old Nokia slides, which show early touchscreen smartphone prototypes, Nuovo said: "Oh my God.…
Continue reading...

More About: Nokia, apple, features, first to know series, ipad, mashable

Quick Pitch: Adaptu Wallet is a financial planner disguised as an iOS app.

Genius Idea:Adaptu Wallet links accounts, monitors spending and calculates future expenses to give users an accurate read of how much money they currently have.

The Internet makes spending money easier than ever before. But here's something that online shoppers and real-life mall rats may not know -- online money management is just as simple as spending.

Sites like Mint have been providing budgeting tools via the web for years, but Adaptu, which launched in 2010, has taken the concept to the next level -- namely, your iOS device.

Those who indulge in retail therapy without realizing that their…
Continue reading...

More About: apps, bizspark, personal finance, startup

We know it's smart to check multiple sources when you read something on the Internet, but exactly how leery is the public when it comes to information on the web? A study conducted by Harris Interactive highlights just how widespread this lack of trust in information on the Internet is for most Americans.

According to the survey of 1,900 Americans, 98% distrust information found on the Internet, with 94% saying "bad things can happen as a result of acting on inaccurate information online."

Reasons Americans distrust information on the Internet include:

Too many ads – 59%
Outdated information – 56%
Information is self-promotional – 53%
Unfamiliar forums – 45%…
Continue reading...

More About: Harris Interactive, internet, trending

Samsung unveiled on Wednesday its ES9000 75-inch LED Smart 3D TV in New York City, complete with a gesture-controlled version of Angry Birds.

Mashable's Samantha Murphy described the 75-inch LED as "stunning" in person. The top-of-the-line set has super-slim bezel of just 0.31 inches that gives the set the appearance of floating and has no visible seams.

While the ES9000 has all the amenities you would expect from a high-end television set -- including a well hidden built-in camera for Skype video calls -- we were most excited about Angry Birds.

Alongside the TV, Samsung unveiled a gesture-controlled version of Angry Birds. The hit game can be…
Continue reading...

More About: HDTV, LCD, Samsung ES9000, angry birds, samsung

1. OkCupid

OkCupid is the fastest-growing online dating platform. It's easy to see why — OkCupid is free, simple and incredibly saturated. The app integrates the site's math-based magic, which suggests compatible mates. On the mobile app, users will still have to build a profile and answer at least 25 questions. But the more questions you answer the better. OkCupid's "Locals" feature on the mobile app lets singles utilize their free time to scout who's nearby for coffee or a drink. Say you have two hours before dinner with friends, you can also send out a "Broadcast" to singles nearby — "I'm free for coffee downtown." Then just wait for responses. When the app is on, users will also benefit from live notifications if there are any good matches passing them by. Price: Free iOS and Android app

Click here to view this gallery.

Right now, over 40 million singles use top online personals platforms such as Match.com and eHarmony as well as niche dating websites to find love. Online dating, however, is evolving. More and more, connected singles are using dating apps to improve their chances of meeting that special someone.

Singles can connect online and test their web-based love connections in person. In some cases, it's only a few minutes after virtually chatting, thanks to location-based features.

"If you think you're not tech-savvy enough to download a dating app, think again," Laurie Davis, founder of eFlirt Expert and author of Love At First Click: The Ultimate Guide to Online Dating (releasing in Febr…
Continue reading...

More About: Mobile, Social Media, android, apps, dating, features, iphone, relationships, social networking

Shooting an iPhone video with your fiends just got a lot more interesting. Meet Vyclone, a social video creation, collaboration, and sharing app for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Available Thursday, the app lets two or more users create a collaborative video with others who are also shooting an iPhone video in physical proximity to them even if you're not friends with or even aware the other people are shooting a video.

The result is an almost instant multi-angle video of an event that you'll swear was created by a professional video editor.

"Working as a musician for years, I noticed that people were always taking video of their favorite
moments of each concert, but there w…
Continue reading...

More About: App, Video, iphone

The boy band One Direction may have charmed teens with their catchy lyrics, but these five musicians have our jaws dropping.

We've seen seven pianists collaboratively cover Jay Z and Kanye West, but the members of The Piano Guys have raised the bar.

More About: One Direction, YouTube, musicians, watercooler

With the 2012 Summer Olympics officially beginning in just over a week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a number of new features designed to boost the Games' social presence and engagement with fans.

The Olympic Athletes' Hub -- an online social destination launched in April to provide verified Twitter and Facebook feeds of past and present Olympians -- is getting two new features. First up is a section called Inside the Olympic Village, which will host a series of live chats over the coming weeks. The IOC is encouraging people to follow @Olympics on Twitter and Facebook.com/Olympics for updates on who will be chatting when. An Olympic Challenge page is also schedu…
Continue reading...

More About: Social Media, olympics, sports

A large part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is aimed at making patients' health records more accessible between multiple physicians, as well as between doctors and their patients. Part of this initiative has been to implement the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. These systems allow easy sharing and accessibility for all parties involved in making your healthcare decisions. In addition to saving time, they also reduce the number of errors sometimes made in written files.

Ideally, with the use of EHR systems you could move to a different state and it would be easier for your new doctor to receive a current file from your…
Continue reading...

More About: CDC, EHR, HITECH, NCHS, electronic health records, healthcare, healthcare reform

Name: Hello La Mode

Quick Pitch: A place to buy and sell designer goods.

Genius Idea: A third party verifies the authenticity of purchases before payments are transferred.

Search for a designer handbag on eBay, and you're likely to come across more than a few fakes. The auction site has made general efforts to prevent the selling of counterfeit goods -- namely, by agreeing to take down items at the request of brand owners, or that users report to be "suspicious." Despite those sanctions, shoppers still must rely largely on their own knowledge of a product -- the brand of a zipper, the shape of a buckle -- to determine if an item they're looking at is the real thing.…
Continue reading...

More About: Hello La Mode, bizspark, ebay, fashion, retail, startup

Brie Stewart

"The amazing ‪blue‬ ‪sky‬ in ‪Sydney‬ city CBD (Darling Harbour)."

Click here to view this gallery.

The color blue is a constant in our lives. It is the color of a cloudless sky and the hue of a deep ocean. Blue is said to promote a feeling of calm and productivity. Our very own Mashable logo sports the color blue.

Last week, we asked you to send us photos that captured the color blue. Our readers excelled in their interpretations of the theme, sending us all kinds of blue snapshots for the weekly Mashable Photo Challenge.

SEE ALSO: 12 Celebratory Photos From Mashable Readers

One gorgeous photo pictures a tropical bay; another shows a sky peaking through ornate windows. From a paint-drenched 5K run to a gorgeous butterfly to a pond full of swans, our favorite photos this week sh…
Continue reading...

More About: Photos, community, photo challenge, photography

Design-focused, socially charged ecommerce site Fab announced Wednesday that it has closed a $105 million Series C financing round.

Fab famously pivoted from a gay social network into an ecommerce site with millions of members and doing thousands of sales every single day.

Fab's growth continues to accelerate. Back in December -- when the company closed a $40 million round of financing -- the site boasted 1.2 million members.

Seven months later, that figure has quadrupled to more than five million members. Fab co-founder and CEO Jason Goldberg told us that the company is now selling 3.4 products per minute.

"We hit on great products that people love," Goldberg says. He attribute…
Continue reading...

More About: Fab.com, ecommerce, fashion, flash deals

A Facebook game currently in development will teach young adults financial literacy, while getting them hooked on an addictive online experience.

Kicked Out, the product of developers and social entrepreneurs in Vienna, Austria and San Francisco, strives to train players to intuitively become responsible with money. The group is hoping to raise a major funding round through Kickstarter, with just three days left to reach its $300,000 goal.

Creator Katharina Norton began working on Kicked Out when she realized financial literacy is a universal struggle for nearly all young people. There's an imbalance between the ease of spending money and the challenge of saving money.

"I wante…
Continue reading...

More About: facebook games, kickstarter, personal finance, trending

Mashable brought you the news on Tuesday night that legendary magazine Sports Illustrated is featuring Instagram photos in this week's issue for the first time in its history.

Now Brad Mangin, the photographer who made the images, used a Wednesday post to his personal blog to share some secrets on how he created SI-worthy Instagrams.

Mangin writes that he got an iPhone 4S last December, and "immediately fell in love with the special effects and social networking aspects of working with Instagram." He began shooting ballplayers in February during spring training, continuing to snap away with his iPhone with a fresh dose of enthusiasm for sports photography. Eighteen of the shots from…
Continue reading...

More About: Sports illustrated, instagram, sports

AT&T announced on Wednesday that it is rolling out shared data plans, allowing customers to pay for chunk of data that can be divvied up among 10 devices, from smartphones and tablets to laptops and gaming devices.

Dubbed "Mobile Share," the wireless provider will offer the plan to customers starting in August. Each of the six plan options includes tethering and unlimited domestic calls and texts for smartphones and basic or quick messaging phones.

The news comes one month after rival Verizon overhauled its billing plans, which gave customers the ability to share data allowance across several devices. Verizon's plan -- "Share Everything" -- is available for unlimited calls, text, v…
Continue reading...

More About: Mobile, att, trending, verizon

As part of a move to bring its Internet content to life for web searchers, Bing's homepage on Wednesday features a stunning time-lapse video of Arizona's desert.

Bing's homepage typically features a different photograph as its backdrop each day, but it's not the first time it has touted video instead.

"We aim to do a few videos on the homepage each month," Stephanie Hortsmanshof, senior managing editor at Bing, told Mashable. "We sprinkle them in so it's meant to be a surprise."

The video homepages first launched in September 2011 for users with an HTML-5 enabled browser. For those without a modern browser, the site will display the still photography.

SEE ALSO: Google vs. Bin…
Continue reading...

More About: Social Media, Twitter, Video, bing

According to the children's song "Six Little Ducks," what did the one little duck who ruled the others have on his back?

To access the answers in each slide, use your cursor to highlight the black text following the "Answer" field. Answer: Feathers

Click here to view this gallery.

Trivia is a widespread part of pop culture. These days, people take pride in consuming niche facts -- from knowing every type of French cheese to reciting David Hasselhoff's entire filmography.

But even the most seasoned trivia buffs are not always right. Sometimes they are so focused on the niche details, that the most obvious answer is amiss.

SEE ALSO: History of Trivia Is Anything But Trivial [VIDEO]

Arkansas-based indie developer Mobile FWD provided us with the 15 most common incorrectly-answered questions from people playing their free iOS game Triv.ial.

The game, which launched less than a month ago, has collectively asked more than one million questions. The Entertainment…
Continue reading...

More About: apps, iOS, trivia, watercooler

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was the breakout star of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, captivating track fans and casual observers alike with his incredible speed, brash style and charismatic personality. Bolt still holds world records for the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints, and this summer in London he'll look to fend off a field of challengers, including countryman Yohan Blake.

But, like more mortal beings, Bolt is also an avid tech consumer. He owns three different smartphones -- a BlackBerry, Samsung S3 and iPhone -- and is active on Facebook (where he has nearly 7 million "Likes"), Twitter (where he has more than 500,000 followers), WhoSay and Instagram. He's a video game junkie who some…
Continue reading...

More About: Gaming, Mobile, Music, apps, features, olympics, sports

Yahoo! made news this week when it named longtime Google employee Marissa Mayer as its new CEO. Mayer steps in just two months after Scott Thompson resigned in May.

Mayer was not seen as a candidate for Yahoo's top spot. Earlier this summer, it was thought that Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and interim CEO Ross Levinsohn were the frontrunners. Mayer was a long-time Google employee who had been with the company since 1999. Now she'll be charged with the task of resurrecting the beleaguered Internet company. In addition, she'll be taking on another difficult job -- she announced yesterday that she is expecting her first child on Oct. 7.

She will have her work cut out for her at Yahoo, which "is…
Continue reading...

More About: Google, Yahoo, marissa mayer

Multimedia-sharing startup Mobli has helped Hollywood cast an actress for The Canyons, a neo-noir thriller starring Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen.

Producers of the movie -- which is funded through Kickstarter and tells the story of five 20-something's "quest for power, love, sex and success" -- held an open casting call on Mobli over the past three weeks.

More than 125 women submitted audition videos to snag the role of Caitlin, a character described as such: "20s, beautiful and very aware of it, a budding socialite engrossed in Los Angeles life, shallow, naive, and easily manipulated."

Co-producer Ricky Horne surprised the winner, Lauren Schacher, this week:…
Continue reading...

More About: Entertainment, Film, Mobli, Movies, celebrities, mobile apps

View from the Clouds.

"#stormcoming #nyc #isolated I've never seen a storm so concentrated. The power of mother nature!" Image courtesy of DhaniJones

Click here to view this gallery.

A building-shaking, body-soaking, dog-scaring weather system tackled New York City Wednesday and amateur photographers braved the elements to capture amazing images of the storm.

Former NFL linebacker and current Travel Channel host Dhani Jones shot the most shared photo of the day, an incredible Instagram image snapped from an airplane taking off from LaGuardia.

More About: NYC, Photos, Weather, instagram, watercooler

The startup space is quickly filling with companies that promote sharing everything from extra rooms, to bikes. And these services are a great way to make some cash on the side. On Spinlister, you can make $400 per month for renting your bike. On AirBnB, one woman made $28,000 extra dollars in a year for renting out a room in her house.

Your automobile is another asset that can score you some big bucks. Here are three up-and-coming car-sharing services that we recommend.

RelayRides

Former Kiva employee Shelby Clark started RelayRides because he had to bike two miles in the sleet and cold in Boston just to get to a Zipcar and realized ther…
Continue reading...

More About: Video, car sharing, valleygirltv

Ask any kid, everything looks better in LEGO. Inspired by a 5-year-old LEGO fan, a Rolls-Royce location in Derby, U.K. has debuted a replica of a jet engine made entirely out of LEGO bricks.

The LEGO version of the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine is more than 6 and a half feet long, half the size of its real-life counterpart. The replica engine is made from 152,455 LEGO bricks and was built by a team of professional LEGO builders advised by Rolls-Royce graduates and apprentices. The model was inspired by a boy named Fred, who built a LEGO jet engine with his father and sent it to the Rolls-Royce site in Derby.

SEE ALSO: LEGO Settlers of Catan: The …
Continue reading...

More About: Lego, cars, engineering

Lovebirds Jeff Schroeder and Jordan Lloyd, alumni of TV show's Big Brother and The Amazing Race, now star in a web series on CBS's website and CBS Audience Network.

Jeff and Jordan Do America, which premiered at 4 p.m. ET Wednesday, documents the couple's big move from Chicago to Los Angeles. In the 10-episode series, they'll traverse U.S. Route 66's landmarks and take part in activities that are "death-defying" or "purely romantic." Watch the first episode below.

"The series has everything from quirky to adventurous and, of course, relationship themes throughout," Schroeder says.

SEE ALSO: Big Brother Embraces Social TV With New Interactive Platforms

An interactive map (se…
Continue reading...

More About: Amazing Race, Entertainment, big brother, cbs, web series

Enterprise Window

Yes, you can get this close to Enterprise.

Click here to view this gallery.

The Space Shuttle Enterprise is open for business in New York City. The Intrepid Air and Space Museum officially unveils the shuttle exhibit to the public on July 19, but Mashable got a sneak preview.

First impressions? The Shuttle is huge. I attended a shuttle launch a few years ago and got to be within a mile of the Space Shuttle Atlantis when it blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It looked pretty big from afar, but it's not until you're standing nose-to-nose with a NASA shuttle that you get a true sense of their size.

And you can get that close to Enterprise -- within three feet at most points on the museum floor. You can walk completely around and under the spaceship. To get…
Continue reading...

More About: NASA, Tech, US, aviation, pics, space, space shuttle, technology

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a release date of Oct. 26 for the consumer release of Windows 8.

The company had previously announced a "late October" launch date for the new OS, but Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live unit at Microsoft announced the more specific date at the company's annual sales meeting.

The date was updated on Windows 8's Wikipedia page within minutes of the announcement.

Meanwhile, the "RTM" (Release to Manufacturing) version of Win 8 is set to hit the first week of August. The dates are not particularly surprising, since the Redmond software giant typically delivers operating system updates in October. Still, there was always the wo…
Continue reading...

More About: Marketing, Windows 8, microsoft

Today a UK judge ordered that Apple must issue a notice stating that Samsung did not copy its design for the iPad.

Apple's statement must be published on its UK website for six months and be distributed throughout several British magazines and newspapers, Bloomberg reports.

Judge Colin Birss mandated that the notice must detail the July 9 ruling in which he dismissed Apple's lawsuit over Samsung's Galaxy Tab. According to Birss, the design for the Galaxy tablets doesn't infringe on that of Apple's product. He even went as far to say the Samsung designs weren't as distinctively "cool" as the iPad.

"[The Galaxy tablets] do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which i…
Continue reading...

More About: apple, ipad, patent lawsuit, patent lawsuit theater, samsung, samsung galaxy tablet

The fact is no medium drives offline conversation better than online marketing. In fact, our research shows that in 15% of conversations about products and 23% of conversations about services, somebody refers to something they saw online.

Yet, a key mistake made by digital marketers is allowing the effectiveness of campaigns to be measured with just digital metrics like clicks, shares, and re-tweets. None of those metrics pick up the impact of offline behavior, such as word of mouth, which can be nine times more voluminous offline than online.

So how does a marketer make sure marketing efforts work in both spaces? Here are five ways to maximize the impact of any marketing strategy…
Continue reading...

More About: Marketing, contributor, features, marketing platform, online marketing