nptech.info

An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times recently ran a story on the discovery of a cache of wax cylinder records, recorded in Europe in the 1880s, of Otto von Bismarck, Helmuth von Moltke, and various musicians. 'In June 1889, Edison sent Wangemann to Europe, initially to ensure that the phonograph at the Paris World’s Fair remained in working order. After Paris, Wangemann toured his native Germany, recording musical artists and often visiting the homes of prominent members of society who were fascinated with the talking machine. Until now, the only available recording from Wangemann’s European trip has been a well-known and well-worn cylinder of Brahms playing an excerpt from his first Hungarian Dance. That recording is so damaged "that many listeners can scarcely discern the sound of a piano, which has in turn tarnished the reputations of both Wangemann and the Edison phonograph of the late 1880s," Dr. Feaster said. "These newly unearthed examples vindicate both."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "While America had offered the F-16, F-18 and now the stealth F-35 fighter, India picked for its new multi-role attack jet a low cost, older French plane. Why? For one, it's cheaper, and two, if American/Indian relations go bad, can they get the parts and equipment to keep the planes in the air? It seems prudence beat out the latest in technology."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Memory-chip maker Micron Technology on Saturday named D. Mark Durcan as CEO and Robert E. Switz as chairman, following the death of Steven Appleton, who had long held those positions. Appleton died Friday in a plane crash in Boise. Sales executive Mark W. Adams was named president.

Plugh writes "In a victory for transparency and openness in government, and saving tax dollars, New Hampshire has passed HB418. State agencies are now required by law to consider open source software when acquiring software, and to promote the use of open data formats."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Radioactivity Counter Turns Your Android Phone into a Geiger Counter (Android) Getting one step closer to turning your phone into a tricorder, Android app Radioactivity Counter uses the CMOS camera sensor on your phone to record radiation levels.
• Use Colorblind Assistant to Identify Whatever Color Your Cursor is Pointing At (Windows) If you're colorblind or just need to constantly know what colors are on your screen the free program Colorblind Assistant might be for you. The program tells you whatever color is displayed at the current location of your mouse/trackpad pointer.
• CCleaner for Mac Comes Out of Beta, Adds New Browser and Disk Cleaning Features (Mac OS X) CCleaner for Mac has been in beta for awhile, but now Mac users can enjoy the final version of our favorite Windows utilities. If you're a little starved for disk space or just want to engage in some early Spring cleaning on your Mac, CCleaner is now finished, stable, and ready to help you out.
• Waze for Android Updates, Adds New Maps, Driver-Friendly UI, and More Social Features (Android) Waze, our pick for the best turn-by-turn navigation app for Android, updated today to include an entirely new UI that minimizes buttons and tools so they're all accessible under one spring-out on-screen menu, easier-to-navigate maps that you can now easily spin around and navigate with one hand, and new location-based information from services like Yelp and FourSquare.
• Belvedere Updates, Can Now Automate Your Folders and Automatically Send Files to iTunes (Windows) Belvedere, our automatic file management tool for Windows, has updated with a few new features, like the ability to move folders around and add tracks to iTunes.
• Simplify is an All-In-One Desktop Controller for iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio (Mac OS X) Mini-player apps like previously mentioned Bowtie or GeekTool are great, though they usually only support one or two media players-which isn't great for music junkies that might use multiple programs. Simplify is a simple desktop controller and shortcut customizer that controls iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio.
• PacApt Brings Arch Linux's Amazing Manager to Other Linux Distributions (Linux) It's no secret that we love Arch Linux, and one of Arch's best features is the simple, easy-to-use package manager, Pacman. Here's how to get Pacman's simple command structure in other Linux distributions.
• Cobook Powers Up Your Mac's Address Book with Social Networks, Mouseless Navigation (Mac OS X) Cobook is an Address Book app for Mac that sits in your menu bar, offers quick mouseless navigation, and lets you add a lot more to your contact cards, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts.
• Syncly Automatically Uploads Every Photo You Take to Dropbox (Android) Syncly keeps watch over your Android's SD card, automatically uploading new photos to Dropbox as soon as you take them-so you don't need to do anything to keep everything synced to the cloud.
• Dashlane Securely Manages Passwords, Form info, and Even Purchases For You (and We'ev Got Invites) (Windows/Mac) There are plenty of services that promise to keep your passwords safe, secure, and synchronized across devices behind a single master password that you can remember, but Dashlane is a new service that does that, audits those passwords for strength, saves your form information for quick entry on new web sites, and even keeps track of the purchases you make with that information so you can see it all in one view-one that's only available to you, not even DashLane employees.

More »

Maybe you’re a little bit interested in watching part of the Super Bowl on your Verizon phone. This should cure you of that: It’s the ad Verizon is using to push the service, which it’s selling for $3. I’m a Verizon subscriber, and the carrier just sent this directly to my iPhone, unprompted, via MMS.

You’ll have to take my word for this, but this is exactly what it looks and sounds like on my phone — there’s no drop in quality in this YouTube upload.

What’s truly bizarre is that the live NFL streaming that Verizon does provide is actually pretty good. Or at least it was, when they were offering it for free at the beginning of the season. I don’t know why they’d want to promote it with something that looked like it was made on a Commodore 64.

Also odd: Verizon has made competent, attractive ads for its NFL offering in the past. Here’s one from 2011:

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Neil Webster)

The New York Giants official website accidentally announced the winner of Super Bowl XLVI more than 24 hours before Sunday’s big game even started, by the look of images floating around the web.

The error was immortalized Saturday in this TwitPic screenshot (above), which Jeff Frias posted to Twitter. No signs of the mistake are left on the team’s site other than a reported link that leads to the image below:

The Giants have yet to publicly confirm whether this whammy is real or the handy-work of a prankster.

While online blunders have cost people their jobs in the past, this misstep — if real — shows that the Giants organization is unsurprisingly ready to financially capitalize on a possible win.

The tweeted image displays championship garb traditionally sold after national sporting contests. Giants quarterback Eli Manning and three other players are cropped into the image along with the Super Bowl’s most-coveted prize, the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The image is emblazoned with these words in all caps: “The Giants are Super Bowl champions!”

SEE ALSO: Super Bowl 2012 By the Numbers | How to Watch the Super Bowl Online

The Feb. 5 broadcast of the Giants vs. New England Patriots game kicks off at Indianapolis Lucas Oil Stadium at 6:30 p.m. ET and will be followed by many post-game breakdowns of the games and commercials. One Super Bowl post-game analysis will occur within an NBC-backed Google+ Hangout. Participants will dissect the commercials, which this year cost $3.5 million each.

Did you notice the premature winner’s announcement before it was taken down? Sound off below.

BONUS: 10 Athlete Gaffes Aided by Social Media

Online whammies in the sports world are not uncommon. Here are a few recent memorable digital mistakes.

Cappie Pondexter

After a tsunami devastated Japan this March, Cappie Pondexter of the WNBA's New York Liberty tweeted, "What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes." Later she continued hypothesizing with this tweet: "u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so you can't expect anything less." Predictably, Pondexter's tweets sparked a strong backlash, and she eventually took to Twitter again, this time to apologize (left).

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Entertainment, football, sports, Super Bowl, trending

An anonymous reader writes "Saad Allami likely never expected that a simple text message of encouragement would have turned his life upside down. But as seen in a similar case of absurd overreaction by authorities, a simple text message is all it takes to have yourself branded as a terrorist. From the article: 'The Quebec man says he was arrested by provincial police while picking up his seven-year-old son at school. A team of police officers stormed into his home, telling his wife she was married to a terrorist. And his work colleagues were detained for hours at the U.S. border because of their connection to him.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

#mealplanning If you try to plan advance monthly or bi-weekly menus it can be difficult to balance variety with the staples that everyone enjoys. Parenting weblog Simple Mom recommends establishing a theme for each day of the week such as pizza day or crock pot meals day. That way you know what type of meal you need for all of your open slots and your family knows what to expect at most meals. More »

If Internet memes were turned into movies, their promotional posters might resemble the designs London-based Stefan van Zoggel conjured up.

“I took the context of the usually short-lived internet memes and virals, and translated that to simple film poster designs,” says van Zoggel on his Meme Movie Posters blog.

He has designed 29 meme-inspired posters so far. Below, you’ll find posters about Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” planking, Nyan Cat, Double Rainbow, Keyboard Cat, Shake Weight and a slew of other memes.

SEE ALSO: 10 Best Memes of 2011 | Hey Girl, Here Are Foursquare Ryan Gosling Memes

Which designs are your favorite of the bunch? Which new memes should inspire his future designs?

I would like to see movie posters about the Occupy Wall Street movement’s Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop, NFL quarterback Tim Tebow‘s Tebowing and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s sweater vests.

Meme Movie Posters

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: art, memes, Movies, trending

For more Entertainment coverage:

• Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter
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• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from a BBC article detailing the suspension of a sales ban on certain Apple products in Germany: "Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store [yesterday] after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December. An appeals court lifted the ban after Apple made a new license payment offer. However, Germany-based users may still face the loss of their push email iCloud service after a separate ruling. 'A suspension like this is available only against a bond, but Apple is almost drowning in cash and obviously won't have had a problem with obtaining and posting a bond.' ... A statement from Apple said: 'All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly.'" Reader DJRumpy points out that Motorola is seeking royalties of 2.25% for Apple's wireless devices in exchange for a license to use Motorola's patents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1. Feb Photo a Day

Blogger @fatmumslim (4500+ followers) started the #febphotoaday trend on Twitter by creating a "photo challenge" where Twitter users share a picture on every day in February, displaying the subjects mentioned on this image. She did the same thing in January, when #janphotoaday was trending throughout the month.

Click here to view this gallery.

We’ve sifted through tens of millions of pictures posted on Twitter during the week and narrowed them down to the 10 most popular, and here they are.

Using a special algorithm developed by our partners/wizards at social media search engine Skylines, we’ve taken the most popular hash tags and found the most widely shared pictures within.

There weren’t a tremendous amount of big events going on this week, so our astute curators made a special effort to take the most amusing and interesting pictures and subjects that resided in the top 100. Even so, there were slim pickings this week. C’mon Twitter users, you can do better than that — share some blockbuster pics next week!

If you’d like to know more about the selection process, see the full results from Skylines.

If you missed them, here are last week’s Top 10 Twitter Pics.

More About: Skylines, Top 10 Twitter Pics, trending, Twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

#windowsdownloads Windows: Sure the default web client for Pandora is nice, but some of us want to have a desktop version to not take up a tab and memory in our browser of choice. The open source desktop client Elpis does a good job of keeping the essential functions of Pandora active while not using as many resources. More »

The 54th Grammy Awards ceremony is only eight days away and the Recording Academy is kicking off the next phase of its digital and social campaign. Under the heading of “We Are Music” the Academy and its partners are harnessing the power of social, mobile and digital to make the award show more modern than ever.

The Recording Academy made the decision to invest in social and digital media several years ago (you can read Mashable’s past coverage of the 2010 and 2011 campaigns) and the organization and its awards show are now seeing the dividends. Big time. The latest trends in social TV and second screen experiences are in direct alignment with the road Grammy has been traveling for years.

We spoke with Evan Greene, Chief Marketing Officer of the Recording Academy, and he told us the strategy around the 2012 Grammys was to put mobile and digital at the forefront of the project. That means the campaign and the show itself were designed with the digital and mobile attributes in mind from its inception, not tacked on at the end. As someone who has been beating the drum of making social and digital a part of the creation process from beginning to end, this is great to see.

Grammy Live and the Second Screen

As in years past, the cornerstone of the digital Grammy experience is around Grammy Live. Grammy Live is a three-day webcast of special Grammy events, red carpets and parties, designed to bring fans behind the scenes and close to all the action.

Although CBS (Grammy’s broadcasting partner) doesn’t stream the awards themselves online, Grammy Live is available as a second screen experience during the event, giving additional insight and tidbits into what’s happening, views from the crowd and access to backstage areas.

As Peter Anton, executive producer of Grammy Live pointed out in our conversation, Grammy Live was actually the first major second screen experience designed around an award show — and this was before the iPad!

Of course, now that the iPad is here, it makes sense to extend the Grammy Live experience to other devices. In addition to viewing the experience at Grammy.com, users can also interact with the experience in the Grammy Live app for iOS [iTunes link].

This year, Greene told us, the Recording Academy worked hard to make the Grammy Live app a perfect extension of the website itself. CBS was also heavily involved this year, both in helping craft the app and in giving Grammy Live official on-air callouts and integration.

Not only does the Grammy Live app give users access to the photos, videos and articles available at Grammy.com, it also features Grammy trivia, the ability to guess who will win at the 54th Grammy Awards and the ability to listen to a streaming radio station of Grammy nominees. One of my favorite features of the app is that it also includes a database of past winners, as well as nominees for the 2012 awards. During the show on Feb. 12, those listings will be updated in real time.

The app also lets users browse tweets from various Grammy accounts and hashtags, and of course, access the full Grammy Awards experience before and during the show itself. The app is optimized for iPhone and iPad, and is one of the best apps we’ve seen for an awards show.

The Campaign: We Are Music

For the fifth consecutive year, the Recording Academy teamed up with TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles for the awards show campaign. The team created a robust campaign with print, outdoor, digital, mobile and television components centered around the theme of “We Are Music.”

The genesis of the campaign was formed around the emotions and social experiences that music brings out in us all. The agency TBWA\Chiat\Day wanted to capture the way music moves us as humans and wanted a way to help visualize that emotive experience.

TBWA\Chiat\Day always likes to push the technical boundaries in the digital aspects of its campaigns, and this year was no different. The centerpiece is a microsite that lives at Wearemusic.grammy.com. This site was developed using cutting-edge web technologies (in this case, Flash 11 Stage 3D) to create robust real-time 3D visualizations that are modified based on what music is playing in the background.

Users can select their own mix of songs (powered using Rdio‘s library API) and add in their own photographs to create their own unique visualizations. Users can then share these visualizations with others using Facebook or Twitter. The effect is insanely cool and I encourage you all to visit the site and see it for yourself.

Creating a robust and cutting-edge desktop experience was important, but the agency also wanted to have a powerful mobile component. Enter the We Are Music iPhone app [iTunes link]. This app helps bring the visualized experience to mobile devices.

In the mobile app, a user’s own music library is used to power the visualizations. Users can also provide their own photos or take one within the app. The app then creates customized experiences based on the music, and also uses the camera flash on the iPhone 4 and 4S to create special pulsing experiences (you can shut this off if you don’t like it). Up to 15 users on the same WiFi or Bluetooth network can even share their experiences with one another.

It’s a super cool app and again, it’s cutting edge. The technology team relied on some of the newest features in iOS 5 to take advantage of these tools. What I like about this app — as with the Music Mapper from the 53rd Grammy Awards, is that the app and microsite can still be enticing and fun even outside the context of the awards show.

The TV spots TBWA/Chiat/Day crafted around the campaign have already made the rounds on YouTube. The Grammy artists profiled in this campaign include Adele, Foo Fighters and Bon Iver. All the spots have style, but the ad with Skrillex is notable because they outfitted the artist in a motion-capture suit to get the liquid movement effect.

Check it out:

Staying Social

Of course, no modern digital campaign strategy would be complete without a big focus on social media. For the 54th Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy is putting Grammy everywhere and engaging with the community of music fans across social platforms.

In addition to the Grammys Facebook Page @TheGrammys Twitter account, the Grammys are also active on:

• Instagram — Photo contests were held for the first month of the campaign
• Tumblr — The Grammy team held a contest asking users to blog about what artists have influenced them.
• Foursquare — This profile includes historical tips about venues that have hosted the Grammys as well as locations of studios where Grammy Winning albums were recorded.
• GetGlue — GetGlue is offering exclusive stickers not just for checking into the awards, but for checking in to the artists nominated for the Big Four awards.
• YouTube
• Google+

What made me really excited, however, was to see how The Grammys embraced digital music services. Grammy and Pepsi teamed up to create a custom Pandora station that includes Best New Artist videos and Grammy winners and nominees in 12 different genres. Next week, Grammy will also roll out its official Grammy Spotify app that will let users listen to all past Grammy winners in four major categories. The Spotify app will get more categories in the months ahead.

What this strong commitment says to us is that the Grammy Awards aren’t playing around with social, the team gets it.

Mashable will be at the Grammy Awards live on Feb. 12, 2012 and covering the digital action from the ground. Let us know what you think of the digital campaign for the 54th Grammy Awards in the comments.

More About: 54th Grammy Awards, apps, grammy awards, grammys

While many techies aren’t sports fans (and vice versa), lots of us are enthusiasts of both ones and zeros and X’s and O’s.

And for those who are into both football and geekery, tomorrow is kind of like the Super Bowl. Well, technically speaking, I guess tomorrow is like the Super Bowl for everyone.

Anyhoo. For everyone looking for some tech to go with their gridiron, there are lots of options.

First of all, NBC is streaming the Super Bowl live over the Internet, for those who can’t make it to a television or want a second screen to enjoy even more of the action.

ESPN president John Skipper said at D: Dive Into Media that he thinks giving away the game for free is a bad idea, but NBC paid for the rights, so they get to do what ever they want.

Verizon is also broadcasting the game live to the smallest of screens via its NFL Mobile service. (However, Peter Kafka notes their marketing of said service could use some work.)

Second, there are a ton of Super Bowl apps, including the official ones for both iPhone and Android, as well as a game program. Peanuts are still not downloadable, but content-tagging app Shazam is offering a variety of commercial tie-ins. Check here for even more game-day apps.

And of course, the big game will be the talk of Twitter, to be sure.

Lastly, as a special treat, AllThingsD will be offering live coverage of the game, the commercials and the social-media hoopla. We had so much fun in January with Footballmer, our liveblog mash-up of Steve Ballmer’s final CES keynote and the BCS championship, that we decided to do it again.

This time, though, I’ll actually get to watch the game, rather than having Ballmer duty. I’ll be commenting on the game, the commercials, the tech and the Twitter commentary. Check back tomorrow before kickoff for that.

New submitter someWebGeek writes "LibreOffice, the community-driven fork of OpenOffice, appears to have a very healthy and growing group of code contributors. The Document Foundation has published new stats that portray the climbing rates of developer involvement both in terms of numbers of people and numbers of code commits. One of the most encouraging aspects, as noted by Ryan Paul in an article at Ars, is that non-corporate code contributions by independent volunteers constitute the largest slice of the latest commit-pie."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

#grilling Many grilling aficionados don't try grilling large fish such as salmon, tuna, or shark as they're afraid the fish will stick to the grill. Culinary site Chow.com recommends using the 70/30 rule when grilling fish: cook the flesh side down first for 70% of the total cooking time, then flip the fish over to the skin side for the last 30%. More »

Super Bowl 2012 is blitzing us like a crazed linebacker, coming up in a matter of hours, and the numbers are stacking up quickly. It’s a weekend of superlatives, with astonishing numbers swirling around those brave warriors on the field.

In the Super Bowl, everything is larger than life. Instead of a dozen TV cameras for normal football game broadcasts, NBC rolls out 57 cameras. Instead of betting a couple of bucks on the game, people bet hundreds. And instead of eating a couple of chicken wings, an entire nation gangs up to eat 1.25 billion of them in one day.

Want more? We have numbers — a long list of them, taking into account the technology of the big game, the behavior of a nation and the world during the contest, the security necessary to keep everyone safe, the enormous amounts of money changing hands and lots more.

So sit back and prepare yourself for a gigantic triviafest, giving you plenty of ammunition to be the Super Bowl know-it-all when the game starts at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday. Warning: Recite these numbers at your own risk.

• $10 billion: to be gambled on Super Bowl XLVI internationally, expected to be the most bet-upon game in Super Bowl history, according to ESPN
• 1.25 billion: chicken wings eaten Super Bowl weekend
• $720 million: construction cost of the Indianapolis Lucas Oil Stadium, built in hopes of hosting a Super Bowl
• 111 million: last year’s average U.S. TV audience, the largest in U.S. TV history. It could hit 113 million viewers this year, according to an unscientific poll by MediaLife
• $4 million: price of the most-expensive advertisement, according to Reuters
• $3.5 million: for a 30-second ad, on average, up from $3 million last year
• 68,000: number of seats in Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI
• $3,985: Average price paid for one Super Bowl 2012 ticket
• 3,000: hours of video content to be acquired, encoded and transported by NBC
• 475: crew members NBC will employ for the pre-game and game productions
• 180: countries and territories in which Super Bowl XLVI will air
• 77%: accuracy of the stock market predictor that if the NFC team (Giants) wins the Super Bowl, the market will rise for the year, or drop if the AFC team (Patriots) wins
• 75: cameras installed in Indianapolis in and around Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl security, according to Public Intelligence
• 70: national network ads NBC will air around this year’s game, sold out shortly after Thanksgiving weekend, according to Reuters
• 60: miles of cable for NBC’s cameras and microphones
• 57: cameras NBC will deploy for the broadcast, including the pre- and post-game shows
• 50%: price rise of a Super Bowl commercial in the last 10 years
• 47%: of Super Bowl viewers will check their smartphones up to 10 times or more during the game, according to a survey by Velti.
• 46: It’s the 46th Super Bowl (XLVI)
• 40: cameras NBC will devote to game coverage
• 29: Trucks and trailers NBC will use for the broadcast
• 25: languages spoken on the international broadcasts
• 12: number of Super Bowl appearances for Giants and Patriots combined
• 6: channels of DTS Neural Surround 5.1 technology integrated into the HD broadcast
• 5: Super Bowls for New England coach Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady
• 4: Hi-Motion II super ultra-motion cameras, shooting at 1000fps at a resolution of 1080p
• 3: $0.03 — average cost to advertisers per viewer for 30 seconds of ad time during the Super Bowl
• 2: dimensions — broadcast will be in 2D HDTV, no 3D HDTV broadcast this year.
• 1: winner. Will it be the Patriots or the Giants?

More About: Super Bowl, Super Bowl 2012, Super Bowl XLVI, trending, TV, Video

New submitter cqwww writes "A small magazine in Victoria, BC just uncovered a massive public traffic surveillance system deployed in Canada. Here's a quote from the article: 'Normally, area police manually key in plate numbers to check suspicious cars in the databases of the Canadian Police Information Center and ICBC. With [Automatic License Plate Recognition], for $27,000, a police cruiser is mounted with two cameras and software that can read license plates on both passing and stationary cars. According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy. ... In August 2011, VicPD Information and Privacy Manager Debra Taylor called me to explain that, even though VicPD had the ALPR system in one of their cruisers, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] ran the system, and I should contact them for any information. "We actually don’t have a program," Taylor said. "We don’t have any documents per se." ... A month later, Taylor handed over 600 pages. ... [The claim they kept no documents] was apparently only in reference to digital information. VicPD had kept 500 pages of written, hard-copy logs of every ALPR hit they’d ever seen.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Were you too busy this week to read everything on Mashable? Maybe you’ve been planning your Super Bowl party, or maybe you were figuring out how to buy a piece of Facebook (don’t get your hopes up). For whatever reason you missed our digital media resources this week, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with our weekly features roundup.

Take a look at what you missed: We have a list of users rocking Pinterest, a rundown of the presidential candidates’ stances on tech issues and tips for what to do if your website gets hacked. You’ll find YouTube‘s most-shared ads for January, unique urban farming projects and ways to update your Facebook Timeline without annoying all of your friends. We even have a real-life Facebook wall at our New York headquarters!

Take this weekend to relax, watch some football and use this list to catch up on our best resources in no time.

Editor’s Picks

• Digital Marketing: 7 Tips for Generating Fresh Ideas
  Interested in sparking some creativity? Here are some tips to get your ideas flowing.
• The Future of Food: 11 Unique Urban Farming Projects
  Cities around the world are becoming hot beds for urban farming. We look at some compelling ideas in Japan, the UK and the U.S., from personal projects to multimillion dollar innovations.
• What Are the Presidential Candidates’ Stances on Important Tech Issues?
  Mashable took a look at the five remaining 2012 presidential candidates for president to find out where they stand on important technology issues.
• Mashable’s Real-Life Facebook Wall is Here
  Mashable‘s real-life Facebook wall can now be seen in our New York City headquarters.
• Facebook IPO: The Complete Guide
  Does the complexity of Facebook’s IPO filing have you down? Look no further than our comprehensive guide to the big event.

Social Media

• 21 Must-Follow Pinterest Users
  Scoot through our gallery to discover some of the most popular curators on Pinterest, the hottest social circuit on the web today.
• 10 Hysterical Political Parodies on Twitter
  There are countless parody accounts on Twitter, but the most entertaining may be the political parodies of public officials around the world.
• Meme Machine: Top 5 Viral Hits of the Week
  Here are the top 5 Meme Machine hits, looking at the five most hilarious viral topics spreading across the web this week.
• How to See When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook
  Would you like to know when someone “unfriends” you on Facebook? We’ve found a tool to help.
• How to Fill Out Facebook Timeline Without Annoying Your Friends
  Some users don’t want to broadcast every life event they add to their new Timeline. Here are some tips for quietly completing your profile without annoying your social network.
• Top Twitter Photos from the 2012 Presidential Campaign
  Republican Presidential candidates have documented their journeys to the Florida primary with photos posted on Twitter and Instagram.
• 20 TV Shows With the Most Social Media Buzz This Week [CHART]
  Which TV shows generated the most buzz on social networks this week?
• 10 Giant Things Less Valuable Than Facebook
  Facebook is now valued at $100 billion. What else in the world is worth that kind of money? We found 10 incredible examples.
• 10 Pro Tips for Writers Using Social Media
  Six well-known writers, who are experts in personal branding, share how to use social media to push yourself forward in the writing industry.
• How to Get a Pinterest Invite
  Here are some tips for getting a Pinterest invite. We’re offering to give away some of our own, too.
• How Higher Education Uses Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
  As social media becomes more integral to students’ lives, educational institutions are finally catching on, and catching up. Here’s how colleges and universities are leveraging social in the classroom and the recruiting office.
• 7 Tips for Planning a Wedding on Pinterest
  Here are 7 simple but effective tips for planing a wedding on Pinterest, from which boards to create and whom to follow, to leveraging your findings while you shop.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business & Marketing

• How To Avoid Hiring The Wrong Person For Your Startup
  Looking to fill a gap in your startup team? Make sure you’re not hiring the wrong person with these five quick tips.
• 5 Privacy Tips for Location-Based Services
  LBS-based businesses that want to avoid becoming future legal or media targets need to identify appropriate privacy updates.
• 6 Ways to Give Your App a Leg Up on the Competition
  How can you ensure your app gets time in the spotlight and the attention it deserves? Try these six tips.
• 4 Sales Tips for Enterprise Software Startups
  If your startup sells enterprise software, today’s environment can be tough. Try these four tips to learn from and acquire more customers.
• YouTube’s 20 Most-Shared Ads in January [VIDEOS]
  From last year’s Super Bowl to the upcoming big game, here are the 20 most-shared ads from January, 2012.
• How to Make Your Company More Social
  Take advantage of the opportunity to foster your company’s social media skills and community in general. Learn how to get everyone on board.
• What to Do When Your Website Gets Hacked
  Every organization is now in the business of protecting its own data. If you are targeted by hackers, there are a few steps you can take the mitigate the damage.
• Facebook IPO: How Will the Social Network Be Affected? [POLL]
  After the $5 billion Facebook IPO, we want to know how you think the social network will be affected.
• Why Context Is King in the Future of Digital Marketing
  Digital marketers must pay attention to the context in which they are reaching consumers if they have any hope of keeping up in the digital ad age.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

• 4 Inspiring Examples of Digital Storytelling
  Today’s artists are creating interactive, multimedia experiences where the audience can actively reshape the stories themselves.
• 10 Tips and Tricks for the Facebook iPhone App
  Try these 10 handy hints to become fluent on the Facebook iPhone app.
• The 10 Most Blatant Design Ripoffs in Social Media
  In social media, original web design is hard to come by, but some sites are bigger copycats than others. Here are the 10 worst offenders.
• How to Prepare Your Social Game for Massive Growth
  Social games, especially those on Facebook, can grow like wildfire. Make sure your data architecture is prepared for the traffic surge.
• iPhone 4 Voice Control: Commands, Tips and Tricks
  The iPhone’s “Voice Control” functionality is a useful tool if you know how to use it correctly. Here are some best practices.
• 8 Things You Should Know Before Building a Mobile App
  Here’s (almost) everything you need to know before you get started on your own app — and what I wish I knew before I got into the game.
• Tablet History: 14 Devices That Laid the Groundwork for the iPad
  For many people, Apple’s iPad is a magical device that appeared out of thin air. The iPad, however, is the culmination of decades of advancements in a variety of technologies.
• 5 iPhone Twitter Apps that Do More Than Just Tweet
  Learn how you can expand your Twitter capabilities using these handy iPhone apps.
• How Tech Can Prepare You for Extreme Weather
  Learn how to use mobile technology and social networking to prepare for and cope with unusual weather events.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, johnwoodcock.

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