Obama Says Social Media Magnifies the Dangers of a 'Messy' World

Islamic State militants making gains in Iraq and Syria, raising fears of terror attacks in the west. A tense truce between Israel and Hamas after weeks of bloodshed. Russian forces entering Ukraine in a throwback to the Cold War.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that the world's challenges can seem "pretty frightening" to Americans. But he argued that they pose no greater threat than in previous decades — it's just that social media makes the dangers seem closer to home.

See also: Obama on Islamic State in Syria: 'We Don't Have a Strategy Yet'

"The world has always been messy," Obama said, speaking at a barbecue for Democratic donors in Purchase, New York. "In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through." Read more...

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29 High Contrast Photos That Use Harsh Mid-Day Light

Light is arguably the most important factor in photography. Knowing when to avoid it, when to use it and to what extent — these are skills sought by many and mastered by few

Last week, we challenged you to implement harsh mid-day light in your photographs. Though it's a difficult situation to tackle, we were incredibly impressed with what we saw

"The submissions for the challenge left me in absolute awe of the vast talent that is out there," guest host and freelance photographer Jose Silva said. "It’s not always easy to shoot in harsh light but many of the talented artists that submitted work seem to have mastered the art form." Read more...

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8 Vines That Will Make Your Head Spin 360 Degrees

Why look only at what's in front of you, when you can see the world in 360 degrees?

We took that thought and made it a challenge this week. Partnered with Hewlett-Packard, we asked you to showcase objects and scenes in 360 degrees on Vine.

See also: 8 Vines of Transformations Happening Before Your Very Eyes

From dizzying videos in fisheye effect to creative motion-graphics animations uploaded using Vine's newest feature, we saw tons of head-spinning submissions

Take a look at the videos shared using the hashtag #HPBendTheRules . Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Moonset x sunrise

Read more...

2. Turn that virus into a cure

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Mashies Late-Entry Deadline Extended to September 5

Last year's Mashies awards program saw the most creative Vine videos and GIFs to the most innovative uses of YouTube channels and branded content series. The bar was set high in 2013, but we are expecting this year's submissions to exceed expectations.

We are now accepting late-entry submissions until Friday, Sept. 5.

Categories for this year's awards are expansive, including “Best Branded App,” “Best Interactive Ad Execution,” “Best Social Media Campaign,” among many others. Submissions will then be judged by a panel of experts within the industry, and winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in New York City. Read more...

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Twitter Now Lets Anyone Check How Many People Saw Their Tweets

Twitter analytics are now available to all users.

In June, Twitter began experimenting with opening its analytics dashboard to users outside of its advertisers.

See also: 20 Honest Twitter Reactions to Emmys' Sexist Sofia Vergara Bit

Then, last month, Twitter rolled out an updated analytic dashboard to marketers, verified users and Twitter Card publishers

The dashboard lets users see how many impressions each tweet has received (how many times users saw the tweet on Twitter), the number of favorites their tweet has received, how many times others have clicked on their profiles, and the number of retweets and replies on a certain tweet. It also shows how many times users engaged with a tweet and what that engagement was. Read more...

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Facebook's Clickbait Change May Mean More of the Same

Facebook's pitch on its News Feed rankings has been consistent: It wants you to be on Facebook, therefore it is in the company's best interest to make the content you see on the site as good as possible.

That is the general rationale that emerged after Facebook announced on Tuesday that it would begin to factor in time spent into its News Feed rankings. The social network openly admitted that the change has been made in an attempt to eliminate clickbait — stories that offer little information but entice users to click. The pages are sometimes misleading or outright spam.

See also: The Top 10 Reasons You're Still Clinging to Facebook Read more...

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20 Creative Hyperlapses From Instagram's New App

Instagram rolled out a new app on Tuesday, and users are putting selfies aside to try their hands at time-lapse-like magic.

The new app, called Hyperlapse speeds up and stabilizes long videos into short, time-lapsed clips. It iscurrently available for iPhone users in the Apple App Store

See also: Instagram Rolls Out Deeper Analytics for Advertisers

The creative Instagram community began to quickly test out the new feature, so we've rounded up a few of our favorites so far.

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Learning How to Score a Job Using Social Media, for Beginners

With 92% of companies using social media in their hiring efforts, job seekers can’t afford to overlook social as a vital resource in the job search. While you're busy job searching, employers are leveraging online resources to find candidates just like you.

That's why Mashable is collaborating with The Muse to bring you a free, email-based class series called How to Get a Job Using Social Media. The series features five different lessons with actionable tips on how to boost your job search strategy. Once you subscribe, content for the class will be delivered to your inbox each day.



These beginner-level classes will teach you how to establish your social brand, network with people online, identify career opportunities through social media, and turn leads into job offers. The classes include homework assignments to give you a head start in the process. Read more...

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Jimmy Carter Talks Preventable Disease at Social Good Summit 2014

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will join the Social Good Summit this year via a special video message. Also the founder of The Carter Center, President Carter will speak about the ways social media is helping the eradication of six preventable diseases: guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis and malaria.

Following the video message, two of Carter’s advisory scientists will take to the stage for a one-on-one discussionDr. Donald Hopkins, vice president of health programs at The Carter Center and Dr. Mark Siddall, curator and principal investigator at the American Museum of Natural History, will delve into the possibilities of achieving eradication over the next 15 years and what that will mean for our world by 2030. Read more...

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Is Social Media Causing Us to Self-Censor on Hot-Button Issues?

Hesitant to post that political link to Facebook? Worried about expressing your opinion on Twitter? It might be changing how you talk offline.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in conjunction with Rutgers University has found that social media doesn't encourage discussion on controversial subjects. It may, in fact, cause people to stay quiet

See also: 12 Facebook Statuses You Need to Retire

The survey, conducted among 1,801 U.S. adults, asked people about their willingness to discuss the Edward Snowden leaks on social media and in person. Social media users demonstrated a particular hesitance to discuss the topic — 86% of those surveyed said they wold be willing to have an offline discussion on Snowden, while only 42% of Facebook and Twitter users said they would post about it online. Read more...

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Photo Challenge: Use Harsh Mid-Day Light to Your Advantage

Harsh mid-day light isn't the most ideal setting for photographers. Extreme contrast, blown-out highlights and hard shadows are frequent results of shooting in sunlight

The best way to succeed in this situation is to work with it, rather than against it. Think about what the light is doing to your subject, and use it

For this week's Mashable Photo Challenge, use harsh mid-day light to your advantage. Freelance photographer Jose Silva, who spends a lot of time #chasingharshlight, will guest-host.

See also: 11 Creative Portraits Without Faces

Silva was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela and lived there until the age of 13, when he moved to New Jersey. Currently, he has two jobs — one as a freelance photographer, and the other as a high school special-services instructor. Due to his talent in photography, he's developed a huge presence on Instagram. Read more...

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Move Aside Twitter Timeline Haters, Business Wins

Twitter redefined its timeline Monday, officially acknowledging that the feature is for more than just those you follow and their retweets.

First, a quick recap. Earlier this month, Twitter started experimenting with what users see on their timeline. That included adding tweets from accounts users don't directly follow and has evolved to incorporate tweets users they follow favorite.

See also: How to Tame Twitter's Annoying Mobile Notifications

The second experiment, which treats favorites more like retweets, offers a significant change to the ways users interact with the service. As I wrote on Sunday, Twitter favorites have an entirely separate social dynamic and their meaning is much more nuanced and personal to the user. Read more...

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Vine Challenge: Capture Objects in 360 Degrees

The tech of our days is so advanced that it's fair to say we've got everything we need. From smartphones and tablets of all sizes to bendable TVs and Bluetooth padlocks, nearly every gadget has multiple things to show off, appearance- and function-wise

See also: 8 Vines of Transformations Happening Before Your Very Eyes

We partnered with Hewlett-Packard once again for this week's Mashable Vine Challenge. We want you to showcase technology operating in a 360 degree capacity

A panoramic image taken on a smartphone may not cover edge to edge of what you see. But on Vine, you have the flexibility of creating stop-motion animations to capture all angles in a single video. Read more...

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Kicked Off Twitter, Islamic State Flocks to Diaspora

As Twitter shuts down access to various Islamic State fighters, members of the group are shifting their social media focus to the decentralized social network, Diaspora.

On Wednesday, Twitter started actively suspending accounts from accounts actively sharing video and graphic imagery related to the brutal beheading of American journalist James Foley. Many of those accounts were related to the Islamic State, the radical Islamist group in Iraq claiming responsibility for Foley's murder.

See also: The Militants in Iraq Threaten the Entire Middle East (and the U.S.)

As Mashable's Colin Daileda and Lorenz Franceschi-Bicchierai reported last month, these radical Islamists in Iraq are using social media to spread fear and propaganda in a way no terrorist group has done before Read more...

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Hands On With the New Vine: 6-Second Videos Will Never Be the Same

The new camera features on Vine aren't just shiny and new. They've totally changed the platform

It’s been nearly two years since Twitter acquired Vine and added it to the canon of notable social media platforms. Six-second looping videos simply weren’t “a thing” before Vine proved that our short attention spans were, in fact, good for something.

See also: 10 Reasons to Use Vine to Help You Build Your Brand

Scores of users descended on the simple new tool, discovering the world of complex six-second animations that could change perspective simply by touching the tapping the screen.

But there were limits. Read more...

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8 Vines of Transformations Happening Before Your Very Eyes

We partnered with Hewlett-Packard for this week's Mashable Vine Challenge, in which we asked you to create tricky transformations in stop-motion or clever live-action videos

We saw turns, flips, slides and just pure magic in these Vines. Food items vanished, objects grew out from other objects, plants and animals transformed. It was an impressive collection of submissions, to say the least

Take a look at the videos shared using the hashtag #HPBendTheRules . Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Fruit Magic

2. The Proverbs

3. Transforming My Tripod Into a Sound-Stitching Rig

Read more...

4. Animal Transformation

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Facebook Launching 'Mentions Box' Device During Emmys

LOS ANGELES — Like a child shaking an Etch A Sketch with both hands, celebrities on Monday's Emmys red carpet will be shaking a new toy created by Facebook.

Facebook told Mashable that on Aug. 25 it will debut the Facebook Mentions Box, an interactive device that stars will wield to answer questions from fans. It's similar to the InstaStop Video Q&A Station that Instagram launched at the Golden Globes in January.

See also: Emmys 2014: The Complete List of Nominations

Though the Facebook Mentions Box will be used for the first time at the Emmys, anchor Katie Couric is already slated to use the device during the Sept. 5 Stand Up to Cancer telecast. Read more...

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