Friday, June 21, 2013

News Tech Today

News Tech Today


5 Words to Use in Every Business Meeting

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 08:50 PM PDT

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Forget presentations, handshakes and power suits: You should focus on what you're saying if you want to make a big impact in a business meeting.

New research has found that employees who used the words "yeah," "give," "start," "meeting" and "discuss" ended up with more accepted proposals in meetings.

In the study, Cynthia Rudin a professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and MIT student Been Kim examined data from meetings and the impact of certain words during those meetings. The research is particularly important considering that 11 million meetings take place every day, Rudin and Kim said. Read more...

More about Business, Meetings, Business Proposals, Meeting, and Words

Rent All Kinds of Local Spaces With Hire Space

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 07:59 PM PDT

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The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Hire Space

One-Liner Pitch: Find and book space for events, sports, exhibitions, performances and more.

Why It's Taking Off: Hire Space is taking the collaborative consumption movement, made popular by poster child Airbnb, and applying it to a new space: Venue rentals.

People are finally warming up to the idea of sharing homes, goods, and cars. Now, Hire Space aims to let businesses and other organizations dip their fingers into the sharing economy honey pot by renting out their unused, extra spaces. Read more...

More about Startups, Business, and The Launchpad

Usher and Samsung: A Blueprint for Viral Success

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:59 PM PDT

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Twenty-two million. That's how many times people have watched "Looking 4 Myself," a collaboration between Usher and Samsung that shows the power of motion in a new smart TV campaign.

"We used a mix of paid and earned views and timed the release of the video to capitalize on the buzz around the season finale of The Voice," said Ross Maupin, the creative director of Huge, the company that created the viral video. Usher is one of the star coaches on The Voice.

The #TeamUsher hashtag on Twitter also played a role in its success, Maupin said. So far, Huge has tracked more than 71,000 tweets about the video. Read more...

More about Video, Viral Videos, Tv, Social Media, and Samsung

What Tech Is Next for the Solar Industry?

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:59 PM PDT

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Solar panel installations have become increasingly popular, but the solar panel manufacturing industry is in the doldrums because supply far exceeds demand. The poor market may be slowing innovation, but advances continue; judging by the mood this week at the IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference in Tampa, Fla., people in the industry remain optimistic about its long-term prospects.

The technology that's surprised almost everyone is conventional crystalline silicon. A few years ago, silicon solar panels cost $4 per watt, and Martin Green, professor at the University of New South Wales and one of the leading silicon solar panel researchers, declared that they'd never go below $1 a watt. "Now it's down to something like $0.50 of watt, and there's talk of hitting 36 cents per watt," he says. Read more...

More about Environment, Eco Friendly, Tech, Solar, and Solar Energy

ASL Interpreter at Wu-Tang Concert Is the Greatest

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:20 PM PDT

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It never fails: You go to a concert and while watching the performance, something strikes your eye. Typically, it's a patron who's dressed oddly or a moshpit forming around you. However, in this instance, it was much different.

During their set at Bonnaroo, Wu-Tang performed and an ASL interpreter signed. However, the rappers probably didn't expect her to steal the show like this. While the legendary group performed, she was full of energy, dancing back and forth and delivering sign language with force.

What did you think about the video? Let us know in the comment section below. Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Concert, Watercooler, Videos, and Wu Tang

5 Ways to Spice Up Your Nike+ Experience

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:20 PM PDT

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Nike showcased its first class of entrepreneurs looking to expand the capabilities of its Nike+ platform, at a demo day event in San Francisco on Thursday.

The Nike+ Accelerator, powered by TechStars, housed 10 startups for a three-month immersive experience in Portland, Ore. This accelerator provides startups with $20,000, access to Nike+ APIs/SDKs and access to around 300 mentors.

The idea was for the startups to leverage Nike+ data and NikeFuel in these health, fitness and wellness projectsNikeFuel is Nike's unique currency for measuring how active you are in daily life. Today, Nike says 1 billion NikeFuel points are generated every single day. The company's FuelBand product is a wearable fitness tracker that integrates with the Nike+ platform. Read more...

More about Fitness, Nike, Wearables, Wearable Tech, and Accelerator

Silicon Valley Art Exhibition Celebrates Warhol and Technology

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:53 PM PDT

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Andy Warhol, the larger-than-life icon who revolutionized art with commercial screenprints and serial imagery — and offbeat gems, such as filming himself eating a burger — is being celebrated in Silicon Valley for something many might have deemed outside his wheelhouse: technology.

Christie's Private Sales is holding a pop-up exhibition, titled "Viral: Andy Warhol and the Image before the Internet Age," at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., from June 24 to 27 to explore and showcase Warhol's art, as seen through the lens of electronic innovation

Read more...

More about Art, Technology, Silicon Valley, Entertainment, and Tv

The Video Game Propaganda Wars

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:22 PM PDT

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A popular video game begins with a small, tactical team of highly trained commandos on a delicate mission behind enemy lines. Two nuclear scientists have been kidnapped and are being held in a hostile country governed by a cabal of crazed military maniacs. To prevent Armageddon, the commandos — chiseled, professional and patriotic — must blow away hordes of faceless and murderous opponents, brutes as skilled in combat as they are devoted to their extreme ideology. The game is short — only eight levels — so play it through, and you’ll feel proud to belong to the greatest nation on earth.

Which is, of course, Iran Read more...

More about Government, Videogames, Middle East, Propaganda, and Iraq

LeBron James Ends Social Blackout With Instagram Video Post

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 04:53 PM PDT

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LeBron James didn't just dominate the NBA Finals on the hardwood, taking home his second straight MVP award — he also dominated the social conversation online

More on that below, but first this: James' online popularity came while he actually laid low on the web, staging a self-imposed social media playoffs blackout for the second straight year. And, for the second straight year it worked — the Heat have now won back-to-back championships

James finally broke that silence Friday afternoon, however, and his first post came with an interesting twist for those tracking the mobile video war currently being waged between Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram against Twitter and its subsidiary Vine. What's the twist? James came back with an Instagram video post just one day after that capability became available on the photo-centric network: Read more...

More about Nba, Entertainment, and Sports

Adobe's Piracy-Proof Software Already Pirated

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 04:28 PM PDT

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Quick! What's the most commonly pirated PC application?

If you said "Microsoft Word," you might be right. But "Adobe Photoshop" wouldn't be wrong, either. And despite Adobe's best efforts to the contrary, that isn't going to change any time soon.

Within a day or two of the debut of Adobe's new software subscription service earlier this week, cracked versions of Photoshop and other Adobe applications appeared on the notorious file sharing site The Pirate Bay.

It's not as if Adobe didn't see this coming. Millions of consumers and professionals have been installing cracked or duplicate versions of Photoshop, along with its accompanying Adobe creative applications, on their PCs and Macs for more than two decades. Read more...

More about Adobe, Pirate Bay, Piracy, Software, and Adobe Photoshop

NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Charged With Espionage

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 04:07 PM PDT

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U.S. prosecutors have formally charged NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, less than two weeks after he revealed his identity. Prosecutors have also asked Hong Kong authorities to arrest him

As revealed Friday by The Washington Post, prosecutors filed a sealed criminal complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia, charging Snowden with espionage, and theft and conversion of government property.

Snowden is the source of the top-secret documents that revealed previously unknown surveillance programs like NSA's PRISM, or GCHQ's Project Tempora. After coming out, Snowden went missing but is still believed to be in Hong Kong. Read more...

More about Privacy, Surveillance, Prism, Us World, and Us

'Midsummer' on Google+ Is Shakespeare as You've Never Seen It

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 03:52 PM PDT

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With a little help from Google, the Bard could be the next Internet sensation — or at least the next social media sensation.

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has put together its 40th rendition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, only this time the company is calling it Midsummer Night’s Dreaming and it's playing almost exclusively on a social network near you

The RSC is playing out the piece in real time live and on social media. That means it will run for three days and will be updated through Google+ — as if the dramatic action were a major current event — that's how the audience will hear the story Read more...

More about Google, Shakespeare, Social Media, and Royal Shakespeare Society

Instagram Users Have Already Posted 5 Million Videos

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 03:47 PM PDT

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Instagram video appears to be a hit. Users uploaded more than 5 million videos during the first 24 hours of availability.

In the first eight hours alone, the app saw one year’s worth of video uploaded, 40 hours per minute when the Miami Heat won the NBA championship Thursday evening, according to Instagram.

A number of celebrities ranging from Justin Bieber to Jimmy Fallon, and even more brands, are already using Instagram video. Huge brands such as Cisco, GE and Gap have started posting videos on the service, as have many major league sports teams, including the Yankees, Giants, Dodgers and 49ers. Read more...

More about Facebook, Instagram, Social Media, Apps Software, and Mobile

Andrew W.K. Slays Drumming World Record

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 03:31 PM PDT

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The O Music Awards ended Thursday night with not just a bang, but a flurry of them, as party machine Andrew W.K. claimed new reign as a marathon drumming king.

Tasked with keeping a beat for 24 hours, the musical reveler broke and set the world record for longest drum session in a retail store. Starting at 7 p.m. ET Wednesday in Oakley's Times Square flagship shop, Andrew W.K. successfully clanged his way to 7 p.m. ET Thursday — as well as victory.

"It was way harder than I thought it was going to be," he said afterward. "I maybe could've practiced drumming more." Read more...

More about Mobile, Twitter, Music, Entertainment, and World Record

31 Prince William GIFs to Celebrate His 31st Birthday

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 03:29 PM PDT

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Prince William turned 31 on Friday. And with the birth of his first child just a few weeks away, Wills has no shortage of things to celebrate

We rounded up 31 of the Royal Highness' most GIF-worthy moments, including his famous balcony kiss with Kate, penchant for jazz hands and Harry Potter-style duel skills

Hey Wills, happy birthday.

Three decades ago, you were already pretty adorable.

Image courtesy of Huffington Post, Lauren Leibowitz

Even from a young age, you and your brother were best buddies.

Image courtesy of Tumblr, William and Catherine Read more...

But did you realize right away that cameras would be waiting to document your every move?

More about Birthday, Prince William, Gifs, Watercooler, and Pics

Revealed: British Spy Agency Secretly Taps Global Communications

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 03:01 PM PDT

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It's not just the National Security Agency. The NSA's British relative, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), also secretly collects and stores a vast trove of global communications through a surveillance program called Project Tempora, a report in The Guardian revealed Friday.

The GCHQ monitors the world's phone and Internet traffic, including calls, emails, Facebook messages and browsing history by tapping directly into transatlantic fiber optic cables that land on the shores of the UK, The Guardian reported, sourcing more documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden

Project Tempora allows British spies to sift through the vast amount of data passing through the cables. The agency is able to store metadata for up to 30 days and content for up to three days, allowing some time to analyze the data. According to the documents, in just the last year, the GCHQ handled 600 million "telephone events" a day, tapping 200 cables. Given that cables can carry 10 gigabits of data per second, the agency has the capacity to store 21 petabytes a day — the equivalent of more than 279 years of HD video Read more...

More about Privacy, Surveillance, Prism, Us World, and Us

Facebook Exposed 6 Million Users' Contact Info

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 02:49 PM PDT

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Facebook accidentally shared 6 million users' email addresses or telephone numbers due to a software bug, the company announced Friday.

The breach was caused by an unfortunate combination of Facebook's "People You May Know" and "Download Your Information" features. "People You May Know" offers friend suggestions based in part on other users' uploaded contact lists or address books; "Download Your Information" offers a downloadable version of your Facebook Timeline archive

When some users downloaded their Facebook archives with "Download Your Information," the archive included contact information for second-tier connections with whom Facebook thought those users might want to connect but who hadn't yet received or approved a friend request from that user. Translation: Data breach. Read more...

More about Facebook, Privacy, and Social Media

Toyota Will Donate One Meal for Each View This Video Gets

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 02:45 PM PDT

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How many YouTube videos do you think you watch each day? Thanks to Toyota, the next one you view can actually change someone else's day for the better.

The car maker is donating up to 1.25 million meals — one for each YouTube view of the video above — to the Food Bank of New York. Since Hurricane Sandy, Toyota has already donated 250,000 meals to communities in the Rockaways that were severely effected by the storm.

After the hurricane, which devastated the lives of thousands, Toyota teamed up with the Food Bank of New York to deliver hundreds of thousands of meals to hungry people affected by the storm. Building on the work it has been doing since the storm, the company has released the video and corresponding website, called Meals Per Hour," about skills-based volunteerism. Read more...

More about Youtube, Viral Videos, Toyota, Social Good, and Us World

How the 'Biggest Scam in Kickstarter History' Almost Worked

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 02:19 PM PDT

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Rarely does a crowdfunding platform pull the plug on one of its projects.

But on Thursday, June 13, Kickstarter suspended all funding to a campaign called Kobe Red — just hours before the month-long endeavor was scheduled to close

Operated by a group called Magnus Fun, Inc., the project claimed to have been raising money for a brand of Kobe beef-based jerky, made with 100% organic feed- and beer-fed Japanese cows. In just under four weeks, Magnus accumulated more than $120,000, close to 50 times its initial goal of $2,437. It had racked up a whopping 3,252 backers

So why did Kickstarter suspend the entire project at the last minute? Evidently, the project was a scam. Read more...

More about Reddit, Crowdsourcing, Crime, Features, and Crowdfunding

Food Network Drops Paula Deen After Racist Remarks

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 01:37 PM PDT

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Food Network star Paula Deen seemed close to tears in a televised apology on Friday. A transcript surfaced earlier this week of Deen seemingly nonchalantly describing different racist jokes she'd told and her penchant for saying the n-word.

UPDATE: 4:51 p.m. EST — The Associated Press reports that Food Network is dropping Deen

BREAKING: Food Network says it won't renew Paula Deen's contract after admission she used racial slurs. -MM

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 21, 2013

Image via Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images Read more...

More about Racism, The Food Network, Paula Deen, Entertainment, and Tv

Show Us Your Most Indulgent Photos

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 01:32 PM PDT

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Let's admit it. We all have our go-to guilty pleasures, whether it's raiding the tabloid rack at the supermarket or sleeping in til 1 p.m. on Saturdays. For photographers, that guilty pleasure might be applying that one Instagram filter you can't resist, or snapping a shot of the sunset — even though you know it's totally cliché. We may not be too proud of our actions, but hey, we're entitled to indulge once in a while

This week, for the Mashable Photo Challenge Guest Series, we want to see your favorite indulgent photos. What's that one thing you can't resist? That one habit you can't break? Be creative and capture it in a photo. Our guest curator will pick some of the most interesting submissions to feature on Mashable. Read more...

More about Community, Photo, Photography, Instagram, and Social Media

Digital 'Library For All' Brings Books to Developing World

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 01:17 PM PDT

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Certain books serve as bookmarks to important life milestones: the ones your parents read to you in the crib as you drifted off to sleep (Goodnight, Moon and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie), the first book you read on your own (Green Eggs and Ham), the novels that made you feel a little less alone when you "came of age" (Holes, The Outsiders and The Catcher in the Rye).

Reading is essential not only to spreading knowledge, but also to guiding child development. However, 260 million children across the globe are growing up without access to books

SEE ALSO: Mobile Phones Deliver Millions of E-Books to Developing World

Library For All wants to fix this problem. Supported by a team of 14 staff members and volunteers, CEO Rebecca McDonald and COO Tanyella Evans plan to create a cloud-based library of e-books for schoolchildren in developing countries, where paperbacks and hardcovers are simply unfeasible to obtain. Six major U.S. publishing companies have already agreed to work with Library For All to build a collection of thousands of books for students to download on mobile phones, e-readers or low-cost tablets that their schools have purchased.

In order to bring their project to life, Library For All has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a fundraising goal of $100,000 by July 13.

Watch the video above to learn more about Library For All and find out how you can help.

Image courtesy of Library for All/Kickstarter
Read more...

More about Library, Education, Ebooks, Kickstarter, and Apps Software

Highlights from Cannes Lions: How Do Celebrities View Advertisers?

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 01:09 PM PDT

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One of the most popular events of the year for advertisers, the global advertising festival Cannes Lions, has consumed the city of Cannes as entertainers and business leaders alike took to the stage to offer industry insights to advertisers. From actor Jack Black announcing that he is working on an animated series — possibly for Yahoo — to Sean "Diddy" Combs unveiling his new music channel, entertainers have been a trending topic at this year's festivities.

Mashable also unveiled the next evolution of our Social Lift product, Mashable Lift for Brand Partners, which will offer agencies and brands the opportunity to publish social assets on Mashable through a self-service interface. Check out other major news and moments from this year's Cannes Lions festivities. Read more...

More about Yahoo, Advertising, Storify, Diddy, and Jack Black

8 Real-Life Superheroes Who Saved the Day

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:56 PM PDT

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Everyone loves a good comic book superhero. But in real life, superheroes aren't defined by their masks and capes, but by their awe-inspiring acts of courage that save lives.

We've rounded up eight real-life superheroes whose stories warmed our hearts and made our eyes well.

1. Daughter lifts a car from her dad's chest and saves his life.

When Lauren Kornack, 22, found her father Alec, 52, pinned beneath his car in their garage, she knew she had to act fast. According to CNN, her superhuman powers kicked in as she lifted the 2,000 pound car from his chest and pulled him out from underneath. A trained lifeguard, Lauren immediately performed CPR in order to get his heart beating again. Read more...

More about Video, Heroes, Social Good, Superheroes, and Watercooler

86-Year-Old Congressman Tests Google Glass

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:55 PM PDT

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The technology may have been different when Rep. John Dingell took office 57 years ago, but the 86-year-old congressman stays with the times. On Thursday, the representative from Michigan gamely tried out Google Glass and declared that it was "quite a machine." Dingell recently broke the record as the longest-serving congressman in U.S. history.

Image courtesy of NowThisNews

Read more...

More about Google, Test, Congress, Us Congress, and Trial

3 Tips for Creating Your Business' Facebook Page

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:28 PM PDT

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Starting a social media marketing campaign can be extremely overwhelming if you're not familiar with the digital space. Just the thought of creating a company Facebook page or tweeting to your consumers can cause stress and anxiety. Last month, Mashable hooked up a few small businesses with social media experts from our Small Business Panel, to offer some mom-and-pop shops advice on how to amp up their presence on various social platforms.

We paired local salt-maker Borsari Food Company with social media marketing expert Ben Pavlovic, founding partner of VineSprout. After reviewing Borsari's social assets, Pavlovic immediately suggested that it focus its efforts on increasing its Facebook following. In order to do this, Pavlovic recommended that Borsari implement a targeted ad campaign on Facebook, include a call to action to "like" the Page in its marketing materials, create a vanity Facebook URL to boost SEO, and to change its cover photo to better reflect the brand and its product. Read more...

More about Facebook, Features, Business, Small Business, and Small Business Panel

Hands On With Samsung's Waterproof Galaxy S4 Active

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:19 PM PDT

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Earlier this month Samsung and AT&T officially announced a new, ruggedized version of the Galaxy S4, dubbed the Galaxy S4 Active

The phone is now available for $199 exclusively on AT&T and we had some time to spend with the unit, comparing it directly to the standard model Galaxy S4.

The biggest difference between the regular Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy S4 Active is that the Active is water and dust resistant and can be submerged in up to three feet of water for up to 30 minutes. You can even listen to music with it while swimming. Read more...

Similar Guts, Better Exterior

More about Android, Samsung, Smartphones, Galaxy, and Tech

AOL Reader Coming Soon to Fill Google Reader Void

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:04 PM PDT

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Google Reader may be on its way out, but AOL is getting ready to launch its own product in the near future that will give users a way to find new content online.

The AOL Reader site is already live, featuring the tagline "all your favorite websites in one place." The site says it is in private beta right now.

AOL Reader

Although it's unknown exactly how the product will work, one can assume users will be able to subscribe, personalize and weed through news and content found online.

The news comes as popular RSS platform Google Reader will shut down on July 1, and Facebook is rumored to be experimenting with its own RSS feedDigg is also poised to launch its on RSS reader on June 26. Read more...

More about Mobile, Aol, Rss, Google Reader, and Tech

U.S. Government Wants to Declassify More NSA Surveillance Data

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 11:54 AM PDT

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Government officials have been arguing that information about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs has been served up in piecemeal, offering an incomplete and confusing picture at NSA's actions. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that he is working to declassify more details about the NSA's surveillance apparatus to offer a more exhaustive view.

"We’d like to do it sooner rather than later, but I also think that we want to do this in such a way that we tell a complete story,” Holder told Bloomberg News. "You want to have something that will be understandable to people that have access to this information, something that is not piecemeal, but really is holistic." Read more...

More about Privacy, Prism, Us World, Politics, and Us

Exclusive: Incubus Frontman Brandon Boyd's New Lyric Video

Posted: 21 Jun 2013 11:50 AM PDT

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Brandon Boyd, frontman of the now-on-hiatus rock band Incubus, launched a new solo musical side project this month called Sons of the Sea. Today, Mashable is world premiering the lyric video for the first single from Sons of the Sea's upcoming album, Compass.

Although Boyd has conceptualized music videos for Incubus in the past, the new tarot card-infused lyric video for "Where All The Songs Come From" (watch below) is his first attempt at shooting and editing one. He spliced the footage together using iMovie

"I still don't know how to stream lyrics across the screen and my dilemma was I needed to have lyrics on the screen so I borrowed that trick from the old Bob Dylan video ["Subterranean Homesick Blues"] and sort of reworked it a little bit," Boyd admitted to Mashable. "I wanted to create a scenario where it looked like a quasi, mystical tarot card reader psychic table, and I borrowed my girlfriend's hands for the shoot." Read more...

More about Music, Entertainment, Music Videos, Incubus, and Video

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