socialmedia

Stan Lee, titan of the comic book industry, will be interviewed by Mashable‘s Sam Laird on Thursday.

For those unfamiliar, Stan Lee is one of the creative forces behind Marvel Comics. He took part in the creation and development of some of the most famous superheroes and comic book series, such as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, and X-Men.

Without the vision and talent of Lee, the Marvel Comics franchise would not have grown to become the great success it is today. The company has converted many of the original comic book franchises into movies, including most recently The Avengers movie, which set a record for the highest grossing film on opening weekend.

Even at 89 years of age, Lee is taking full advantage of digital media. He is currently in the process of launching his own comic convention and plans to bring all sorts of social engagement for those attending and following online.

Lee has a showcase of awards and honors for his achievements including a member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame as well as receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

We’re taking questions for Stan from you, our Mashable readers. We want to know: what would you like to be able to ask the comic book visionary?

We’ll choose some of the most unique, poignant, or just plain interesting reader-submitted questions to ask him. Submit your question in the comments below by Wednesday, May 23 at 8:00 P.M. EDT, and be sure to check back to read our interview with Stan Lee.

Image courtesy Gage Skidmore, Flickr.

More About: comic books, interviews, Marvel, Stan Lee

For more Entertainment coverage:

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

In an effort to expand Hellmann’s relevancy beyond the sandwich, the company and ad agency Ogilvy Brazil recently launched a campaign that told consumers how the groceries they had just purchased could be used to make a new mayonnaise-intensive dish.

They partnered with a large supermarket chain called St Marche to install software in cash registers at about 100 stores. When customers purchased Hellmann’s mayo at these stores, the software automatically looked at the other ingredients in their cart and compiled a recipe that used them. The recipe, complete with preparation instructions, was then printed on the customer’s receipt.

Within the first month, sales of Hellmann’s mayonnaise increased by 44% at stores with recipe receipts, according to a video about the campaign.

“We needed to take advantage of the moment when customers had all of the right ingredients at hand,” explains the same video.

More About: Advertising, Hellmann's, Marketing, retail

The Leaders in Digital Series is supported by Samsung. Follow Samsung USA on Google+ and Twitter, and like it on Facebook.

On Monday, Hulu revealed a slate of 10 original shows it plans to premiere on the site this summer.

The news followed a slew of announcements from the likes of Yahoo, AOL and other big media companies that are now developing original video content for the web — much of which looks much like traditional television (Mashable also recently premiered its first episodic series, Behind the Launch).

Earlier this month at Mashable Connect, we caught up with Wilson Cleveland, who is the creator and executive producer of Leap Year, a scripted series that debuted in 2011 and will go live with its second season in June. We chatted with Cleveland about what’s behind the sudden boom in premium web video content, why advertisers are jumping on board (Leap Year is funded by Hiscox insurance) and how audience consumption habits are changing.

Check out the interview above. You can also watch the first season of Leap Year on Mashable Video.

---

Series presented by Samsung

---

The Leaders in Digital Series is supported by Samsung. Follow Samsung USA on Google+ and Twitter, and like them on Facebook.

More About: features, leaders in digital series, mashable, mashable connect, mashable video, TV, web video

For more Entertainment coverage:

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

A report released Tuesday argues that high-tech immigration reform is a vital ingredient in the economic recovery of the United States.

The report, commissioned by the Partnership for New York City and the Partnership for a New American Economy, suggests U.S. immigration policy is bogged down by bureaucracy and politics — while other highly competitive countries tie immigration rules to the economic needs of the country.

“Artificially low limits on visas and serious bureaucratic obstacles prevent employers from hiring the people they need –- and send entrepreneurs to other countries, who are quick to welcome them,” reads the report.

“In fact, other nations have learned from the American experience and are employing aggressive recruitment strategies to attract the key high- and low-skilled workers that their economies need to compete and grow.”

If the U.S. is to turn its economic ship around, argues the report, it must follow the example of other countries, such as Canada and Singapore, and prioritize economic over political goals in terms of immigration policy — particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields.

The report warns the United States will have a deficit of 230,800 advanced degree holders in STEM by the end of the decade, despite the country’s numerous top-tier technology universities.

The source of the problem? Currently, foreign students earning advanced STEM degrees in the U.S. are given a short window to find work and an unclear path to citizenship.

Part of the solution, says the report, is to staple permanent visas to advanced STEM degrees.

John Feinblatt, chief policy advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, backs that notion wholeheartedly. “When you look at our universities, people in our STEM programs are populated by people from other countries,” Feinblatt told Mashable.

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot by sending them back home, no company would ever do that. It used to be the gold rush, now it’s the talent rush.”

SEE ALSO: Lawmakers Want High-Tech Foreigners to Stay in the U.S.

Another high-tech immigration reform idea backed by the report and by Mayor Bloomberg himself involves giving visas to foreign entrepreneurs to build businesses in the U.S., an idea modeled on a similar law in Singapore.

The report found that in 2006, technology and engineering firms founded in the U.S. by immigrants made $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2006, and for every immigrant with an advanced STEM degree from an American university working in the U.S., 2.62 jobs were created for other Americans.

“If you want best and brightest, you’ve got to go out and get them,” said Bloomberg of the idea during a panel discussion about the report at the New York Forum.

Allowing state governments the flexibility to set their own visa requirements, a policy currently in place in Canada, is an additional solution pitched by the report and supported by Bloomberg. New York could, for example, set requirements that attract investors and entrepreneurs, while other states could pull in agricultural workers.

“There’s no reason you need the same immigration policy across the nation,” said Bloomberg. “In New York we’d be first in line for immigrants, we’d take as many as we could get. There are states in America that don’t believe that and that’s up to them. Why not let us do that and let them do what they want to do?”

Read the full report here.

What do you think the United States can do to attract and keep the world’s top technology talent? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, selimaksan

More About: immigration, Politics, US, World

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has some short words for Internet providers that want to charge customers by how much bandwidth we use: Go right ahead.

“Usage-based pricing would help drive efficiency in the networks,” Genachowski told the cable industry’s annual confab NCTA, in Boston Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Even if the FCC chief had wanted to shut the Net Neutrality stable door on per-use pricing, the horse appears to have bolted.

As of last week, Time Warner and Comcast have both introduced limited trial pay-per-use services — despite the fact that previous trials of monitoring users’ bandwidth haven’t gone over well.

According to a large number of comments, customers suspected the cable companies were mostly exploring the option as a way to raise prices overall.

What do you think? Is it reasonable to insist that consumers pay by how much bandwidth they use? Or should we all pay a flat fee? Take our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.

Should the FCC Let Internet Companies Charge By How Much You Use?

More About: fcc, net neutrality, trending

Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker has been taking heat for the controversial comments he made about President Obama’s campaign during a Meet the Press panel discussion on Sunday morning. Booker, one of the prolific tweeters in politics, has since taken to his social media accounts to defend himself.

Booker originally called the Obama campaign’s attack ads against Republican rival Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital “nauseating,” suggesting that the company’s record isn’t as bad as the Obama campaign has been making it out to be. Booker was equally critical of a Republican Super PAC’s reported plan to invoke Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a controversial pastor from President Obama’s former church, in advertisements.

During the discussion, Booker said that negative ads distract from the real issues which most Americans worry about every day.

Republicans almost immediately took advantage of the gaffe by launching a web petition and Twitter hashtag, “I Stand With Cory,” labeling Booker a campaign surrogate gone rouge. Republicans across Twitter are using the hashtag to lambast Booker’s comments and Obama’s anti-Romney ads. The GOP has also purchased sponsored tweets and Google ads which appear when searching for “Cory Booker” and direct users to the petition.

On Sunday evening and into the earlier part of the week, Booker used Twitter and YouTube to explain his statement and launch a hashtag of his own, #IStandWithObama.

SEE ALSO: Super-Mayor Cory Booker Gets Memed

“I made it clear on Meet the Press this morning how I believe that President Barack Obama has done such a strong job as a leader of our nation and how he more than deserves re-election,” said Booker in his YouTube video. “I also expressed my profound frustration with the kind of the campaigning that’s becoming too much the norm in our nation, which is generally negative campaigning. And this campaigning is about to become an avalanche, and in many ways, I believe, could risk muting out the important voices of the candidates themselves talking about the issues that matter.”

Is Booker’s use of social media to defend and explain his comments appropriate? Sound off in the comments below.

[View the story "Cory Booker Uses Twitter, YouTube to Defend Himself" on Storify]

More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Politics, US

If you’re itching to get your hands on Samsung’s new Galaxy S III, you may not have to wait much longer. Amazon put the phone up for pre-order on its website, with a delivery date of June 1.

Priced at $800 the handset isn’t exactly something you’re going to pick up on a whim, and comes with a few compromises beyond the hefty price.

The $800 model for sale on Amazon is the unlocked international version on the phone. Samsung has yet to announce a version of the phone for the U.S (although that announcement is expected this summer). So you’ll be getting the same version of the phone that’s up for sale overseas.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Reveals Galaxy S III

Since the phone is unlocked, you can use it with any GSM carrier you’d like, which in the U.S. means you can use a SIM card from T-Mobile or AT&T (the only GSM carriers in the country) in the phone and make calls. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t support the data network T-Mobile uses, so while you’ll be able to make calls using a T-Mobile SIM, you won’t be able to hop on the data network to surf the web or use any of the phone’s cool new S-voice capabilities.

The international version of the phone is also not compatible with AT&T’s LTE network, so while you’ll be able to use the phone on the carrier’s HSPA+ network (slightly faster than 3G), you won’t be able to speed along on the much faster LTE network with all your friends who hold out to buy the U.S. version of the phone later this year.

What you will get, however, is a quad-core 1.4 GHz Exynos processor. That particular processor isn’t compatible with LTE, so chances are good when the S III does make it to the United States it will be rocking a slower dual-core processor instead. We’ll have to wait and see what difference the processor might potentially make in the phone when Samsung releases the U.S. version of the phone later this year.

Are any of you planning on buying the Samsung Galaxy S III? Are you tempted to buy the unlocked international version rather than hold out for the U.S. version of the phone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Galaxy S III

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: android, galaxy sIII, samsung, trending

For more Mobile coverage:

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

The chart-topping songstress Beyonce sent her first tweet, launched a Tumblr blog and redesigned Beyonce.com on April 5. This week, the singer is revealing her #BeyHive app in the Apple App Store and on Google Play.

#BeyHive is the new mobile home for fans. The colorful app — which looks like a mix of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare — was built for Beyonce buzz.

Users must sign into the free app with a Twitter account. Fans can access Beyonce-related news, her entire discography (with sample audio and links to buy tracks) and current concert schedule. Badges are also up for grabs with activity.

Fans are encouraged to generate their own news. They can earn points for tweeting about #BeyHive, checking in at events and liking photos within the app. Hashtags such as #BeyVideos, #BeyNewSite and #BeyLove are used.

Tweets with the #BeyHive hashtag are collected and showcased in a live stream on the website.

SEE ALSO: First Photos of Beyonce’s and Jay-Z’s Baby Emerge on Tumblr [PICS]

See the video above for more about the app’s social features. The digital community, with Queen Bey, at its center has its own vocabulary — to which it’s good to have a guide handy.

Do you think digital fan bases for celebrities will be a hot trend? Sound off in the comments.

More About: beyonce, Mobile, Social Media

An analyst at the lead underwriter on the Facebook IPO cut his revenue estimates on the company before it went public, though most investors were not aware of it, according to a report.

The Morgan Stanley consumer Internet analyst, Scott Devitt, revised his forecasts as Facebook was in the midst of its roadshow, according to Reuters.

Devitt lowered his projections for Facebook’s revenues in both the second quarter and full-year 2012, according to Reuters, which did not provide further details.

Devitt’s report may have contributed to the stock’s so-far lackluster performance. Though analysts like Devitt operate independently of the firm’s investors, it is highly unusual for the lead underwriter or a looming IPO to declare such a bearish opinion on the company at such a late date.

The report came after Facebook amended its prospectus on May 9 to highlight caution about the company’s lack of monetization strategy for the consumer shift to mobile devices. Two other underwriters on the IPO — JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs — also cut their estimates based on that filing, according to the report.

Reps from Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs could not be reached for comment on the report.

More About: facebook ipo, Morgan Stanley

For more Business coverage:

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

One of the new customer service representatives at New York City’s three major airports this summer will stand out from the rest. She is friendly, helpful, and made out of plexiglass.

In other words, she’s North America’s first avatar airport customer service representative.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey unveiled the virtual assistant Tuesday morning. It works by projecting video from a human spokesperson onto a life-size cutout of a woman.

In early July, the hologram-like gadget will be installed in terminals at Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and JFK airports. New York City airports handled a combined 106 million passenger-trips last year.

“I never take a break, don’t charge overtime, hardly ever take a sick day and I don’t need a background check,” says the avatar in a promotional video from the company who created her, Arius Media.

Each avatar costs about $250,000, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Port Authority purchased its new virtual help as part of a broader effort to improve airport customer service that includes a 20% increase in human customer service staff, additional power poles for charging hand-held devices and cleaner restrooms.

More About: Airports, avatar

Using mobile phones to report malaria outbreaks in Africa has been stunningly effective — reducing the government response time to an outbreak from four weeks to three minutes, according to a new report.

HP, along with partners Positive Innovation for the Next Generation (PING) and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and mobile network provider MASCOM, announced the results of the first year of a mobile disease response pilot program last week.

“We see technology having a profound impact on disease surveillance, which has a highly antiquated process,” says Paul Ellingstad, HP’s director of global heath.

According to Ellingstad, it can take three to four weeks to send a list of sick patients to a district health clinic and then to the Ministry of Health of a respective country. Electronically automating disease surveillance speeds up the communication time to three minutes, meaning the government can immediately send bed nets and and alert citizens to take precautions.

Some 1,068 notifications were reported to Ministry of Health officials since the program first rolled out in June 2011 in Botswana’s Chobe region. Healthcare workers have been trained to use mobile devices to collect malaria data and report outbreaks to authorities.

The collected data is then plotted on a geo-tagged map, providing health workers context for their responses. Using the program’s technology, 89 potential outbreaks were identified during the pilot year.

Speed isn’t mobile’s only advantage to the dated paper process. Ellingstad says reporting potential cases of malaria has increased from about 20% to 93% compliance.

“This is an example of the role technology can play in fundamentally transforming and improving existing programs within the public health sector,” Ellingstad says. “What’s critical in doing so is partnering with governments and other leading NGOs to appropriately implement technology, rather than providing technology and letting the process sort itself out.”

HP and CHAI have also started working with Kenya’s Ministry of Health and are in talks with Mozambique’s government to continue their expansion. Kenya’s government is already using the platform to track the spread of 11 diseases, including malaria. Botswana’s government hopes to add another 16 diseases in the near future.

HP and PING plan to open another 20 health facilities in Botswana by June 1 and an additional 80 by October 2012. In August, the program will begin tracking other diseases, starting with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

PING, a Botswana-based NGO, plans to develop a game-like mobile phone tutorial, to ease the training of new health workers.

When it comes to future uses of mobile phones in public health, Ellingstad says he feels like the sky’s the limit.

“Mobile phones in the health space feels like the Internet and e-commerce in 1994 and 1995,” he says. “Right now, we know it’s a connection point, since 5.7 billion people have access to a mobile phone. With that sort of pervasiveness, you can provide health information, education and prevention to millions at risk of death.”

How else do you see mobile phones being used in the global health space? Share your ideas in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter

---

Interested in technology’s role in sustainable development? Join Mashable and partners in Brazil for Rio+Social. If you can’t make it to South America, you can join in the discussions on Facebook and Twitter. Click on the image below to learn more.

More About: developing countries, malaria, Mobile, sustainable development

For more Mobile coverage:

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

Design makes all the difference. It determines a concept’s usability, interactivity, clarity and scope, and can mean the difference between a business’s success and demise.

Firms like IDEO help organizations in the public and private sectors achieve “human-centered” design goals. IDEO’s approach is multi-faceted; it applies overlapping principles of design, like viability, desirability and feasibility, to account not only for the linear progression of a company, but for its organic, layered progress.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]

Founder of IDEO Duane Bray spoke at this year’s Mashable Connect about how to anticipate the future of digital behavior. How will we navigate the ever-expanding ocean of data? How might we build a different narrative style as digital communication changes over time?

Answering these questions means factoring in a thousand different components and trends, not the least of which is design.

Mashable editor in chief Lance Ulanoff caught up with Bray backstage at Mashable Connect, where he asked, “How much is a good design worth?” Bray responded that it’s imperative that companies invest design efforts up-front to ensure they won’t have to make incremental adjustments down the road.

More About: design, mashable connect, Video

For more Business coverage:

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

The Webby Awards

Now in their 16th year, the Webby Awards are legal to drive!

Click here to view this gallery.

The 16th Annual Webby Awards were held Monday night in New York City. Celebrities, tech luminaries and viral stars turned out for the big event.

In addition to a star-studded tribute to Steve Jobs (introduced by the great Richard Dreyfuss), the Webbys showcased a bevy of talent from across the Internet landscape.

After all, where else can you see Scumbag Steve and Juliette Lewis at the same event?

Host Patton Oswalt kept the show moving, whether it was by satirizing the rise of the “first” commenter phenomenon or helping remember the memes that passed on in 2012.

Tumblr’s David Karp presented New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work with Bloomberg L.P.. Meanwhile, the founders of Instagram received the “Breakout of the Year” award for the mobile photo app.

Spike Lee was on site to present Grantland’s look at the year of social media and sports, including special guest Jeremy Lin. Icelandic music goddess Bjork accepted her award for “Artist of the Year” for her album, Biophilia.

One of the highlights of the night was the presentation of the Webby for Cultural Institution. It went to the “Remember Me Project,” which used the web to help identify more than 300 young children who survived the Holocaust. Survivor Tibor Sands, who was identified because of the project, accepted the award to a standing ovation.

Mashable took home a Webby for our business coverage and our own Pete Cashmore presented Facebook with the People’s Special Achievement for Social Change.

The Webby for “Meme of the Year” went to none-other than Nyan Cat, with an assist from Scumbag Steve.

More About: Facebook, steve jobs, webby awards

For more Entertainment coverage:

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

1. BabbaBox

BabbaBox offers crafts and activities. This model caters to kids from 3 to 6 year olds, and all materials are included to complete two or three projects. Themes vary each month. An example box is “gratitude.” Kids create a serving tray, handmade thank-you cards, and use a disposable camera to take photos of things they are thankful for. Hey, what parent couldn't use a little more gratitude and a little less attitude in their life? ($29.99 a month, free shipping)

Click here to view this gallery.

Who doesn’t love a business that makes life easier? Well, that’s what subscription boxes — where subscribers receive a package of goods on a monthly basis — have started to do for parents.

In the past few years the breadth of products available via subscription boxes has become incredibly diverse. And If you’re a parent, you know what it’s like to juggle work, kids, and extracurricular activities. You simply don’t have the time to research the “best of” whatever you’re looking for.

SEE ALSO: 7 Heartwarming Digital Projects Parents Made for Kids

So if you’re in need of items like kids’ clothing, activities, or diapers, there’s likely a subscription model out there that will get these to you with very little effort. Tempted to give one of these services a try? Here are ten aimed at families like yours.

Know of a subscription service we didn’t mention? Share it in the comments below.

More About: contributor, features, kids apps, parents, Subscription service

The Leaders in Design Series is presented by Volvo.

Dyson is a company that embodies the word “disruptive.” Before it arrived on the scene, the world of vacuum cleaners was boring and stagnant, and the machines themselves were essentially commodities. Dyson — with its novel solution of getting rid of irritating disposable bags by using different suction technology — shook up the industry and became a household name along the way.

A fair bit of that disruption came from the design of Dyson’s vacuums, which eschewed broom-closet aesthetics for iMac-like modernity. With transparent parts, simple shapes and strategic placement of color, Dyson’s vacuums are instantly recognizable. The company has since spread its air-blowing technology into hand dryers and fans.

The man behind those designs is Alex Knox. One of the longest-serving members of the Dyson team, Knox has seen the company grow from three people to more than 3,900. He works at the company headquarters in the UK, where the 650 scientists and engineers based there are greeted every day by elaborate cutaway models on display. Each is an iconic example of great design, and the collection includes the original Mini and a Harrier jet.

Dropping by Mashable‘s offices, Knox talked with us at length about his design philosophy, why Dyson hasn’t made a robot vacuum and how sustainability factors into his work.

---

Q&A with Alex Knox, Senior Designer at Dyson

---

How did you first get interested in design?

My father was an architect, and I almost never had any doubt that I would do anything other than architecture or design. I enjoyed designing and playing with things that I could actually get my hands on. Dad was always up all night drawing things, and product design was always something I was attracted to.

How did you hook up with Dyson?

I was working for a design consultancy in Italy, and I had just read a magazine article about James, who had just released this brand new vacuum cleaner. I was really fascinated. I just thought it would be an amazing place to go and work. So I wrote them a letter and got a job. It was tiny then — there were just two of us and James.

Was there a moment where things turned, when you knew Dyson had really arrived?

When I first started, it was basically a startup company. I remember thinking, “I just don’t know if this is going to work or not. In a month’s time, I might not have a job.” But then sales just kind of picked up. The sales charts were almost like comedy graphs, going up and up and up and up and up. It been just like a roller coaster ride from then on.

How do you approach design?

By breaking it right down and starting with, “What’s the fundamental problem?” We don’t worry about what it’s going to look like — it’s all about the problem we’re going to solve and how we’re going to solve it. And then we start thinking about maybe tackling that problem in a slightly different way than perhaps everyone else did.

The vacuum cleaner is a great example. The problem was this bag that clogged up, and by coming up with a new technology, a new idea, a new way of solving the problem of separating dust and air, you can come up with a really interesting machine that doesn’t have all the disadvantages of the conventional way of doing it.

And at some point a sexy product just pops out? How does design factor in?

The way our machines look is kind of derived from the way they work. The final embodiment of it all is just kind of a process of fine-tuning the way it works and looking at the usability and just experimenting. There’s no time where we sit there doing a sketch and think, “It would be really nice if it looked like this.”

Would you say Dyson is “green” tech?

We don’t really do green. Green is this word that gets bandied about all the time, and actually sustainability is the important thing. And we think that by doing good engineering, you automatically design something that is going to be sustainable, because it’s all about efficiency, and that’s what green is all about.

Why is Dyson’s technology more efficient?

Because we set ourselves some pretty challenging targets in terms of what we’re trying to get out of whatever technology that we’re using. And so it’s all about what we can get out of that and minimizing what we need to put in to do it.

How important is the design process at any company that sells products?

You’d think it would be central. I’m not sure it always is. It certainly is for us — it’s one of the key things that we do. It’s something James Dyson is incredibly passionate and involved in, so even now he spends most of his time in our R&D center. And that’s not just looking at things in a top-down strategic view — it’s right down to the tiny little details of design. So he’s involved right the way through.

So design and engineering — since we don’t really separate the two things — is just a fundamental part of what it’s all about.

How does failure factor into the design process?

Failure is really important, actually. If you want to push something to the limits, you want to see failures because otherwise you know you haven’t pushed it hard enough. So if you’re testing or developing anything, you want half of the things you test fail and half of them work. By seeing failures, you can then work out where the limits are — how far you can push a certain technology or design.

---

Series presented by Volvo

---

 

The Leaders in Design Series is presented by Volvo. Experience the newest Volvo for yourself. Step inside the 325hp 2011 Volvo S60 T6 R-Design at volvocars.us.

More About: dyson, features, Leaders in Design Series, mashable, vacuum

For more Dev & Design coverage:

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

What would President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Mitt Romney look like if they hopped on board Carly Rae Jepsen’s infectious “Call Me Maybe” train? Something like the parody The Tonight Show host Jay Leno showed the world Monday night.

Thanks to some digital wizardry and video editing, the two politicians perform the viral song in a similar format that athletes from Harvard University and Southern Methodist University did this month.

Harvard University’s pitcher uploaded a clip of his teammates doing a not-so-elaborate synchronized “Call Me Maybe” dance with their arms.

Not to be outdone, Southern Methodist Univeristy’s female rowing team (see slide 11 in the gallery below) recorded a version using only their legs.

The Today Show brought both teams to New York City to battle it out. They tied for awesomeness.

The digitally edited Obama and Romney take their moves to the next level, using both their arms and legs.

“Call Me Maybe” hit number one on iTunes in the U.S. last week and still holds the top spot. The song’s original video has 71 million views while her second video (featuring a celebrity cameos from Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Ashley Tisdale) has 39.5 million.

Jonathan Simkin of 604 Records, Jepsen’s label, told Mashable he and Jepsen “love” all of the sports covers: “It’s so flattering to see these people go to the trouble.”

---

BONUS: Watch 11 Sports Teams Rock Out to ‘Call Me Maybe’

---

1. Harvard University Baseball

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: barack obama, celebrities, Entertainment, humor, jay leno, Mitt Romney, Music, music videos, parody, Politics, pop culture, the tonight show, trending

For more Entertainment coverage:

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

Meet Dragon Drive!, the latest in talking-car technology. Nuance Communications unveiled on Tuesday this new Siri-like voice platform designed specifically for the connected car.

The platform allows you to send and receive texts and email via voice commands in five languages, including English, French, Italian German and Spanish. For example, you can tell the system the following: “Reply to Alex, ‘Sushi sounds great. See you at 7.’”

Although hands-free voice recognition software in cars is nothing new, adoption has been slow due to the unnatural nature of some of its commands. Nuance aims to simplify the process by blending the vehicle’s internal computers with cloud technology that can access your email and text messages, so you don’t even need to use your phone during the process.

The company is working with manufacturers to get the solution integrated into new cars. Unfortunately drivers won’t be able to add the system to existing vehicles.

“The entire automotive ecosystem faces a critical challenge — keep consumers connected to the content they love without imposing dangerous distractions behind the wheel,” said Arnd Weil, vice president and general manager at Nuance Mobile, in a statement. “Dragon Drive! has been designed from the ground up with a focus on voice and natural language, bridging that gap to give consumers the ability to take full advantage of the broad range of services today’s connected car has to offer.”

SEE ALSO: Do People Really Want Self-Driving Cars? [VIDEO]

Although Dragon Drive! is focused on messaging right now, the company said it will eventually allow users to download songs, locate nearby restaurants and get directions.

The industry expects the demand for connected to cars to grow significantly in the future. In fact, according to a report by IMS Research, the category is expected to jump 650% by 2017, reaching 40.5 million unit sales.

Meanwhile, a recent JD Power 2012 U.S. Automotive Emerging Technologies Study showed that drivers are interested in the trend — about 69% of study participants said they want natural language voice activation functionality and 68% want wireless connectivity.

Do you want to talk to your car? Is this truly the future of the automobile industry? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, fotografstockholm

---

BONUS: New York Auto Show: The Coolest Car Tech

---

Terrafugia's Transition Flying Car

Here's that flying car you've been dreaming of your whole life. From aircraft company Aircraft company Terrafugia comes the Transition car, which touts four wheels, two wings and the ability fly two people anywhere.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: cars, siri

There’s a good chance that last year around this time you didn’t know about Google+ — which wasn’t even in beta form yet — and “Hanging out” was something you only did in person. But the search engine giant has made big strides with its social network in the past 12 months, so much so that it’s hosting its first-ever Google+ conference in San Francisco this week for photographers.

For the next two days Google is hosting what it calls a “HIRL” or “Hang Out in Real Life,” bringing together some of the biggest photographers with presences on Google+.

The conference is designed to help photographers to refine their photography skills, grow their brand and get the most out of their Google+ experience.

“We are photographers ourselves,” Bradley Horowitz, VP of product at Google, said during the opening keynote for the conference Tuesday. “We are geeks. Photography geeks are a sublayer of geek, and there are a lot of us on the Google+ team”

While Google+ may be not be as popular on the social networking side as Facebook, the service is exceptionally popular for photographers, partly for how it handles content.

“Photos are the lifeblood of our service,” says Horowitz. “We wanted to make the content the hero.”

Photos on Google+ are typically displayed larger than they are on other services and offer several advantages for photographers, including the ability to carefully tailor which groups of people are able to see the photos uploaded to the service.

If you’re not in San Francisco for the conference but love photography and Google+, you can still participate in the various sessions taking place over the next two days virtually via Google+ hangouts. Sessions are streamed live, and if you sign up for sessions via the Google+ Photographers conference app, you can ask questions during the talks and participate as if you were attending in person.

What do you think about Google+ from a photography perspective? Will you attend the conference virtually? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

More About: Google, photography

Losing your iPhone is worse than losing your wallet these days, considering all the information we store on it. But does it require a 10-man police hunt?

Berkeley, Calif. Police Chief Michael Meehan and a crew of 10 police officers searched for his son’s missing cellphone on taxpayer dollars this January after it went missing from the boy’s unlocked locker at school.

After that, eight members of the department’s drug task force worked on overtime to track down the cellphone, which was equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software.

The search was unsuccessful, but did succeed in stirring up more controversy for the police chief.

In March, Meehan sent a sergeant to a reporter’s home at around 1 a.m. to ask for changes to an online article, Inside Bay Area reported.

The city of Berkeley hired a San Francisco law firm to investigate the chief’s actions that night.

Another issue with the January incident is that no report was filed. “At minimum there should have been a police report. If a department is going to put people onto an investigation, they should have a police report,” said Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review, according to Inside Bay Area.

A spokesperson from the department said it’s not “uncommon” for patrol officers to track a stolen phone if they get an active signal while on the streets.

In a statement sent to Mashable, the Berkeley Police Department wrote that the chief did not order an investigation, but the drug task force officers volunteered to help locate the lost smartphone.

The Berkeley Police Department offers these guidelines for phone theft cases online.

If you walked into your local police department to report a missing cellphone and had the cellphone finder app, do you think the police in your area would jump on the case right away? Tell us in the comments.

‪Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Antonprado ‬

More About: cellphone, iphone, legal, police, smartphone, trending

In celebration of Robert Moog’s 78th birthday, Google has created an epic Google Doodle to honor the electronic music pioneer.

The Doodle, which is scheduled for Wednesday but already visible on Google’s Australia landing page, presents an interactive Moog synthesizer.

Users can adjust dials on the synthesizer, turn switches on and off and play sounds on the keyboard. You can also record and playback your creations — even layering multiple tracks over each other.

It seems Google is also allowing users to share their music via Google+ and via a regular weblink — though at this time those links are not working for users who aren’t logged into Google.com.au.

This isn’t the first time Google has created a playable Doodle celebrating music legends. Last year the company released a Les Paul Google Doodle celebrating the guitar legend.

Readers sent us their Les Paul Doodle recordings; here are seven of the best.

What do you make of this Moog? Let us know in the comments — and send us your killer synth tracks.

More About: Google, google doodle, moog synthesizer, robert moog, trending

For more Tech coverage:

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