Early Tuesday morning, The Boston Globe reported details of the 8-year-old boy who died in the Boston Marathon bombings, identifying him on Twitter as Martin Richard and his parents as William and Denise Richard

A few people immediately — and mistakenly — thought the Globe was referring to actress Denise Richards. The 42-year-old celebrity, however, doesn't have a son. She and ex-husband Charlie Sheen have two daughters; she also adopted a girl in 2011. (Note: The above photo is of Richards and Sheen at a Yankees vs. Mets game in 2012.)

In total, three people have reportedly been killed and more than 130 others injured after the explosions detonated Monday near the Boston Marathon finish line. Read more...

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When you think electric vehicle, cars like the Tesla Model S or Chevy Volt might come to mind. But a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup wants to change that perception with what they claim is the "world's lightest electric vehicle" — and it's a skateboard.

Boosted Boards was a Kickstarter success last fall, when they raised over $467,000 to further develop their 12-pound electric longboard. The motorized board is packed with 2000 watts of power (or 2.6 horsepower) and has a six-mile range on a single charge.

“Because it’s really light and portable it means there’s a lot lower friction involved when you use it," Boosted Boards co-founder Sanjay Dastoor told Mashable at Stanford University's Cool Product Expo on Wednesday. "So you don’t have to park it, you don’t have to lock it, you don’t get stuck in traffic — things that you associate with cars or even bicycles.” Read more...

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The Boston Marathon explosions have left many looking for an explanation behind the tragic events that unfolded on Monday. As people scour the web for answers, YouTube has made it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest developments

Hours after the explosions took place, the video-sharing website launched an official YouTube Spotlight page devoted to "Explosions at the Boston Marathon."

At the time of this writing, the page has 26 videos, with 47 minutes of footage in total. They include U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the nation following the deadly blasts, as well as news reports from reputable media outlets including Bloomberg, AP, CNN and The Boston Globe. Read more...

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We're quickly getting used to the fact that computer, smartphone and tablet screens are meant to be touched — but what about paper?

Fujitsu has developed a technology that detects objects your finger is touching in the real world, effectively turning any surface — a piece of paper, for example — into a touchscreen, DigInfo reports

"This system doesn't use any special hardware; it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam, plus a commercial projector. Its capabilities are achieved by image processing technology," explains Taichi Murase, a researcher at Fujitsu's Media Service System Lab Read more...

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Sunday night's competing programs, Game of Thrones and Mad Men, both saw a dip in buzz during the second and third weeks of their respective seasons

Mad Men was nowhere to be seen on the chart of top cable programs, while HBO's bloody fantasy series dropped 32% into seventh place

The MTV Movie Awards raked in the most comments on social media this week, nearly tripling its total from 2012. Check out the chart below to get a more detailed look at the social statistics.

The data is courtesy of Trendrr, which measures social media activity related to specific television shows (e.g. mentions, likes, check-ins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Viggle. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV. Read more...

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The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, is headed to a full vote in the House of Representatives Wednesday or Thursday of this week.

CISPA passed the House Intelligence Committee last week following a closed-door debate, during which committee members approved four amendments. One particularly significant change was made which disallows the government from using information collected under CISPA for national security purposes — language opponents argued was overly vague and easily manipulatable

However, most of the amendments which would have made a significant impact on CISPA's privacy implications were voted down. Despite the insistence of CISPA authors Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), pictured above, that "multiple amendments were made based on input from privacy and civil liberties groups," many of those groups are still opposing the bill Read more...

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Apple Maps wasn’t very good. This is not news. Even company CEO Tim Cook admitted it fell short. The folks at crowd-sourced, turn-by-turn navigation competitor Waze weren’t surprised, either. On Monday, company CEO Noam Bardin told an audience at All Things D’s Dive into Mobile conference that they never actually expected Apple Maps to be that good. So then why was Bardin surprised?

Bardin said they knew Apple Maps was coming, and saw it as a "nightmare" for the Waze business. “We assumed Apple’s product wouldn’t be that good, but we thought it would be good enough for consumers,” he recalled Read more...

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For all those curious about what it's like to develop for Google Glass, your wait is over.

On Monday, the search giant released its Google Mirror API, which allows developers to begin creating applications for Glass. Web-based services called “Glassware” will interact with Glass over the cloud-based API, and will not require any code to be run on the Glass hardware.

Teased at a South by Southwest event by Timothy Jordan, Google’s senior developer advocate, the API has a few key features that will go into applications: managing timeline cards, interacting with menu items, subscribing to timeline notifications, sharing to contacts and working with user location. Read more...

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Keeping the default settings on any Internet-connected service is just asking for trouble. It's easy enough to scoff at people whose brilliant "12345" password fell victim to hackers, but it's just as simple to target usernames. A number of WordPress bloggers discovered this the hard way, when their "admin" accounts became part of a hostile, exploitative botnet.

The attacks began last week, and have affected more than 90,000 blogs so far. The hackers behind the attacks have combed through WordPress accounts and attempted to guess passwords via brute force.

Their program cycles WordPress accounts through 1,000 common passwords. While this tactic is useless against savvy users, enough people utilize easy-to-guess passwords to make it worthwhile for the hackers. Read more...

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The classic definition of a hacker is somebody who uses their ingenuity to tinker and modify things to make them do what they were not designed to do. In other words, someone who gets around hurdles with smart "hacks." With that in mind, it shouldn't be too surprising that Andrew Auernheimer, more famously known by his hacker name, Weev, has found a way to make his voice heard on the Internet, even when he's locked up in prison.

On March 18, Auernheimer was sentenced to 41 months in prison for accessing an AT&T webserver that contained 114,000 email addresses of iPad owners, and sharing the information with Gawker. Post sentencing, Auernheimer is being held in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), awaiting transfer to the Lewisburg penitentiary in Pennsylvania Read more...

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Samsung's flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S 4, is now available for pre-order in Canada via Rogers

The Galaxy S 4 is available in two colors — Black Mist and White Frost, and it starts at $199.99 with a three-year plan. Those who don't like the idea of signing up for such a long plan can have the Galaxy S 4 sans contract, but the price is hefty: CA$700 ($683)

Existing Rogers customers can pre-order the device through the Rogers Reservation System, while new customers can pre-order it at www.rogers.com/GALAXYS4.

Those who have pre-ordered the Galaxy S 4 will start receiving it on April 27. The device will become available in Rogers stores and selected retailers on May 3 Read more...

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Of all the pontificators and pundits reacting online and off, it was comedian Patton Oswalt who perhaps provided the most poignant take on the Boston Marathon bombing Monday afternoon

In a post to his Facebook page, Oswalt wrote that while violence such as Monday's tragedy exemplifies the worst of humanity, it's easy to lose track of the bigger picture

The post reads in part:

This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago Read more...

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Every day is a good time to enjoy art, but it's especially on April 15, World Art Day, when the whole world is invited to devote a few minutes to enjoying the finer things in life.

But if you don’t have time to visit a museum or gallery today, don’t worry. According to Google, World Art Day is the perfect time to take advantage of its virtual art gallery. With online access to more than 40,000 works of art in high definition, you might just decide to spend all day touring this free “museum.” Besides, perusing paintings on your screen should be welcome change from staring at tax forms.

Google Art Project was started just over two years ago as a collaboration between the Internet giant and 151 art partners in more than 40 countries. The interactive platform allows users to view some of the greatest works of art down to the level of brush strokes. Read more...

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Tyler Fenton lives in Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood, and can sleep five people between his extra bed, couch and floor

David Rahn lives in Brighton, and has room for one — plus extra clothes, Wi-Fi, a shower and more amenities for use

Kara Bauer lives 40 minutes outside town, but "would happily drive anywhere to pick up a runner who needs food, shelter and comfort."

Fenton, Rahn and Bauer are among hundreds of area residents who have listed their phone numbers and email addresses online after a Boston.com call to action. The Boston Globe's digital arm asked locals to offer extra space to Boston Marathon runners and spectators stranded in town after Monday afternoon's deadly explosions Read more...

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Mozilla's resigning CEO Gary Kovacs may be stepping down, but he's still passionate about transforming the mobile space and believes “the line between a browser, web page and an app should just go away."

Kovacs took the stage at All Things D’s Dive Into Mobile conference in New York City on Monday to explain why Firefox is building its own mobile operating system, especially in a space where upstart mobile OSes have trouble thriving, and to talk about his decision to leave Mozilla before the end of this year.

The key to understanding why phones bearing the Firefox OS will arrive in five European countries this summer is to look at where the next 2 billion mobile users will come from. As Kovacs sees it, those new mobile users are, in the next four-to-seven years, coming from the developing world, in places where the majority of the population is below the poverty line and doesn't have access to the same kind of powerful hardware found, for example, in the U.S. Read more...

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Google Glass is about to ship — to developers and early adopters, that is.

Google contacted Glass Explorers Monday afternoon to let them know both hardware and software for Google Glass are now ready. The first few devices are now coming off the production line, the company added.

Orders for the Explorer Edition of Google Glass were taken during Google I/O last year. In two and a half days, the company says it saw around 2,000 people sign up for the project.

While there are a few devices ready to ship now, there aren’t 2,000 of them. In its email to Explorers, the company said it will be shipping Glass units in waves, rather than waiting for all 2000 units to be available. Google will contact individual Explorers via email with details when their time comes. Read more...

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Dove posted on Monday a three-minute ad on YouTube
that teaches a vital lesson about how we view ourselves compared to how others see us. Trust us, it's worth your time.

A former forensic artist for the San Jose police department met a series of women and asked each to describe the way they look. He had no way of seeing them behind a curtain. He prompted them to detail everything: hair length, facial structure, their most prominent features. He then sketched each participant from their self-description.

Each woman was asked before the study to get to know one of the other participants. The forensic artist then prompted each woman to describe the other's face Read more...

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When police didn't take immediate action after a parent reported that his sixth-grade son was being bullied, the Wisconsin father took matters into his own hands — on Facebook.

On March 26, dad Matthew Bent posted a Facebook photo holding a sign declaring, "I stand behind my son in the fight against bullying!" Bent's Facebook plea to stop bullying went viral and had generated more than 453,000 likes and 466,000 shares, as of Monday afternoon.

In the post, Bent claims that a bully body-slammed his son three times and stole his son's necklace. When Bent went to authorities to report the bully, he alleges they brushed him off: "He [the officer] told me that because my son voluntarily walked into the area that the bully was, that it was my son's fault for going 'into the lions den' and there was nothing he would do about it." Read more...

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Cellphone service in the Boston area is currently experiencing disruptions, following the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Much of the service disruption seems to be due to increased usage. A Sprint representative described the situation to the Boston Globe, saying that "the network is blocking calls because the number of calls coming in exceeds the capacity.”

Verizon released a statement saying:

"Verizon Wireless has been enhancing network voice capacity to enable additional calling in the Copley Square area of Boston. Customers are advised to use text or email to free up voice capacity for public safety officials at the scene. There was no damage to the Verizon Wireless network, which is seeing elevated calling and data usage throughout the region since the explosions occurred." Read more...

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President Obama will address the nation at approximately 6:00 p.m. ET Monday, following at least two deadly blasts in Boston that seemed to target the Boston Marathon. You can watch live, above.

Obama has already been in touch with FBI Director Robert Mueller, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and several Massachusetts elected officials and law enforcement. He has promised Massachusetts the full support of national law enforcement and investigators

Image via Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Read more...

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Google Person Finder, a tool the company built following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, has been activated for use following the deadly Boston Marathon explosions Monday afternoon.

Shortly after launching, the Person Finder homepage says it's tracking about 800 records

As the tool is being populated, you can either search for someone or share information about someone's whereabouts. The tool includes a disclaimer stating that Google doesn't review or verify any information, and all submitted details are public to all users.

Read more...

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The Boston Police Department tweeted a plea for video from the finish line of the Boston Marathon after multiple blasts rocked the area Monday afternoon

At time of writing, police had confirmed 23 injured and two dead as a result of the explosions, although those numbers will change. The explosions were later identified as bombs

In the minutes after the blasts, the official Boston Police Department Twitter account posted this message asking for video from the finish line:

BostonPolice looking for video of the finish line #tweetfromthebeat via @cherylfiandaca

— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013 Read more...

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One of the largest online communities, Reddit, is often a great source of breaking news, and right now it's proving it with a story on the Boston marathon explosions

In one of the top stories on Reddit at the moment, a redditor has started compiling all the news about the explosions that occurred at the marathon, leaving many runners and spectators injured and some dead

With hundreds of comments, some apparently from people from Boston, and with Reddit's comment voting system pushing the most important info to the top, the story has quickly grown one of the best places to find info about the explosions Read more...

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Dennis Crowley, the CEO and co-founder of Foursquare, ran in Monday's Boston Marathon, but emerged unhurt after explosions marred the event. Crowley used Twitter to report from the scene of the incident

Crowley, who also used Foursquare to check in at every mile, sent his first tweet at 3:08 EDT.

I'm ok.about 20k of us in corral just before mi 26. marker. @chelsa ok too

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

Crowley then offered real-time description of the horrible events:

still stuck at mi 26. mom dad Michelle chelsa all ok.

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

FYI no one at mi 26 has any idea what's happening.

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013 Read more...

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Two explosions occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon. The news and images, including some graphic photos, unfolded on social media just before 3 p.m. According to a tweet from the Boston Police Department, 23 people were injured and two are dead. CNN reports as many as 49 injured. A live feed, hosted by CBS, of the finish line continues to show the aftermath of the explosion, including emergency vehicles and crew on the scene

Twitter users shared graphic images of the sceneMashable will refrain from sharing overly graphic images in the Storify below, however, you can follow these links to tweets, if you chooseWARNING — graphic images: from @JackieBrunoNECN8m, @theoriginalwak, @brm90, Vine user Doug, the AP; an especially detailed video with audio of the explosion at Boston.com. Read more...

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Two of the country's most notorious survivalists — the Hermit of North Pond in Maine, and The Mountain Man of Utah, were found and arrested in the last few weeks. And a case of a missing family, the McStay family of southern California, was effectively closed when investigators said the family appears to have gone to Mexico voluntarily.

So is it still possible to "disappear" in 2013?

"Is it more difficult? Yes," said Jim Biesterfeld, a former U.S. army counter-intelligence special agent who teaches private investigations at California State University-Fullerton Jim Biesterfeld. "Impossible? Not even." Read more...

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If you bike at nighttime, you're probably all too familiar with the challenges of keeping visible on the road. Reflectors and standard bike lights often help, but a Northern California startup has a unique solution that incorporates LED lighting directly on bike wheels.

If you're a cycling enthusiast, you may have seen or heard of Revolights in the past. The company rolled out its original LED bike lighting system after its first Kickstarter project was a huge success in 2011. But the original product was not an easy installation process and involved mounting the light ring with clips to your existing wheels. So the team listened to feedback and they've now designed "Revolights City v2.0," which are bike wheels with the LED lights directly built into them. Read more...

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If nothing is certain but death and taxes, it's telling that death often seems more pleasant. Doing taxes is, inevitably, excruciating. All those forms. All those numbers. All that bureaucratese. No wonder we all procrastinate.

But at least it's not the early '90s. Back then, when personal computers were new, software designers and the IRS alike were experimenting with ways to use computers to replace mailed-in tax forms. The results were, as so much software was back then ... clunky. And text-based. And oddly fluorescent. Those early tax prep programs replicated analog tax documents in digital form; their main value-add, besides offering their users a whiff of The Future, was that they did your tax calculations for you. Read more...

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So-net Entertainment, a Sony-backed Japan ISP, has launched a fiber-based Internet service that reaches download speeds of 2 Gbps, making it the fastest home internet in the world

The Nuro, as the service is called, is available to homes and small businesses in Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures, Computerworld reports. The upload speed is a little slower than download — 1 Gbps — but it's still faster than most of us get, even at work

For comparison, the ultra-fast Google Fiber broadband Internet service offers a "mere" 1 Gbps download speed — and that's still some 100 times faster than today's average home internet connection Read more...

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Most Americans now know the feeling of typing something into a social media input box, thinking again, and deciding against posting whatever it was. But while it certainly seemed like a widespread phenomenon, no one had actually quantified the extent of this "self-censorship."

But now, new research based on a sample of 3.9 million Facebook reveals precisely how widespread this activity is. Carnegie Mellon PhD student Sauvik Das and Facebook's Adam Kramer measured how many people typed more than five characters into Facebook content-input boxes, but then did not post them

They term this "last-minute self-censorship." The research was posted to Das' website and will presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's conference on Weblogs and Social Media in July. Read more...

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