Explorer editions of Google Glass began rolling out to customers as of Tuesday, but the company has enforced restrictions on those lucky new owners, banning them from reselling and lending the eyewear

Here's what the company's terms of sale state:

"You may not resell, loan, transfer or give your Device to any other person. If you resell, loan, transfer or give your device to any other person without Google's authorization, Google reserves the right to deactivate the Device, and neither you nor the unauthorized person using the Device will be entitled to any refund, product support or product warranty." Read more...

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Santiago Swallow may be one of the most famous people no one has heard of.

His eyes fume from his Twitter profile: he is Hollywood-handsome with high cheekbones and dirty blond, collar-length hair. Next to his name is one of social media’s most prized possessions, Twitter’s blue “verified account” checkmark. Beneath it are numbers to make many in the online world jealous: Santiago Swallow has tens of thousands of followers. The tweets Swallow sends them are cryptic nuggets of wisdom that unroll like scrolls from digital fortune cookies: “Before you lose weight, find hope,” says one. Another: “To write is to live endlessly.” Read more...

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Twitter is set to make a "big announcement" Thursday on Good Morning America, ABC's early-hour television show.

GMA teased the reveal on its Twitter feed Wednesday night

Tomorrow on #GMA: @twitter will be making a BIG announcement... tune in!

— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 18, 2013

So, what should viewers expect from the announcement? Online speculation points to the official launch of Twitter Music. A website for the service went live last week, hinting that a formal unveiling will soon take place

Ryan Seacrest confirmed the existence of Twitter Music after posting a tweet that said he was playing with the app. It reportedly helps users discover new artists, and indicates which songs are trending among their friends and on Twitter at large Read more...

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Gaming is big in China and only getting bigger. And while mobile gaming is important, the PC is still by far the most popular gaming platform for the nation's young gamers (see this infographic for more information on Chinese gamers and their preferences)

So what are people playing on the PC these days? QQ Games compiled a list that measures which games got the most play in Internet cafes by gathering data from the Shunwang gaming platform used in many net cafes. Here are the top ten.

1. DNF (also called Dungeon & Fighter, Dungeon Fighter Online, etc.). A Korean-developed beat-’em-up game that’s pretty old (released back in 2005) but still very popular in China.

2. CrossFire*. China’s version of Counter-Strike (a tactical first-person shooter), another oldie-but-goodie that was actually developed by Korean devs SmileGate and released in 2007.

3. League of Legends. The DOTA-based competitive online game that has been immensely popular worldwide.

4. QQ Speed. A 2008 racer developed and released by — no big surprise here — Tencent Games.

5. QQ X5* (QQ炫舞). A casual dance game also first released by Tencent in 2008. Read more...

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NOTE: The music starts at 1:15

Boston is on the minds of people all over the world after Monday's horrific twin bombings shook the city during the Boston Marathon, leaving three dead and nearly 200 others injured

American Idol finalist Angie Miller, who calls Boston her hometown, dedicated her Wednesday performance of The Pretenders' "I'll Stand by You" to the city.

The 19-year-old singer and the four other finalists were tasked to sing songs from the years they were born. In Miller's case, she chose one from 1994. Her rendition brought judges Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Randy Jackson to their feet. Read more...

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Warning: The content of this video is graphic in nature. Please watch at your discretion.

An explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant Wednesday night has reportedly left 60 to 70 people dead and hundreds injured, according to KWTX.com. A viral video capturing the blast, above, has been circulating online. It is unclear whether the YouTube user who uploaded the video is the same person who filmed it

The disturbing footage shows the West Fertilizer plant in the town of West, 20 miles outside Waco, Texas, engulfed in flames. An unidentified man whose face is obscured by a camera, sits in his car (along with another person who self-identifies as his child), while filming the scene. Halfway through the 30-second video, the plant explodes, appearing to impact the vehicle Read more...

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Not long after reports that a massive fertilizer plant explosion occurred in Texas on Wednesday night, a map featuring key points of interest from the scene has been added to Google Maps.

Reddit user OverR created a custom map of the incident on Google Maps, highlighting evacuated areas, places with reported injuries and an identifier where the natural gas leak allegedly started

Google Maps allows users to create and share personalized annotated maps. The Reddit user's map of the fertilizer plant is public and open for those to edit with new information and details.

Read more...

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LinkedIn has updated its mobile app for the first time since 2011 and will run a small test of "sponsored content" i.e. ads in the stream

The test comes after LinkedIn announced a similar test of sponsored content in its iPad app in January. This would be the first time a LinkedIn phone app would sport the ads.

Like other recent app updates, the update for iOS and Android has a heavy emphasis on photos. This makes the difference between the new app and the old one immediately apparent:

As with the previous design, there's a big emphasis on the news feed, but with shorter updates and more emphasis on who is doing the sharing.: Read more...

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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: Disconnect.me

One-Liner Pitch: The browser extension helps users monitor and block more than 2,000 websites from collecting their data online.

Why It's Taking Off: Disconnect.me was founded by an ex-Googler to put users in control of their browsing history.

Brian Kennish spent more than a decade building the software that allows companies to track your data online. He developed ad servers for Double Click in the early 2000s, and then joined Google where he worked on the search giant's first AdWords API. But then he became a heavy Facebook user, and his thinking about ad-tracking technology started to change Read more...

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This isn't just the double dutch you used to play in the backyard — this lady has got some major skills when it comes to jumping rope

Dubbed the "world's greatest jump roper," the athlete does everything from cartwheels while jumping to jumping while sitting down. At times, she's swinging the rope so fast it all but disappears from view

The video was created by YouTuber devinsupertramp, known for his extreme sports videos like the canyon rope swing.

And while jump roping doesn't usually seem like an extreme sport, this athlete definitely makes it look insane Read more...

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Electric guitars, when compared to their acoustic counterparts, have the ability to produce a much more diverse range of sounds

Inventor Paul Vo, of Asheville, N.C., is hoping to even out the playing board with Vo-96 — an acoustic guitar synthesizer that modulates and controls the vibrations you generate when you pluck the strings. Vo launched a Kickstarter campaign for the contraption last week

"I've had this idea for many years," he told Mashable, "and, honestly, I don't believe there are any other similar products out there right now."

The Vo-96 works as an add-on for any acoustic guitar, without the need for an amplifier or post-processing. Instead, it uses a transducer to pick up, monitor and control the strings' vibrations, which creates a naturally modified synthesis sound Read more...

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It's really, really difficult to make a successful superhero game. For every great title in the bunch (Batman: Arkham Asylum), there are multiple unfathomable atrocities (Superman 64, Catwoman and Aquaman: Battle For Atlantis should all be erased from history)

Nonetheless, Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm will not only take up the cursed mantle of DC Comics, but also create a fighting game in Injustice: Gods Among Us.

Fortunately, Injustice: Gods Among Us pleases comic book fans for its faithful recreation of more than 20 characters from the DC Universe, and gives fighting game fans a worthwhile title for their libraries. Read more...

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Wednesday's NHL game between the hometown Bruins and visiting Buffalo Sabres marked the first major sporting event in Boston since Monday's deadly bombings at the Boston Marathon. (A Celtics home game on Tuesday was called off.)

Before the game, noted belter Rene Rancourt took center ice to sing the national anthem. Then, a few seconds in, an amazing thing happened: the TD Garden crowd heartily took over, singing the lyrics as one and drowning Rancourt out completely

Read more...

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Back in January, many email marketers said increasing their lists was their top goal for 2013. Well, spring is here. Is your mailing list growing as fast as your flowers and lawn? If not, it's time to execute a new plan

Many marketers have email addresses only for 30% or less of their customer and prospect lists. They're tempted to revert to their direct-mail experience and reach for a quick fix like email append ("e-append") and list rental/purchase.

But in today's engagement-based inbox placement world, this "quick fix" approach can give you more headaches than new sales.

If you seek quantity over quality in list growth, you're practically inviting the ISPs either to block your entire opt-in mailing list or route everything to your recipients' bulk folders, where they'll languish in obscurity until the ISPs dump them automatically. Read more...

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While cheap netbooks slowly die off, Toshiba is going for the complete opposite end of the market with its new KIRAbook, a high-end Windows 8 laptop that kicks off the company's KIRA line of luxury products.

As the top consumer Ultrabook made by Toshiba, the KIRAbook has some bells and whistles you won't find in other laptops. First and foremost is the 13.3-inch screen, an ultra-high-res (AKA "retina") display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. Not only is it protected by Corning Concore Glass, but it's also a touchscreen, giving users the full Windows 8 experience (a non-touch option is available too). Read more...

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Having long since sold his social media juggernaut to Conde Nast, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian now has his eyes on a different role: part-owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets

To make that happen, however, he'll need to strike a deal with a fellow modern magnate: Jay-Z

The Brooklyn rapper announced recently that he intends to become an agent for NBA players, meaning he'll have to sell his .067% stake in the Nets. Those are the shares Ohanian hopes to buy

The Reddit co-founder and anti-CISPA activist actually first tweeted his interest last week. But he confirmed his intentions in a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg TV's Money Moves host Diedre Bolton, the Nets Daily blog reports: Read more...

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Facebook recently updated its iOS app, giving users a new News Feed and Chat Heads, a funny name for in-app conversations.

Android users are able to use Chat Heads on apps outside of Facebook, while iOS users are limited to the branded app. In other words, the feature is really only applicable for iOS users who spend a lot of time on the native Facebook app.

SEE ALSO: Hands On With Facebook Chat Heads for iPhone and iPad

However, you can create your own fun on the app. It turns out Chat Heads make for great additions to your regular News Feed browsing. Try replacing politics, gossip and baby photos with your friends' floating bubble heads. With a little screenshot and cropping action, you've just created an entertaining game Read more...

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The New Zealand Parliament couldn't contain itself on Wednesday after approving an amendment to the country's 1955 marriage laws that legalizes gay marriage — its members immediately broke into song to celebrate the moment

Supporters of the bill, including lawmakers, cheered and then sang, in harmony, the Maori love song "Pokarekare Ana" (singing begins at 1:15) after the voting had concluded

The new law takes affect in August and makes New Zealand the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to allow gay marriage, giving supporters plenty of reason to sing Read more...

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Tumblr users spend an average of 14 minutes per visit, Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp revealed on stage at a paidContent conference in New York City Wednesday. That's about a minute-and-a-half longer than the average Facebook visit, and a few minutes longer than the average Twitter visit, he said.

"Does Mark [Zuckerberg] know that?" Karp's interviewer, GigaOM senior writer Mathew Ingram, asked.

"He does. I've made sure he does," said Karp.

The reason for the longer session time is not that Tumblr is "so much better," Karp explained. "It's very different behavior. People come here for same reason they turn their TV on when they come home at the end of the day ... It's something to do before checking your email, it's a chance to go and see stuff you enjoy, let's you escape from the real world. And that media experience is one that ends up consuming a fair bit more time than just the amount of time you spend checking your friends updates on Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare." Read more...

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Battery technology has improved over the past decade, but now scientists claim they have made a giant leap in power storage, giving lithium-ion batteries 30 times more power and the ability to recharge 1,000 times faster "than competing technologies."

This is a battery breakthrough that could change the world — it's "a whole new way to think about batteries," according to its creators. The team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, headed up by Professor William King, wrote about the technology in the April 16 issue of Nature Communications.

According to King, battery technology has "lagged far behind" the technology it powers. Read more...

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In another step toward going fully mainstream, Bitcoin is now being accepted by OKCupid. The dating site started accepting payments in the crypto currency on Tuesday, joining a series of other companies that already process payments in Bitcoins

Bitcoin, a digital peer-to-peer currency based on cryptography, was created in 2009 by a mysterious man supposedly named Satoshi Nakamoto. A lot has changed since its early days as an Internet curiosity. Bitcoin is now a household nameIt topped $200 already and has forced U.S. authorities to apply money laundering rules to its exchange.

Read more...

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Disney and Lucasfilm reportedly told CinemaCon attendees Wednesday that after Star Wars: Episode VII arrives in 2015, fans will see a new Star Wars movie every subsequent summer

These annual releases will include the other two movies in the new trilogy and several standalone films, which will focus on specific characters from the Star Wars franchise

The main episodes — VIII and IX — will be released every other summer and a standalone movie will be released during the off years, film sites reported when the news broke during a CinemaCon session in Las Vegas. CinemaCon brings together movie theater owners. Read more...

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Fifty years from now, you will look back with regret at all the hours you spent watching cat videos and reading mind-numbing celebrity gossip. At least, that's what the people of the future say in this frightful warning

The Poke used their time machine to travel to the year 2068 and learn about "one of the greatest disasters to befall mankind" — the Internet. Sure, it may seem like harmless fun now, but the Internet will destroy your life. (Insert dramatic music.)

So heed this warning: Don't click your life away.

Read more...

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One year ago Read It Later officially changed its name to Pocket. Originally a service for just saving online articles to read later, along with the name change Pocket also added the ability to save other types of content, such as images, videos and recipes. The service also became free for users.

In the past year the company has expanded to several new platforms: Mac, Chrome and Safari. Pocket users now save an astounding 35 million items per month, and the service’s network of developers and publishers has grown to close to 12,000.

To help celebrate its birthday, Pocket is adding a new Send to Friend feature Wednesday. The update — which will launch on iPhone, iPad, Android and Mac — brings a completely redesigned Share Menu to the service, highlighting your most recently used services such as Twitter, Facebook, Buffer or Evernote. Read more...

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Innovation in the mobile phone space, for many of us, means the latest smartphone or tablet from Apple or Samsung. But for millions of people in the developing world, simpler developments for feature phones — the type you probably haven't used in half a decade — can be an education game changer and a tool for empowerment.

Non-profit Worldreader has brought more than half a million e-books to children in Africa via the 10,000 Kindles it's distributed. After a one-year pilot program, the organization has launched Worldreader Mobile, a way for any feature phone user with a 2G connection to read more than 1,400 books for free. Read more...

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Just hours after the Boston Marathon bombings Monday, scammers were already using the tragedy to fuel their malware campaigns, according to a study by Romanian anti-virus firm Bitdefender.

The study found that the words "marathon," "Boston" and "explosion" found their way into the subject headers of one out of every five spam messages in the hours and days following the event.

The use of news events to spread malware is nothing new for scammers. Just last month, scammers used the news of the pope's installment as bait for email victims. Emails containing links to malware-laden sites were circulated with subject lines such as "New Pope Sued for Not Wearing Seatbelt in Popemobile." Read more...

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The city of Provo, Utah, had a mystery announcement scheduled for today, and now we know what it is: It's the next city to get Google Fiber

The news, posted on the official site of Provo, has been confirmed by Google, which has listed Provo as one of the cities to get the service on its Google Fiber page

“Provo City’s vision has long been one where our residents have access to reliable high-speed broadband Internet. We know that communities are better — and communities are stronger — when people are connected,” said Provo mayor John Curtis.

Google's ultra-fast broadband internet and TV service offers users gigabit download speeds, but it's so far only available in the Kansas area. Besides Provo, Austin, Texas, is another city that will be getting Google Fiber soon Read more...

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Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, whose "Thrift Shop" hip-hop single premiered on Mashable in August and months later reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100, unleashed an elaborate music video for their new single, "Can't Hold Us," on Wednesday.

"Can't Hold Us" features fellow Seattle musician Ray Dalton, a camel, ship, mariachi band, kangaroo, sled dogs, haircut on a beach and stunning landscapes.

The seven-minute video includes footage shot on six continents, rapper Macklemore revealed to MTV News before its release. Producer Lewis said it took 16 days to shoot the video. The song is from the duo's independently released 2012 album The Heist. Read more...

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a statement Wednesday afternoon essentially scolding several media outlets after they incorrectly reported that an arrest had been made in the investigation of Monday's bombing attacks against the Boston Marathon.

"Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack," reads the FBI's unusual statement

"Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate," it continued. "Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting." Read more...

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That's Celeste Corcoran and her daughter Sydney in the photo above. They went to the Boston Marathon finish line Monday afternoon to watch a relative complete the legendary race. When a bomb went off just after the marathon's four-hour mark, shrapnel tore through their legs

Both of Celeste's legs were amputated below the knee on Monday night. Sydney, a high school senior, suffered deep injuries and massive blood loss of her own. Mother and daughter are undergoing further operations on Wednesday at Boston Medical Center

Celeste is a hairdresser by trade, and relies on her feet to work. She may never be able to do her job the same again. Both women live on the second floor of their Boston home. Their medical bills will likely be astronomical through more treatment and recovery. Physical and psychological damage aside, what will they do financially over the coming days, weeks, months and years? Read more...

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