Internet

To hear someone from Google claim they don't understand something is like hearing a fundamentalist religious believer suddenly declare he has celestial doubts.

There was something, therefore, stunningly heartwarming about Eric Schmidt's appearance on Tuesday night's "Colbert Report."

In a previous appearance on the show, Google's executive chairman had tried to be funny. This time, he allowed Colbert to be the comedian -- which was a good decision.

Instead, Schmidt took the opportunity to thrust his new book "The New Digital Age" at the cool, ironic world and offer a little hope.… Read more

Would you be more willing to buy a tablet if it had a slick sci-fi promo video? How about something that mixes "The Matrix" with Apple's iconic "1984" Macintosh ad?

That seems to be what Japanese app developer Ubiquitous Entertainment iss shooting for with a series of eerie, dystopian videos titled "Brave New World" that introduce EnchantMoon, a stylus-operated tablet that lets you easily create HTML5 games and apps without programming code. … Read more

The White House has NOT been bombed, folks, despite what you might have seen on the Associated Press Twitter account.

Hackers apparently got ahold of the wire service's Twitter feed and tweeted out "breaking" news of a White House bombing that injured President Barack Obama.

Not so, say the Twitter feeds of AP corporate and some employees.

When the tweet went out, Twitter immediately erupted with notes from sleuthing tweeps who noted that the suspicious tweet did not use the normal all caps style for BREAKING news, and was sent from the Web, which is unusual for … Read more

On balance, there may be worse things in life than sending someone pictures of yourself in your underpants.

However, there may be fewer more ill-advised things, especially if you've never met the recipient and you happen to be a politician held in some regard.

For his intimately twittered transgression, Anthony Weiner paid a certain price and that price was what, in some media, is defined by the word "disgrace." It seems odd that this word might be damning, as it is one so often used to describe politicians.

Some might have imagined that Weiner would seek a quieter, more contemplative life after events which saw the Democratic Representative for New York resign in 2011 for his socially networked unseemliness.

A decent amount of time has passed, however, and Weiner seems to be girding his loins for a run at the mayor's office. With this perhaps in mind, he has returned again to the place of alleged disgrace, Twitter. … Read more

Crowdfunding sites set up by friends and families of the Boston bombing victims are giving the world a way to help. And the world is stepping up.

As of this writing, Bucks for Bauman on GoFundMe has raised more than $192,000 in two days for Jeff Bauman, a 27-year-old marathon spectator who lost both legs to the blasts. Bauman also reportedly helped ID the suspects from his hospital bed.

"Medical bills are going to start rolling in, let's get a head start on helping out Bauman and his family! Every dollar counts!!" reads an introduction by Brooke Gibbs, who started the site. It's just one of a number of crowdfunding efforts that have sprung up this week to aid Boston Marathon bombing victims through grassroots campaigns -- and have collectively drawn more than $1 million in a matter of days. … Read more

Authorities pursuing a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing have a love-hate relationship with social media. After initially asking for help via Twitter, law enforcement later requested that social-media users be a little more conscientious about the kind of information shared (or fabricated) on social networks.

In the immediate aftermath of the dual blasts that killed three and injured dozens near the marathon finish line on Monday, law enforcement turned to the public via Twitter and other platforms for help crowdsourcing leads. On Thursday, the FBI released video footage of two young men carrying backpacks near the finish line of … Read more

The FBI has undertaken what is law enforcement's highest-profile effort at crowdsourcing to date: asking for help identifying two suspects linked to this week's Boston Marathon bombing.

"Someone out there knows these individuals," Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston field office, told reporters this afternoon. He asked the media and the public for help in "identifying and locating these individuals."

The photos published on the FBI's Web site show two men, one wearing a black baseball cap and carrying a backpack, and the other wearing a white baseball cap, around the scene of the blasts. … Read more

As the search continued Wednesday for clues as to the person or persons behind the Boston Marathon bombings, hypothetical suspects and crime scenarios began popping up via online crowdsourcing.

After 24 hours passed without an arrest in the attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigations said Tuesday that the "range of suspects and motive remains wide open" and asked the public to submit photos, videos or anything suspicious that they may have seen or heard.

Members of the link-sharing community Reddit launched a sub-section called "findbostonbombers" late Tuesday to collect clues.

"Sometimes the rules change. Sometimes dogma needs to be flipped: 'Shut up and let the cops do their job' in the case of a terrorist attack is exactly wrong," Jason Calacanis, Internet entrepreneur, said in a blog post. Calacanis suggests that investigators should be combing through services like Twitter and video-sharing app Vine for clues.

Reddit users targeted at least three men, based purely on speculation. A link posted from photos-sharing site Imgur showed photos of the men collected on the Web site 4chan. … Read more

One of the runners in yesterday's Boston Marathon captured some sobering video footage from a head-mounted cam as the first of two bombs went off.

In their search for suspects, authorities looking into what is now being described as a terrorist act have appealed to the public to share any photos and videos they may have taken in Downtown Boston yesterday. The attack took three lives and injured more than 100 people.… Read more