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Sunil Tripathi, falsely linked on social media to Boston bombings, found dead

Sunil Tripathi, the Brown University student falsely identified by people posting on Reddit and Twitter as a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, is dead.

The 22-year-old's body was recovered from the waters around India Point Park in Rhode Island. In a post on Facebook, Tripathi's family confirmed Tripathi's death and offered the following note:

As we carry indescribable grief, we also feel incredible gratitude. To each one of you-from our hometown to many distant lands-we extend our thanks for the words of encouragement, for your thoughts, for your hands, for your prayers, and for the love … Read more

Twitter Music founder leaves to join Jelly, a new startup

The man responsible for helping lead the team that built Twitter's music app has reportedly stepped down.

According to AllThingsD, Kevin Thau is leaving Twitter to join a startup launched by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone called Jelly. Thau is said to be the new chief operating officer of the startup.

Last month, news first appeared that Stone was preparing to add Jelly to his line of startups. It's said to be a company that will most likely produce a product to be featured on smartphones and tablets.

Twitter hired Thau in 2009 to be a director of mobile … Read more

AP Twitter feed returns, minus many followers, after hacking

After spending the better part of a day offline -- following a hacking and fake tweet incident that caused a violent hiccup in the stock market -- the AP Twitter is back up and tweeting -- albeit, to far fewer followers.

The main Associated Press Twitter feed had almost 2 million followers Tuesday morning. That was before the Syrian Electronic Army apparently got hold of the account and tweeted the "breaking news" that a bomb had gone off in the White House, injuring President Obama. The hoax was almost instantaneously called out -- the formatting and channel used to send the tweet weren't consistent with AP standards. Also, it didn't go unnoticed that a live press conference happening at the time in the White House was uninterrupted by a bomb blast in the building.… Read more

Top-trending music topics on Twitter to fuel new TV show

Do you like music and want to know what the hottest music-related stories are? A new TV show that features the top trending music topics on Twitter hopes to have you covered.

Known as "Trending 10," the new show is being produced for music-oriented cable TV network Fuse, in partnership with Twitter and gum company Trident.

The idea, the companies said in a release, is to build "Trending 10" around the Top 10 music-related Twitter topics of the day. Those stories will be selected based on Fuse's "heat tracker" algorithm, a system that … Read more

Twitter to roll out new password security control?

After the Associated Press' Twitter account was hacked into on Tuesday and the accounts of CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, it's been made clear that Twitter needs to boost security. But, it may be doing just that.

According to Wired's Mat Honan, the social-networking site has reportedly been working on creating a two-factor authentication for user password verification. Honan writes that the company is currently carrying out internal testing before rolling out the new security control.

This isn't a huge surprise considering Twitter posted a job advertisement … Read more

A bad day in Twitterland

Twitter is having a tough day. First, parts of the service were having performance problems, and then the @AP Twitter feed got hacked, causing the stock market to tank nearly 150 points before recovering.

Twitter has vastly improved in the last few years in keeping the site up, but the hacks are escalating. The Twitter accounts of CBS News programs  "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, with bogus messages going out, such as "The US government is hiding the real culprit of the Boston bombing." In February, an estimated&… Read more

AP Twitter feed hacked; White House has NOT been bombed

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

Twitter goes down for some

Twitter experienced some hiccups early Tuesday.

The company said today there were service issues that were affecting some users. The message was posted to its Tumblr blog at about 7:30 a.m. PT. By 8:50, Twitter updated the post saying the issue was resolved.

The outage appeared to be affecting parts of the site. The main feed was working for some, while the connect and discover pages were down.

"Our engineers are currently working on this issue," the company earlier said in its post.

Update, 10:05 a.m. PT: The service appears to be back … Read more

Google execs' 'New Digital Age' resists cyber-siren song

When two executives at the world's most optimistic technology company write about humanity's digital future, you might expect a book brimming with excitement about the wonders to come.

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen offer plenty of that, but what makes "The New Digital Age" worth reading is the correspondingly healthy dose of pessimism. The book, released today, ultimately is persuasive in making the case that people can steer technology so it helps us more than it harms us.

The book, with straightforward writing and compelling details, seeks to predict what happens as today's online population … Read more