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Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Bonobos opens stores that don't sell anything.

- The Smithsonian gets Warner Bros. movie props no one else wants.

- Moving Image art fair sells first ever "Vine art" for $200.… Read more

Twitter acquired the music discovery service We Are Hunted last year and is using its technology to build a standalone music app, CNET has learned.

The app, to be called Twitter Music, could be released on iOS by the end of this month, according to a person familiar with the matter. Twitter Music suggests artists and songs to listen to based on a variety of signals, and is personalized based on which accounts a user follows on Twitter. Songs are streamed to the app via SoundCloud.

Twitter Music, which is set to arrive in the wake of key competitor Facebook … Read more

The Federal Trade Commission has updated its consumer protection rules for online activities, and has specifically taken aim at celebrity tweeters.

The agency released the rules yesterday (PDF), and outlined how celebrities who want to promote a product on Twitter should do so. To illustrate its point, the FTC used a fictional celebrity it called Juli Starz. The original tweet shows her endorsing a "Fat-away" pill that helped her lose 30 pounds in six weeks. That tweet was accompanied by a URL to the product's site.

According to the FTC, that kind of endorsement is now illegal. … Read more

Several visits to bars when I was 13 taught me a simple thing: it's rarely good to insult someone who's larger and more muscular than you are.

The Web, though, offers some theoretical protection from this maxim. The object of your bile doesn't know who you are.

There again, they could find out. Which is what British boxer Curtis Woodhouse decided to do after a particular annoying human being mocked him on Twitter.

Woodhouse, you see, had just lost a fight for the English light-welterweight title. As so often seems to happen in this sport, the decision … Read more

In case you're unfamiliar with the significance of the color of smoke rising from the world's current most-watched chimney, here's how Ireland's Father Paddy Byrne broke it down in a Tweet awhile ago:

Not going to directly accuse Father Byrne of anything except wacky tweeting here, but it should be noted for noobs to the conclave of Catholic cardinals currently trying to select the pope's successor that only the first two parts are true. I hope. After each round of balloting that doesn't produce a two-thirds majority, a puff of black smoke goes up and out of the Sistine Chapel. Once a new pope is selected, the smoke turns white.

So, that means the true pope-arazzi should have already staked out a prime smoke-viewing spot outside the chapel. But for the rest of us who aren't trained to the live Vatican smoke cam but are maybe just a little obsessed with anything that involves balloting, be it popes or pop stars, fortunately there's Pope Alarm (tagline: "When the smoke goes up, you'll know what's going down"). … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Baauer of "Harlem Shake" sued over unauthorized samples.

- Surprise hit "Harlem Shake" was a shock for artists heard on it.

- "Sweet Brown" sues Apple and radio stations for unauthorized interview.

- SXSW: Marvel to give away 700 first-issue digital comics.

- Marvel giveaway crashes Comixology's servers.… Read more

- Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Cook reportedly discussed music-streaming service with Beats.

- Snoop Lion reverts to canine type in video game "Way of the Dogg."

- W controller for "Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style" ain't nothing to futz with.

- Guy with Netflix tattoo gets a free year of Netflix.

- Andrew WK is now the spokesperson for Playtex Fresh + Sexy wipes.

- Bathroom break video: "Iron Man 3" trailer, remade shot for shot.… Read more

Facebook rolled out its big News Feed news yesterday. The result is more emphasis on photos and a "following" tab that will let users actually see all the updates from pages and people that they want to, instead of relying on Facebook's mysterious algorithm to deliver posts to their attention.

If this sounds a lot like the way Twitter works, that's not a coincidence. Twitter has a reputation as a breaking news source, a place to follow the commentary as it happens. The Facebook changes could put it in a similar position. All you would do is hit up the "following" tab to watch the information flow in from your favorite sources.… Read more

The folks at Twitter announced Monday that the standalone TweetDeck apps for mobile will no longer be supported after May of this year. While Twitter says that it is putting more resources toward the Web version (which can easily be used on the desktop), there are surely plenty of people who are upset that their beloved mobile clients are going away.

For those of you looking for an alternative to TweetDeck, here are a few mobile apps that should prove adequate for your tweeting purposes.

Tweetbot ($2.99) is an extremely popular Twitter client for good … Read more