You know that apocalypse thing we're always being told might be just around the corner? Well, do you feel the chilling breeze? Do you feel the troubled twittering in the trees?
For here is a tale that I know you will discuss with your loved ones, perhaps with other people's loved ones, even with your psychological professional, the minute you hear it.
It appears a man called Dana Hanna is standing at the altar on November 21. He utters those most solemn vows about how he will love and obey or whatever it is that married people claim to do these days.
The officiant pronounces that Dana and his lovely bride, Tracy, are now married. Does Dana weep? Does he kiss his bride?
Ah, no. For Dana's Twitter moniker is TheSoftwareJedi and his first loyalty is to his digital followers. So, much to his wife's surprise, he whips out his cell phone and updates his statuses on both Twitter and Facebook. Right there at the altar. He also hands his wife's cell phone over to her.
Now that he has uploaded the evidence (which we're assuming isn't staged), Dana insists that this was all done for fun.
Indeed, he explained on YouTube: "I have a lot of family scattered around the country and we all use Facebook a lot to keep in touch. So when Tracy and I were engaged, most of my family found out via Facebook because we updated our statuses."
If you're wondering what it is he tweeted from the altar, here it is: "Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday"
However, another tweet sent on Monday night by Hanna, who is chief architect of NextDayPets.com and president of Torian Technologies, might perhaps offer an even greater insight into his complex and socially networked psyche: "Just changed over the laundry for @TracyPage and was thrown off by the fact a bra was in there. Not used to living with a woman again."
Oh, Tracy, are you sure about this? I only ask because I just tried to access the Tracy Page Twitter feed and received the message "this page doesn't exist."
To show support for the global fight against AIDS, both Google and Twitter changed up their sites a bit Tuesday.
If you go to Google.com, you'll find a link under the search box that leads to several resources where you can learn more about AIDS, volunteer to fight the disease, and donate money to fight AIDS. It's no small contribution to the cause--Google's home page is undoubtedly driving considerable traffic to all the organizations the company lists.
Twitter has turned red for World AIDS Day.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Twitter has introduced a more obvious change to its site. Whenever a user adds the hashtag #red to their tweets, the message they update their status page with will be displayed in red to followers. Users can also add the hashtag #laceupsavelives to turn their tweets red. The change is part of the Turn Red initiative, which aims at battling AIDS in Africa.
You can learn more about Join Red and the fight against AIDS on the organization's Twitter page.
Something has been rocking the boat over at Twitter, where stability issues on Monday afternoon caused the company to temporarily take down Twitter Lists, a popular and relatively new feature that lets members group Twitter accounts into categories.
"We began experiencing a very high rate of errors and we are working on the underlying problem," a post on the Twitter status blog read. It was later updated saying, "We are now recovering from this unexpected downtime. The Lists feature is temporarily unavailable as we diagnose the cause of the outage."
Many members had reported sightings of the "fail whale," Twitter's error message featuring a cartoon whale, earlier on Monday. It may have been more noticeable than usual because of the day's status as "Cyber Monday," a big day for holiday e-commerce deals--which in this day and age means plenty of people hunting on retailers' Twitter accounts for fire-sale promotions.
Obviously, amid all the seasonal shopaholism, somebody forgot to feed the whale.
TweetDeck now doubles up profile pics on retweets to give original poster's credit.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)Seesmic's Twitter reader app for Mac and Windows is looking at some serious renewed competition from TweetDeck.
The newly updated TweetDeck 0.32 (and AIR app for Windows and Mac,) packs in a host of changes that should make the desktop app more attractive to power tweeters. Chief among these is new behavior for retweeting, when users share a contact's tweet with their own list of followers in just a click. TweetDeck supports two formats, the "new style" that spits out an identical post and displays both your photo and that of the original tweeter, and the "original" style that lets you edit before you post the duplicated message. We like that TweetDeck can remember your preference, or that you can do nothing and choose fresh each time.
(Credit:
TweetDeck)
The new TweetDeck also incorporates Twitter Lists for the first time, a grouping feature that Twitter launched about a month ago. Just as you can manage individuals on TweetDeck, you can also manage lists and omit people on them that you don't directly follow. You're able to create new lists from scratch or from a list you already have.
In addition, tweets that include geolocation information now pop up with a yellow pin at the bottom of the message. You can click the pin to expand an embedded map. We haven't seen any of these show up in our lists yet, but the concept of convenience is similar to what Yahoo Messenger already does when it embeds photos and videos into chat windows. We hope that's next here, too.
Adding and expanding on Twitter features isn't TweetDeck's only move. The update also pulls the LinkedIn social network onboard, which means you can now read status streams from LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace in TweetDeck's column view, in addition to tracking streams from various Twitter accounts.
The version 0.32 update also makes its mark with a reorganized Add Column screen that replaces previous menu items with redesigned navigation for maintaining your Tweeting dashboard. The new TweetDeck includes numerous bug fixes as well; here's the changelog for more details.
Twitter has had quite a year. Not only has it attracted worldwide attention and millions of new users, "Twitter" has been named the top word in the English language for 2009.
According to the Global Language Monitor, which examines language usage across the world, "Twitter" beat out "Obama," "H1N1," "stimulus," and "vampire" to take the crown. Interestingly, "2.0" came in at sixth place.
"In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the aftereffects of a financial tsunami, and the death of a revered pop icon, the word 'Twitter' stands above all the other words," Paul JJ Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, said Sunday in a statement. "Twitter represents a new form of social interaction, where all communication is reduced to 140 characters. Being limited to strict formats did wonders for the sonnet and haiku. One wonders where this highly impractical word-limit will lead as the future unfolds."
To compile its data, the Global Language Monitor uses its proprietary algorithm, called the Predictive Quantities Indicator. According to the company, the algorithm "tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet." It also monitors blogs and social media. Word frequency, contextual usage, and "appearance in global media outlets" contribute to a word's popularity.
Click here to see a full listing of the top words, phrases, and names of the year--and of the decade.
Sometimes ingenuity doesn't quite lead you to a comfortable place.
The enterprising folks at WPMI TV in Mobile, Ala., decided that they should reach out on a real-time basis to their viewers. They erected a billboard, adorned it with an image of three of its most photogenic anchors, and added a live Twitter feed.
The whole thing ran very smoothly, until a passing human took this photograph and sent it in to The Palmetto Scoop.
(Credit:
The Palmetto Scoop via Mashable)
Perhaps one's first reaction would be that this image might have enjoyed a little concoction.
However, Mashable has confirmed that not only is it real, but, citing the Lagniappe blog, it says WPMI-TV's general manager and news director have allegedly been suspended for a week because of this unfortunate conflagration.
This all seems just slightly odd. Television and radio has always been fond of slipping in a seven-second delay just in case untoward syllables slip through the mouths of guests or, indeed, hosts. It seems that no such delay was considered for this Twitter feed.
Yet who might have imagined such an unhappy coincidence might have occurred?
No, this isn't The Onion.
But just look at that headline and wonder how it could possibly be true.
Well, according to Newsday, Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber was due to conduct an album signing at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, N.Y.
It seems that thousands of teenage girls turned up to mob the wondrous teen hope, a happening perhaps so frightening that Bieber did not turn up.
The Nassau County police became rather concerned that the crowd might break the glass in store windows with its shrieking. (The official word seems to have been "unruly," but teenage girls are never really that.)
So they asked a senior vice president from Island Def Jam Records (Bieber's record label), James A. Roppo, to do what record label executives often do when solving a difficult situation: tweet.
However, he is alleged to have not complied with this endearing request and thus found himself arrested, pending charges that might, according to the police, comprise criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor, and obstructing government administration.
Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police told the AP: "We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message. By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk."
What is somewhat peculiar is that a tweet was sent from Justin Bieber's account around the time of the arrest, reading: "they are not allowing me to come into the mall. if you don't leave, I and my fans will be arrested, as the police just told us."
Bieber followed this message up with another tweet pleading for the high-pitched wailers to disperse, just three minutes later.
All this occurred Friday. And, thanks to Bieber himself, I have embedded YouTube footage of the melee at the mall.
Bieber posted a link to this footage Saturday and tweeted, "wow. this upsets me. the mall should of had proper security. They wouldnt let me in! Gotta make this right 4 the fans."
Well, yes, it should of. Just look at the worried faces of the parents. Just listen to the screams of the aficionadas. This is the kind of nightmare many will have experienced after a large tub of dulce de leche eaten well past midnight.
I cannot imagine what Roppo might have said to the police in order to incite their wrath. However, looking at this footage, I suspect that something like "Look at these people!!!! They're outta their minds!!! You really think a tweet is going to stop them from screaming?!!!" might have been part of the dialogue.
It is also pleasantly reassuring that the mall staff appears, near the end of the footage, to have resorted to analog crowd dispersal means. Yes, someone found a loudhailer.
However, I can find no record of any arrests from the scene other than Roppo's. And certainly, no one else appears to have been arrested for refusing to tweet.
Therefore, this truly seems to be a world first. One can only look forward to the day when someone's Facebook friends cause them to be arrested for not updating their status.
The Twitter service with the cutesy raccoon mascot is making a new home on BlackBerry and Google Android phones. The free Seesmic, like its proliferate rivals, lets you read, manage, and compose Twitter messages much more flexibly than you can do from Twitter's Web site. We crash-tested both mobile versions as soon as we heard the news.
Seesmic on Android
Seesmic 1.0 for Android is available from the Android Market app, which is located on the smartphone. It takes up just over 1MB. The interface spreads four tabs along the top in both landscape and portrait mode, one each for the timeline, replies, direct messages, and your profile. There's also a ribbon on the screen that you can tap to refresh the feed. Click to open a tweet and you can save it as a favorite, retweet, or reply as a public "@" message or as a private posting. From the menu button, you can refresh, compose, or tinker with the settings.
Although Seesmic's Android interface is much more stripped down than its desktop AIR app for Windows and Mac, the app manages to remain flexible by giving you a choice over the kinds of notifications you'd like to receive, and over the partner services you'd prefer to use to send a photo, video, or shorten a URL.
Sure, it's blurry (blaming the BlackBerry camera), but squint hard enough and you'll see that Seesmic associated a picture with my account that's not actually my face.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)The biggest flaws we've noticed so far? ... Read more
An example of Brizzly's new tweet translation.
(Credit: Brizzly)Web-based Twitter client Brizzly made a dual announcement Friday: first, it's opened up into a full public beta mode (previously, an invite code was required); and second, it can now translate tweets into your default language on the site.
To translate a tweet in Brizzly--which already expands links, videos, and photos posted to Twitter, creating a more visual experience--you can click on a question mark for an instant translation. This is interesting, as Twitter has made its first moves recently in launching translated versions of the service (starting with Spanish), meaning that there will potentially be many more non-English tweets flowing through the system. It uses Google Translate, so needless to say, it's not totally perfect.
Twitter's geolcation API in action.
(Credit: Twitter/Birdfeed)Twitter has now launched the geotagging API, or application programming interface, that it announced in August.
Users now have the option to opt-in to geolocation by clicking a box in their settings menu, according to Twitter. For now, the company said, the impact of geotagging will be in third-party apps. Users won't see a difference to Twitter.com just yet.
Twitter contends that including a user's location when he or she tweets could significantly add to its microblogging service. The company wrote in a blog post that the new feature should allow users to "better focus in on local conversations."
Several third-party tools, including Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, and Twittelator Pro are already supporting geolocation, Twitter said. It should be interesting to see how other developers will incorporate location-based information into their apps.
