Social networking

Last month, Paul Chambers revealed a little of his frustration on the modern public-access broadcasting network known as Twitter. On Friday, he will be appearing in court to answer for that frustration.

Chambers is the chap who, in January, was choked with concern that he would not be able to vacation in Ireland because his local airport, Robin Hood in Doncaster, United Kingdom, was snowbound.

Naturally, he tweeted. Perhaps slightly less naturally, he tweeted what appeared to be a bomb threat: "Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s*** together, … Read more

Are you one of the 297 million Americans who has yet to start following Kim Kardashian on Twitter? Perhaps you'll be enticed to fly her way.

Or perhaps not. You see, on Tuesday, the astoundingly famous celebutante was flying from Los Angeles to New York.

Who knows what exciting project she was involved in. However, nothing could compare with her excitement at discovering the claim to fame of the chap sitting next to her.

As breathless as a groupie at a Julio Iglesias concert, she booted up her tweeting app (TweetGenius, for those who care) and sent this important message … Read more

If there is, indeed, a second life, I'm still not sure I would want to come back as a bishop. It's not merely that I don't look good in a long skirt. It's the difficulty of the job.

Somehow, you have to try to influence people who have long ago sailed down the Material River, as if their first port of call will be Nirvana.

However, this seems not to have stopped the bishops of the Church of England from suggesting that, now that we are in the ashen 40 days and 40 nights of Lent, you should, for these few weeks, give up on Nirvana. And the Cowboy Junkies. And Jay-Z. And any other musical accompaniment with which you normally plug your ears.

The bishops have found a very material argument for this highly spiritual sacrifice. According to the Telegraph, they are suggesting that you go on a technology fast to save the rotting planet, as well as your equally putrid soul.

Indeed, the whole project is called the Carbon Fast and its motto is phrased in serious tones: "To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8) What does the Lord require of you?"

Hark, too, the herald of doom that is the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Rev John Pritchard: "Giving up technology is a more serious way of looking at the issues that face us as a global community. It is a statement [of solidarity] with a world that does not have that ability to communicate the way we can and a reminder to us that perhaps we may have got beyond ourselves in terms of our own consumption of technology."… Read more

Two changes in one week at Google Buzz weren't enough to satisfy the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The privacy group filed a complaint on Tuesday with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, seeking constraints on Google's new social-networking service.

"This complaint concerns an attempt by Google, Inc., the provider of a widely used e-mail service, to convert the private, personal information of Gmail subscribers into public information for the company's social network service Google Buzz," the complaint (PDF) reads. "This change in business practices and service terms violated user privacy expectations, diminished user privacy, … Read more

In a move to marry its old-school Office product with the newer trends of the Net, Microsoft issued beta software Wednesday that brings social-network information into Outlook.

The product, called Outlook Social Connector, has been available in the Office 2010 beta. According to the Outlook Social Connector download site, the new version works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 and connects with social-network partners, which wasn't the case with the earlier version.

Outlook Social Connector will let people see updates from a person's social-network contacts. LinkedIn announced in November that it would become the first actual partner in the Microsoft program. … Read more

Perhaps you, like me, were forcefully encouraged to see the new movie "Valentines Day" last weekend. In the course of diplomacy, perhaps you, too, said that it was a wonderful movie.

You will be fascinated, then, to discover that the movie's star, Ashton Kutcher, has become a U.S. government diplomat.

No, not one of those who takes an overseas posting, sleeps with women who are not his wife, and, having embarrassed himself by dropping his trousers at an official function, is forced to function at a slightly lower level for the remainder of his career.

According to the LA Times, … Read more

On Saturday, the crew of a Southwest Airlines flight between the California cities of Oakland and Burbank asked a passenger to leave the plane before takeoff because it deemed him too overweight to fly. Unfortunately, that passenger happened to be Clerks and Chasing Amy director Kevin Smith, who has more than 1.5 million Twitter followers and was willing to make sure that they all heard all about it.

"Dear @SouthwestAir - I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?" Smith asked in a heavily quoted tweet … Read more

In a post last week that hammered off some random thoughts about Google Buzz, I noted that with all of the social media noise out sprouting up, what I really needed was a good aggregator, a central location where all of the updates, links, tweets and pokes could reside. I noted that a service called Yoono was close--but that it just wasn't quite there yet.

On Tuesday, Yoono is pushing out an update that really brings it closer to the holy grail of social media aggregation. That's not necessarily because it has a long list of compatible … Read more

Those iPhones really are awful.

Who could possibly imagine people wanting to buy those ridiculous little objects? You know, the ones that only allow you to open one app at a time. The ones that simply don't believe in the quintessential togetherness of apps.

No, no, I wouldn't dream of offering such outlandish besmirchment. But you'd be forgiven for imagining that these were the exact sentiments expressed by Microsoft in a little film the company presented at the Barcelona launch of its possibly, maybe, surely excellent Windows Phone 7 Series.

It seems this ultimate phoning machine's … Read more