I Wish I Knew Who You Were, And Who You Worked For (Automatically)

Article on Twittercism

Lots of people have multiple accounts on Twitter, for various reasons. I can’t tell you the number of times I get a message from somebody out of the blue and I’ll think, “Hey, I know you, don’t I?”

But who is it?

Some detective work later, I figure out that the reason I know this person is because I’m following one of their other accounts. Perhaps their business account. Maybe their personal one. What bugs me about this is I might have a friendly relationship with this person on one of their accounts, but have no idea who they are on another. Or even that they have another.

What I’d like Twitter to offer (and this would be entirely opt-in) is a way for multiple accounts to be linked together. This would be great for businesses that have main accounts and lots of additional ones for their staff. Like Twitter themselves, for example. When you visit the Twitter profile, all their employees should be right there, too. With titles and responsibilities. And if I stumble across an individual employee, it shows that they’re linked to Twitter.

(Think Twitter + LinkedIn.)

Some people do this now in their bios, but it’s kinda awkward, and doesn’t translate well into manageable data.

It could even work a bit like a newsfeed, with one main account pulling the updates from everybody else. So, if I wanted to really follow Google, for example, an @GoogleTeam user could be setup so that everybody who worked for the company could be followed via that one account. The different users would feed in and I could reply to them accordingly.



(Think Twitter + RSS.)

And it wouldn’t have to stop at businesses. Participants in sports teams could link together, as well as social groups and other clubs. You could start your own tribe.

(It might even come with privacy. You could direct message everybody in your tribe with one click. Wouldn’t that be convenient?)

As it is, it’s awkward to find out all the people that work for any corporation on Twitter. I’ve been trying to do this for Twitter themselves, and Dave Winer is doing some great work with his 100twt project. (Check out what the people who work for the New York Times are saying.)

I’d like to see it automated. I think it benefits businesses and customers, which is rare enough to make it very worthwhile.

Read this and more at Twittercism

Charlie Brooker on how to save newspapers

You know what'll save newspapers? Magic coins. Yes, magic coins. And I've just invented them

Hello reader. Where are you reading this? In the paper? On the website? On an iPhone?

Is the Guardian even available on the iPhone? Bet it is. There's probably even a little downloadable application that lets you turn the pages by tilting it to one side. After all, there's an "app" for everything. There's one that turns the iPhone into a motion-sensitive light sabre: it makes wooshy Star Wars noises as you swipe it around. Really passes the time during the unrelenting march to the grave, that.

I'm unmoved in the face of friends screaming at me to join the iPhone cult. It's horrible. Here are a few iPhone apps I'd like to see:

1. An app that makes the iPhone scream 'I'VE GOT AN IPHONE!' each time the user pulls it out of their pocket. Once activated, it would be impossible to switch off. The only way to stop the constant embarrassment would be to repeatedly crack the device against a wall, or preferably your own face, until it shattered.

2. An app billed as a "comical toilet paper simulator". You switch it on, pretend to "wipe" your backside, and hey presto: the screen appears smeared with virtual pixilated poo. But – ho ho – just like the screaming iPhone app above, it's a permanent booby trap. Once you've performed your first comical wipe, in a frankly desperate bid to impress your non-iPhone-owning friends, it's impossible for the screen to revert to its original state. Instead, you're left with no option but to go home and cry.

3. An app that makes your iPhone unexpectedly oscillate and explode halfway through a conversation to a loved one, sending thousands of miniscule shards of plastic and silicon hurtling into your ear canal like a swarm of angry pins. As a bonus, the detonation also blasts your hand apart like a spent casing. Why? Because you bought an iPhone, silly.

Still, there's a good chance you're reading this on an LCD display of some description, rather than on paper. There are advantages and drawbacks to both platforms. The paper version can be rolled up, scribbled on, and read on the tube. If I write something obnoxious – something about the hilarious inherent low-self-esteem of iPhone owners, perhaps – the page can be torn out, screwed into a ball and thrown across the room, thus providing a slender amount of catharsis. (Come to think of it, iPhone owners can probably download an app that makes a satisfying "thwock" sound as they bat the paper ball across the room with their ridiculous handheld toys). Paper is tactile, and that's a plus. Trouble is, you have to pay for it.

Not so online. In Webland, it's yours for free. Better still, the byline pictures are slightly smaller, so there's less chance you'll be sick. But it isn't tactile. Here, catharsis comes in the form of interactive feedback – so if (for example) you're a uniquely inadequate, unfulfilled and unattractive sort of man, and the article you're reading happens to have been written by a woman – any woman – you can vent your annoyance in a series of inadvertently revealing messages, then masturbate into a sock. (This describes 33% of all messages on all news websites. Check if you don't believe me.)

Still, at least the misogynists know what's making them angry. There's an astounding level of unfocused rage on the internet, which is weird considering it's full of people getting something for nothing. Films, TV shows, music, newspaper reports . . . none of it costing a penny.

But newspapers won't be free for ever. At least that's what Rupert Murdoch thinks, and he's probably evil enough to know. Last week he announced the Sun and the Times are to start charging for their online editions. But will it work?

Nope. Not until someone perfects a system of universal online micro-payments once and for all. Some simple means of easily "tossing a penny in a cup" for the internet is required. Everyone knows it; no one's managed to crack it. Sure, there are systems such as PayPal (familiar to anyone who's used eBay), but they're fiddly and boring. What's needed is something universal and user-friendly.

But more than that, it should be fun.

That's right. It should be intrinsically fun to spend money. How? Huh? Wuh? Listen. If you ask me, one potential answer to the newspaper industry's woes lies somewhere in videogame design. A simple payment system shouldn't just be easy to set up: it should be intrinsically satisfying to use. It should feel positively Nintendo. Look at the Wii. Look at the micro-games in Rhythm Paradise, or Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, both on the Nintendo DS. That's how online payments should work. They should have the illusion of being tactile.

On your desktop: a cartoon purse filled with fat gold coins. Pull out a penny. It shimmers on the screen. Drag it toward a "coin slot" situated right there on the web page you want to view, and drop it in. It disappears with a satisfying ker-chunk. And you're in. If you're feeling cavalier, you can throw your coin toward the slot; with practice it won't bounce off the rim. And hey, iPhone users: we'll even let you play. You can "fling" coins from your phone directly on to the screen.

One page costs one penny: not too off-putting for anyone – and crucially, the teeny spoonful of fun and satisfaction you derived from playing with that virtual coin each time is worth the penny anyway.

Has anyone else thought of this already? If not, consider it patented right now, by me. I'll settle for 0.001% of every penny spent for all eternity, thanks. And now, over to the Dragons.

Article by Charlie Brooker via The Guardian

Murdoch to charge for news website access

Guardian News article about media mogul Rupert Murdoch's plans to charge for news website access

In what can only be seen as an 'interesting' move, Rupert Murdoch has announced that you will have to pay to access The Sun, The Times and News Of The World websites as of next year.

Currently all of these websites offer free access to stories that are in their newspaper equivalents that day, but this is all set to change according to Murdoch.

Murdoch's words seem to be spurred on by a $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for News Corporation for the financial year to June. This is something that has been put down to restructuring, writedowns and a slump in commercial revenue.

It is unlikely that people would be prepared to pay for news which can readily be accessed on other news channel sites however could this lead the precedent for future pay per view news access bu other news organisations?

Full article can be read here

UK Government Writes a Twitter Guide … in 20 Pages

Interesting article by Stan Schroeder on Mashable

A tweet can have a maximum of 140 characters. A guide on how to use Twitter, well, that’s another matter. The UK government has one, and it took its author, Neil Williams, 20 pages and 36,215 characters to create it.

The guide,is actually quite an interesting read. Besides giving a clear cut explanation of what Twitter is and how (and why) the UK government should go about using it, it enumerates a number of third party tools (for example, bit.ly is to be used for links because it offers traffic analysis), talks about risks of using Twitter (for example, publishing embargoed news too early), and discusses the value of retweeting. Unlike some other Twitter guides, like the one from Wall Street Journal, it’s not focused on forbidding things and telling employees what NOT to do, which is a good example of how these types of guides should be done.

The document can be found here

The King of Pop is Dead and nearly took Google with him

Love him or hate him, pretty much everyone on the planet knows who Michael Jackson is and will remember the moment when they heard the news that the controversial pop star had died on Thursday 27th June 2009. A news flash interrupted my weekly fix of Question Time to broadcast the news and I knew this was going to be a big news event. As many other people did I immediately turned to the internet to "Google" the news of his demise. BBC news report states

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page

.Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker confirmed this in a statement

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page,"

It seems however that Google was not the only company who felt the strain of the public scramble to search for more information. The microblogging service Twitter is also reported to have crashed with the sheer volume of traffic by users. The BBC reports

Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

Many celebrities took to the internet in particular using Twitter to pay tribute to Michael Jackson.

Philip Schofield: Now sadly confirmed that we have lost such a gifted performer as MJ. What a terrible tragedy on so many levels.

Stephen Fry: Goodness. Michael Jackson. Poor old soul. Oh dear.

Demi Moore: I am greatly saddened for the loss of both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Especially for their children!

Ashton Kutcher: Now the ap confirms aswell. Rip Sending love and light to family and friend but especially his kids.

Miley Cyrus: michael jackson was my inspiration. love and blessings

Samantha Ronson: Say what you want about Michael Jackson's private life (just not near me) but NO ONE can deny his talent, his compassion and his legacy.

Peter Andre: "Michael Jackson dying is absolutely devastating. I am totally shocked. MJ, you're the best."

Lance Armstrong: Terrible news about Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett. My best to their friends, fans, and families.

As I said in the beginning of this article love him or hate him he was certainly one of the most famous popstars on the planet.

ALLTOP - All the Top News

I have recently discovered a new way of collaborating a personal collection the most interesting news stories to me and the best thing about it, it is user friendly. Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. The stories are updated every hour. Pick a topic by searching, news category, or name, and they will deliver it to you 24 x 7. All the topics, all the time.

State of the Twittersphere June 2009

Hubspot have compiled an interesting factfile using data on 4.5 million users they have collected from Twitter Grader.

For instance:

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

• The average user tweets .97 times per day
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738

Some interesting Statistics on Tweets

users are frequently using Twitter to interact and communicate with other users rather than just answer the “What are you doing?” question.

• 1.44% of all tweets are retweets

• 37.95% of all tweets contain an “@” symbol (mentions)

• 33.44% of all tweets start with an “@” symbol (replies)

Many users are reaching the 140-character limit in an attempt to get as much content as possible into every update.

The report can be found at the hubspot website

Flawnt's Blog of fictious wonder

This Blog is highly recommended

one idle day i realised that there was this ocean of readers out there (that includes you!) ever hungry 4 what the french deconstructionists so elegantly and underwhelmingly call “texts”. so i got me a twitter account and had my picture painted by one of the creative hoodlums sitting at the bottom of Sacre Coeur. (it’s his fault if i closely resemble dr franklin.)

i had no idea what 2 write though at first. this evidently was not a book, it was a totally different metaphor not yet chartered territory, a terra incognita and quite possibly mine 4 the taking. i new how 2 write whole books but i didn’t know how to brave this new bosom. so i lightly promised that i would dedicate a piece of writing 2 my first follower. this seemed 2 B in line with the medium.

An Odd message for Television

Great article as usual by David Mitchell in The Guardian

One of my least favourite programmes of the 1980s was Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead? I watched it anyway, of course. It was on.

It was presented by gangs of children with different regional accents, which I suppose was meant to make it feel more inclusive. It didn't work on me. I found the accents alienating. They made me worry that those were the sort of children who would despise me and call me a "posh twat", a jibe my parents worked hard to earn the bare minimum to qualify me for. They scrimped and saved to buy me just enough privilege to make me contemptible.

And the thing I did have in common with the presenters - that I, too, was a child - just made me think: "How'd they get that? Why can't I be on TV maddening them?" Sometimes, things work out in the end.

The content of the show was the familiar series of tedious tasks that required items of stationery that I never possessed or physical activities that I was too weedy for. But my main beef with it was its title. That was the metaphorical photo of a cancerous lung on the cigarette packet of my viewing pleasure.

I was already aware that my predilection for watching hours of television every day was a terrible failing. The concerted censure of every authority figure left me in no doubt of what a betrayal of the opportunities of childhood that was. I should have been reading books or getting fresh air, bicycling around in crime-solving gangs and fishing in streams. Our bit of suburban Oxford seemed a bit short on streams or caves full of forgers, but then I'd never really looked.

Adults' sentences beginning: "When I was your age ..." never ended with: "I'd have given my eye teeth to be left alone to watch Knight Rider, so you go for it, lad!" What I was doing was an insult to children of the past and of fiction: to Coral Island and evacuees and a ha'porth of gobstoppers. I should have been going to Cubs or training for swimming badges. But most worryingly, I was putting my imagination in jeopardy. Because, as surely as carrots help you see in the dark and that you'll regret giving up the piano when you're older, television rots the imagination.

You don't have to imagine Star Trek - the aliens and lasers and spaceships are all on the screen in front of you. There are no gaps for your mind to fill - the art department has already plugged them with chipboard and silver paint. So reading, running around the garden, riding a bicycle or, most terrifyingly, interacting with new people are important activities that strengthen the ideas-generating parts of the brain that otherwise atrophy under the influence of TV.

"Get used to these more gruelling and effort-requiring forms of fun and you'll build the mental equipment for a fuller life," was the argument. A bit like the principle by which we're weaned on to alcohol: "It may not taste as good as Coke now but, you wait - oh, you just wait." Sadly, the latter argument was the only one I had the imagination for.

But among the advantages of becoming an adult are that people stop admonishing you and you're allowed the illusion of vindication about your childish choices. "I spent most of the Eighties watching TV and it never did me any harm," I can safely say, knowing that it's an experiment with no control. There's no other David Mitchell walking around with an imagination whose growth wasn't stunted by assiduously following the plot of Dynasty - unless it's that pesky novelist.

So it came as a shock when Jeremy Paxman stormed into the living room during Doctor Who and started hoovering under my legs and telling me to go outside. I protested that I'd finished my work, but he said it was a lovely day and that he'd give me 2p for every mare's tail I dug up.

I'm speaking metaphorically (a medical miracle, my old English teacher would say, after what all those episodes of The A-Team did to my brain). In a talk at the Hay Festival, Paxman called the public a "bunch of barbarians" because watching TV is our favourite leisure activity. He thinks we should go to art galleries instead.

I don't mind that he's biting the hand that feeds him. A healthy disdain for that hand is an attractive quality, I've always thought - that's probably why I'm more of a cat than a dog person. But has he considered what it signifies that it's he, a television personality - a highly respected journalist, certainly, but hardly a potential Nobel Prize winner - who has the prominence to make this unreconstructed appeal on behalf of the highbrow?

It means that he's what counts as highbrow now, a high-rent newsreader who's done a few books as TV spin-offs, the most recent of which he got another writer to finish for him. The fact that the likes of him are the focus of literary festivals is an index of how completely the cause he's arguing for is lost.

I don't rejoice in that. But as someone who can't spend more than a few minutes in an art gallery without developing a desire for a cup of tea and a sit down as all-consuming as a sudden realisation of diarrhoea, and who often insists on watching episodes of Homes Under the Hammer to their neatly decorated conclusions, it would be hypocritical of me to echo his moans. And I'm a beneficiary of dumbing down, too. Regurgitate half-remembered facts from your A-level syllabus on a panel show, I've found, and you'll get lumped in with the learned.

It's unkind to kick TV at the moment. It may still be our favourite leisure activity, but new competitors are threatening its solvency. Eschewing television for reasons of arty respectability is no longer a choice that can be made with confidence that the medium will nevertheless prosper. Even the most bookish may soon wonder whether they'd be better off with the devil they know.

The barbarians are switching off, but a glance at YouTube confirms that they're not necessarily doing anything less boring instead

Israelis get four times more water than Palestinians, says World Bank report | World news | guardian.co.uk

Report on guardian.co.uk : regarding the desperate plight of some Palestinians who are receiving inadequate water supplies from Israeli sources

"In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink.
The World Bank report, published last month, provoked sharp criticism from Israel, which disputed the figures and the scale of the problem on the Palestinian side. But others have welcomed the study and its findings"

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts - :
Good article on Cio website informing Twitter beginners of the basic rules of etiquette for the service,

like any social network, the Twitter community has its own set of unwritten guidelines — or etiquette — that dictates good (or bad) behavior on the service. Some people call it Twittequette. So before you stick a foot measuring 140-characters-or-less in your mouth, check out their advice on how to follow and un-follow, share politely, direct message appropriately, and more"

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts - :

US churches use Twitter to reach a wider audience - Telegraph

US churches use Twitter to reach a wider audience - Telegraph: "American churches are embracing Twitter, the micro-blogging website, in an attempt to reach congregations in acts of worship of 140 or fewer characters."

Pastors in Westwinds Community Church in Michigan have turned to Twitter, as a way of connecting with the congregation and adressing the problem of declining attendance figures. The social networking site allows users to send messages to each other which are no longer than 140 characters and the church encourages congregants to ask questions about a sermon that the pastor can answer later. Alternatively, they can "tweet" during the service in case another worshipper can provide enlightenment, Of the church's 900 adult members, 150 are now tweeting.

Understanding Swine Flu Outbreak: Questions and Answers - Bloomberg.com

Interesting article about swine flu on Bloomberg

"Swine flu, a virus that normally infects pigs, has been detected in people in Mexico, the U.S., New Zealand, Canada, and the U.K. Health officials around the world are checking to see whether infections have occurred in their countries, and readying measures to prevent its spread."The article answers some frequently asked questions about swine flu using information drawn from the data released by the World Health Organization in Geneva and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Here is a revised list of the most important points

What is Swine Flu?
Swine flu, or swine influenza, is a form of influenza that normally infects pigs.

How do people catch swine flu?
Flu is generally transmitted through the respiratory tract. Droplets of infected body fluids can carry flu when people cough or sneeze. Studies indicate that masks called N95 respirators that, when properly used, filter germs from the breath and hamper the spread of flu

What are the symptoms of swine flu?
Influenza normally causes symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, headaches and body aches, fever, chills, and sometimes vomiting and diarrhea. Swine flu causes the same symptoms, and may be difficult to distinguish from other strains of flu and respiratory illnesses

What’s a flu pandemic?
Flu pandemics occur when new influenza viruses emerge that spread quickly and few people have immunity to them.


How else can I protect myself from swine flu?
Personal hygiene measures, such as avoiding people who are coughing or sneezing and frequent hand-washing, may prevent flu infection.

Clicks for tricks: Twitter's first brothel?

House of Divine in glamorous Milton Keynes tweeted to say that Lucia and Karol were working on Sunday while another message offered a "Twitter Discount". The operation has been exposed in The Sun newspaper, which trumpets: "A BROTHEL is touting its services via social networking site TWITTER

Article at The Guardian

Guy Clapperton on the big TV makers switching on to supplying an internet widget as standard | Technology | The Guardian

An article by Guy Clapperton in The Guardian reveals the big TV makers are about to allow people the opportunity to access online television through their set tops. Clapperton writes

For a few years now, the television industry has been talking about "convergence" between the internet and television. It's slowly becoming a reality: more and more people are connecting their computers to their TVs to view photos, listen to music and other activities that cross over between the two; now television manufacturers are starting to add functions to their TV sets that will allow people to share photos through social networks, play online games, watch YouTube and other material found on the internet. YouTube is a barometer of this shift, as people move on from watching short clips or videos to looking at longer works and whole programmes, and the BBC's iPlayer, plus the versions from ITV and Channel 4, also make full-length programming available on computers

This may yet pose a threat to traditional broadcast outlets as they struggle to keep up with the rapid developments of technology and increasing competition from up and coming online broadcasters but the signs are showing that they are swlowly taking up the gauntlet and fighting for survival in this new digital era.

The rise and rise of Twitter | Technology | guardian.co.uk

"In November 2008 a total of 40 articles appeared in British local and national newspapers that included the word 'Twitter'. Though a quarter of them were published by the Guardian, this paper's technology correspondent nonetheless found himself explaining to general readers that 'Twitter, a mobile social network, has generated lots of buzz'. The Daily Telegraph, quaintly, was still using the word to describe a way of talking.
The following month, 85 articles appeared on the subject. By January 2009, it was 206. But those were still the dark ages. Hot on the heels of the Twitter plane crash came the site's first live action celebrity lift catastrophe, when the actor Stephen Fry, a tweeter so prolific that one hopes he still eats, offered breathless updates from the stationary elevator in which he briefly found himself marooned. (His followers total is now 350,000)."

Article at guardian.co.uk

John Prescott to lead internet campaign

Report on the Guardian website

"John Prescott has been chosen as the unlikely leader of Labour's general election campaign on the internet, as the party prepares to launch a low-budget battle for a fourth term in government"

What on earth is going on? John Prescott does not strike me as the most computer literate member of the Labour party. On further reading the name Alistair Campbell appears

Last night Alastair Campbell, former director of communications under Tony Blair, who also has a large following online, said it was clear Prescott was succeeding in motivating Labour supporters online in a way nobody else could. "You cannot imagine a cabinet minister getting the huge support he did for a campaign on bankers' bonuses. What JP has shown is that he has an ability to cut through to voters that needs harnessing. Because he is no longer a cabinet minister, he can be a bit edgier. It is about making it fun. It is part of modern campaigning."

The knives are out for you Gordon Brown and it looks like Campbell and co are sharpening them to boot

One is twittering: Her Majesty the Queen's latest foray online - Telegraph

Article from The Telegraph

"She emails her grandchildren and her Christmas message appears on YouTube. Now the Queen has taken a further bold technological step by becoming the first member of the Royal family to have an official engagement tracked on Twitter."

Wonder what her user name is?

Eye of God pictured in space

European astronomers have taken a stunning photo of a Big Brother-style cosmic eye, nicknamed the Eye of God, staring down from space.photo was taken with a giant telescope at the European Southern Observatory, high on a mountaintop at La Silla in Chile. It is so detailed that a close-up reveals distant galaxies within the central eyeball. read more Telegraph

Further to an earlier article in which I commented on the relaxed attitude of the British public in the wake of the economic crisis, The Guardian report

Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned

The article reveals that it is

middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations who may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

At last the country is waking up to the reality of the situation and making their voice heard. The government may choose not to listen but the message needs to get through. United we stand, divided we fall