The US Army says that Twitter is a potential tool for terrorists. I know what you’re thinking — thank God my tax dollars are finally being put to good use. And this isn’t another one of those AIG spa treatments or anything.
I mean, with the exception of only a small handful of other services, Twitter is the only micro-blogging platform that could possibly be used for malicious communication. And, unlike other forms of nefarious yacking technologies like the cell phone and instant messaging it is inherently and by default open to the public for easy reading (yes, I know Twitter accounts can be marked private — not the point).
Ok. You sense sarcasm? Well, at least they’re paying attention to the right groups. You see, they’ve identified Twitter as becoming an activists tool for “socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists”.
In fact, “Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives.”
Damn those vegetarians and political enthusiasts…
I was lucky enough to hit the A-list at work for an upgrade to a BlackBerry 8830 from my usual cell phone. This is the first mobile device that I’ve ever owned and I’m totally hooked. It’s like the move from dial-up to broadband — I’m not sure I could ever go back to a standard cell phone or not owning some type of 3G device.
That being said, I’m disappointed with the lack of solid, free applications written for the platform. I spent hours trying to find a reasonable program to view my school books (PDF format) from my media card and mostly found paid subscription software that was grossly overpriced. I ended up creating a BlackBerry email account and sending my PDF’s to it. It’s a workaround that I’m willing to live with rather than fork out money for something we all take for granted in the PC world. I don’t understand why BlackBerry developers think they should be charging for something as basic as a reader that is free on virtually every platform I’ve ever used. Charge for the added value of the writer (like Adobe Acrobat), but give the reader away and get your name on the device.
The next thing that got me was the difficulty in listening to streaming music on it. I know I can throw MP3 (maybe OGG) files onto it and play them locally, but I really just want a Pandora or Last.fm setup where I can play a tag or similar artist station. Pandora doesn’t support the BlackBerry and their web-based player thought my IP was from Norway so wouldn’t work either. Last.fm doesn’t support the BlackBerry directly as well and even if I wanted to scrobble tracks played locally I needed to buy software (3rd party). End of the road here is that I applied for a Last.fm API key so that I could attempt to write my own streamer for the BlackBerry. More to come on that I hope — still waiting on the key.
And yes, if and when I complete this project (I already have a name picked out) I will absolutely release it for free.
I signed up for a Twitter account late last year as a skeptic looking at a buzz technology tool. I thought, “Who cares what I’m doing right now” and “How is this useful?”
I’m not sure why exactly, but I recently gave it another go and have become increasingly intrigued with how to use it.
So far I’ve got it pegged to being:
- an IM client
- a chat room
- a micro-blog
- a news source
- an idea storm/generator
- a megaphone
The ways to use it really go on and on. Heck, someone even used it to propose!
[tags]twitter, microblog[/tags]
It was interesting to see some action on the Google Toolbar taking over the standard 404 error page on a website. I guess some web developers out there are a little up in arms, but hasn’t Internet Explorer been doing this for years? Any 404 page under 512 bytes is taken over by the browser, and now the Google Toolbar will have a thing to say about it too.
For me as a webmaster this is a major intrusion into my own intellectual property.
Source
See Google’s explanation:
When a visitor tries to reach your content with an invalid URL and your server returns a short, default error message (less than 512 bytes), the Toolbar will suggest an alternate URL to the visitor.
Source
This isn’t worth sweating over. If you use custom error pages then you already know (or should) to combat IE hijacking you need to make them larger than 512 bytes. If you’ve already done this, then the Google Toolbar will respect that too.
No more new social networks, ok? The idea of having to continually register for the next big thing with a better service just doesn’t seem like an attractive idea to me anymore. Being on the edge was fun for a time, but in the long term is just a major pain in managing my online identity.
Instead, I’m hoping that we reach a day when the agreed upon social network is a standard one and universal. To a large degree I think it already exists today as Google. I’m of the frame of mind that you should come to me to find out what I’m up to because when I have to update ten services to make that happen it becomes impractical. Through syndication and a good search engine this isn’t asking too much and certainly doesn’t mean that one would have to come directly to my site — ever.
I happily killed my MySpace account last year, and I’m hanging on the button with Facebook right now.
[tags]social network, social media, online identity[/tags]
According to a recent survey by NPD, the following was found:
Ninety-four percent of U.S. consumers have never heard of Web-based productivity suite alternatives. A mere 0.5 percent have substituted Web-based productivity suites for desktop software such as Microsoft Office. Chris Swenson, NPD’s director of Software Industry Analysis, described the 0.5 percent figure as being a “bit high.” Swenson predicted worldwide usage to be even lower than the United States
Some have gone as far as to say that the Web office suite is on its way out?! Please. It’s hardly touched the threshold, why rush it out the back door?
I do agree, however, that these types of tools are better spread through necessity of actual problem solving. The average consumer probably hasn’t used or heard of it yet because they don’t have a problem with their local tools.
The fact of the matter is that these new Web applications aren’t ready for the prime-time yet (hence most are still listed as beta). But you can bet your money that as soon as local and Web data are synced smoothly and with more applications (look to Google Gears), the balance will most certainly be tipped for many.
[tags]google apps, google docs, web office[/tags]