Internet still the leading source for news
The Internet is by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice for news ahead of television, newspapers and radio, according to a new poll in the U.S. But just a small fraction of U.S. adults considered social Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace as a good source of news and even fewer would opt for Twitter.
TweetPsych: This is your brain on Twitter
We’ve covered several utilities that have found fun and creative ways to analyze Twitter messages, but TweetPsych takes the cake. This one looks at your past 1,000 Twitter posts and gives you a “psychological” profile including how much you talk about yourself, work, money, and “negative emotions.”
Microsoft veteran launches Twitter search engine
Ken Moss, who once headed M|cr0s0ft’s search engine unit, is launching the beta of CrowdEye, an engine that tries to offer a better way to mine Twitter.
16 Tips to Become an INSTANT iPhone OS 3.0 Power-User
Shout it from the mountain top, copy and paste has arrived on the iPhone. After you’ve gotten your fill of pasting links into your favorite Twitter app and Facebook, here are some tips to make using iPhone OS 3.0 just that more exciting.
Microsoft Is Getting Really Desperate
We’ve buried ,000 somewhere on the internet and if you’re the first one to find it, you get to keep it. If you want a serious shot at the ten grand, upgrade your browser to Windows Internet Explorer now. Then follow @tengrand_IE8 on Twitter for daily clues that point you to the buried loot!
U.S. Government Asks Twitter to Stay Up for #IranElection
A short while from now, Twitter will go down for maintenance due to extraordinary circumstances: The #IranElection Controversy. Originally scheduled to perform maintenance last night, the work was moved to 2 PM PT today so that Iranians could tweet about the crisis.
Statistical Suspicions In Iran’s Election
hoytak writes “An expert in electoral fraud, professor Walter Melbane, has released a detailed analysis (PDF) of available data in Iran’s controversial election (summary here). While he did not find significant indications of fraud, he does note that all the deviations from the predicted model are in Ahmadinejad’s favor: ‘In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political process… [These] stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which all of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are always negative. This pattern needs to be explained before one can have confidence that natural election processes were not supplemented with artificial manipulations.’” In related news, EsonLinji notes reports in the Seattle PI and other sources that the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis. And if you would like to help ease the communication crunch, reader RCulpepper tips a blog post detailing how to set up a proxy server for users with Iranian IP addresses.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Iran Protests: The Whole World Is Watching, Flickring, Tweeting
“The whole world is watching” was one of the loudest rallying cries of Vietnam protesters gathered in the streets of Chicago outside the Democratic convention in 1968. Forty-one years later, the same slogan is even more relevant in the chaotic streets of Tehran. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media technologies, the whole world is indeed watching Iranian citizens rise up against suspect presidential election results. The chaos roiling Tehran is reflected in the surge of claims, counterclaims and unverified information streaming in and out of the country.
For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)
Some people use Twitter to organize street protests in Tehran. Some people use it to share their daily thoughts and observation. But it is increasingly becoming clear that one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor.
Iran Moves To End "Facebook Revolution"
We’ve had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate. First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that “the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation’s president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. ‘The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. ‘The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites… are completely inaccessible.’” And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see. “People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US.” Update: 06/14 18:32 GMT by KD : Jim Cowie contributes a blog post from Renesys taking a closer look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and concluding that the story may not be as clear-cut as has been reported.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
