Archive for the ‘Citizen Journalism’ Category

[This is a follow-up post to "Foursquare Stalkers Go IRL."]

I usually don’t post my Foursquare location until after I leave. At dinner we decided to dine-in instead of takeout but by then the post was out and also over to Twitter.

As we waited for my salmon on brown rice plate, the cashier spoke my name into the microphone.

I never thought not to pick up the phone. Foursquare was fresh on my mind since I had recently written a blog post on PleaseRobMe.com, the stalker-enabler site.

As I went to the phone I figured someone was playing a prank and I would see this through. I didn’t recognize the voice on the phone that immediately started calling me “the biggest [insert homophobic language]“. There was nothing funny about that and the voice was even, as if he had done the same thing a dozen times earlier that night. I could tell from the stupid questions he was asking that he was trying to offend me, but still keep me on the line. I figured he was getting his jollies by recording the conversation so I hung up.

That evening I tried to figure out who it was and started closing up accounts and blocking people. My list grew longer and longer as I became more paranoid. Was it the PleaseRobMe guys, pissed because I linked to their Whois information on my blog post, exposing their address? Was it the Mayor of the place I visited, warning me off of his territory? I didn’t know.

The next morning I started some serious searching on Google and Twitter. Eventually I searched for “called me Foursquare” and found someone else who had the same thing happen to him. I kept digging and a reply to his tweet led to this PhoneLosers.com post. The site users had been stalking several people using Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook and posting about their exploits.

After looking through their site, I didn’t find my name on it so I couldn’t positively tell if they were the ones calling, but I was 99% sure. It was the same thing they did to the other guy. I figured the caller didn’t get enough satisfaction from my hanging up so he never posted to the site and went on to harass someone else.

Energy is very important to me. I’m very careful about the kind of energy I let into my life. After doing more research on the PhoneLosers site members, I saw some seriously creepy stuff so I left it and didn’t tweet about it or post about it for several days. It wasn’t until I told some people about it at a tweetup that I decided to review the site again.

They were now stalking dozens of people.

I felt bad that I hadn’t exposed the site earlier but I can’t do anything about the past. There is only the now and I’m acting now by working to close their juvenile operation.

I love our online community. I love playing in it and oversharing. And won’t let some loser site piss in my paddling pool without making waves of my own.

Related Posts
* Foursquare Stalkers Go IRL
* New Site Aims To Scare Foursquare Users – PleaseRobMe.com
* Are We All Asking to Be Robbed? (Mashable)

Will these self-identified stalkers ruin your cyber community? Or will we ban these bullies from our playground?

A site called PhoneLosers.com has been stalking dozens of people using Foursquare, Twitter search, and Facebook. Supposedly, their main goal is to prank people and get them to post about them or the event.

This is part of the PhoneLosers.com forum post by someone named RBCP (appears to also be @rbcp on Twitter), urging people to stalk Foursquare users:

Make a new thread in this board for each person you stalk. If that gets out of hand, we’ll figure out a different way to organize it. It would be cool to include a phone call with your stalking, but I guess a transcript would work too. Most Twitterers are such attention whores that they’ll post about being stalked too. Or they might Facebook it, so check their Facebooks too and post their reactions in the thread you create. – RBCP

The name on the Whois listing for PhoneLosers.com lists a “Brad Carter” as the domain registrant.

There’s also a @PhoneLosers Twitter account and it shamelessly tweeted out:

Stalking people on FourSquare is fun! Come and listen to the sound clips at http://www.phonelosers.com/index.php?board=61.0 – @phonelosers

I have emailed Foursquare, GoDaddy (the domain host), and Twitter so they are aware of the situation and can take action.

Ever wonder if it’s really safe to use location-based sites like Foursquare or Gowalla? The new site PleaseRobMe.com is trying to make a point by listing people who are checking in somewhere other than home via Foursquare.

Anyone who uses the services should know this is possible via a simple search or over Twitter searches, if the status update is auto-tweeted.

But this is an example of how technology usage is like having windows in a house. We sometimes sacrifice absolute security to allow light in and a view out.

And in that same vein, if you want to see the addresses of the people that built the site, just do a WhoIs search over PleaseRobMe.com and mail them your warmest regards.

I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

No this isn’t a trailer from a new James Bond movie. The Airborne Laser (ABL) successfully fired its onboard Laser on a missile during testing earlier this month.

These videos were just made public.

The ABL, being developed by the DOD’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA), first fired December of 2008 but is now able to “acquire” a missile target. The laser system is housed aboard a modified Boeing 747-400 Freighter, with two solid state lasers and a megawatt-class Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser.

The purpose of this test was lock onto the missile, so the missile wasn’t actually destroyed.

According to the MDA, this test occurred off of California’s central coast (that’s just up the highway from me). The data gathered from this successful test will be used for its next test this year when it will attempt a “lethal shootdown” of a ballistic missile. For all our sakes, I hope the system is more stable than the laser satellite in Diamonds Are Forever, the Solex Agitator Laser from The Man With A Golden Gun, and the Icarus satellite in To Die Another Day.


Related Sources:

• Official Airborne Laser (ABL) Gallery with videos and images
• The Airborne Laser Fact Sheet (PDF)
• Catalog of James Bond Doomsday devices ;)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been exactly one year since we first heard of the miraculous landing of flight 1549 in New York’s Hudson River. The great hero of the Miracle on the Hudson was Captain Chesley Sully Sullenberger who managed to safely land the plane without any loss of life. Truly a miracle.

So much has happened since then. President Obama was sworn into office, the Twittersphere sprouted green avatars to support protesters after the Iran Election, and now we have the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.

One thing these events all have in common is that important snippets first showed up on the picture sharing site TwitPic. Amazingly, TwitPic was created in a weekend by Web developer and master tinkerer, Noah Everett (@noaheverett on Twitter).

One of the most famous TwitPic pictures ever posted was by Janis Krums (@jkrums on Twitter) live from a ferry in the Hudson River just after the airplane crash.

Just yesterday, Noah Everett revealed in an interview with Andrew Warner (@AndrewWarner on Twitter) on Mixergy.com that shortly before the Miracle on the Hudson, he had planned on shutting down TwitPic because he was having trouble keeping the site up and running in a consistent manner.

I want to send Noah Everett a BIG “Thank You” for pushing through the tough times and keeping the site up. It’s an important global resource and it is greatly appreciated.

This is a MUST WATCH interview. Everett gives details on how he first started TwitPic on a spare server, the ups and downs of running a site that takes off like a wildfire, and shows you how he was able to direct TwitPic by focusing on being a nice business. There is also a transcript of the interview on the Mixergy.com site.

View the Noah Everett interview

Related Posts:

* Mashable: TwitPic Worth More Than $10 Million?