Archive for the ‘Citizen Journalism’ Category

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktEz5KVdKQo

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?

The main story on November 5, 2009 was about the shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas. Twelve people were killed and 31 wounded, according to CNN. My thoughts and prayers go out to the injured and their families.

A secondary story is the way people used Twitter’s new Lists feature to follow the news. This is how I did it. Shortly after I saw the first tweets from @heykim, who was also tracking the developing story, I started my search for secondary sources via Twitter’s search feature. I searched for mentions of “Fort Hood” and “lockdown,” since the second term was more likely to be used by people who were actually near the scene.

After finding a few people tweeting from Fort Hood, I saw Marilyn Maciel’s (@MarilynM) tweet with a location-based search over the Fort Hood area. That helped filter out people, like myself, who were tweeting about Fort Hood from outside the area.

My next news step was to find local news stations, which are usually first on the scene because of location and connections to inside sources. I spotted KCEN News (@KCENNews) which was tweeting and working on posting updates to its site.

I retweeted @KCENNews and then noticed that its Follower count went up and so did its List count. Several other local news stations had already created “FortHoodShootings” Lists and had added @KCENNews to their Lists.

I tweeted:

**News stations are braiding sources together using Twitter Lists. http://bit.ly/1DGX4x #forthood

I though I’d get at least one Retweet or Reply on that, but realized that I didn’t spell things out enough in the tweet. I continued to dig around for other people and news sources tweeting about Fort Hood who lived near the base. I decided to create my own Twitter List, which included people who had family at the base, then tweeted out the link. As chance would have it, mega blogger Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) forwarded my List to his 100K+ followers.

@Scobleizer – And there’s already a list of sources covering Fort Hood Shootings: @jesseluna/fort-hood-shootings are you getting why lists are important?

Retweets poured in as a result of Scoble’s influence super powers and I continued seeking sources to help the list tell a fuller story. Shortly thereafter, the name of the shooting suspect was revealed and chatter started about it because it was a “Muslim sounding” name. I ran into tweets from Naveed Ali Shah (@aCitizenSoldier) who is a soldier and milblogger serving in Iraq. According to his profile and tweets, he has family at Fort Hood and is Muslim. I added him to the List because I could see the larger story shifting in a political direction. Naveed would have some interesting perspectives.

Twitter is a global community. The more we tune in to what’s going on in the world, the better informed we’ll be and the more likely we’ll be to act in our own communities. I like tracking stories to direct friends and followers to breaking information, especially if it’s an emergency and it might provide information to help them or their loved ones. In a tragic situation such as the Fort Hood shootings, the Twitter Lists feature was extremely powerful as it created an ad-hoc news feed that shared valuable information.

Related Links:

* @jesseluna – Fort Hood Shootings List on Listorious.com
* Mashable: Fort Hood Shootings: News Orgs Put Twitter Lists to the Test