Five More Search Tools You Should Know

Have you ever needed to see the search results for another city — maybe because you want to see what PPC ads are shown somewhere else?

Have you ever needed to see search results from a different country, or in a different language? Maybe you’re into real time search, and you’d love a place to find the latest photos and videos being shared on Twitter. Or perhaps you’re planning a vacation abroad, but you’re not sure when is the best time to visit Europe.

It’s time again for another roundup of the latest and greatest search tools and search engines, and in this article, I’ll share five such sites that will answer the above questions (and more). This is the fourth in my occasional series profiling under-the-radar search tools. Links to the previous three are at the end of this article.

SearchMuffin

Look, I don’t name ‘em, I just use ‘em and write about ‘em if they’re cool. And this one is SearchMuffin has a simple premise: Type in a keyword and choose a city from the dropdown menu, and it’ll show you the Google search results that match. Think of it as a sort of geo-targeted competitive research/PPC research tool. It’s about the easiest way I know of to see the PPC ads that appear in other cities.

And best of all, it’s not just limited to major U.S. cities; at the moment, there are 262 choices in the dropdown menu, including such non-metropolises as Roseville, California, and Arvada, Colorado. (No disrespect intended to Rosevillites and Arvadians.)

Glearch

Let’s expand our horizons beyond 262 U.S. cities. What if you needed to quickly see some search results from other countries and/or other languages? Glearch (again, I don’t name ‘em) is an international meta search engine that lets you search by country, by language, and/or by search engine. You can take those three options and customize each to build just the query you want.

Roooby

We’ve written a fair amount about real time search in the past few months, but we haven’t focused too much on the visual element — people posting photos and videos of what they’re doing now. Roooby is one of several real time search engines that capture media, but one of the few that surface both photos and videos. (Although, to be frank, Roooby could do a better job of finding videos by scanning sites such as Qik.com, TwitVid.io, and others that host live video.)

Roooby isn’t the only player in this space. TwitCaps, TwitPicGrid, Pingwire, and Twicsy offer similar real time image search engines.

Spezify

Speaking of media and images, here’s the most visual search tool I’ve ever seen: Spezify. The best way I can describe it is a sort of visual meta search engine. It pulls in results from Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and even eBay and Amazon to create a fairly stunning search results page.

This is serious eye candy. There’s a settings page where you can choose the sources and types of content (images, text, video) you want included. But to be frank, the focus on visuals means the search results have no context whatsoever. You can move vertically and horizontally through the results, but you have no idea why you’re seeing what you’re seeing. It’s innovative to be sure, but for this searcher, it’s too lacking in functionality.

Joobili

Finally, here’s one for our readers in Europe, or for our readers traveling to Europe. It’s called Joobili, and it’s a travel/event search engine with a twist: Rather than telling the search engine what you want to do or where you want to go, you tell it when. There’s a cool date-based slider on the home page to get you started, and once you’re in the results, Joobili lets you see results based on categories (Arts, Sport, Nature, etc.), by country, or by keyword.

If you create an account, Joobili will let you save events to a wish list or a “went” list. You can also rank events to help other users make decisions on what to do and where to go. It’s a clever approach, but as I hinted above, it only covers Europe.

Related articles:

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/technorati-to-launch-twittorati.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-unveils-new-search-features.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/twitter-search-to-index-pages-and.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/yahoo-upgrades-search-engine.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/search-sucks-and-microsoft-is-almost.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/searching-for-meaning-of-bing.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/microsoft-must-buy-twitter-msft.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/ballmer-on-bing-economy-and-more.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/china-google-and-pornography.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-they-might-be-little-evil.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/05/wolfram-alpha-has-google-attention.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/26-people-who-mislead-you-on-twitter.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/ballmer-all-traditional-content-will-be.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/rate-of-tweets-per-second-doubles.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-unveils-sms-service-for-africa.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/yahoo-ceo-stop-comparing-us-to-google.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/06/future-of-facebook-usernames.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/06/googles-schmidt-rips-microsofts-bing.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/06/history-and-future-of-computer-memory.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/kosmix-tries-to-avoid-google-search.html

http://globalblognetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/dispute-finder-intel-program-finds.html

Source:

http://searchengineland.com/five-more-search-tools-july09-22766

Tags:

TwitCaps, TwitPicGrid, Pingwire, Twicsy, real time image search engines, Spezify, SearchMuffin, Glearch, Joobili, Roooby, real-time Web search, Google, Twitter search, PageRank, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, Qik.com, TwitVid.io,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Internet Service Providers Not Keeping Up with User Trends

There's a revolution happening on the Internet — though broadband providers have not seemed to notice.

Thanks to new gadgets, programs and Web services, consumers are sending, sharing and swapping more data than ever over the global network. Yet many are stuck with Internet connections that give them upload speeds much slower than download speeds. What that means is that it takes a lot longer to send a movie or picture out to the Internet than it takes to download the same file. Uploading a video, a roll of pictures or a backup of key files on your hard drive can take hours, or even days. I ran into this issue earlier this month when I sent some pictures to Kodak to get them printed for my dad for Father's Day. I uploaded 170 pictures, which was about 800 megabytes of data.

Admittedly, I have a relatively poky connection: EarthLink says my maximum download speed is 3 megabits per second, but I rarely get more than 2.2 megabits per second. Even at that rate, it would have taken me less than an hour to download that much data. But because I was uploading — at a mere 384 kilobits per second maximum throughput — it took me more than three hours.

I'm not the only one affected. Internet users as a whole are sending increasing amounts of data out on to the Net. They are blogging, posting messages on Twitter, using Loopt to tell others where they are hanging out, or writing messages on friend's profile pages on Facebook. They're sharing videos and pictures on sites such as Flickr, YouTube or Facebook. And they're playing multiplayer games over the Internet such as "World of Warcraft'' or via services such as Xbox Live.

Those on the cutting edge are doing even more. They're swapping videos or software — sometimes illicitly — through services such as BitTorrent. They're using gadgets such as the SlingPlayer, programs such as Simplify Media or services such as Apple's Mobile Me to remotely access videos, music or files from their home PCs or other devices. And they're backing up their home PCs to online storage sites.

And their ranks are growing. YouTube users upload 20 hours of video to the site every minute. That's up from six hours of video every minute just two years ago. Meanwhile, Facebook users upload 850 million photos and 10 million videos to its site every month.

But broadband companies seem oblivious to this trend. If you look at the plans offered by the Bay Area's two main providers, Comcast and AT&T, it's all but impossible to find one in which the upload speed comes anywhere close to the download speed. To get an upload speed that's faster than a slow DSL download rate, you have to subscribe to one of the pricier plans, like Comcast's Extreme 50, which gives you a 10 megabit per second upload connect — at a cost of $100 a month.

Comcast and AT&T officials say they are watching consumer Internet usage trends. They note that as their companies have ramped up download speeds, they've tended to increase upload speeds as well and will continue to do so. The download and upload speeds they offer are simply a response to market demand, they say, claiming that the vast majority of their customers still download far more data than they upload.

"We're designing our products based on how we see consumers using them," John Britton, an AT&T spokesman, told me. Over the course of a month, a week or even a day, it's undoubtedly true that consumers tend to download more data than they upload. But for a growing number of Internet users, there are times when they want to upload data.

When I was uploading my pictures, I was sending far more data than I was receiving. During that time, I couldn't have cared less how fast my download speed was. Indeed, I would have loved to have been able to allocate my download bandwidth to upload my pictures.

But there's no way for me to do that. In terms of Internet access providers, the Bay Area essentially has a duopoly. There are numerous small players such as EarthLink, but Comcast and AT&T dominate — and duopolies tend to not have a good read on real market demand. People often buy one of their products because they don't have any other choices — not because they meet their needs.

In other words, if the market were more competitive, a company might be able to build a successful business by catering to people who want faster upload speeds. Just because consumers use their connections to download more data than they upload isn't proof that they don't want to upload more. The slow speeds could well discourage folks from doing more uploading. And they may well find a use for faster upload speeds — if they had them.

I'd love to be able to back up the videos, songs and documents on my computer to a server on the Internet. But with my slow upload connection, that's not really an option because it would take days of uninterrupted uploading to back up any significant portion of my hard drive. Here's hoping broadband providers join the revolution and make faster upload speeds an option soon.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_12689652?source=email

Tags: AT&T, EarthLink, Comcast, ISP’s, uploading rates, downloading rates, Internet infrastructure, Global IT and Business News, YouTube, Loopt, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, World of warcraft, Xbox live, BitTorrent. SlingPlayer, Simplify Media, Apple's Mobile Me,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Twitter Best Practices

It's been almost eight weeks since I gave in and started using Twitter. I had a rapid change of heart from my initial skepticism. For those who've never heard of Twitter, you may just have arrived here from some planet extraterrestrial. For those who have simply refused to give it a shot, I can list a few quick reasons why it might be worth it.

I've used it to rekindle old, lost friendships.

I've used it to promote my personal brand.

I've used it to develop a number of new, fruitful interactions in my field.

I've enjoyed the simple, lighthearted smalltalk and banter that it fosters.

It's nice to get to know people I've known for years on a more personal, human level, catching quick, concise glimpses of their thoughts.

It's also been fascinating to get an interior dialogue of some heroes/mentors/idols. Yes, I follow some "famous" folks. They don't seem to mind. And it's not entirely because of ego. Most of the ones I interact with simply seem to want to share the lessons they've learned--and are in the process of learning--so that others can be successful as well. Now THAT is selflessness. They don't need to do this!

Others have already gone before me and done a fine job of extrapolating more developed reasons to be on Twitter. I won't repeat entire prosaic tomes, but I'll point you to my favorite, Michael Hyatt's "12 reasons to start twittering."

That being said, Twitter can be a nightmare. Twitter is suffering measurable growing pains as it emerges as a trendy tool and a collection of pointless, verbal spew. It's ripe for being abused by spammers (who apparently now prefer the term "viral marketers," a category that apparently also includes...me, which may force me to write an explanatory and apologetic article later). In fact, they've already started abusing it. And the line between victim and culprit is a bit blurred. Like any social networking technology, it's remarkably addictive. And, unmanaged, your own connections can grow into something ugly and uncontrollable. We can accidentally contribute to the problem!

So, I think it's time we pitch some "best practices" for using Twitter. To bring you up to speed on what "best practices" means, keep in mind that emerging technology is based on open source and established standards. Violate the standard, and people probably won't trust what you're doing. It doesn't mean it's not a good idea. It means that you need to lobby to get the standard rewritten to accommodate your invention. But it takes time to get a standards board to revise a document. In the meantime, you want to establish market presence (even for a free product), so an interim document is often offered, a list of "best practices." Put simply, it's good things to do when nobody really knows for sure what to do.

So allow me to assume that if you're reading this you'll probably want to base your practices on the following fundamental assumptions:

We want to avoid receiving spam.

We want to avoid inadvertently contributing to the distribution of spam.

We want to avoid maliciousness.

We want to avoid intentionally or unintentionally facilitating maliciousness.

We want to be relevant.

We want to maximize and capitalize on our awareness of the relevance of others.

It is possible to use Twitter without being a twit. Here's how to do that: Control your follows and followers.

Set up your account appropriately

Here's why we need best practices. Twitter has two basic account settings: public and private. If you set up your account to be private, you protect yourself real well from receiving unwanted followers. Nobody can find you. But this sorta violates the premise of being able to establish, build, maintain, and develop an interactive relevance with others. "Best practices" recognizes that the most effective thing to do may not be the most useful thing to do. So, a "best practice" in the development of online relationships requires us to make those relationships public. That means we now have some subsequent work to do.

When someone adds you, you have three choices on how to respond.

You can do nothing. They will continue to be able to read your account information and any new tweets that you post. You can reciprocate the follow. That will allow you to engage in dialogue and conversation with them. Their followers will see their half of the conversation. Your followers will see yours. Mutual followers will observe the entire conversation. You can block them. They will then be unable to see your contributions, to send you private messages, or to view your profile.

Not everyone who adds you is really a friend.

You know those late-night infomercials that catch you off-guard when you wake up at 3am and realize you left the TV on? In your half-conscious state, some slick, friendly, good-looking and persuasive individual hypnotizes you into picking up the phone. Next thing you know, UPS has delivered three years worth of diet pills. Or tupperware. Or a set of encyclopedias you don't need. Or a lava lamp with a built-in AM/FM radio and a companion garlic chopper and a set of knives that are yours free to keep even if you choose to return the garlic chopper and the lava lamp AM/FM radio which will never work anyway because there's no one in customer support picking up the phone to let you know what address to send the lava lamp radio and garlic chopper to so that you can get your refund. Something like that. Yeah, Twitter's the same way.

Not everyone who adds you is really a person.

Some are entities. Some are corporations, or marketing firms, or "bots" that farm account names for the purpose of spreading malware, or advertising, or phishing schemes to purloin your account information. Some of them make this pretty obvious. To be fair, there are some companies (that identify themselves as such) that I'm interested in following. News. New product releases. Interesting interactive opportunities. Relevant technological organizations. Sure. There are reasons why you might want to do this, on purpose, selectively. Some of them are nasty sneaky about it. We'll get to this in more detail right after the next point.

Sometimes, the owner of a company uses his or her company's name as his or her account name.

Ok, fine, you can do that. Nothing wrong with that. There are a few owners of recruiting firms that I follow. Some of them use their firm's name as their account name. And when I'm looking for work, it's important to maintain contact with them.

Do you know who this is?

When you receive a new follower on Twitter, decide very quickly, Do I know who this person is? If you do (and you trust him or her) by all means, reciprocate the follow. If you don't, consider instantly blocking them from your account. Yes, there's a several step process if you block someone and then change your mind. But the hassle might be worth the control you maintain up front. And yes, I have blocked someone accidentally and recovered from it. And yes, I have probably been blocked inadvertently (Frosene, if you're reading this...it's me!).

Sometimes, I don't know them, but they look interesting.

Ok, let's see how we can find out real quick if they're on the up-and-up. How many followers do they have? If someone is following 1000+ accounts, I'm going to initially suspect that they're on the verge of dispensing fluff. Is anybody (except Ashton Kutcher) really that popular? But seriously. I even dropped Ashton Kutcher (and Demi Moore, and Miley Cyrus) from my follows. Why? Because if I were writing a marketing bot, I'd write it to find accounts that have hundreds and thousands of people in their lists, and farm those account names to add to my own. So if YOUR name appears on the list of an account who's following 10,000 folks for no reason at all, you're probably being added to a whole bunch of internet mailing lists faster than you can say "Kaspersky-compliant spam filter." That being said, there are a few people I follow, selectively, who have well into the tens of thousands of followers. Why? Because I've perused their tweets and I want to be involved with these folks. They're important to me. So judge wisely.

What's their ratio of followers to follows?

After eight weeks on Twitter, I've accumulated a little over a hundred people following me, and a little over 200 people whose "tweets" I'm following. I've observed this 2-to-1 ratio to be relatively consistent amongst my crowd, give or take. So I'm using that as a norm. If someone is following 800 people and only 7 people are following their account, this might say something significant. Consider the prevailing wisdom as a sign. They're either a bot, or they think that they can fabricate popularity...and it's not working.

What's their account name?

It is generally a best practice to set your real name (or some revealing reference to it) as your account name. This is a nice thing to do. It is not essential, but it is remarkably polite. There are a few legitimate reasons not to do this. If their account name is unusual, annoying, offensive, or illegible, think twice. Especially if it's a collection of random characters. That's a tell-tale sign that this account was created by a machine, not a human being. A machine will have nothing interesting, relevant, timely, or practical to offer you. Block.

Check their profile.

No bio? If their bio is nonexistent, what are they hiding?

Internet marketer?

Does their bio contain the honest but death-wishing phrase "internet marketer?" At least they're admitting it up front. Are they promising the dream of a life of ease, sipping piña coladas on the beach while fortunes are deposited in their bank accounts for them? If you have no reason to want what they're pedaling (or if they don't identify it), I recommend you encourage them to pedal it elsewhere.

Funky web address?

If their URL is a shortened, redirecting, non-descript URL, again, what are they hiding? Don't click on it to find out. You might find yourself where some man has been before. Many times. Many, many times, to quote Blanche Devereaux.

Peruse their lists of follows and followers.

If it's not someone you know, but 40 of your friends are in common, it might be someone you'd like to know. Again, use your wise discretion and judgment.

Is it "Britney?"

If their account description starts with the word "Britney" and ends with the word "vids" and has a naughty word between, BLOCK THEM IMMEDIATELY!! Good Lord I hate that person, whoever it is. And I use the term "hate" lightly in this case.

Consider why they added you.

Were they looking for you? That might be good. Were they looking for ANYONE AT ALL? Ok, not so good. If "number of followers" is your only metric for relevance, by all means, go ahead and add. But don't come crying to me when your inbox becomes clogged with emails asking if you want to see revealing videos of the aforementioned pop star. Best case scenario is this person is an emotional leech. Run. Fast.

Check their tweets.

Do they write in clear English? No, that does not apply if you're looking for friends who all speak Portuguese. I just mean that a random assortment of jargon and abbreviations every 5 to 10 minutes is not going to make for an enjoyable experience.

Was it something you said?

The other day, I retweeted something funny that David Pogue said about chess and kickboxing. Call me paranoid, but I was immediately followed by two chess playing bots. Like I said, I don't like bots with several thousand followers. Other bots are looking for that sort of information to use for "marketing." And Britney. I'm sure she plays chess. She's a semiconductor physicist, after all.

Yes, that link is safe. Yes, I'm pulling your leg.

Anyway, I blocked the chess bots. And I apologized to the friend who "re-tweeted" what I said (because it was funny) and probably received the same two immediate unwanted follows. Apparently, there are bots out there just waiting for you to mention certain terms. Say them, and immediately they figure you're an interested chap.

Same tweet, over and over and over and over and over and over and...

If someone's posting the same tweet (or at least the same hidden link) repeatedly, it's probably a machine just promoting itself at regular intervals. I'd rather hear from human beings.

Protect your identity!

This should be a no-brainer. It isn't. Spence Smith thought it was ok to register his account with a third-party site. Their disclaimer even admitted that they MIGHT occasionally change his status (that is, his most recent tweet). Mr. Smith didn't consider that they would change his status (and the status of the thousands of others who registered) frequently for the purpose of promoting their own choice of product or opinion. Spence changed his password and distanced himself from that service. When you're encouraged to register your account somewhere else, ponder why they would want this information and why you would want to give it to them.

How does a new follower act?

The aforementioned Spence Smith, a few days after his epiphany, tweeted this: "FYI, for [my] new followers: if the first private message I get from you is a marketing message, then I'm unfollowing you. Get to know me first." Wiser words are rarely spoken. Thanks, Spence!

Act urgently and responsibly.

If I don't clear out my new follows right away and block them if they're inappropriate, MY friends are gonna wind up on their lists. I don't want to subject my friends to that! The thing about best practices is that they're emergent and flexible. They're part of a conversation. So if anyone has any questions about these, suggestions, challenges, or additions, the whole community of Twitter users should be all ears. We'll probably never have a standard, really. I'm not sure we'd want an environment for open communications being limited by a rigid set of standards anyway. But let's iteratively make the best set of best practices we can, reform it as necessary, and apply good and wise judgment to make the best experience possible for everyone. Follow me, but you might want to drop me a quick email first so I know who you are. And please, if your first name is Britney, consider changing it.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-8005-SF-Eastern-Orthodoxy-Examiner~y2009m6d14-Managing-Twitter-social-networking-with-social-responsibility

Tags: Twitter best Practices, Twitter, Rules of Twitter, Tweets, Twitter Profiles, Bots, Twitter users, Follow me, Global Best practice, Global IT News, unfollowing, Twitter rules,

Posted via email from Global Business News

California Paying Bills With I.O.U.’s

LOS ANGELES — Its budget gap growing and its political process for addressing the gap unhinged, California will begin Thursday to pay vendors and taxpayers with i.o.u.’s, only the second time the state has adopted the emergency payment method since the Great Depression.

By Thursday afternoon, state officials said, 28,742 warrants worth $53.3 million will be printed and readied for distribution. If the state’s fiscal crisis – which has left California unable to pay all of its bills – continues without a budget settlement, it would issue as much as $3.36 billion for the month of July.

The bulk of the warrants – which will offer recipients an interest rate of 3.75 percent -- will be issued to Californians waiting for their income tax refunds, though some will be issued to local governments as well as to vendors doing business with the state. Federal and state laws prohibit paying state employees, schools, or Medicaid recipients with the warrants. The issuance of i.o.u.’s comes after state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger failed to agree on how to close a state budget hole — now roughly $27 billion — by the end of the fiscal year on Wednesday. The state is essentially too short on cash to pay its bills, and will continue to issue warrants — with potential long-term serious damage to the state’s credit rating — until the budget impasse is resolved.

In the meantime, Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has ordered state workers to take a third furlough day each month, beginning next Friday, to help stave off a further cash crisis in the state. On Wednesday, he proclaimed a fiscal emergency and called for a special session to continue the budget debate.

A union representing engineers immediately filed a lawsuit protesting the third furlough day. “Telling people to stay home a third day a month slows economic recovery,” Mark Sheahan, of the Professional Engineers in California, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. Vendors and state residents who receive warrants may take them to a bank or credit union that accepts them for cash, or hold on to them until their maturity date — which will probably be sometime in October — and get their cash plus the accrued interest.

On Thursday, a small handful of banks – including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase -- indicated that they would accept the warrants, but only through the middle of the month. The state’s trade association offered less-than-overwhelming optimism that more banks would step up, citing the technical difficulties in managing the IOUs coupled with fear of getting paid out in early October, when the warrants are set to mature.

“In evaluating potential registered warrant acceptance, banks have been advised by regulatory authorities to consider such issues as credit quality, capital requirements and concentration limits,” the president of the California Bankers Association, Rod Brown, said in a prepared statement. “Given the poor credit rating of California – the worst in the nation – banks may be hesitant to extend credit to the state.”

Democrats in the State Legislature tried unsuccessfully to stave off the need for the warrants through piece-meal budget cutting earlier in the week that was blocked by Republican lawmakers.

The Democrats, who are in the majority in both houses of the legislature, are at bitter war with Governor Schwarzenegger, who has said he will sign no budget legislation that does not close the entire budget gap and include several significant policy changes that will have an impact on future budgets. The governor’s failure to sign off on legislation earlier in the week that would have reduced payments to schools and thereby pushed off the need for IOUs was met with rage by State Senator Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem, who called it “without question the most irresponsible act I’ve seen in my 15 years of public service.”

The governor held his first of two planned news conference in Southern California here Thursday to denounce the lawmakers, whom he has already taken to task in every possible media — television, video and Twitter feed — for mulling, in one instance, changes to a law concerning the tail of cows while the budget stalemate continued. He also promoted several policy initiatives, including some that are sure to run afoul of public employee unions, which have historically been aligned with Democrats.

“I presented my proposal and asked the legislature to make the tough decisions that are necessary and to make the real tough and deep cuts,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said during his news conference in Los Angeles. He added: “Instead of negotiating and coming to a budget agreement, they decided to debate and to debate and to have hearings and more debates and more hearings and finger-pointing and assigning blame. At the end of the day, they haven’t accomplished anything.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/us/03calif.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Tags: Darrell Steinberg, Schwarzenegger, California politics, California budget, Twitter, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, Professional Engineers in California, State legislature, Warrants, IOU’s, budget gap, the great depression,

Posted via email from Global Business News

The First Twitter Arrest

Tucked away in a back corner of my morning paper, I found something that caught my eye.

Jean Anleu may be the first to be Twitarrested by his own government. To be sure, there are paranoid and repressive governments who fear the Twitterverse, and have taken actions. There may be scores of unreported arrests already. We've read reports of Iran arresting thousands, many of them for Internet activity. China and Vietnam are also worried about the effect that Twitter and other social networking sites has on opposition groups—the ability of protesters to use networking sites to gather people quickly for a common cause is a concern to governments that don't trust their own people.

But Guatemala is doing something different. They've gone public with Anleu's arrest to send a message to those who might use Twitter as a forum for protesting the government's actions.

Anleu's alleged crime? He was so fed up with corruption, especially the government banking system, that he used Twitter to send a message for popular action to counter the corruption. The managers of the government's rural development bank, Banrural, are enmeshed in a political scandal. Anleu sent this message out to the Twitterverse: "First concrete action should be take cash out of Banrural and bankrupt the bank of the corrupt."

Prosecutors now seek to charge him for spreading false information which carries a five-year prison sentence and $6,500 in fines (much more than the average Guatemalan makes in a year). Sympathetic Twitterers raised money for his bail. About half of his $6,200 bail was donated via PayPal from 19 countries.

Prosecutor Genaro Pacheco says that Anleu's words illegally undermined the public trust in Guatemala's banking system. The police were able to prove that Anleu sent the message by searching his home in Guatemala City. He was taken to a prison that houses kidnappers, extortionists and other dangerous criminals for two days before he was able to make bail. Anleu's lawyer, Jose Toledo, believes the government wants to make an example of him.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone declined to comment on the Anleu case or say whether he knows of any other arrests involving Tweeting. In an irony that only living in a country with a repressive government can produce, Anleu, a geeky computer enthusiast whose passions include playing chess online and reading Czech author Franz Kafka—we see his life has taken on some eerie parallels. Kafka wrote The Trial, whose protagonist struggles to defend himself against the powers of the state.

"I fear I'm being watched and scrutinized in everything I say and do," said Anleu, who walks around with an iPhone to constantly tweet and a BlackBerry loaded with e-books. "The fear makes me want to avoid saying what I think, even about the most mundane topics, and saying where I am, where I'm going—like you would normally do on Twitter."

Guatemala is only a nominal democracy—emerging, still, from a quarter century of genocidal civil war that has seen the deaths of 250,000 of its own citizens, most of the dead comprised the indigenous Mayan populations in remote villages. Guatemala has never been free from violence in its troubled history—a history our own country has provided examples in the laws of unintended consequences. In the 50s, Eisenhower's State Department and the CIA helped to overthrow the legitimate popularly elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, in part because that newly elected government posed a threat to our own multi-national corporations' profits and interests.

Twitter—not so innocuous or vacuous as some critics like to proclaim—it can be a tool for moving toward freedom, and to hold governments accountable.

Anleu's Facebook page is here.

Note: I have some experience in Guatemala. I've written about one part of that in aprevious post here on OS—Chajul and Chalcaté. In my time there, we were never completely safe. On our way up into the remote mountain villages to build homes for widows, we would pass by buses and vehicles, pushed off the dirt highways only enough to allow traffic to pass. They were metaphoric reminders from the government of the dangers of opposition. Slowly rotting and rusting hulks, burned from RPG explosions—stories of untold death and misery—charred and burned bones long since carried away. Our group even had 105mm howitzers fired over our encampment, reportedly as "artillery training exercises," but the message was clear. "You can be here to help widows, orphans, the poor and destitute, but don't make any political statement other than building homes for widows." On one of our trips a uniformed customs agent at the airport in Guatemala City asked us "Why are you taking this dental and medical equipment to the Indians? They're animals—they're not even people."

Source: http://open.salon.com/blog/bbd/2009/06/28/kafka_and_the_twitterverse

Tags: Open Salon, Guatemala, Eisenhower, Mayan, Twitter, Twitarrested, Jean Anleu, twitterverse, Guatemala City, iPhone, Kafka, blackberry, dissident, Global IT News, Politics, Technology and Politics,

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YouTube Uploads Soar After iPhone 3G S Ships

Mobile uploads to YouTube jumped 400 percent last Friday, the day that Apple released its iPhone 3GS, which contains a video recorder function and easy sharing features.

In the last six months, meanwhile, the Google-owned video site has seen mobile uploads increase by 1,700 percent, the company said in a blog post.

"This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks," YouTube wrote.

To take advantage of its increased uploads, YouTube issued a challenge to video creators -- make your video go viral through social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and YouTube will feature it on its homepage. Just upload your video with the "mobiletest" tag, share it with friends, and Tweet the link to @youtube.

"We'll give you one week to spread your test video far and wide, after which we'll take a look at the most popular clips and feature a few on our homepage in a special "mobile upload" edition of our Spotlight Video," YouTube said.

Also today, YouTube announced that it is rolling out the updated version of its channel design to all new users. All existing channels will roll over to the new version by July 15.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/zd/20090625/tc_zd/241763

Tags: YouTube mobile, iPhone 3G, Facebook, Twitter, mobiletest tag, YouTube spotlight video, Google, Global IT News, Youtube mobile video competition, Youtube channels,

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Twitter: Fastest Growing Brand

Twitter grew 1,448 percent from this time last year, but its growth is slowing as the year goes on, according to Monday data from Nielsen.

The micro-blogging site logged 18.2 million unique visitors in May 2009, up from 1.2 million in May 2008, and up 7 percent from April 2009. Those stats make Twitter the fastest growing brand year-over-year, but that growth is starting to slow, Nielsen said. Time spent on Twitter also increased 175 percent from last year, up from 6 minutes and 19 seconds to 17 minutes and 21 seconds. That was down 1 percent from April 2009, however.

Elsewhere in the social networking sphere, Facebook remained the number one global social networking site in May for the seventh month in a row with 144.3 million unique visitors. It was also number one in the U.S. for the fifth month in a row with 75.4 million visitors - a 190 percent increase from May 2008.

MySpace was still number one when it came to total video streams, with 116.1 million video streams. Unique video views jumped 22.9 percent month-over-month, from 9.9 million in April 2009 to 12.2 million in May.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/zd/20090622/tc_zd/241620

Tags: Twitter, Twitter growth, unique visitors, myspace, Facebook, Nielsen, unique video views, total video streams, twitter fastest growing brand, Global IT News, global social networking,

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Google, Facebook Launch Persian Services

(AFP) - Internet giant Google has unveiled a Farsi translation service to help Iranians "communicate directly" to the world, while Facebook has launched a version of its site in Persian, they said Friday.

The Internet has played a key role in allowing some Iranians to communicate since last week's disputed presidential elections and many international media outlets have used services like Twitter and emails in their coverage. "We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran," Google's principal scientist Franz Och said, announcing the addition of Farsi to Google Translate, its free online service.

Like YouTube and Twitter, "Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa -- increasing everyone's access to information," he added in a posting on Google's official blog. Meanwhile, Facebook engineer Eric Kwan said on its blog: "Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath." He added: "Today we're making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian." Several thousand people posted a "thumbs up" reaction to the news, denoting their approval.

The BBC reported that Google and Facebook had speeded up work on their projects because of huge interest in current events in Iran. Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been declared the winner of the elections, provoking major protests on the streets of Tehran by supporters of his principal challenger, moderate former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Many young people have been taking part in the protests. Meanwhile, the BBC also said Friday it has increased the number of satellites carrying its BBC Persian television service to countries including Iran. It said in a statement that the Hotbird 6 satellite which carries BBC international TV and radio services had been subjected to "deliberate interference" since last Friday. Services will now be available via three other satellites.

"This is an important time for Iran and many Iranians are turning to the BBC for impartial and independent news and information during this crisis," said BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090619/tc_afp/iranpoliticsinternetgooglefacebookmedialanguage_20090619160723

Tags: Google, Twitter, Facebook, Farsi, Iran, BBC, YouTube, Hotbird 6, Franz Och, Peter Horrocks, Eric Kwan, BBC Persian Television, Google Translate, Global Best Practice,

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Mideast Hanging On Every Text and Tweet From Iran

Though Tehran has largely shut down communication outlets, protesters are getting out snippets of text and stealthily uploaded photos in a guerrilla-style Internet revolt.

Reporting from Cairo -- Footage of burning cars, masked boys and bloodied protesters in Iran is playing across the Middle East, captivating Arab countries where repressive regimes have for years been arresting political bloggers and cyberspace dissidents.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations have tense relations with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Shiite-led theocracy ruling Iran. But they don't want protests in Tehran to inspire similar democratic fervor in their countries -- especially the merging of Facebook and Twitter with a potent opposition leader like Iran's presidential challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

So far, that has yet to happen. Egyptian activists, for example, have called for rallies and strikes on Internet social networks over the last year, but they have no galvanizing personality and are too disorganized to pose a threat to the police state controlled by President Hosni Mubarak.

"I don't think similar events could even take place in Egypt or other Arab countries," said Ibrahim Issa, editor of the Cairo independent newspaper Al Dustour, who has been arrested a number of times for criticizing the Mubarak government. "We hope and we always keep faith that what's happening in Iran could push Arabs to try and do the same against their oppressive regimes. But reality tells us that this is not applicable. We are comparing 30 years of what I can call Iranian democracy to 30 years of Egyptian tyranny."

The Middle East is witnessing Iran slip into a guerrilla-style Internet and Twitter game of strategies and slogans pecked out by protesters attempting to outflank a government that has largely shut down communication outlets, leaving the nation breathless on snippets of text and stealthily uploaded pictures.

It is a battle on the streets and across the airways, a realm where technology is both churning out and smothering polarizing messages and images. Iranian authorities have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and cut off text messaging. But still, word is trickling beyond the censors, linking, however sparsely, protesters from Tehran to those elsewhere in the country.

Tweets by StopAhmadi are both philosophical and terse: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Over n' out." "Girl shot in Tehran." Persiankiwi's tweets list updates of police movements and arrests: "Our street is quiet now -- we cannot move tonight but must move asap when dawn starts."

Iran is offering an intriguing glimpse into how years of disillusionment can suddenly leap from cafes and university campuses to a national revolt, where dueling political voices and agendas square off with banners, rhetoric and allegations of election fraud.

The Iranian elections have "imposed themselves on everything. The masses of young men, the noticeable presence of young women -- especially female university students -- and the slogans of change, the intense competition that raged," Mohammad Hussein al-Yusifi wrote in the Kuwait daily Awan. "All these factors left us no possibility but to observe closely what is happening on the Iranian scene."

The characters in that tumult, appearing amid videos of tear gas and baton-swinging police, have provided alluring narratives: presidential challenger Mousavi, whose Facebook fan group has about 50,000 members, standing amid throngs of his supporters; Ahmadinejad proclaiming victory and calling for calm; and the hovering visage of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Each is mentioned on Twitter missives bristling with rumors about what might happen next.

But sometimes things go blank. On Tuesday, Persiankiwi's Twitter feed, which has nearly 19,000 followers, posted this: "I must log off now -- will log on when I have more info -- need phone line -- no mobile cover, no sms, no satellite, no radio." Similar difficulties are encountered by international media. Teymoor Nabili, a reporter for Al Jazeera, wrote on the network's website: "Day-by-day our ability to access any information has been slowly whittled away. . . . I am no longer allowed to take a camera out into the streets. I'm not even sure I can walk out into the streets with a mobile phone without getting into trouble."

Activists and bloggers watching developments in Iran from afar say the protests show the promise and limits of technology in orchestrating the kind of social unrest seen in Tehran. There is also the sentiment that Iranian activists rising up against an anti-Western regime enjoy more international support than their counterparts in Arab countries where anti-democratic governments are close U.S. allies.

"A cyber war and its bloggers [can't] carry out a revolution or overthrow a certain regime on its own," said Wael Abbas, a blogger and human rights activist in Egypt. "Full revolution has to come from the masses in the streets." The huge rallies and placards in Tehran make Issa, the Cairo editor, envious: "The current Egyptian system was built on fraud while the Iranian revolution was built by the people, and that is why they are fighting for such a system," he said. "The bottom line is that unlike Iran, we are politically dead."

Iran's revolutionary spirit, evident 30 years ago in the Islamic Revolution, has been unbottled again. And for the Arab world it is a lesson in resistance and a maturing democracy that may be controlled by clerics but is expressing its will in the streets and in blips of texts and tweets.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-iran-image17-2009jun17,0,5597.story?track=rss

Tags: Iran, Twitter, Iranian elections, Iranian protests, Cairo, Egypt, Facebook, Bloggers, activists, persiankiwi, Tehran, Global Development News, Al Dustour, Mubarak,

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Norway's Central Bank to Twitter Interest Rate Decision

OSLO (Reuters) – Norges Bank will Twitter its interest rate decision on Wednesday, breaking ground for central banks using social networks to spread the word on monetary policy.

"We believe we are the first in the world to use Twitter this way," Norges Bank spokeswoman Siv Meisingseth told Reuters.

She said Norges Bank was giving priority to its regular Internet announcements but would seek to Twitter the rate news at "about the same time."

To sign up, go to http://twitter.com/norgesbank

Norges Bank's rate decision is due at 8 a.m. EDT.

(Reporting by Wojciech Moskwa)

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090617/wr_nm/us_norway_rates_twitter_2

Tags: Norway, Norges Bank, Norwegian Central Bank, Siv Meisingseth, Twitter, Global IT News, Oslo, Global Development News,

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US Asks Twitter to Stay Online Because of Iran Vote

NEW YORK (AFP) – The US government took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of its use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, according to a senior official.

The request highlighted the Obama administration's Web-savvy and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media. But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tuneup, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday but said the decision was made with its network provider, not the State Department. The micro-blogging site went down around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Tuesday and was back online about an hour later.

A State Department official in Washington said Twitter had been asked to delay Monday's shutdown because it was being used as "an important means of communications" in Iran. The official told reporters on condition of anonymity that Twitter was all the more important because the Iranian government had shut down other websites, cell phones, and newspapers.

"One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter," the official said. "They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to." Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in a blog post, noted the State Department request but said the decision to delay the outage was made with Twitter's network provider, NTT America.

"When we worked with our network provider yesterday to reschedule this planned maintenance, we did so because events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network," Stone said.

"We decided together to move the date. It made sense for Twitter and for NTT America to keep services active during this highly visible global event," he said. Stone said "it's humbling to think that our two-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that State officials find their way toward highlighting our significance.

"However, it's important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision making process," he said. "Nevertheless, we can both agree that the open exchange of information is a positive force in the world." Stone also said the maintenance was a success and Twitter's network capacity had been "significantly increased."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said meanwhile that the United States does not intend to meddle in Iranian politics. "We don't want to be seen as interfering," he said. Obama himself issued the same message Tuesday, saying: "It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as ... meddling in Iranian elections."

Kelly went on to say that new media provided a good source of information for the US government, which has had no diplomatic relations with Iran for three decades. "We're of course monitoring the situation through a number of different media, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter," he said.

Another Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, speaking at a two-day conference in New York on Tuesday about the micro-blogging service, described the usage of Twitter by Iranians as "amazing." "Just think about what's occurring over there and the accessibility that we all have to see this unfold in real time," he said. "It's amazing. It's huge."

"Suddenly everything that's happening over there feels extremely close," he said. "It feels approachable. And that's really important and that is really the greatest success of what Twitter is."

"If ever there was a time that Twitter mattered it was this past weekend in Iran," added Jeff Pulver, organizer of the 140 Character Conference.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090617/ts_alt_afp/iranuspoliticsunrestinternettwitter_20090617014955

Tags: US State Department, Obama, Biz Stone, Twitter, NTT America, Jack Dorsey, 140 Character Conference, Jeff Pulver, Iran, Iranians, Facebook, Election, Election Protests, Global Development News,

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Dell Is Monetizing Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social media company Twitter is struggling to craft a profitable business model, but the Web-based service has helped Dell Inc chalk up millions of dollars in sales.

Dell said on Thursday it has raked in more than $3 million from Twitter followers who clicked through its posts to its Web sites to make purchases. The company, which has posted to Twitter about two years and tracks the sales with proprietary software, made more than $1 million in the past 6 months.

"We're going to watch it over time to make sure it's tracking at the right level," said Lionel Menchaca, Dell's chief blogger. "It is trending upward and that's what we're going to be looking at overall."

Three million in sales over two years is a pittance for Dell, ranked by IDC as the world's second-largest PC maker in the first quarter of 2009. Dell posted $12.3 billion of revenue in the first quarter of this year, alone. But the PC maker has become one of the first public examples of how companies might profit from Twitter.

Twitter does not charge companies for such benefits, but does not rule out doing so in the future.

"For now, monetization of this type of activity remains unknown," Twitter spokeswoman Jenna Sampson said in a statement. "However, as the network grows, the company will be committing more resources toward profitability."

Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said such financial success could provide a model for Twitter, itself, to make money. "Certainly one of the ways Twitter can begin to think of itself as a money-making operation is to facilitate a lot of these things, build it as part of the infrastructure. So if you're a company, you can pay Twitter a certain amount of money and they can directly distribute coupons on your behalf, or clear transactions," Weiner said.

Twitter is building add-on tools and services for businesses and professional users, co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit last month. Dell said it posts 6 to 10 times a week to its DellOutlet account, which is where the majority of Twitter-based sales have come from. Stephanie Nelson, who manages the account, said almost every post includes a coupon or a link to a sale, and about half of the posts are Twitter-exclusive deals.

The PC maker, which has about 600,000 followers, is one of the Top 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter, according to private trackers TwitterCounter and Twitterholic.

Other non-media companies ranked in the Top 100 include Whole Foods Market Inc, Woot.com, Zappos.com, JetBlue Airways Corp. Whole Foods and JetBlue said they have not tried to monetize their Twitter presence. Woot.com and Zappos.com were not available for comment.

Twitter had approximately 17 million unique U.S.-based visitors in April, and about 24 million worldwide, according to Nielsen. Its number of users has grown by more than a thousand percent over the last year.

Small companies are also finding financial success on Twitter. New Orleans-based Naked Pizza, which turns $1 million in sales annually, is "betting the farm" on its Twitter presence according to co-founder Jeff Leach.

The company, which created a Twitter presence about two and a half months ago and has about 4,300 followers, last week said nearly 69 percent of sales generated during a one-day Twitter advertising blitz came from customers drawn in from the site.

Leach posts 1 to 15 times a day and said his company sees a sustained 20 percent of sales dollars from its Twitter presence. Leach recently put up a billboard advertising the company's Twitter presence and is planning mailings bearing the company's Twitter contact information instead of a phone number.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090612/wr_nm/us_twitter_dell_2

Tags: Dell monetizing Twitter, Twitter, Dell, Jetblue, Woot, Zappos, Naked Pizza, Reuters Global Technology Summit, Biz Stone, Nielsen, IDC, Gartner DellOutlet, Global Best Practices,

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