A Twitter-only Device

Spotted on TechRadar, a new mobile device that gives driect access to Twitter - and nothing else.

Dubbed the 'affordable alternative' to a smartphone, the TwitterPeek is a full QWERTY-enabled device exclusively used for sending and receiving Tweets.

The TwitterPeek has been designed by Arnol Sarva, founder of Peek, which specialises in low-cost email devices for those that don't want to pay for a smartphone.

Twitter 'costs businesses £1.4bn'

Staff who use Twitter and other social networking sites while at work are costing UK businesses £1.38bn ($2.25bn) every year, a report has said, according to the BBC.

Twitter offered $500,000 to run ad just one day

According to The Telegraph, Microblogging site Twitter has been offered half a million dollars to feature a single banner advert on its pages for just one day.

The offer has been made by uSocial, a company that specialises in marketing products and services through the social-networking website. It has offered Twitter $500,000 if it hosts an advert on its site for 24 hours.

Shades of another era? Sounds like we've been here before, circa 2000, when companies like computer.com spent 3 million dollars on three 30 second superbowl commercials, after raising 6 million with investors.

The Berlin Twitter Wall

For the upcoming 20-year anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, The Berlin Twitter Wall is asking people to share their thoughts on the event and post a wish for the future.

Just use the hashtag #fotw on twitter and after a while your message will appear on the twitterwall.

By clicking "stop" and "play", older messages (tweets) will be shown. A click on the cameras up on the wall will show a selection of the domino-artwork that will fall in a symbolic act on November 9th 2009 at the "Fest der Freiheit" (festival of freedom) at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

Berlintwitterwall.com is an initiative of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH within the festivities of Berlin’s 20-year anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.

Some of the messages (many are in German)

-- »no more walls in the world #fotw«

-- @paulvandyk Maybe in the next 50 years the internet will bring everyone together, so will be harder to get people to fight money wars.#fotw«ke we used to be, so free your mind, free Venezuela, Peace!#fotw«

-- »?Wir wollen eine Mauer bauen, wir brauchen eine Mauer, eine Mauer der Liebe" #fotw«

Griffith University adds Twitter to Curriculm

Twitter has been made compulsory writing for would-be journalists at Griffith University in Australia.

[via The Sydney Morning Herald]

Twitter secures SMS deal in India

As of yesterday, 110 million new people can tweet via SMS, all from the second-most populous nation in the world. [via Mashable]

Twitter announced that it had secured an SMS deal with India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel. Its customers can now send their 140 character updates via texting. While texting an update will still cost Indian customers, receiving SMS updates from Twitter will be completely free.

Now Planes are Tweeting, Too

According to Mashable, planes are now Tweeting too.

Apparently Lufthansa has set up a new service named MySkyStatus that automatically posts the current position of your flight to Twitter or Facebook so your friends can follow your travels.

Cult Tweets

The organiser of a US spiritual retreat, during which two people died and another 19 had to be admitted to hospital, has been caught deleting potentially incriminating tweets he published during the event. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

While attendees were falling ill at the retreat, he made several posts to Twitter that were later deleted but not completely removed from the site.

"The Spiritual Warrior has conquered death and therefore has no enemies, and no fear, in this life or the next," he wrote in one.

In another he wrote: "... for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?"

After deleting those tweets Ray published new Twitter messages saying he was "shocked & saddened by the tragedy occurring in Sedona".

His latest post: "I am spending the weekend in prayer and meditation for all involved in this difficult time; and I ask you to join me in doing the same."

Twitter to introduce live video-tweeting

Twitter users may soon be posting real-time video tweets in addition to text tweets under plans to modernise the site, reports The Telegraph.

The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter's founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.

Tweet gets waiter fired

A waiter claims he was fired after complaining on Twitter that actress Jane Adams star of the star of the new HBO drama Hung failed to leave him a tip.

[via The Telegraph]

Tweet What You Eat diet shames people into calorie counting

A new diet on Twitter dubbed Tweet What You Eat has been hailed for its effectiveness as it shames people into listing the amount of calories they have consumed each day.

[The Guardian via The Huffington Post]

Twitter promotes Social Conscience

Twitter’s “suggested users” list is a Who’s Who of Twitter celebrities, featuring the likes of Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Ashton Kutcher, John McCain, Martha Stewart, and others with millions of followers. The New York Times claimed that a spot on the list would guarantee 500,000 additional followers and reported that social media guru Jason Calacanis had offered $250,000 to be listed. News.com reports.

Last Friday, Twitter did something remarkable. It added a number of well-known social entrepreneurs and innovators to this list, among them Social Edge, Skoll Foundation, Kiva, Matt Flannery (Kiva co-founder), Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz (Acumen Fund founder), charity: water, GOOD Magazine, Kjerstin Erickson (FORGE founder), and Room to Read.

Twitter’s move is huge, not only because it propels social entrepreneurs to enter mainstream but also because the micro-blogging service – THE trading floor for attention on the web – has decided to give away some of the attention it attracts to promote good causes.

Read full article.

UK Court order served over Twitter

The High Court has given permission for an injunction to be served via social-networking site Twitter. The BBC reports.

The order is to be served against an unknown Twitter user who anonymously posts to the site using the same name as a right-wing political blogger.

The order demands the anonymous Twitter user reveal their identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who blogs at a site called Blaney's Blarney.

The order says the Twitter user is breaching the copyright of Mr Blaney.

... UK law states that an injunction does not have to be served in person and can be delivered by several different means including fax or e-mail.

'Tweeting' medics expose patients

Medics posting messages on networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are breaching patient confidentiality, the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals, reports the BBC.

Research in the leading journal found examples of web gossip by trainee doctors sharing private patient stories and details.

Over half of 78 US medical schools studied had reported cases of students posting unprofessional content online.

One in 10 of these contained frank violations of patient confidentiality.

Many postings included profanity and discriminatory language. Sexually suggestive material and photos showing drunkenness or illicit drug use were also commonplace.

Online Posting of Unprofessional Content by Medical Students - Journal of the American Medical Association

Twitteleh

Just in time for Rosh Hashanah comes a Twitter alternative targeting the one person guaranteed to care: your Jewish mother: Twitteleh.

Twitteleh requires that you answer three basic questions: Where are you?, What have you eaten? and Are you wearing a sweater?

Very funny.

[via Mashable]

Classic works get Twitterature treatment in new book

Emmett Rensin and Alexander Aciman distil more than 60 literary classics into fewer than 20 tweets a book. [via The Guardian]

There was a minor publishing sensation this summer when Penguin announced that it had bought the rights for the book, Twitterature, in which two first year university students summarise everything from Medea to Madame Bovary.

The book is not published in the UK until 5 November but an advance copy has been seen by the Guardian.

Romeo tweets his dying lament: O, I am fortune's fool! Maybe just a tool. And so I die. BTW that other woman I was into before Juliet? Would've been a safer bet.

Read full article.

Phone calling coming to Twitter

A beta service expected to launch Thursday will allow Twitter users to make voice calls to each other without needing to know someone's phone number.

A new third-party offering from Jajah known as Jajah@call is expected to go into beta Thursday morning that will allow Twitter users to initiate a two-way voice chat with other users.

[via Geek Gestalt by Daniel Terdiman]

Twittering ferries alert passengers to delays

The world's first tweeting ferries are sailing across The Solent, thanks to an inventor who took matters into his own hands after becoming frustrated with delays to his commute.

Hundreds of passengers travelling between Southampton and Cowes on the Isle of Wight now use the micro-blogging site to receive automatic updates when their ships enter and leave port.

[via The Telegraph]

Does Twitter make you stupid?

Dr Tracy Alloway, cognitive psychologist and director of the Centre for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, says that the ''instant'' nature of texting, Twitter and YouTube is not healthy for working memory.

''On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information [that is] very succinct,'' said Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving your nerve connections.''

[via Stuff]

Twitter's New Terms of Service

Twitter publishes new terms of service -- you own your tweets & Twitter can show you ads.

[via Publish2.com]

Woofer, a Twitter parody in 1400 signs no less

Sometimes, 140 characters isn't nearly enough.

That's the premise behind Woofer, a Web site recently launched by a couple of Washington-based friends.

Woofer, however, is really just a practical joke albeit a rather good one. Instead of the 140 charactars that Twitter offers with Woofer you get 1400 charactars. However the fun bit is that if you don't reach 1400 charactars it won't let you post.

Since Woofer went online on Aug. 14, about 11,000 people have posted wordy entries to the site, though many more have dropped by just to take a look.

The most popular post on there at the moment is called 'Four score and seven years' and is an inspiring segment of a speech from US President Abraham Lincoln.

[The Washington Post and TechDigest]

Oven sends a Tweet when done

Make your oven send a tweet to all your followers when your apple and cinnamon cake is done with BakerTweet.

The first BakerTweet device has been installed at the Albion Cafe on Boundary Street in Shoreditch, London. To find out what's cooking follow @albionsoven on Twitter.

How does it work?

In simple terms it's a bakery-proof box that sends messages wirelessly to Twitter. The clever bit is that the baker can update their messages and things they're selling using a simple web interface. Obviously not something that you'd do mid-bake but it's an important feature for future-proofing the device.

[via Publish2.com]

Twitter, texting useful for disaster communication

Text messaging, Twitter and social networking Web sites could help families stay in touch in the wake of a disaster, a national safety group working with the government said Tuesday.

The Safe America Foundation announced a national campaign to train families about alternate ways of staying in touch if traditional communication methods are not working.

[via Cellular News]

In emergencies, text messaging has been recommended for years instead of voice calls, enabling the people who need to make voice calls the most - emergency responders and 911 callers - can get through more easily

Roddick slams US Open's 'lame' Twitter rules

Watch what you tweet.

That's the message tennis authorities are delivering as the US Open gets set to start, telling players and their entourages to be careful about what they post on the social networking site Twitter. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Signs are being posted in the players' lounge, locker rooms and referee's office at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre with the header: "Important. Player Notice. Twitter Warning."

The signs, written by the Tennis Integrity Unit, point out that Twitter messages could violate the sport's anti-corruption rules.

Andy Roddick, for one, is not a fan of the warning. In a tweet on Friday night, the 2003 US Open champion wrote that he thought it was "lame the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting. I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can't do it on our own time ... we'll see."

Read full article.

TweetSaver archives your tweets

TweetSaver is a paid service that backs up (almost) everything you've ever posted to Twitter (your last 3,200 tweets) along with private messages and replies from other users.

[via News.com]

'Poll leak' tweets alarm Germans

Forecasts for Sunday's results in Saarland, Thuringia and Saxony appeared on Twitter 90 minutes before polling stations closed in the three states.

According to Spiegel magazine via the BBC, the assumption is that the information in the Twitter postings was leaked from either within political parties or the media.

Celebs endorse products via Twitter

Former Playmate Holly Madison is also making a name for herself as an endorser of Giorgio Armani on Twitter, according to USA Today.

She and a growing number of well-known names from TV, movies, music, books and the Web are touting products to their legions of followers online. Home-improvement expert Bob Vila has tweeted/vouched for K-Mart, and reality star Kim Kardashian is representing Armani too.

Armani is paying Izea, an online marketing firm that pairs brands with celebrities, to market its brand in the land of Twitter. ... The biggest check Izea CEO Ted Murphy has written to an unnamed celebrity is $20,000 -- for one post.

The main reason why Twitter isn't used by teenagers

The main raison why teenagers use Twitter far less than adults:

When Twitter became popular, teenagers already had their favorite Web sites for communicating, so they were not interested in a new one. The people who discovered Twitter were adults who were new to social networking.

[Bits via The Broad Reach Of Social Technologies, a report by Forrester Research]

Hundreds on Armstrong Tweet ride

About 300 people have joined an impromptu bike ride with cycling legend Lance Armstrong after he issued an open invitation on a Twitter post, reports the BBC.

The seven-times Tour de France winner alerted fans that he was coming to Scotland during a Tweet on Monday.

He posted: "Hey Glasgow, Scotland! I'm coming your way tomorrow. Who wants to go for a bike ride?"

Up to 300 people are thought to have turned out for the event - including Scottish former cycling champion, Graeme Obree.

A Musical Meted Out via Twitter

At a recent performance of “Next to Normal,” the Broadway musical at the Booth Theater on West 45th Street, Alice Ripley, was reaching to answer a cordless telephone when she knocked it off the stage. Fourth wall broken, Ms. Ripley asked, with a smile, “Could you hand that to me?” The New York Times reports.

Audience members were suddenly on all fours, but when they could not find the prop, a woman in the front row held up her cellphone, which Ms. Ripley accepted and spoke her lines into before tossing it back, to laughter and applause.

It is, it turns out, strangely fitting that a theatergoer’s cellphone should play a role in a “Next to Normal” performance, since many people have been introduced to the musical by the devices. In early May, six weeks after opening, the production began what is by all accounts a Broadway first: over Twitter, the social networking site, an adapted version of the show began to be published in the form of short text messages, or tweets — just a line from a character at a time. Several times daily over 35 days, followers of N2NBroadway eagerly awaited the arrival of the tweets on their cellphones and computers.