Social Media News: Twitter to add new features?

UPDATE: Apparently, @twitteronnotice is not what many have thought it was supposed to be...back to Louis Gray for the answers:

My late-night speculation on Twitter readying a new feature uncovered not a new way for users to send notices to others on the site, but instead, one of the multiple internal-only accounts used to raise company morale and togetherness.

Definitely go to Gray's blog for the hilarious explanation from Twitter.




Twitter has you on notice. Compared to Facebook, Twitter is still a pretty small company with a tiny support team.  With it's explosion of users over the past year or so, this team has been overwhelmed trying to keep up with spam accusations, suspension of accounts, abusive behaviour - you know, your regular mixed cocktail of internet social norms.  According to Louis Gray, respected tech blogger, Twitter might be giving some support to their, ummm, support team.

A new account, called @twitteronnotice, says cryptically "You're On Notice!", featuring an avatar of Uncle Sam glaringly pointing his finger in your direction. The account even calls itself "Minus One", a common Internet tally for somebody or something being modded down by the community. (e.g. +1 and -1)

Get enough negative karma associated with your account, and you might see your account go on notice. While no public details are yet available for this private account, it could be a way for the company to try and avoid user attrition through aggressive account deletions, and put accounts in something of a holding pattern for violating the terms of service.

To add more credence to this rumour, the account is only being followed by a select group of Twitter staff members.  Finally, as many already know, it's impossible to create a Twitter account with the word "Twitter" in it - unless you work for the company, of course.  So it's pretty much guaranteed that Twitter is working on something here.

In other Twitter account news.  Are you an active participant in #FollowFriday?  Twitter might be attempting to make it easier for you to get the word out about your favourite tweeps. The account @TwitterShoutout has also been discovered by Louis Gray, suggesting that the account will be used as a new action to promote your favourite people on Twitter.  Gray speculates that a new list may appear in your profile that keeps track of all the tweeps who give you a "shout out", kind of like recommendations in LinkedIn.  One of Twitter's goals with the explosion of users in the last while has been to promote ways for discovering people as Twitter get's pretty boring if you don't have anyone interesting to follow.

What I learned on the internet: the auroras...from space!, dumb parents, mystery tunnels and more!

My mind!  It hurts!

Another interesting few days on the internet.  Up today, we have a cool picture, a dumb parent doing dumb things to his kid, a flashback to an amazing college football game, and a couple of crazy stories from around here in Hamilton, Ontario.  Let's get to it!

The Auroras from Space
Not much to say about this, it's a pic from the International Space Station of the "Southern Lights".  I'll leave the description to the folks at The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth:

"While aurora are generally only visible close to the poles, severe magnetic storms impacting the Earth’s magnetic field can shift them towards the equator. This striking aurora image was taken during a geomagnetic storm that was most likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 24, 2010. The ISS was located over the Southern Indian Ocean at an altitude of 350 kilometers (220 miles), with the astronaut observer most likely looking towards Antarctica (not visible) and the South Pole."

 And, the pic:

Very cool.



Dumb Parents
Once again, not much description needed.  Parent thinks it's funny to attach a rocket to a kid's loose tooth and decides to film it.  Parenting 101 says "propellant and children's mouths don't mix".  Just because something bad doesn't happen here doesn't mean it's not stupid.





Northwestern vs. Auburn in the Outback Bowl 2010
This isn't anything recent or very old...so it's kind of in the internet's version of purgatory.  So what if it isn't "cool" to post stuff that's either only a few days old or super retro - this video will be posted nonetheless!  If you like college football, sports, or surprise endings, you'll love this recap of an instant Outback Bowl classic (I think that's kind of an oxymoron, but I digress).




Yes I know I suck at formatting clips to fit horizontally in this blog.  Thanks for making me feel worse.


The Local Edition

Part 1
Only in Hamilton.  I've been holding back on posting this for a few weeks.  I don't know why because it makes me laugh every time I read it.  Apparently a guy in downtown Hamilton was trying to steal a phone booth of all things.  From The Spec:

"He was wheeling away a stolen booth, pushing it on a skateboard when an incredulous cop caught up with him near King Street East and Hughson Street about 7 p.m.

Police don't know where the booth came from but say Bell Canada values them at about $1,000 each. A 59-year-old Hamilton man has been charged with theft and possession of property less than $5,000."

First of all - wow.  Secondly, he was 59 years old (!!!1!).  Third, what is a 59-year-old man doing with a skateboard??  Fourth, I really love how the reporter makes a point of declaring that the police don't know where the booth came from.

Way too funny.

Part 2
Hamilton roadwork crews had a bit of a surprise as they dug up the sidewalks of Queen Street North.  What did they find?  Well nothing really at all - unless you count the giant unknown tunnel found under the street!  Once again, from our friends at The Spec:

"The tunnel -- believed to be a remnant of Greening Donald Company Limited -- is about two metres tall, about 21/2 metres wide and around 20 metres long. The top of the tunnel formed the sidewalk on either side of the street and runs across Queen, near Peter Street.

"What they did was they put reinforcing steel in it ... and then they poured concrete around it to make it appear as though it was the sidewalk, which in actual fact it was, but it was also part of the roof structure of the tunnel itself," said Jeff Pidsadny, senior project manager in construction with the city."

On a bit of a depressing note, it's being reported that they're going to fill in the tunnel.  That seems like a perfectly good waste of a tunnel to me.

What I Learned On The Internet: Lifesaving severed arms, stuck trucks, and planned intergalactic explosions

We're blogging in space...

It's been a while since my last educational post of fascinating facts found on the internet, but I promise this will not disappoint. We have quite the lineup today full of...well...don't really want to spoil the surprises so let's just get started.

The Sandpit

Source
First up, a really great video of NYC but processed to look like a miniature.  Using over 35,000 still photos, Sam O'Hare then combined them all to make this stunning video.  Be sure to check out how he did it.


The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

West Hartford Man Tried To Cut Off His Own Arm

Source
So here's a weird one.  First of all, dude got his arm caught in the furnace...details of exactly how are sketchy, but, yeah, he was stuck there for 2 days. TWO WHOLE DAYS!  Arm stuck in furnace.  Like...whoa.  That's crazy enough as it is. BUT, it gets worse.  Coming in and out of consciousness, he realized that his arm was infected and seeing as how he couldn't exactly make his way to a doctor or anything unless he wanted to carry a freakin' furnace along with him, he did what any sane person would obviously do - he cut off his arm.  Excuse my language but HOLY SHIT! HE CUT. OFF. HIS. ARM! WTF!!

I cringe at the thought of pulling splinters out of my hand and this guy is nonchalantly chopping his own arm off.  Jeebus!  And I'm guessing he didn't exactly have a hot knife sitting around for the job either:

"...using whatever tools were within reach, he started cutting. He managed to cut through most of his arm, except for some fat..."

Oh god.  Yeah I have trouble cutting the fat too...ON A STEAK.  This guy has some serious, eh-hem, guts.

Money quote from his doctor:

"Said Shapiro, "It's inspiring to see someone take their life into their own hands, quite literally."'

Wow.

Camera survives ocean trip to Florida

Source
Slightly less traumatic story - the journey of a lost camera. So Paul Shultz finds a waterproof camera bouncing off some rocks on a beach in Key West.  He picks it up wondering who's it is, flips through the pictures and sees some underwater shots.  He then proceeds to upload the photos to Scubaboard.com where it is determined the pics are from of the shores of Aruba...1,100 miles from Key West!  Presumably, this camera has travelled that whole way.  A bit more investigation and the owner of the camera is located in Aruba and is sent to the grateful photographer!  Check out the link for the whole story.

Spacecraft Explodes Upon Re-Entry

Source
Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa returned from a mission that involved collecting samples from a comet far, far away.  The vehicle was designed to drop it's pay load upon entering Earth's atmosphere with the spacecraft itself fulfilling it's destiny with a beautiful explosion in the night sky.  Check out the video:

Local Edition x 2

In honour of the World Cup, the Hamilton Spectator does a demographic breakdown of the city by competing team.

And I think this next picture says it all:

What I Learned On The Internet: Tessellation, Standing Cats, and TV Failures

Another installment of "What I Learned On The Internet" where I attempt to enlighten my millions of avid readers with some intellectual discussions on how the internet is advancing our society to an ultimate Utopian ideal...or basically what irreverent article or video I came across in the last few days.

Subway to start tessellating cheese July 1st
Big news for all you submarine sandwich eaters out there - Subway will now lay out their cheese triangles in an alternating fashion so one side of the sandwich doesn't end up with more cheese.  This apparently is called tessellating.

Really?  Is tessellating even a word?  I think they made it up to sound like a more complicated process to explain why it took THREE YEARS for them to listen  to their customers to make this change.



First human infected with computer virus
This sounds like it's out of the Matrix.  Are we going to need Neo to come and rid us of all electronically-based ailments in our bodies?  What actually happened:

Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading had a chip inserted in his hand which was then infected with a virus.

 The cynical area of my brain tells me that this is a cheap publicity stunt.


Contender for Funniest Video Ever




This is a huge win for the internet. Be sure to watch right through to the end for a spectacular finish.


Lost and Star Wars Nerdom Combine


If only Locke used a mechanical breathing device and was Jack's father and Jack was a whining protagonist that wanted to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.


The Biggest TV Failures of the Past Decade
Clips from the biggest flops of the past decade.  Seems like the Seinfeld cast didn't do to well after they parted ways.  However, watching this clip from The Michael Richards Show still makes me laugh hard:





Local Edition: Skydiving Houdini
Local Hamilton guy jumps out of a plane with a black bag over his head and attempts to un-cuff himself and pull his parachute before hitting the ground.  Apparently this act was due to a bet he made with some Toronto high school students.  Crazy!

What I learned on the internet...

This picture owns my mind. It's like when you point a camcorder at the TV and you keep seeing smaller and smaller images of TV's within each other until you reach some moment of singularity.

So! This marks the first occasion of a regular topic I'd like to blog about once a week...more or less. I like to keep you guessing.

Anyway, the aim of this post is to enlighten you with some good ol' fashion cool content I've stumbled across in the last little bit. It could be funny, mind blowing, sad, enlightening, or merely interesting. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

Crazy robot that might take over the world
I really like robots. And not in a hipster-1950's-robots-are-cool-way. No...real, live robots. This kind of blew me away and frightened me at the same time:


Sorry, I can't get the video to resize properly

Can you imagine how complicated this would be to program and design? I almost died trying to figure out how to use html on my so-so website that I am both ashamed of for it's mediocrity, but proud of because I made it from scratch (with a little help from a script I scooped). Anyway, humans...beware. I predict we have about 5 years left to rule. And don't get me started on nanobots.

Blurb: Make your own books



Kind of a cop out because I've known about Blurb for a while...but it's just so damn cool. Basically, Blurb is a service that you can use to make any kind of book you want. You download some software that helps you design it, add in text, add in pictures, save the thing and upload it to Blurb's site and boom! You can order books that you created yourself. Who says you need a publisher? And the pricing is pretty reasonable too. I want to create a photo book but haven't decided what the topic will be yet. Any suggestions?


Local Edition: No Lovin' For McLovin














So it seems as though Christopher Mintz-Plasse has a thing against Hamilton, the city I live in. Christopher is the actor who played the absolutely hilarious character of McLovin in Superbad. But some locals have fought back, organizing rallies and protests. Don't believe me? Check out the rest.

That's it for now! See you next time.