And Signing Out, For Now

Well, the final exam is over and done with, so I already said goodbye to everyone in the class in person, and I just posted the grades, so that pretty much wraps things up for the Social Moose. It's been great fun and great learning, and I thank you all for a splendid semester, and wish you all the best of luck!

This is The Social Moose signing out, for now...

Celebrity Twitter Overkill

How could I not post this?

The Social Moose Thanks BJ Emerson and Tasti-D-Lite

Back on April 27, we were delighted to have BJ Emerson of Tasti-D-Lite as a guest speaker in our class, not the least because he brought us free samples. It was marvelous to hear him talk about his own experiences and approaches to social media in a business context, and we were fortunate that he allowed us to video his talk. It's not possible to present the class in its entirety, but here are some excerpts from his time with us:
















And so, the Social Moose, aka the Spring 2009 Interactive Media class at Fordham University thanks BJ Emerson and Tasti-D-Lite for a delicious discussion of social media!

Reflecting Moose

Prior to taking Interactive Media I never appreciated the full capabilities of Web 2.0. After reading and discussing the innovations to cyberspace, it's amazing to see how far the technology has come in such little time. I think about other forms of media that have progressed over hundreds of years while the Internet essentially evolved in a couple of decades. 

Social networking is the current fad in the cyberspace community. I find it fascinating how essentially our entire country is trying to figure out how to utilize this new phenomenon. You have the American people, celebrities, and corporations all adapting to this new way of utilizing technology. I'm curious to see how long this sensationalism lasts. I've learned to respect Twitter and all of its capabilities, but I'm not entirely comfortable with how much attention it's receiving. I'm cautious about the amount of time my generation spends on the computer. There are more and more reasons to constantly check your profiles and there are also so many different ways to check. The Internet is at the touch of our fingers and I wonder how much that pulls us away from reality.  While I respect technology, I'm also wary of its consequences. I'll be curious to see how it all plays out.  

Social Moose Goes YouTubing

For our final class, we did some interviews for YouTube, and here are the results:

fordham circle

In my attempt to look for a job, I visited the Career Services office at Fordham today. Unfortunately they were little to no help. I was hoping to get into contact with some alumni from Fordham to network and possibly inquire about job openings in the New York area. Unfortunately the "database" they offered me was over four years old. They reccommended that I try their new social networking site called Fordham Circle. I set up an account and provided important information for my profile. However, when I attempted to upload my resume, it didn't work. Also, I tried searching for communication/media jobs in New York and THREE jobs/people showed up. I am almost positive there are more than three people/jobs in the New York area (!!!) I talked to one of the directors at the Career Services office about Fordham Circle and she informed me that I would not have full access to Fordham Circle until a few months after I graduate. Major fail Fordham. Major fail.

starts somewhere around 1:20

Twitter featured on TV....

Last night, i was watching the Big Bang Theory on CBS and throughout the episode, twitter was mentioned. Leonard. one of the characters, read from his Iphone, that Howard Walowitz was twittering...

TV sitcoms are very popular sources of advertisements, sometimes free, which reach out to the community, especially when a large part of the people are watching...

the beginning of the end

This past semester has shown me a lot of insight into the online community. Since the beginning of college I have used the internet less and less, and with the help of the class I have been influenced by many social mediums I was not aware of like twitter, myspace, and blogging such as our blog The Social Moose. From my prior blogs where I have smashed twitter- Im a big fan. And I thank the class for making me use it, despite my past online prejudices, of hating computers. Well im about to leave for class, see everyone there, and REMEMBER "the medium is the message"!!!!!

My experiences with interactive media

Reflecting back on the semester, I have learned some valuable lessons throughout it. The computer has become the medium for my exposure to virtual reality as stated in our textbook in our chapter on Cybertime. One is very broad but I think valuable : be open to experiencing new networks outside of my comfort zone. Up until now, I have only connected with people that I knew personally, but this class has exposed me to learning things about new people from networking sites I have never thought twice about joining. Visits from individuals such as Paul Young have taught me how important networking sites could actually become in our careers. For instance, LinkdIn, is a great example of that. Upon joining LinkdIn, I have searched for people I could possibly know through Fordham and even my previous employers. I have then stumbled upon people I never knew were connected to either.
Looking at social networking from a less professional aspect of it now, I think exposure to sites such as Lastfm.com has really helped expand my iTunes list because once again, I was exposed to songs I wouldn't typically listen to but found as a recommendation from an international listener ( I love international music!).Pandora is also a great site, but the music recommendations are chosen by the website and not other users. Speaking of recommendations, I now started using a heavily advertised by Facebook but helpful site called LivingSocial where my friend's recommendations on books, movies, etc. are constantly updated and help me make a decision based on their judgement. Furthermore, sites such as Twitter not only expose me to updates of my friends but virtually anyone who has Twitter. I am now following a number of celebrities and sometimes listening to their recommendations on books and movies. MySpace, on the other hand also has exposed me to some great bands where I can learn more about their music, their preferences and recommendations all while listening to a couple of their tracks.
I believe that the net has anything that a person is looking for. I have learned about many great cooking websites from our classmates as well as networking sites from other classmates. Watching videos about how technologically advanced we have become has lead me to believe that interactive media has become a necessity in today's economy to follow.
***I would just like to add for you all to start using this search engine : www3.hoongle.org -> every time you do 20 grains of rice will be donated to malnourished children!

My Final Send Off

Hello my fellow moose, this is my final send off to the class, and i am sorry that it had to come to an end. I enjoyed every minute I had in Interactive Media, from twittering to my celebrities without a response to talking to strangers on Omegle.com... I never really knew about social networking and new media until I took this class, and to my surprise, it was actually interesting. I appreciate all of you, or to whomever read some of my posts, but i hope we can still keep it going after college. This way we can all check in on how everyone, including you Lance, is doing. Graduation is around the corner and I wish all of you seniors the best of luck for now and in the future. Thanks everyone for everything, and follow me on twitter if you haven't so we can keep in touch; my username is DK_All_Day. Yes, i will follow you back, unlike Tony Hawk or P.Diddy haha! I'll see you all soon, so lets all have fun this last class, and look forward to the future...Sincerely, 1 social moose.

Reflections

Taking a look back at the beginning of the semester - this was the blog post I came across - this blog post described my media usage at that time:

The internet is an endless source of information and resources. My daily usage of the internet consists of checking email, at least several times a day, checking facebook, and mostly doing some type of research. Three out of my five closest friends currently live outside of New York, one of them is just several hours away by car, while the other is overseas. Checking email frequently allows us to have conversations and communicate with each other on a regular basis. Even though it may be difficult for us to talk on the phone because of time differences, and schedule conflicts - emailing each other regularly makes us feel that in one way or another everyone is quite close. Also, I help come up with different projects for local youth groups, so many a times I spend my time doing research --> looking at other organizations and figuring out how they do what they do, looking for team building activities, and other useful information for youth group leaders. Throughout the day I tend to check the New York Times website regularly to get my daily dose of news. Additionally, I use the internet to instant message friends, check bank statements, and buy books.

Moreover, when the class first started out - we were instructed to blog about our social networking usage on a weekly basis. However, for me - from a week to week basis - it did not change too much from the initial blog post. Thus, I refrained from writing that I visited the same social networks this week as I did last week, but rather found different social networking sites and shared the interesting ones with everyone in class. Over the semester, I came acorss anobii, ning, friendfeed, italki, etc. And I came to realize that you can find social networking websites for almost any type of commonality or interest. Some of the students in the class also posted their findings - and shared websites about Twitter like twazzup, twitpic, along with flickr, living social, digg, TED, and slashdot, to name a few. It was interesting to visit these websites, look at what they have to offer users, and learn about the amount of people on these social networking websites.
Everyday - i continued to check my email several times a day and went on facebook once or twice a day. After we all signed up for Twitter in class, I started to check that once or twice a week. At first, I couldn't quite believe I was using Twitter, but as time went on I started to like it. We also signed up for MySpace, but I had a difficult time getting used to it. Even though I checked it about once a week and made an effort to making my profile page look a little bit exciting, I still had a hard time trying to get used to it. However, by visiting the websites the students posted - I learned about what is out there. There are a few well-known social networking websites - that most of the people are on, but it was interesting to see how many other types of social networking sites there are out there. People use social networking websites for different reasons - some to connect with their friends, others to market themselves in the business world. However, everyone uses social networking websites for the same purpose - to make connections with others and to feel a sense of belonging. I also learned about blogging. In the past, I had to blog once a week for my internship and sometimes it was fun while at other times it wasn't. Nevertheless, blogging about the readings for the class, being able to read about other student's understanding of the reading, what they found important - was a good way to learn the material. Not only, was I able to share my thoughts about the reading, but I could learn from the students - because sometimes I may have overlooked something.

So - all in all - my media usage has changed- I've become more aware of and learned about other websites and in addition to the websites i went on when the class first started - i also regularly check twitter and myspace.

New Site

Found this new interactive site that is similar to digg.com in that users submit the content but unlike digg, the editors choose which stories get on the front page. Warning for everybody: this is a site is kind of directed towards nerds as their slogan reads "News for nerds. Stuff that matters".

Anyways, the site was really fast in posting that story about the swine-flu virus and twitter being partially to blame for the panic that is currently being spread about it. Check out the article here: Twitter done killed us

Here is another cool posting that I thought you guys might enjoy. It is a video about this new speakers that are the size of paper. Check it out here: So tiny wow!!!

So check it out, slashdot.org. Cool site for both the nerd and aspiring nerds.

Also, found this great video on ted.com. This may be kind of contraversial but the name of the video clip is "Do schools kill creativity?"

Sir Ken Robinson references an idea brought up in the "did you know" video Profesor Strate showed us. He says that we have no idea what the future is going to looks like so how can we educate our kids and prepare them for it? To answer his own question he responds, "creativity is as important as being literate... and I think we squander our kids creativity too much."

Anyways, check out the video for the full scoop on why education is bad for creativity:
Education and creativity.

Alright. Fun times.

swine flu infects twitter

The recent outbreak of swine flu has not only taken 100s of lives already, but it has terrified millions around the world. Today, CNN.com reported that Twitter is partially to blame for false information and scares in certain parts of the country and world. This is just another example as to why we cannot trust Twitter as a news source. One quote from the article read,"This is a good example of why [Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it's just propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions or key information," said Brennon Slattery, a contributing writer for PC World. "The swine flu thing came really at the crux of a media revolution." While Twitter seems to be a harmless form of micro-blogging, it aids in the spread of terror during drastic times like these. See the full article here.

Demi Moore uses Twitter to help prevent fan's suicide

As mentioned before in class, I really think it is Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher that blog all the time, judging from an article in this post. Since I follow them on Twitter, I observe what they write and it sounds very personal and I think only they could write that (as opposed to hiring their PR person to do the work). Furthermore, I began to think about the impact that having 30,000+ "followers" on Twitter could have, especially now that most people have the postings sent to their phone. I think Twitter's ability to do that surpasses the impact on getting people's attention as compared to Myspace. Alhought Myspace is accessible through the phone, I have not seen an option where people could receive updates of others sent directly as a notification to their phone. Hence, not getting immediate attention. So, even though you may have 30,000+ friends on Myspace most people do not know what you're promoting unless they CHOOSE to click on your site and check it out.The site does have a great ability to draw someone in with the music and decor, which Twitter does not provide as extensively. Also, Twitter is very popular with the tiny URL's which usually leads you to a site that the person wants to draw your attention to. Myspace is not popular with using the tiny URL's-- it is actually most focused on 'updating your mood'.
To wrap this up, I basically wanted to state how today's busy society doesn't allow for us to spend a lot of time 'viewing' people's site and reading an often extensive autobiography about them to get to know what they're about. We want to glance, read, and move on. Twitter was wisely constructed.
Here, I found an interesting article that was brought to my attention by a tiny URL from one of my Twitter friends. It is basically about the impace that Twitter interactions actually could have on people.
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Demi Moore uses Twitter to help prevent fan's suicide
Apr 3, 2009, 06:08 PM | by Alynda Wheat

Categories: Current Affairs, Movies, Web/Tech

A "tweet" may have saved a Demi Moore fan's life, CNN reported today. The actress, whose Twitter blog has some 380,000 fans, received an online threat from a woman who said she was "getting a knife, a big one that is sharp. Going to cut my arm down the whole arm so it doesn't waste time." Moore responded to the grim statement with the comment "Hope you are joking." The unnamed 48-year-old woman's suicide threat was traced to a San Jose, Calif., home, where she was taken into custody for a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation. Moore, who was in southern France where husband Ashton Kutcher is shooting the crime drama Five Killers, later informed her Twitter followers that the San Jose police were in control of the situation, and that she was "very torn about responding or retweeting that woman's post but felt uncomfortable just letting it go."
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After I read this article I thought to myself, if this lady has posted the same thing with the same amount of friends on Myspace would Demi Moore pick up on it? Would it be brought to attention by someone else? I guess we'll never know but all I know is I'm glad she seen it.

Twitter on my mind

I just found this article on CNN.com about how scientists discovered a way to link Twitter to the brain and to, essentially, post what you are thinking without actually typing. I thought this was a good connection between Twitter and the new technology we learned about in the TED video. Check it out.

Brain-Twitter project offers hope to paralyzed patients

Adam Wilson posted two messages on Twitter on April 15. The first one, "GO BADGERS," might have been sent by any University of Wisconsin-Madison student cheering for the school team.

The brain-computer interface allows people to compose a tweet by focusing on the desired letter.

His second post, 20 minutes later, was a little more unusual: "SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN."

Wilson, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, was confirming an announcement he had made two weeks earlier -- his lab had developed a way to post messages on Twitter using electrical impulses generated by thought.

That's right, no keyboards, just a red cap fitted with electrodes that monitor brain activity, hooked up to a computer flashing letters on a screen. Wilson sent the messages by concentrating on the letters he wanted to "type," then focusing on the word "twit" at the bottom of the screen to post the message.

The development could be a lifeline for people with "locked-in syndrome" -- whose brains function normally but who cannot speak or move because of injury or disease.

Wilson and his supervisor, Justin Williams, made the breakthrough last month after hearing a question posed on the radio. Watch how the new technology works »

"Wouldn't it be great if you could Twitter just by thinking about it?"

That query sparked what Williams called the "a-ha moment."

"We can do that," said Williams, an assistant professor and the principal investigator at the lab in Madison, Wisconsin. "We can do that tomorrow."

In the end, it wasn't quite "tomorrow," Williams said, but Wilson had written the software to link existing technology with Twitter "within a couple of days" of starting on the project in March.

He sent Williams his first "tweet" -- or message -- from the brain-computer interface on March 31.

"I had set up my phone to get Twitter updates, and I walked in my door and got this message, and I knew it was really possible," he told CNN by phone. "My wife was sitting there, and I showed her the message and she immediately got excited about it -- and it's rare that I come home from work and she gets excited about what I have been doing."

That's because using the brain to post Twitter messages is potentially much more than an academic exercise or a party trick -- it could help paralyzed people communicate.

"These are people who have ALS, like Stephen Hawking, or they have a brainstem stroke, or a high spinal-cord injury," Williams explained. "There is nothing wrong with these people's brains. It's a normal person, locked into a lifeless, useless body." (The British physicist Hawking has ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.)

Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from locked-in syndrome, Williams estimated.

Many of them want just the kind of ability the brain-Twitter project seems to offer, said Kevin Otto, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University in Indiana.

"The interesting thing about this project is they are directly addressing some of the patient desires," he said. "A lot of people think [locked-in patients] want to walk and want fancy prosthetics, but a lot of times what they want are bladder control and basic communication skills."

Otto, who was not involved in the University of Wisconsin project, called it "a very important incremental step to take two existing technologies and marry them together like this."

Williams had been working on brain-computer interface technology "for many years," he told CNN, before the idea to use Twitter.

"The technology we were developing was 10 or more years down the line, so we started wondering, 'Is there something we can do now?' "

His lab at the University of Wisconsin -- like those at Brown University, Purdue and the Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York, among others -- is developing ways for locked-in people to communicate. Projects range from manipulating a cursor on a computer screen to operating a robotic arm, and they can include devices physically implanted into a brain.

But the Twitter project has a lot of advantages, Williams said.

"Twitter fits so many of our needs and patients' capabilities," he said. "Their first interest is in being able to communicate in a normal fashion, and at a distance."

Twitter is simpler than e-mail, he said.

"If I am locked in and I want to e-mail someone, the format is all wrong. You have to be able to select recipients and group them, copy, paste, send. ... We don't think about that much as normal people, but it can become unmanageable.

"Twitter takes care of all those things. They just have to get [the message] to a location where people can come and find it," he said.

Locked-in people communicating by tweet might have followers who don't even realize they are disabled, Williams said.

"Nobody's going to notice that the person at the other end is disabled. They might not have any idea. And that might be very empowering for people," he said.

The interface is not unlike the method the French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby used to dictate his novel "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- later turned into a movie -- after a massive stroke left him paralyzed except for his left eyelid. Bauby's caregivers recited letters of the alphabet; he blinked when he heard the one he wanted and they wrote them down.

The brain-Twitter application flashes letters on a screen while the user, wearing a cap fitted with electrodes, concentrates on a letter.

"When the letter that you are concentrating on flashes, we can pick that up," Williams said.

Williams declined to say how soon the interface could be available commercially, noting it has not yet been used by anyone with locked-in syndrome.

"I'd hate to speculate about things being on the market," he said. "Adam [Wilson] is going to graduate in May, and his next role is to start preclinical trials with subjects in New York and Germany."

But Williams said he is excited about the development.

"We were interested in seeing what we could do right now to help people," he said. "The field has come far enough that we need to start getting to people in their homes."

"Most Informative (and Entertaning) Money-Related Bloggers" according to MONEY magazine

I was recently flipping through my May issue of Money magazine and I've come across an interesting article on about who Money magazine considers the most entertaining and informative of the money-related bloggers and I've immediately thought of our class. I've come across great recommendations for helpful and cool sites from my classmates but I haven't come across recommending bloggers or sites of that sort which could help our often, poor selves. So with no further adieu, here are the four major players and where you may find them :) :

Tyler Cowan: marginalrevolution.com
Mr. Cowan in the article is described as an economics professor at George Mason University and also a MONEY contributor.He discusses many issues that are economic and behavioral so I've observed that most of his blog is commentary on the crisis that we're in.

Brad DeLong: delong.typepad.com
Mr. DeLong is a Berkeley economics professor and when Clinton was president he was the deputy assistant Treasury secretary. He appears very liberal and as Money magazine described " you'll get a vigorous defense of liberal-leaning, interventionish economic policy, plus vivid prose." I think that paints the picture.

Paul Kedrosky: paul.kedrosky.com
Mr. Kedrosky is a venture capitalist vet and he uses his blog to point to interesting economic ideas around the web. Out of the four bloggers mentioned in the article, I found him the most helpful to me and what I'm looking for. I love the following quote that I think suites Mr. Kedrosky's approach and descriptions well on his take on global finance :"It's kind of like a traffic accident where the parts are still flying through the air.And when it comes back down, it's going to be very different."

Barry Ritholtz: ritholtz.com
Mr. Ritholtz is the CEO of a quantitative research firm. He points out what he thinks is a misleading economic statistics and what he sees as the government's "criminal" bailouts of financial giants such as AIG. In other words, he's blunt and to the point and to me, that's very important when I'm looking at someone's opinion, on especially most importantly, monetary situations.

GroupTweet

In class we were talking about group tweeting - while this website does not allow people to categorize their tweets according to different groups - family, coworkers etc. The site does allow users to post their tweet - once it is sent to the group account - any member of the group can comment back. It kind of seems like a private message board.

This is what it says on their website, GroupTweet:

So how does it work?

GroupTweet piggy-backs on the Twitter service via the Twitter API. Setting up a Twitter group is simple:

• Create a new Twitter account specifically for your group (e.g. initechwebdevs or smithfamily). If you want to make this a private group, make sure that updates are protected in the settings.
• Register your group's new Twitter account at GroupTweet.com
• Tell all group members to follow the group account you created at Twitter. Note that the group account must also follow the group members. (If updates are protected, you will need to approve each follow request)
• Members can broadcast a message to the whole group by sending a direct text to the group's Twitter account. For example: 'D initechwebdevs Just committed the latest code to the repository'

That's it! GroupTweet is constantly listening for direct texts sent to your group's Twitter account. When a direct text is received, GroupTweet instantly publishes it as a tweet from the group account. Since all of your group members are following the group's Twitter account, they will each receive the message. Easy-peasy!

Have not tested it out as of yet...

Twitter directories

We've been talking in class about if Twitter had groups. There are a couple websites which come to mind. One of them is Twitter directory called We Follow. It tells you the most popular tags, and then you can pick one and it will show you all the Tweets about it. For example, if you click #music, JOhn Mayer is the first one to come up, and it tells you how many followers they have. It also separates Twitters by news, celebrities, comedy, and even things like travel.
Another website I found is called Twitter Campus... although I have found numerous problems with it. It seems as if the website is kind of new, because for some reason I can't seem to figure out how to add Fordham to the list. It does say thought that Emerson has the most amount of students on Twitter... hmmm, we should beat them Ashton Kutcher style!

Celebrity Backlash As Oprah Joins Twitter

Oprah Winfrey, one of the world's most powerful celebrities, has faced a web backlash after becoming the latest star to join Twitter.

Oprah Winfrey is the latest star to join microblogging site Twitter

The American talkshow host sent her first "tweet" on Friday and has already amassed more than 350,000 followers.

But users of the microblogging community have blamed her popularity for causing the site to slow down.

Some estimates suggest hundreds of thousands new users may have joined Twitter after Winfrey promoted it on her TV show.

Her profile has also allegedly been the target of a 'worm attack' - which hijacks users' profiles and sends rogue tweets from their accounts.

It has spread messages mentioning Winfrey and actor Ashton Kutcher in what appears to be a deliberate attack on celebrities with profiles.

So far, Winfrey has used her page to chat to celebrity friends including Demi Moore, inform fans what she is eating and talk about her dog.

Follow @SkyNews on Twitter

But users seemed to turn on the famous interviewer, claiming her popularity was overwhelming the site and making it hard to use.

Twitter founder, Evan Williams, who appeared on Oprah the day she launched her feed, was forced to publicly deny the problem was caused by her profile.

He told followers her arrival had a "huge effect" on Friday but his team "kept it under control".

"Site slowness today had nothing to with @Oprah," he insisted.

Users have mocked Winfrey's slow arrival on Twitter by proclaiming they were "here before Oprah".

Other stars who have become popular on Twitter include P Diddy, Stephen Fry and Hugh Jackman.

Cops have Philip Markoff, suspected "Craigslist Killer" of model Julissa Brisman, in custody

UPDATE: Fiancee of the suspected 'Craiglist Killer' says he's innocent.

Boston cops on Monday night branded a 22-year-old med student engaged to be married as the "Craigslist Killer" who murdered a pretty New York masseuse and attacked at least two other escorts in hotels.

Philip Markoff, a Boston University student who lives in Quincy, a harborside town 10 miles south of Boston, will be arraigned on murder charges on Tuesday.

Cops said the brainy blond doctor wanna-be, who grew up in upstate Sherrill, N.Y., and went to SUNY Albany for his undergraduate studies, has no rap sheet, but they think he has preyed on sex workers for a while. Police begged other victims to come forward.

"He is a predator," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. "There may be other victims out there, and we want to help you."

Markoff, who was arrested after cops tailed him for several days, will be charged in Boston Municipal Court with the murder of Julissa Brisman.

The slain 26-year-old New Yorker advertised her services on craigslist and was shot in a posh Boston hotel last Tuesday.

Markoff also will be charged with kidnapping and robbery in an attack four days earlier in another luxury Boston hotel on an exotic dancer who advertised online.

Police believe last Thursday's armed robbery of a Las Vegas hooker in a Rhode Island hotel is also connected.

Markoff, the son of a Syracuse dentist, is engaged to marry Megan McAllister, a fellow med student he met while they were at SUNY Albany. A Web page devoted to their planned wedding later this year recounts how they volunteered together at an area emergency room and enjoyed their first date on Nov. 11, 2005. McAllister could not be reached for comment.

Brisman's mother was glad to hear there was a break in the case, but she was too distraught to talk.

"Her mother was very pleased, but when she saw the pictures [on TV], she broke down and was just crying. We turned it off. You have no idea how fragile she is," said family friend Mark Pines. "It is great that they found him, but it's not going to bring back our girl."

Cops credited "high-tech leads and old-fashioned shoe leather" for the arrest. Cops stopped Markoff at 4 p.m. Monday as he drove south of Boston on Interstate 95, Davis said. He agreed to come in for questioning and was arrested at headquarters.

The break came hours after police released new security camera photos showing the clean-cut, 6-foot-tall suspect strolling casually to and from the three crime scenes peering into his BlackBerry.

The new pictures were taken last Thursday in the hallway of a Warwick, R.I., Holiday Inn Express, where a prostitute who advertised on Craigslist was tied up and robbed at gunpoint.

Markoff is expected to be charged in that attack, too. Cops say Markoff's first known attack was April 10, when a 29-year-old woman who advertised as an exotic dancer on craigslist was attacked at Boston's Westin hotel. She was bound and robbed of her debit card and $800 in cash.

Four days later, Brisman was shot multiple times in a 20th-floor room of the Copley Marriott, apparently because she fought the thief's attempts to restrain her with plastic handcuffs known as "zip ties."

Residents of the sprawling 800-unit High Point apartment complex where Markoff rented a third-floor flat earlier this year mostly described Markoff, who was on the golf and bowling teams in high school, as an average Joe, but several said there was something not quite right about him.

"The guy was friendly enough. He'd say hello when you saw him and he supposedly had a girlfriend," said John Uva, who has lived in the building for two years.

"But he was never really around much, and there was a creepy factor to it."

Does anyone still go to Twitter.com anymore?

Twitter.com has been my favorite social networking website i've used since we have started class, but it has got to the point where I do not even need to goto the site anymore. Applications like Tweet-Deck, TwitterBerry, Twitter-rific, and Tweet-Genius, have made it so easy for us to micro-blog without having to actually goto Twitter.com. Tweet-deck, still a beta version, allows us to see everything on our Twitter (@ replies, DM's, Favorites, Other's updates) without having to goto the actual website. Is it going to slow down the amount of people that visit Twitter.com though? I am not sure, but it sure is making the site more enjoyable. Although some celebrities with thousands of followers tweet about tweet-deck crashing on them, users like us (with little followers) can enjoy it without any problems. 

I like to use the combination of Twitterberry (on my phone) and Tweet-Deck (on my computer) for connecting with Twitter. I am posting this to show you guys the possibilities outside of Twitter.com, so that you are fully able to connect without having to goto your Twitter! Could we make something better than Tweet-Deck or Twitterberry? Probably! 

This class, for me, is showing me that I  have the potential to make the next best thing when it comes to microblogging sites, regular sites, and social networking websites etc. We, as a class, must just put our minds in to it, and we too can be the next great Internet developers!

facebook is #1

      Top Ten Reviews, a website that claims to "do the research so you don't have to," rated the top ten social networking websites. They claimed Facebook was number one, while MySpace took second, and Bebo third. Some others on the list were Friendster, hi5, and orkut. This website gave important information about each social networking site, and even rated dozens of features for each site. 

The review stated the minimum age to join, which ranged between 13 and 18, and the percentage of users under 18, which ranged from 4% - 54% (Bebo.com). Although I have not visited each of these sites, it would be interesting to know why some sites require you to be 18, while others only require a 13-year age minimum. 

         The review also indicated what features were included on the websites and which were not. They looked at profiles (i.e. photos, url, friends), security (i.e. privacy, block users, report abuse), networking (i.e.  instant messaging, groups, mail), search (i.e. by name, by keyword, browse), and support (i.e. FAQ, user forums). Some of the features that were incorporated into all of the the top ten sites were an international community, photos, post comments, friends, groups, privacy, blocking, and reporting abuse. These seem to be the most basic standards for a social networking website. I was surprised at the fact that not every site was multi-lingual, had mail, or instant messaging. And, while every site had groups, you could not necessarily create your own group. 

          After looking at the article, I'm tempted to check out the websites for myself. I'll let you know what I find next week in class! To check out the article for yourself, click here. 

Tweet Police

        Twitter is making headlines recently as it is becoming a more widely-used form of social networking. Not only are regular joes and celebrities getting twitter accounts, but so are police departments. As CNN reported, police departments have been using twitter to report everything from road closures to suspect descriptions.

       Fortunately for police and the public, news is immediate, and the public does not have to wait 24 hours to hear it in traditional mass communication. Twitter is an efficient way to spread the news to the public. With new budget cuts on the rise, twitter offers police departments a cheap alternative to other forms of police reports.

       On the contrary, Twitter as a form of news can be a bad thing. Twitter is limited to 140 characters, so the police are somewhat limited in what they can say. While they could post multiple tweets, it is hard to know, how many is too many? Police do not want to bombard the public with news, as it may lessen or worsen the severity of an issue. There is also the concern that the public might flock to a crime scene once a tweet is posted. 

       All in all, I think that police departments should use tweets with limitations. They should not rely on tweets but also report news in traditional media. It is great that organizations like police departments are embracing new technology and ideas.