The Ash Cloud sets off SOS signals 2.0

Smoke signals in an ash-clouded sky would not have helped matters for the thousands of stranded travellers that found good use in Web 2.0 when reaching out for help.

Social networking websites, including Facebook and Twitter, surfaced as essential tools for those stuck as a result of the ash cloud plume disaster emerging from the Icelandic volcano. As several travel and airline websites crashed under the pressure of online inquiries, these websites enabled people to connect with others that were stranded, or those that offered help.

The Swedish carpool movement set up a Facebook group called Carpool Europe to facilitate the connection between people asking for, and those offering lifts. The group seems to have been very effective, with wallposts such as “I was stranded in Budapest for 5 days and thanks to you I found a link here to a bus going back to Sweden and I contacted them and now Im home safe and sound. So keep up the good work and thanks again” and “Thanks to carpool europe, I got home from Hamburg via Stockholm last week. Otherwise, would have been stranded there for quite some time. This rocks!”. Users from all over Europe, and even some from Australia and the United States have made use of the service, as per the wallposts.

The hashtag ‘#ashtag’ on Twitter gained enormous popularity soon after the eruption on Friday, as did #getmehome and #roadsharing. People posted experiences, asked for advice, lifts and accommodation, while others offered the same. Someone even created an account for The Ash Cloud, offering creative respite floating through all that distress, like starting the hashtag #ashtunes which asked people to post song titles that should have been about the ash cloud. @TheAshCloud also offered news updates, but written entertainingly from the cloud’s point of view.

Some really great photos of the ash cloud were posted to Flickr by people like Baldvin Hansson who flew above the cloud or were around the volcano site, and by others who photographed their surroundings and the situation.

A photograph of the ash cloud posted by Baldvin Hansson to Flickr

Twitter users face Secret Service after tweeting for Obama's assassination

Twitter users called for Obama’s assassination yesterday, and are now facing a Secret Service probe.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/

After the controversial Health Care Reform Bill was passed, two users in particular – @THHEE_JAY and @Solly_Forre – published angry, frustrated tweets, such as “ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the Assassinations and Lincoln & Kennedy. We’ll surely get over a bullet to Barrack Obama’s head” and “You Should be Assassinated!! @Barack Obama.”

@Solly_Forre identified himself as Solly Forre, “an authentic African-American.” After the first assassination message, Forre sent out another tweet asking “someone who has a clear shot” of the President to pull the trigger.

@ THHEE_JAY has been identified as someone called Jay Martin, and is also suspected to be of African descent.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service has been quoted across the Internet saying that they will not tolerate such action or calls by anyone against the president of the United States, saying that the suspects will face certain time for the assassination calls.

“We are aware of the comments and are taking the appropriate investigative action. We respect the right of free speech, but in such instances we have a right and an obligation to ask questions and determine intent,” the government agency said.

Twitter CEO launches 'anywhere' platform at SXSW

Twitter CEO Evan Williams took the stage today as keynote speaker at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Evan Williams at SXSW 2010. Source: http://www.latimes.com

Williams made some announcements, but not the one that was under heavy speculation. Everyone was hoping to hear about the company’s ad-platform strategy, after they raked in about $25 million after partnerships with Google and Microsoft last year.

Williams unveiled the @anywhere feature, which integrates Twitter to other websites. With this platform, users can follow an account directly from the third-party website – the example Williams gave was that you could follow a columnist directly from their website, instead of having to search Twitter for their account.

Initial partners for this feature include The Huffington Post, Amazon, Yahoo, Youtube, Bing, The New York Times, and Digg.

Twitter has also partnered with 65 mobile operators around the world for Twitter-SMS services, said Williams.

Williams said that the ultimate goal is not to get people to spend more time on Twitter, but to allow people to use it as a tool to share pretty much anything on the Internet, from wherever they want. He also stressed the philosophy of Twitter being an ‘information network’, as opposed to purely a social network.

Chris Brown deletes Twitter account after tirade

Even after singing a track titled ‘Twitter Ruff’, Chris Brown deleted his Twitter account yesterday, possibly after a tirade against store owners over the weekend.

Brown had been to a Wal-Mart outlet in Connecticut, and burst into an outrage when he didn’t see his new album, Graffiti, on the shelves. “The didnt even have my album in the back … not on shelves, saw for myself,” said one of his final tweets.

Brown said that the stores were ‘blackballing’ him, and retweeted responses from fans who said they had trouble getting their hands on the album at various stores across the country. Some of the fans even tweeted saying that managers of stores had told them that the album would “never” be stocked because they didn’t support “woman beaters”.

Brown also said that he spoke to the manager, who claimed to not know anything about the album sales, and sent out angry tweets about how Alicia Keys album was ready and stocked, even though it is set for release next week.

Although the account is now deleted, Chris Brown’s Twitter account is still living in Google’s cache. Here’s a screenshot of his last few tweets.

Baby-talk in 140 characters

So birds chirp and babies tweet?

The Twoddler prototype - Source: http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~twoddler/

A research team at the Hasselt University, Belgium, have developed what they’re calling Twoddler, a Fisher Price Activity Centre that connects a toy station to a Twitter account, and sends out tweets based on what the baby is doing with the toy.

The twoddler application is basically an activity centre enhanced with pictures of family members and friends, and an Arduino board inside. This is how the Hasselt University team describes the toy:

“For example: when Yorin plays with mommy’s picture for over 3 minutes, a twitter message will be posted saying “@mommy_yorin Yorin misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening”, or when Yorin is hitting the doorbell button four times in a row, a twitter message will be posted saying “Yorin is showing off his music skills with a new tune”. We hope to even support dynamic composition of new strings in the future.”

The team won an impressive 5000 Euros for their prototype at the Innovative and Creative Applications (INCA) developer competition earlier this year; however, they are not willing to commit to its commercial availability at this stage. The jury at the INCA ’09 described the prototype as “A good, well implemented idea with a lot of potential. It allows people/children that are not capable of verbal communication to communicate through an inventive combination of hardware and software.”

The internal working of the activity centre. Source: http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~twoddler/

Here’s a video demonstration of how it works.

Reactions to the prototype were varied in London, ranging from “Why would I want a baby to clog up my timeline, and know that he is missing his mommy?”, as Bobby Collier, a 23-year-old graduate student of Law said, to “I might like to know what my baby is doing while he’s with his sitter, and I’m at work!”, from Anette Campbell, a 32-year-old finance executive.

MJ: No one was responsible for me dying

The Twitterverse expanded into other galaxies yesterday, as Angels Fancy Dress, a London-based costume store conducted Twitter’s first ever séance. The ‘Tweance’, which could be followed @tweance, started their pre-Halloween publicity experiment on October 7, where they asked people from all over the world to tweet their ‘dead celebrity nominations’ for the séance.

The final four chosen to contact were Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, Hollywood teen idol River Phoenix, William Shakespeare and Michael Jackson, chosen from a shortlist including Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Elvis and Abraham Lincoln.

Celebrity psychic Jayne Wallace conducted the séance at an “undisclosed location”, famous for her previous contact with Jade Goody in the presence of Goody’s mother, conducted by The Sun.

Wallace claims that Michael Jackson sang ‘Heal the World’ during the interaction, tweeting “his voice is very powerful indeed still”. She asked him the question puzzling everyone, “Who was responsible for you dying?” Jackson’s spirit answered with “No-one was responsible. I was warned many times about medication but the pain was too severe, and I felt I could not survive without it.”

Wallace was unable to get in touch with Shakespeare, because he was “very weak. Many people have tried to contact him.”

When Wallace contacted Kurt Cobain, she says she knew she had him when she “got itchy skin and sore gums from Kurt.” Cobain apologized for letting the drugs destroy his music, and said he would much prefer it if kids were bought real guitars, not video games, when asked for his opinion on Guitar Hero.

River Phoenix apologized to his parents for “leaving in such a devastating way”, and that he wants his mum to know that he is “okay where he is”.

Benjamin Webb of Angels Fancy Dress said: “We were amazed that no one had used Twitter for a séance before, and thought it would be a great idea to rope in millions of Tweeters into Halloween spirit.”

@Tweance has 2,234 followers at last count this morning, and nominations were collected for three weeks leading up to Halloween.