Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes talked with me about his
new video series for Teva (and then blogged about the stuff we discussed that didn’t make it into the story, as well as Gawker’s reaction).
Then I wrote a story, blog post and follow-up blog post about texting while driving — the emerging category of services that prevent it, the workaround services, the debate over the risks and the growing support for a ban on the practice.
]]>And this is the latest study to light up the blogosphere — lots of stats on Wikipedia participation, but the most striking is the low percentage of female contributors. Former Lifehacker Gina Trapani follows up with her tips on changing that.
Ira Socol noticed election workers at his polling place in Holland, Mich., Tuesday telling voters the address on their ID card had to match the one on their voter registration. Otherwise, they couldn’t use the voting machines.
The 52-year-old doctoral student believed this discouraged some from his low-income district from voting.
In Birmingham, Ala., Joy Heard, a 42-year-old warehouse worker, and her 26 relatives displaced from their New Orleans home by Hurricane Katrina, weren’t able to obtain absentee ballots in time to vote.
Annie Taylor, a new mother who works in landscaping with her husband, noticed people in the parking lot of her polling place in Austin, Texas, giving prospective voters wrong information about how to cast their ballots.
Such Election Day incidents have happened for two centuries of presidential contests, but they typically remain among a few friends, family members and co-workers. In some rare instances a local media outlet might pick up a story.
Not this year: Everyone’s an election observer.
All three of these frustrated voters took their complaints straight to the Internet, recording their experiences, either by email, text or video, and posting them on one of more than a dozen Web sites that have set up pages to funnel stories from voters.
Read it: Voters Post Experiences Online
]]>My post about the fake SMSs got some pickup: see what the L.A. Times, Times of London and National Journal had to say.
On Qwest’s union talks: the lead-up, the late-night update, the results and DNC’s impact.
Last but not least, some perspectives on making cheaper international calls with your cellphone.
]]>Though she already has a blog, a podcast and a character in the virtual world of Second Life, Kera Richard has recently become obsessed with a new online tool for connecting with friends. For the past three weeks, she has joined the crowds on Twitter.com, a site that invites everyone to answer the question: “What are you doing?”
“I didn’t get it at first,” said the 32-year-old Randolph, N.J., project manager for a financial services company. “How much information do I really need to let the world know about me?”
But soon she was “Twittering” a dozen or more times a day, broadcasting quick, as-they-happen updates to friends who had chosen to link to her through the service. Topics ranged from her lunch (tomato soup and a pretzel) to work annoyances (a high-pitched buzz from a nearby computer). She sent updates from her office and home computers, and used her cellphone to send posts from her car and a bar at happy hour. “It became addicting very quickly,” she said.
Twitter is one of several growing services, including Google Inc.-owned Dodgeball, that tie together instant messaging, social networking and wireless communication. Twitter allows members to use their computers or cellphones to distribute short messages on what they’re doing. Each message is limited to 140 characters, but there are no limits on how many messages a user can send. Members specify whether they want to be alerted by a text message on their phones or an instant message on their PCs when friends post updates.
Like most social-networking sites, once a person opens a Twitter account they can invite their friends to join or connect with existing members. Each member gets a personal Web page that logs all their posts. Some members limit their networks to a handful of friends while others sign up to receive instant updates from dozens of members.
These services elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel “too” connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they’re having for dinner.
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