Web Concepts

Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

IFTTT primarily works with social networking sites, including ones that make you wonder if "social networking" actually means anything at all. That ranges from the obvious (Facebook, Twitter) to the niche (ZooTool, Posterous) to the useful (Craigslist, Google Calendar), with some basics like Weather and RSS Feed thrown in. It also works with your phone, so you can add SMS texting and even phone calls to the mix. You can create your own IFTTT command from a list, or customize what's already there, or you can simply browse through the previously created IFTTTs, which the site calls "Recipes."

IFTTT is now available to everyone, instead of the private invite-only beta it was running before. It's a pretty great tool--my own tests worked flawlessly, and the breadth of services is pretty impressive. There are restrictions, yes, and real nerdly types may scoff, but it's actually a lot more flexible than it appears and, more importantly, it's not the least bit threatening to set up. Check it out here.

[IFTTT]

We’ve seen how easily biometrics can be used to identify people based on their Internet photos, using something as simple as an iPhone app. Cops themselves are using this technology to ID people on the street — so why wouldn’t intrepid motorcycle gang leaders do the same?

The Australian Federal Police is researching how social media may impact covert ops. In a survey last winter, they found the vast majority of law enforcement officers were using social media — 90 percent of females and 81 percent of males, with Facebook and Twitter the top two sites, respectively. Nearly half of those surveyed said they used the sites daily, while another 24 percent used them weekly, according to ComputerWorld Australia.

The worst news, from a cop’s perspective: “All respondents aged 26 years or younger had uploaded photos of themselves onto the Internet,” ComputerWorld reports. And 85 percent of respondents said someone else had uploaded photos of them. What’s more, 42 percent of respondents said they could identify someone based on his or her social media relationships, ComputerWorld says.

“The 16-year-olds of today who might become officers in the future have already been exposed,” Mick Keelty, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, said at a security conference in Sydney.

This covers Australia, not the U.S., but it’s reasonable to expect the numbers would be somewhat similar in this country. If so, that means the next generation of undercover agents may have to go to even greater extremes to win the trust of the groups they’re trying to infiltrate. It can already take several years to do this. Maybe future cops should adopt the adage used by aspiring politicians: Decide at age 5 and act accordingly.

[ComputerWorld Australia]

In a statement this morning to other members of Parliament (MPs), Cameron let loose with this bit of totalitarian wisdom:

"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

That was about all the detail Cameron gave, so, as Thinq noted, we don't know how he might approach the task of shutting down Twitter's, Facebook's, and BlackBerry's U.K. services--though of course it is possible. Several Middle Eastern nations, including the United Arab Emirates, have in the past blocked BlackBerry from operating on their soil. But for the U.K. to even think about such a step, and to express it in such a high-profile speech, is a bit shocking.

Shutting down social networks is not an unfamiliar approach--we saw it in a more severe form in Egypt, when the government shut the Internet down entirely in an effort to quell protests mostly by stymying the use of Facebook and Twitter as protest coordination tools. (That didn't last, of course, and Egyptian Internet services went back online after about a week.) But it ignores that social media is also being used en masse for beneficial coordination, like the 20,000-person-strong London Cleanup Facebook page. That's not even to mention the "Supporting the Met Police against the London rioters" page, which has garnered nearly a million Likes. It remains to be seen whether Cameron and the police forces will actually pursue this line of inquiry. In the meantime, authorities are using the country's ridiculously dense system of CCTV cameras (one for every 14 people!) to identify looters.

[via Thinq]

The department has put one of its more tech savvy officers (he’s previously had success catching sexual predators and monitoring for gang activity on the Tubes) in charge of this new juvenile justice unit, which will mine Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and other social sites for signs of impending mayhem or bragging about past lawbreaking.

It’s an appropriate week to implement something like this. As I write this, rioters in the UK are using social media to coordinate their chaos and warn other rioters about police actions. And police are using social media to figure out where the rioters are headed next.

Such use of technology has been used by the NYPD specifically in the past to track down everything from unruly house parties to murder suspects, so the tactic isn’t really new. But the institutionalization of a dedicated police unit to patrol social networks marks a shift in priorities and in the value the NYPD places on this kind of policing. So is it Big Brother or sound police practice? That probably depends on which side of the law you are on. Guess it’s time we pulled down the video of our editors popping off firecrackers somewhere in the greater NYC area, lest we finally have to own up to the act.

[NY Daily News]

Pakistan-based IT consultant Sohaib Athar noticed a helicopter hovering over Abbottabad around 1 a.m. local time, and noted this was a “rare event.” Then a “window-shaking bang,” and news that a helicopter had crashed.

At first he tries to guess at what happened — maybe a drone was involved, maybe it was a UFO. But as the news slowly emerges, Athar realizes the enormity of what he had tweeted.

“Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it,” he wrote. Moments later: “And here come the mails from the mainstream media ... *sigh*”

His timeline of events seems to match official reports of what took place yesterday, as a Navy SEAL strike team raided a compound where bin Laden was hiding. Four helicopters were involved and one was apparently damaged by enemy fire, according to various accounts.

Athar's full Twitter feed gives an interesting glimpse into the action, the fallout as the news spreads through the affluent Islamabad suburb, and of the exhaustion caused by Athar's unwitting historical commentary.

[via SF Weekly]

What started out as a joke on the social media site has mushroomed into a nationwide effort to build a statue of RoboCop in the beleaguered city of Detroit. Earlier this week, someone in Massachusetts sent a tweet to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, suggesting RoboCop would be a great mascot for the city. Philadelphia has a Rocky statue, and RoboCop would "kick Rocky's butt," he pointed out.

Bing actually wrote back, responding, “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.”

The Internet was listening. Not long after Bing’s tweet, a group of Detroit residents started a Facebook event page, which quickly grew to 4,600 supporters and counting. As of Friday morning, supporters have already raised $8,300 toward their $50,000 goal, using the fundraising platform Kickstarter.

Imagination Station, a nonprofit center aimed at cleaning up blighted neighborhoods, is offering space on its campus for the RoboCop statue. The Kickstarter campaign explains how metal artists might build the statue: “We can take a relatively small figure of RoboCop (conceivably even an action figure), have it 3D scanned by lasers (cool!) and scale its form to create a light-weight model of any size we'd like, which can then be used to pour and cast liquid metal.”

While Bing rejected the idea of a city-funded effort, his office seemed willing to accept RoboCop, in case his likeness is bestowed upon them.

“Should the opportunity present itself to receive a donation of this, or any other works of public art, we will consider acceptance and appropriate placement,” said Karen Dumas, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.

The Detroit Free Press points out that not everyone loves the idea: “Sorry, I think this idea is horrid,” Carl Henry of Plymouth posted on the Facebook page. “If you wanna build a statue, build one to represent an unemployed autoworker, homeless person or something deserving of recognition.”

Others have argued statues of Motown legends like Diana Ross or Michael Jackson should take precedent over a nerd-tastic sci-fi icon.

The fundraising campaign has until March 26 to reach its goal.

[via Reuters]