I think your computer would do it better

Actual tweet from someone who just started following me:

Im not Actually typing this my computer is!!! LOL, email me to learn how to automate your business

This person really needs his computer to start typing his tweets for him. Computers at least know basic rules of grammar. He doesn't do much to convince me I should trust him anywhere near my business. I don't need to look like an uneducated hick...automatically.

I am not going to be nice and follow this person back.

I realize that Twitter forces one to be brief, and perhaps he has decided to trade punctuation for brevity. But just drop "LOL, " from that tweet and you've bought yourself enough punctuation to look intelligent.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Social media is all fine and good, but it is only as smart as the user. Broadcasting a poor image to a million people instead of a few thousand just drives your business into the ground that much faster. The rules of business still apply. The Internet is merely an equalizer, not a miracle-maker. If you are clueless, it can't help you.

The more technology encourages people to communicate without proper grammar and spelling, the easier it will become to differentiate oneself by merely writing to an acceptable standard. There are already too many people out there who think that grammar is the person married to grampar.

[/snark]

State Department, Twitter, and the Iran Protests

I had heard nothing about this until yesterday in an interview with the president of a new internet startup.

Twitter, as most know by now, has become a critical link to the outside world for the protest movement in Iran. When the State Department found out that Twitter had a maintenance outage scheduled for the middle of the day Tehran time, they asked the company to reschedule so as not to disrupt service in Iran. Twitter agreed, and the outage occurred during the day in America instead.

However, over all, the administration gets a mixed grade for protecting internet freedom of speech abroad:

The week before supporters of Mousavi were Tweeting and coming together in the streets, China announced it would require the installation of a Web-blocking program called “Green Dam Youth Escort” on all new computers in the country. While ostensibly meant to block pornography and violent images, many technology experts pointed to its ability to block sites that are politically distasteful to the communist government. Chinese lawyers, academics, and even many in Silicon Valley were up in arms and vocal with their criticism, but Washington stayed silent. The Chinese government ultimately relaxed the requirement, but battles still loom, especially in Iran.

Kodak Moment?

I was listening in on a conference call from my den this morning when my daughter came in. "Daddy," she said, "since you're losing your job and won't be able to make any money I wanted to give you some of mine." Awwwww.... That tugging sound would be my heartstrings.

She then proceeded to place three coins in my hand--make that Chuck E. Cheese tokens. "April Fools!" she laughed. Ornery little snipe!

She's eight, so I don't know that she understands how to turn convention on its head. But then she is pretty smart, so perhaps she did, if even subconsiously.

Speaking of April Fools jokes, here's a good one from the Guardian in the UK. They announced they're going to switch to Twitter as their publishing medium. It's fortunate I was not drinking when I read this part:

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

Hitting The Tweets

As you may have noticed, I've joined Twitter. I'm still in wait-n-see mode over it, but if nothing else it was worth joining just for this single tweet from James Lileks:

There is actual MARCH MADNESS outside my office; I see people streaming into the Metrodome. Festival! Festival! It is the will of Landru!

There's some actual March Madness in my town this weekend, too. Me? I'm feeling somewhat sane.