I’m not going to comment on this issue but rather I’m just posting about it to make more people aware of the story…

Microblogging/social messaging service Twitter has become the center of a new debate about online harassment and what services’ responsibilities are the protect their users. What started out as the fairly run-of-the-mill harassment of a female user has turned into a much larger controversy over terms of service, the definition of a community, and what protections the site might have under the law.
He said, she said

The sequence of events began like this: Ariel Waldman, now community manager for Twitter competitor Pownce (but was apparently not in this position when the issue began) became the subject of what she characterizes as harassing “tweets” (140-character messages sent to the service, usually broadcast to the public) last June containing her full name, e-mail address, and disturbing comments. At that time, she reported it to Twitter’s community manager, who subsequently removed the offending user’s updates.

Read full article here…

Corner Gas did an episode called “The Littlest Yarbo” where a dog comes into town and Hank believes it is “The Littlest Hobo” from the TV Show. Have a search for it, it is Season 3, Episode 5. Very funny.

Tonight I went to my first “Social Media Meetup” and I have to say I was a little nervous at first but once I introduced myself and starting chatting to some of the people there, I was instantly at ease. The people who attended were great, I only wish there was more time to speak to everyone.

It was also nice to meet some of my new twitter friends and put a real (not having to squint to see) face to that avatar thumbnail.

I took along my video camera to try and get a few clips. I’m still learning, so the video I shot was not the greatest. (Don’t forget it was shot in a bar where this is music playing and low lighting… so I guess I don’t have to take all the blame).

Next time I’ll be more organized.

Tonight we had Joanne and Tracy join us from “the hub Halifax” project, which according to their site is:

a space for people with great ideas to take risks and make them happen. It brings together the best elements of an office, a neighborhood café, and the comforts of home. The Hub is a physical space that provides what you need to do business, run an organization or launch something new.

Lauren Oostveen wrote a piece on them earlier this month, you can check it out here.

Here is the video I shot, enjoy.

Halifax Social Media Meetup from Paul Wesson on Vimeo.

Links:
Halifax Social Media Meetup
The Hub Halifax
Hi-def version of video (if anyone has any tips for encoding this so it plays smoother, please let me know)
Twitter folk: Benjamin Boudreau, Jeff White, Joshua Cross, Lauren Oostveen and many more…

Question:

I’m thinking this may be the start of a new Netcast/Vidcast/Podcast. What I should have done is walked around and interviewed some of the people there asking who they were and what they did etc. If any of you at the meetup would be interested in joining me on this venture, please get in touch.

When: Thursday, May 22nd
What Time: 6-8 pm
Where: Argyle Bar and Grill (meet next to the bar, where else?)
Why: To meet other web geeks and get out from behind your keyboard for a short while.

This will be my first event of this type. I hope I’m not too old or washed up for this crowd!

Thanks to Ben Boudreau for “getting this party started”.

The official site: http://wiredhalifax.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

***
Hey Jeff and Amber over at CommandN.tv, why don’t you guys come over and shoot a segment? I’m sure you’d find plenty of content here. Me, no not me… I’m just a geek who likes to follow this stuff. I’ll get the drinks.

Phone Guy - Solid State from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

Several days ago, a volcano that had been dormant for 9,000 years near the coast of Chile erupted spectacularly, hurling liquified metals and lightning many miles into the sky. The results, which you see here, are called a “dirty thunderstorm,” and are quite rare. Nobody is certain what causes them, but according to National Geographic it’s believed to be “the result of rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collid[ing] to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.”

Origial Article

As most of you know when you get a new PC or Laptop, whether it is a Dell, HP, Toshiba etc., it comes pre-loaded with all kinds of crap in hopes you’ll want to buy the full versions of those apps. Those pre-loaded apps also make your new machine run like an old machine.

One of the things I used to do all the time is go into peoples homes and remove all that crap then install things like AVG Free Antivirus, FireFox and Picasa to make their machines “just work”.

You can save yourself a lot of time and headache if the first thing you do is download and install “The PC Decrapifier“. They just released a new version that now adds…

A new version has just been posted with lots of great updates! This version focused on removing crap from the latest Toshiba Laptops. Some of the newly detected apps are: Norton 360, Microsoft Office 2007 Trial and Activation Assistant, Quickbooks Financial Center, Napster, Memeo AutoBackup and Picasa 2. There were some additional bug fixes for WildTangent Games (again!) and Symantec LiveUpdate.

For a complete list of applications it detects, see here.