By AncaA lot of firsts for Twitter this week. Beside the fact that it just passed the 500 million user mark, it’s also being used as peace-keeping tool in a Kenyan village, and it was part of medical and social media history, as for the first time an open-heart surgery was live on Twitter. The doctors provided 140-character updates throughout the procedure and even answered questions submitted by followers of the hospital’s Twitter account. On top of everything, they are tweaking a new feature that will automatically translate tweets into a variety of languages, and are encouraging users to have a ‘healthy’ approach to micro-blogging.
So, after open-heart surgery on Twitter, you won’t be too surprised by the fact that you can now dive and visit the Great Barrier reef via Google Earth, use Terminator style Google glasses, or choose your next seatmate. No, no pun intended. The Dutch carrier KLM began testing Meet and Seat, a program allowing ticket-holders to upload details from their social media profiles and use the data to choose seatmates. Talking about traveling, offline travel agencies might soon be a thing of the past, as shown in this online travel infographic. What next? Well, time travel is not in the cards yet, so you should just check this list of must have travel apps.
The Europeans reading this might be interested to hear that the European Union’s highest court has been asked to rule on the legality of ACTA, also known as THAT controversial anti-piracy agreement. In the States, the Obama administration outlined a set of online privacy principles that “officials said would help consumers control the use of their personal data gleaned from Internet searches”. In other words, things are moving. Since we’re talking about legal matters, check out this list of legal things you should know about social media and how to deal with them.
Information leaked, and everybody’s now talking about the fact that Facebook may announce a complete overhaul of its premium ads next week. Google quietly launches Latitude Leaderboards which threatens Fourtsquare. Engadget.com knows why. And Entrepreneur.com helps you cut through the clutter and be more effective, that’s why it came up with this 10 must-use social media tools. By the way, are you generation C or generation Y? If you are just as confused by this ‘generations’ talk, these two articles might clear up some of the unknowns.
For the weekend, you should add this article on wireless spectrum to your reading list, as Mashable predicts it’s going to be a hot issue in the upcoming year. And before I go: Mozilla prepares for war. The smartphone war. Have a peaceful weekend!
