Ohio State kicks off season vs. Akron: Twitter updates

Marvin Fong, The PDOSU’s Joe Bauserman

Everything’s different for the start of the 2011 college football season in Columbus. Luke Fickell makes his head coaching debut, Joe Bauserman and Braxton Miller alternate at quarterback and several key players won’t play due to suspensions.

How will it all play out as the Buckeyes open the season against Akron? Get updates on Twitter from Doug Lesmerises @PDBuckeyes and Bill Livinigston @LivyPD in the box below. Kickoff is at noon.

• College football scoreboard

Article source: http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2011/09/ohio_state_kicks_off_season_vs.html

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Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Booted From Flight Over Saggy Pants Saga

Billie Joe Armstrong performs with Green Day during the 2010 Lollapalooza festival on August 7, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois.

Getty Images

As the typical airplane seating advice goes, your seatbelt should be fastened tight across your lap. Perhaps Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong should have applied that advice to the belt on his pants.

Armstrong, the lead singer and guitarist for Green Day, was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight Thursday night because of his saggy pants. He was escorted off the Oakland to Burbank flight after a flight attendant insisted his pants were too low. The rocker immediately took to Twitter to vent his frustration.

Twitter / @BJAOfficial (edited by TIME for profanity)

A producer for a local Los Angeles news station was on board the flight and recounted the singer’s low blow. Cindy Qiu said most of the plane was seated when Armstrong boarded. As he walked to his seat, a flight attendant asked him to pull his pants up.

(WATCH: 10 Questions for Billie Joe Armstrong)

The rebel rocker didn’t take the news lightly, lashing out at the flight attendent. “Don’t you have better things to do then worry about that?” Armstrong retorted, according to Qiu. When both sides refused to back down, Armstrong and his travel companion were escorted off the plane, after which Billie Joe tweeted his annoyance.

But the saga ends with no runway of Broken Dreams for Armstrong. As soon as Southwest was made aware of his profane but prolific tweet, an airline representative reached out to apologize, booking Billie Joe on the next flight.

While the situation might have been resolved quickly, Armstrong can now count himself among many other victims of the fashion police in the skies. In July, a New York woman was kicked off a JetBlue flight for wearing shorts that were too short. She ended up suing the airline.

Southwest itself is no stranger to celebrity-induced controversy over its flying policies. The airline encountered scrutiny last year when it kicked off actor-director Kevin Smith for allegedly not fitting in the one seat he had purchased.

Nick Carbone is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @nickcarbone. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

READ: Twitter: The New Customer-Service Express Lane

Article source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/03/green-days-billie-joe-armstrong-booted-from-flight-over-saggy-pants-saga/

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New twists to online dating

With hundreds of millions of users on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google Plus, how do you navigate dating on social networks? Some singles say they’re better than traditional dating sites at giving you a full picture of the object of your affections — for better or worse.

Panama Jackson, who blogs at Very Smart Brothas and recently co-wrote the book Your Degrees Won’t Keep You Warm At Night, says you get a lot of insight into a person’s life when you see the kinds of things they tweet about and if their tweet totals are closer to 40,000 than, say, 5,000.

“The beauty of Twitter is that when something excites you, at that moment you can tell random people and have a conversation about it,” he said. “Once that excitement is gone, it’s hard to relive it. Point here is, if you are both talking about all the important stuff via Twitter, what the hell do you talk about when you do actually ever talk?”

Jackson said he’s found that some of his dating prospects like to vent about life and tweet things that make him second-guess his initial attraction. He’s had about six dates with women he met on Twitter, and although not all of them were disastrous, one was a woman he classified as crazy.

“Twitter is free and Facebook is free, so you never know what you’re getting. There’s a deterrent if I have to pay $50 for a profile, because I might take it more seriously.”

Jackson cautions that flirting online can lead to jealousy, which is likely to intensify the crazy early on.

“I recommend not following or friending people on Facebook or Twitter if you’re interested in them, actually,” he said. “I’ve learned from following some of the women I know that there was interest there, and then I realized, ‘Some of your thoughts actually scare me, and now I have to find a reason to avoid you.’ ”

One way to help gauge someone’s credentials is to see if they have a profile on LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site. Allison Peacock, a communications and marketing specialist who blogs at Living Radically Well, likes LinkedIn because “it just helps with the confidence level when you’re meeting people anonymously at first.”

She doesn’t advertise her single status or use sites like Twitter to date, but if she meets someone on a dating site, she uses social media networks to look at the profiles and comments of her prospective suitors “to see more about who they really are outside of the presentation they make on a dating site.”

That’s becoming a more common approach as dating using social media becomes more popular, says University of Texas psychology professor Sam Gosling. And Facebook in particular gives singles better insight into their potential partners than fee-based online dating sites.

One of the things Gosling studies is how people create environments that provide insights into their personalities and how they would like to be perceived.

“There are some crucial differences between social media and online dating sites, and one of them is that people tend to trust social media sites, since there’s a great deal of overlap between their online and offline friends,” Gosling said. “The impression people have of folks based on their Facebook profile tends to be pretty accurate.”

If anything, he says, it’s the online dating sites that can lead to more of a false impression because there’s no circle of 2,000 friends or even 100 to hold people accountable.

“If I say I’m an excellent cyclist on Match.com or EHarmony, no one will say, ‘No you’re not,’ ” Gosling said.

“But if I friend you on Facebook, I’m not just giving you my impression of me, I’m letting you into my social circle and letting you see what other people say about me and what other people post on my wall. The bottom line is that it’s really an accurate way of learning about people.”

Article source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/03/2386970/new-twists-to-online-dating.html

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Should students, teachers be Facebook friends?

For Ed March, keeping in touch with his former students on Facebook has allowed him to watch them grow up.

“It’s almost as if I live next door to each one,” he writes. “Without Facebook, this would not be possible.”

The retired Plain Local Schools teacher has nearly 600 friends. About half are former students from 1968 to 2003.

“I have never once felt that a Facebook friendship with a former student was awkward or inappropriate. I cared about them when they were my students; I care about them now that they are adults. Nothing has changed,” he wrote in an email.

However, he added, “I’m not sure I would feel the same way if I had current students as Facebook friends. But I joined Facebook after I stopped teaching, so I’ve never had to deal with what might be a less-than-comfortable situation.”

GOOD IDEA OR NOT?

With the school year under way, students are sending and receiving online friend requests from new classmates.

Teachers, too, are getting to know a new batch of students and perhaps wondering how last year’s class is doing.

When, if ever, is it OK for a teacher to “friend” a student or vice versa? Is Facebook just another method of communication, like a note or email?

We posed this question to our readers in light of a recent law passed in Missouri aimed at limiting teachers’ conduct with students via social media and texting. The law, according to The Associated Press, was passed because 87 Missouri teachers lost their licenses between 2001 and 2005 because of sexual misconduct, some of it online, with students.

The Missouri State Teachers Association appealed the law and last week was granted a preliminary injunction, effective for 180 days.

In Ohio, local school districts make rules regarding student/teacher fraternization.

“If they already have a policy and rules that prevent fraternization, that could cover social media,” said Jessica Spears, staff attorney with the Ohio School Board Association.

Some districts in Ohio have strict policies specifically banning communication by social media; others allow it on district Internet, but not personal accounts.

If a district wants to ban it, she said, the OSBA offers language or a model policy on request.

Dayton Public Schools recently added a new policy that prohibits teachers from friending, texting or sending instant messages to students. The rule says also that educators may not respond to students’ attempts at communicating through any personal or professional accounts not approved by the district.

The Dayton Daily News reported that school officials consulted with the Ohio School Boards Association, which has suggested that districts lay out policies against teachers fraternizing with students through electronic media.

NO BAN IN STARK

According to Stark County School Superintendent Larry Morgan, no Stark County districts have created a policy specifically banning teachers and students from “friending” each other.

“My recommendation to a teacher would be not to do it,” he said strongly. “It’s inappropriate and could result in communication that is unprofessional.”

There’s no question that it should not be done, agreed Kevin Oblisk, a retired Canton City Schools teacher.

“Teachers friending students on Facebook is definitely a problem and not even a potential one,” wrote Oblisk of Jackson Township, who believes the school’s email system is a better choice.

“Things can start out to be fun and enjoyable, but let rumors or anger get in the air … then the situation changes and someone gets hurt or in a really big mess.”

“Youth’s emotions can be unpredictable — that’s a fact.”

Now that he is retired, Oblisk communicates via Facebook with former students as they are now adults.

Another retired educator, Mary Spear of Canton, agrees.

“I can see no time when I would want to be on Facebook with my students. Even though a student and teacher may have an honorable friendship through Facebook, it’s just a bad idea,” she said.

If the relationships turn sour, an immature student could use social media to retaliate, she said.

“Teachers must retain a professionalism and distance that I don’t think can be achieved through social networking with their students,” said Spear.

COLLEGE EDUCATORS RESPOND

Professor Jim Williams at Kent State University Stark Campus sees a need for discussion.

At 63, he said, he found the social media explosion “breathtaking,” and has chosen to embrace it.

That said, “I see no controversial position with teachers/professors having Facebook linkage with students, but with a caveat: For adult students and adults professors in a mutually agreed upon Facebook linkage.”

Williams said his Facebook page is “a way to encourage, educate and maintain connection with my students who are networking for positions in the professional world. There are hundreds of examples where Facebook linkages with me have paid rich dividends in uplifted hearts, people with major health issues encouraged, songs from YouTube to encourage, issues I sensed from my students’ posts that led me to pursuing dialog to aid if I can with making the issue better.”

He adds, “In my classes, I speak at great length about Facebook as a positive tool and I talk about the no-nos with poor taste photos, hand signs, tattoos, etc., for every employer in the world now goes directly to Facebook to check out potential or current employees, which I believe is right and they should,” he said.

Another college professor, Carie Greene, of Kent State University, waits until the last day of school to offer friendship.

“Many of my students have chosen to stay in contact with me,” she said. “I enjoy reading their updates and hearing from them. … I truly enjoy staying in touch with those students who want to continue our relationship. I rejoice in their accomplishments, and they celebrate mine!”

She, too, recommends Facebook only for college-age students and their teachers, but said she never seeks or “friends” a  student because she thinks some may consider it an invasion of their privacy.

OTHER TOOLS

Twitter is the social network Hoover High School teacher Kim Nidy uses to communicate with her current students.

“That way, I can send out reminders and short bursts of information, but I don’t follow any of them so I can’t see anything they write,” she explained.

She said she is careful with her Facebook account, using her maiden name to avoid friendship requests from students.

“I have had several of my friends’ children try to friend me and I won’t (accept their requests) because they are future Hoover students,” she said. “I did recently create an account using my married name so that I could stay in touch with former students, but I never post anything on their pages or make comments. I only use it to send out information about my classes once in a while.”

University of Akron student Ian Sanderson of North Canton said Facebook connections between teachers and students are fine, provided that the teacher adds the student as a limited profile friend. This, he said, allows the teacher to severely limit what the student can see.

“For instance, the teacher can make the limited profile friends only able to see certain school-related or safe photos and information such as wall-posts at the teacher’s discretion,” he said. “This is how I treat co-workers and superiors that add me as a Facebook friend.”

However, he went on to say that this doesn’t prevent the teacher from seeing private/intimate details about the student’s life, which may create a conflict of interest.

“Truth is, Facebook is an intimate extension of a person’s life,” he said. “It should be kept as such by only friending people on a personal level, not professional.”

Article source: http://www.cantonrep.com/carousel/x1069103506/Should-students-teachers-be-Facebook-friends

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Facebook testing a translate feature for comments (rumor)

Facebook is testing a new translation feature for comments. A small subset of users are reportedly seeing a new Translate button at the bottom of comments (only on Pages), according to Inside Facebook.

If a comment posted on a Page is in a language that is different than the one your Facebook account is set to, a Translate button may show up just below it and beside the existing Like button. Clicking on the button will translate the comment to your account language. After translation, an Original button appears instead, and if you click that it will revert the comment to the original version (and presumably offer the Translation button again).

It’s not clear how many languages are currently supported, but English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and Chinese appear to be on the list. The system is far from perfect: it doesn’t always recognize the comments. Sometimes one or more words aren’t translated and other times the following error shows up: “There is no translation available for this story at the moment.”

On the flipside, the technology seems to be work with slang. In the example above, Facebook figured how to translate “Totally cool” from Hebrew to English. Given that Facebook employed its own users to translate the social network’s user interface into multiple languages, I’m wondering if this feature works in a similar way: it may be remembering certain phrases that users have inputted in the past.

It makes sense for Facebook to test this feature out on Pages first: it’s much more likely that Pages will have international users speaking many different languages. You may have friends that speak more than one language, but chances are if they post a comment on your profile, it will be in a language you understand. This feature is clearly meant for users who want to interact with each other but cannot because of a language barrier.

The feature also benefits Page owners who currently have to rely on third-party translation services to understand what their fans are posting. It could thus also be useful for apps and games. Imagine interacting with other users in a Facebook app or Facebook game regardless of what language they speak.

If Facebook ever does roll out this feature, it could significantly change how users communicate on the world’s largest social network. I’ve contacted Facebook for more information and I’ll update this post if I hear back.

See also:

• Facebook using natural language processing to group posts, link to Pages
• Facebook testing two new mobile security features
• Facebook testing homepage with separate News Feed scrolling
• Facebook starts testing check-ins for Events
• Facebook testing suicide help system

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-testing-a-translate-feature-for-comments-rumor/3235

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Facebook date forces woman to be getaway driver

These days, if you don’t meet your date online, there must be something a little wrong with you.

There is a small cabal of humans, however, who are still uncertain as to whether someone you meet on, say, Facebook, mightn’t be married. Or merely a hardened criminal.

I mention this dilemma because of the tale of 23-year-old Leah Gibbs, from Rhondda, South Wales.

The way The Daily Mail presents it, Gibbs met Adam Minton on Facebook and agreed to be his date. Her hope was that they would spend their first encounter watching a DVD at Minton’s house. It is not recorded whether he had rented “The Sting”, “Bonnie and Clyde,” or “Inside Man.”

When Gibbs arrived, Minton told her he needed to see a friend and asked whether she might drive him to see said friend.

(Credit:
Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

It appears that there might not have been a friend at all. Instead, she drove him to the vicinity of what the English call a betting shop and New Yorkers call an OTB. There, Minton threatened the staff with a kitchen knife and took off with cash. When he leaped back into Gibbs’
car, he reportedly told her: “Go, go, go!” Which suggests he really had seen more than one bank heist DVD.

One can only imagine what might have been pounding through Gibbs’ head at this point of her date. She offered the Mail this highly considered quote: “I thought I would be ending the night in Adam’s arms.”

Having shortly afterward been arrested with Minton–her license plate turned out to be the giveaway after the getaway–she added: “Instead, he had landed in the long arms of the law and I was facing jail.”

Gibbs spent a night in the cells before Minton persuaded police that she was merely an innocent bysitter whom he had met on Facebook. Yes, this was their first date.

Minton was sentenced to four-and-a-half years for his behavior. It is not recorded if Gibbs has ventured onto Facebook again in order to find the man of her dreams, or at least someone to take her to a bar. Or at least someone who doesn’t land her behind bars.

Article source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20101380-71/facebook-date-forces-woman-to-be-getaway-driver/

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If Julian Assange walks free, he still faces arrest in Australia

The move to publish uncensored cables drew stinging condemnation from newspapers which collaborated with Wikileaks in the past.
Source: Supplied

JULIAN Assange could face prosecution in Australia after publishing WikiLeaks’ entire archive of US State Department cables, including sensitive information about government officials.

Most of the cables were published uncensored – a move that drew stinging condemnation from major newspapers which in the past collaborated with the anti-secrecy group.

Attorney General Robert McClelland said in a statement that the release identified at least one individual within Australia’s intelligence service, the Guardian reported.

He added it is a criminal offence to publish any information which could lead to the identification of an intelligence officer.

“I am aware of at least one cable in which an ASIO officer is purported to have been identified,” he said. “ASIO and other Government agencies officers are working through the material to see the extent of the impact on Australian interests.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

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“On occasions before this week, WikiLeaks redacted identifying features where the safety of individuals or national security could be put at risk. It appears this hasn’t occurred with documents that have been distributed across the internet this week and this is extremely concerning.”

Many media outlets previously had access to all or part of the uncensored tome. But WikiLeaks’ decision to post the 251,287 cables on its website makes potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone, anywhere at the stroke of a key.

A joint statement published on the Guardian’s website said the British publication and its international counterparts – The New York Times, France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Der Spiegel and Spain’s El Pais – “deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk”.

Previously, international media outlets – and WikiLeaks itself – had redacted the names of potentially vulnerable sources, although the standard has varied and some experts warned that even people whose names had been kept out of the cables were still at risk.

But now many, and possibly even all, of the cables posted to the WikiLeaks website carried unredacted names.

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, former US State Department official PJ Crowley warned that the new release could be used to intimidate activists in authoritarian countries.

Crowley said “any autocratic security service worth its salt” probably already would have the complete unredacted archive of cables, but that the fresh releases mean that any intelligence agency that did not “will have it in short order”.

WikiLeaks staff members have not returned repeated requests for comment sent by AP in the past two days. But in a series of messages on Twitter, the group suggested that it had no choice but to publish the archive because copies of the document were already circulating online following a security breach.

The controversy is a further blow to WikiLeaks, whose site is under financial embargo and whose leader remains under virtual house arrest in an English country mansion pending extradition proceedings to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault allegations.

WikiLeaks says it will increasingly turn to “crowdsourcing” – that is, relying on internet users to sift through its leaked documents and flag important material.

It says the process is working, pointing to one document flagged by Twitter users who’ve already begun perusing the newly released files.

The cable, filed in 2006, carries an explosive allegation that US forces entered a house during a 2006 raid in Iraq, handcuffed 10 members of the same family and executed them.

Although the UN letter in which the allegation was made was five years old, its publication put new pressure on the already strained negotiations over keeping US forces in Iraq.

Iraq’s Government said it is investigating, and some officials said the document is reason enough for the country to force the American military to leave instead of signing a deal allowing troops to stay beyond a year-end departure deadline.

 

Article source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/julian-assange-faces-arrest-in-australia/story-e6frfro0-1226128705202

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Twitter Ads: No Harm, No #Fail

Only 11 percent of Twitter users get annoyed by Promoted Tweets, according to a new study by market research firm Lab42. And 25 percent of the study participants said they had seen Promoted Tweets from brands that were relevant to them.

Chicago-based Lab42 surveyed 500 Twitter users in August to arrive at the data. Twenty-two percent of them said they have discovered a discount offer via a Promoted Tweet, while 14 percent said they had retweeted a Promoted Tweet. Four percent didn’t know what a Promoted Tweet was.

Eleven percent claimed that following brands on Twitter was the leading reason for using the micro-blogging site. Nearly 50 percent said they follow between one and 10 brands, and 11 percent said they don’t follow any.

Here’s maybe the most surprising statistic from the report: 8 percent stated that they follow a whopping 50 or more brands on Twitter.

Relatively speaking, the findings appear to be good news for Twitter, which reportedly plans on running ads in users’ tweet streams for brands whether the viewer follows them or not. Since launching Promoted Tweets in April 2010, users have only seen the ads for companies they follow.

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ClickZ Academy e-learning courses allow you to immerse yourself with insights from digital marketing insiders and progress at your own pace. Learn more.

Article source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2106423/twitter-ads-harm-fail

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Beyoncé Pregnant: Overwhelmed with Baby Gifts!

Ever since Beyoncé announced that she was pregnant, it seems the country has Beyoncé fever. Within the hour of their announcement at the 2011 MTV VMAs, she and Jay-Z’s big news broke twitter records. Celebrities and fans alike poured in congrats over twitter. Now, it’s being reported that the happy couple is being inundated with baby gifts!

The Winnipeg Free Press reports, “Her phone hasn’t stopped ringing. She’s received dozens of bouquets of flowers, teddy bears, fruit baskets, you name it.” Presents have come in from Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. Certainly some of those presents are from close friends and colleagues, but many are probably from fans who want to share in the excitement. Indeed, people everywhere seem to be thrilled for Beyoncé, pregnant at 29. No word yet on whether Beyoncé and Jay-Z plan to keep all the gifts or donate some.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z married in 2008 and focused on their careers for the first couple of years of their marriage. The wait paid off—they’re now one of the highest earning celebrity duos.

What do you think Oprah Winfrey sent the couple for a pregnancy gift? One thing is for sure about Beyoncé—pregnant never looked so alluring!

Article source: http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980151224

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Facebook pays thousands of dollars to hackers

Facebook is actually looking for people to hack the social media site.

The online company’s dishing out thousands of dollars to hackers in what they’re calling the “Bug Bounty Program.”

Facebook Security’s White Hats page states, “…We realize, though, that there are many talented and well-intentioned security experts around the world who don’t work for Facebook. Over the years, we have received excellent support from independent researchers who have let us know about bugs they have found.  A couple of years ago, we decided to to formalize a “whitehat” program to encourage these researchers to look for bugs and report them to us.  We received really positive feedback when we launched our responsible disclosure policy last year, in which we told researchers we would not take adverse actions against them when they followed the policy in reporting bugs…”

Whitehat reports the program’s already paid over $40,000 hackers who were able to discover security flaws. One of those hackers received $7,000.

If you think you know of a security breach, you can submit the details to the whitehat program by clicking here.

In the meantime, tell us your thoughts on this program in the comment section below or on our Facebook page.

Article source: http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=658992

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