Twitts

Link of  th Day – We tried it – Bistro MD

Hugo Chavez, president of the socialist utopia Venezuela, has announced that a team of 200 workers would help him manage his new Twitter account. Chavez said of the new hire: “I’m creating a team due to the avalanche of requests, and some grievances”.

Socialism: worse products and services, 200 times more expensive. And I bet he’s telling his subjects “in America, they don’t even hire hundreds of people to manage social media”.

A website that provides minute by minute updates on people who are not at home has sparked concern that it will encourage burglars. The site, called Please Rob Me, launched this week and has been criticised for being the perfect tool for any self-respecting housebreaker.

But the three brains behind the website insist they’re not helping criminals, but highlighting the dangers of the latest social networking craze of announcing to the world where you are at any given moment via the internet. Social networking crazes such as Foursquare, in which users post their location online, are a goldmine for potential burglars, the website’s founders said. The Please Rob Me website says: ‘Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized.’

Instead they are trying to alert people to the danger of putting too much information on the world wide web. The Dutch website channels information from other networking sites like Twitter into one place, listing ‘all those empty homes out there’ and providing a running total of ‘new opportunities’. The information it provides on people’s movements is searchable by city or by their Twitter username.

‘We’re leaving the lights on when we’re going on a holiday, but we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home,’ said co-founder Frank Groeneveld, 22.

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How to build your career in b2b

A quip on Twitter by a snowbound traveller has led to his arrest and bailing on suspicion of communicating a bomb hoax…

Frustrated by delays at Robin Hood airport, near Doncaster, 26-year-old Paul Chambers keyed in: “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” Police knocked on his door in Doncaster shortly afterwards and arrested him under the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Bailed after more than six hours of questioning, Chambers also had his computer and iPhone briefly confiscated and the message was deleted from Twitter’s website. Tweets of support and incredulity have since been posted by some of the 769 people regularly following his page, along with requests for interviews from journalists.

South Yorkshire police said that Chambers remained bailed because of the Twitter comment and added: “We advise members of the public to use such sites appropriately, as they are easily accessible to the public and any inappropriate use could cause unnecessary concern and lead to comments being reported to police…”

Chambers describes himself on his Twitter profile as a “film-watching, football-loving, rubbish-talking, hyphen-using idiot”. His tweets are kept locked, which means that only followers accepted by him can see them, rather than the public at large.