twitter

Twitterati and other netizens should already know that their Internet musings are public and could potentially become fodder for intelligence analysts. But now U.S. spy agencies have officially invested in a software firm that monitors social media and half a million web 2.0 sites daily.

In what was no doubt the first ever 140-character legal document, the British High Court has served an anonymous web-pest an injunction via Twitter. This is the first time the microblogging service has been used to execute a court order.

The last time I tried making beer, we were up until 3AM standing in a kitchen that looked like tornado had struck. My last wine-making attempts ended in grape-flavored vinegar. Even PopSci staff photographer John Carnett (or rather, his wife) endured a wort explosion the first time he tested his prototype DIY all-in-one brewing machine. Clearly, adult-beverage-making benefits from precise control and automation. Check out a few of my favorite electronic brewing projects after the jump.

Nothing motivates like peer pressure, whether it’s friends goading you into one shot too many or friends tracking your power consumption on Twitter. That’s the thinking that led Limor Fried and PopSci contributing editor Phil Torrone, circuit wizards who run the electronics-kit seller adafruit.com, to cross a small power monitor with an XBee wireless home-automation module and a few lines of code.

So all that importance-of-social-media business you keep hearing about Iran? This should tell you something about the underlying truth, no matter how numbing the barrage from the media can be: When the U.S. State Department heard of Twitter's plans for an hour-long regularly-scheduled maintenance outage that would have denied daytime Twitter service to Iran, they stepped in and "urged" them to reschedule.

As you have heard (by now, ad nauseum), the protests surrounding Iran’s troubled and disputed presidential election this past Friday have highlighted how technology and social media are redefining the way moments of mass political unrest are reported, live. Instead of watching CNN, you can observe the same on-the-ground reporting--all in real time--that the CNN folks are watching and then passing on to you. Here's where to find it.

This Thursday marks twenty years since China's military ended the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democratic demonstrations by killing off hundreds of students, workers, and ordinary civilians. It's fitting, then, that in celebration of the anniversary, the government is once again curbing free speech. Censors have been at it for weeks, but now they've even begun cutting citizens off from Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, and Microsoft's live.com.

Look out, Ashton, there's a new Twitter sensation: the can. That's right, the toilet, the head, the commode. Shardy, a hacker over at Aculei has modded his toilet to tweet with every flush. And frankly, it's awesome.

You can follow the porcelain recliner's Twitter feed here, and I've got to admit, some of the tweets are kinda funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, but at least "bring a smile to the face" funny.

Emergency response entails a widespread tactical effort by countless government agencies. Too often, citizens are left out of the loop and have to rely on mass media, cell phones, and Web sites for emergency information. Microsoft Vine is a new social networking tool, designed to help its users keep tabs on people and places. Currently in a beta test in Seattle, the service lets you enter a location and see news reports aggregated from 20,000 sources, and from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. You can enter people you want to track into Microsoft Vine, and then receive an e-mail, text message, or an update about them in the Vine dashboard -- which runs on Windows only. Disaster victims with Macs are out of luck.