Found two interesting posts about how Twitter becomes a real-time news media and how it contributes to spread news all over the World despite telecommunication networks breakdown and/or government censorship.

Smart Mobs author Mark A.M Kramer asks if Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) could make humanity morally accountable ? Today, even with a very limited presence of the International community (politics, journalists as well as Aid workers) we continue to receive near real-time information from Myanmar through various multi-plateforms communication media such Twitter, SMS, RSS etc.

Ten days later, in China, an powerful earthquake shook the Sichuan province, information that Technology blogger Robert Scoble claimed that Twitter had the breaking news even before the United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.

Is Twitter's slogan "What are you doing" should be now replaced by "What's going on" ?

Sources: SmartMobs, BBC

The Register published the result of a survey, among office worker in London, which reveals that women are 4 (four) times more likely than men to give out "passwords" in exchange for chocolate bars.

The survey by of 576 office workers in London found that women are by far more likely to give  their computer login credentials to total strangers than their male colleagues in a ratio above 4/1 (45% vs. 10%).

The bogus researchers also asked for workers' names and telephone numbers, ostensibly so they could be entered into a draw to go to Paris.

The complete article is on Register website 

I found very interesting post on Tom Barrett's "ICT in my Classroom" blog about how Twitter is used as an educational tool.

Tom's post also describes where Twitter is positioned among other communications tools. Twitter is not a synchronous or an asynchronous communication system. It is rather both at once depending how channel's followers use it.

He makes a nice metaphoric comparison between Twitter and a flowing torrent where people can just stand by it and observes the flow. Some prefers to jump into while others simply do not pay much attention to the  stream.

Personally I am amazed to see how many different ways Twitter is used today. There are, indeed, lots of individuals (you and me) but also some politicians (Clinton, Obama, UK Prime Minister), Public Services (LA fire department, AmCross), Airlines, News agencies, etc.. which are increasingly using it, but not necessarily to interact with others but to broadcast content or information.

Is any company using Twitter for internal use only ?