Twitter For Dummies

March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, Twitter surpassed the 10,000,000,000 tweet mark. This means that Twitter users have sent 10 Billion ‘tweets’ which are 160-character messages. Before I go into vocabulary, let’s start off with how Twitter has changed media and the internet.

This month, users of the world wide web proved that the internet is becoming more and more social. Nowhere was this more evident than Facebook overtaking Google in hit-count. (Google’s share last month was 6.06%, Facebook’s was 6.07% of total internet queries) This means people are preferring to connect with each other on a more personal and social level, and this has become an unexpected platform for unprecedented growth in media, business, news and even activism.

To compare the potential for entrepreneurial success stories, let’s us take World of Warcraft and compare it to FarmVille. It took WoW, a complex virtual world with fascinating environments and killer graphics, four whole years to amass 4,000,000 active users per month. It took FV a mere 4 months to get to that 4 million mark. Keep in mind WoW was specifically designed to be a gaming platform, while the Facebook team never planned for it to become such a powerful gaming utility.

To understand the impact Twitter has had on news is very significant. If I were walking down the street and saw an explosion a few blocks down, it would take me 30 seconds to post it in a 16-character tweet on Twitter. CNN can pick it up through its Twitter account and get second-by-second updates from people on the ground as it happens, not reporters who often get to the site of interest in the aftermath of an event.

It wasn’t just news networks who benefited from this ease of reporting and communication. The unrest seen in Iran a few months ago over the disputed presidential elections saw a great degree of violence and oppression. The best example was government agents awaiting wounded protestors in governmental hospitals to be bagged and tagged. In order to avoid being persecuted and incarcerated by the government, protestors tweeted locations where first aid was being offered to fellow opposition members. The US government asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance check in order to keep this valuable lifeline open to these protestors.

If you’re not into politics or business, you’ll be happy to know that everyone and everything is on Twitter. From celebrities to doctors, NGOs to governmental institutions, magazines and newspapers. Anything or anyone you can imagine, most probably has a twitter account, so you’ll be up-to-date all the time.

Some vocabulary you should familiarize yourself with:

  • Tweet – a 160-character message you send
  • Tweep – a friend you have from twitter
  • Tweetup – a real-life meeting of tweeps
  • Twestival – a special kind of bigger tweetup
  • Following – if you follow someone on twitter, his or her tweets will appear in your feed
  • Followers – the people who follow your tweets
  • @ – The @ symbol followed by a username means you are addressing that person, for example @GinoRaidy will appear as a reply to me in my @GinoRaidy tab
  • # – The # symbol is put before a word or name of interest, for example #GinosBlog is cool, so when someone searches twitter or a twitter-based search engine, the tweet containing this #GinosBlog will appear
  • Trending Topic – is a topic being tweeted about the most around the world, usually there are a few breaking news TTs and some which are weekly, such as Follow Friday, Music Monday, etc. (#FF o #MM where you either suggest a tweep to follow, or a song you love)
  • Lists – you or others can compile people you follow into lists, such as @lebanon or @ginosblog and from there you can find people of interest to follow, and look at a feed they produce which is unique usually to their group

I guess that’s enough for you to start off, don’t forget to follow me @GinoRaidy

Happy Tweeting!

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Google Calendars, Save Time and Money

March 19, 2010 By 1 Comment

Google’s free facilities seem endless. One which I’ve noticed become much more popular than last year (when Baz and I were maybe the only 2 people using it in the world =P) is the Google Calendar.

It’s an online log, very detailed and very customizable. You can organize your appointments, meetings and to-dos.

However, the best part is the ability to use a calendar with a group of people with SMS and Email notifications – Free. Yes, Free…

Here’s what to do

  1. If you have a google account (gmail) go to http://www.google.com/calendar/ If not, do one you backward person
  2. Click the settings tab on the top-right
  3. Under ‘General’ choose the language and country and stuff like that
  4. Under ‘Calendars’ you won’t really do anything till you sync a calendar with a group of other people
  5. Here’s the best part, under ‘Mobile Setup’ enter your country and mobile number (+9613134477 for example) and you will receive an sms verification code. Punch it into the page and you’re all set.
  6. You could also fiddle around with the experimental addons and features in the Labs section

Now, with your code verified, try to create an event and invite someone to it.

  1. On the top-left of the page, click on ‘Create an Event’
  2. Set the what, where and when and description.
  3. Then in options, choose ‘add a reminder’ and select from either email or SMS (SMS of course =P) and specify how early you’d like to be reminded of the event (10 minutes, a day, etc.)
  4. Here’s the nice part, to the right of the page, there is an ‘add guests’ box. Punch in your friend’s google account. Your friend, if they have setup their mobiles to Google Calendars, they will receive an SMS similar to: “Gino Raidy has invited you to the Basement on Saturday March 20th at 11:30PM”

Best of all, it’s FREE and FAST =D

For all you skeptics, Google doesn’t share your private information, so you won’t receive unwanted telemarketing calls or messages.

Long Live Google =D

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Electronic Music for Dummies – Techno Edition

March 8, 2010 By 2 Comments

Everyone you know (who knows electronic music) will tell you it is an American genre. It’s appearance at the peak of the House and Acid movements in the US and Europe can be credited to one city: Detroit.

Techno is the term that was best recognized my lay people who were not yet familiar with the electronic music revolution. Everything synthetic was referred to as ‘techno’. The misused term today has changed though, and is now ‘trance’ or worse yet ‘tiesto’.

This type of music can be described as very primal. It is a DJ’s heaven. Why? Because it focuses on the instrumental aspect of music and rarely, if ever, has lyrics. Not only instrumental, but also very percussive. By percussive, I mean rhythm is god in techno music. The bassy music, described as ‘tribal’ in its earliest forms (similar to ancient tribal beats, only more high-tech) usually is pretty steady, without the ups and downs of other electronic genres, such as Trance. However, the changes are minute and evenly spaced, appreciated by true electronic music connoisseurs.

Techno and minimal had a nice visit in Beirut last weekend, with Spanish DJ Paco Ossuna gracing the decks at Roger Moukarzel Studios on March 6th.

Beats Per Minute: 120 to 150 BPM (pretty varying between one song and another)
Famous DJs: Richie Hawtin, Paco Osuna, Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold, Deepdish, The Prodigy
Famous Classics: Cafe Del Mar – Energy 52, Felix – #1, 8PM – Faithless, The Drill – The Drill
Famous Clubs: Tresor – Berlin
Samples I Recommend: Say Hello (Club Mix) – Deep Dish and  Geht’s Noch – Roman Flugal
Some DJs in Lebanon Who Spin Techno: maDJam, Ronin’n'Nesta

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Understanding the Richter Scale

February 28, 2010 By 4 Comments

Unfortunately, the past few weeks have seen 2 devastating earthquakes hit different parts of the world. The first was of course the one that ravaged Haiti on January 12th. It recorded a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale. The second hit Chile yesterday morning, with a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale.

Richter was an extremely annoying man who set up the most misleading kind of scale. What’s the difference between a 5 and a 7-magnitude? How come an earthquake of 7.0 killed 217,000 in Haiti, while a 8.8 one appears to have killed only 700 so far? (even one person’s loss is a devastating one, but the human death toll in Haiti was more than 300-times that in Chile so far, so you really can’t ignore the numbers)

Let’s start off by explaining the how the Richter scale works.

“The Richter Scale is the best known scale for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes. The magnitude value is proportional to the logarithm of the amplitude of the strongest wave during an earthquake” < I didn’t understand anything from this, for those of you who did, good for you. For the rest of us, here is sone more:

The energy release of an earthquake, which closely correlates to its destructive power, scales with the 3⁄2 power of the shaking amplitude. Thus, a difference in magnitude of 1.0 is equivalent to a factor of 31.6 ( = (101.0)(3 / 2)) in the energy released; a difference in magnitude of 2.0 is equivalent to a factor of 1000 ( = (102.0)(3 / 2) ) in the energy released.

Basically, each degree is 10 times as powerful as the degree below it (earth motion-wise). So, a 7 magnitude is 10 times as bad as a 6 magnitude and a 100 times worse than a 5 magnitude. The 10-fold increase applies to the relative motion of the Earth in each case. A 31.6-fold increase in energy though is seen between each degree. So, the energy involved in a 5 magnitude earthquake releases 31.6 times more energy than a 4 magnitude one, explaining the massive difference in damage and casualties between seemingly close-range earthquake magnitudes.

Next is the frequency of earthquakes. We’ve heard about 2 this year so far but in fact, some 1,000,000 earthquakes happen each year, that’s some 2740 earthquakes a day (2732 earthquakes a day on a leap year =P)

 

The Richter scale however isn’t the preferred scale for scientists and seismologist. Experts in the field take many other factors into consideration besides wave amplitude. Most notably, the direction of the waves (up and down, or side-to-side), the population density in the affected area, and the strength of buildings and infrastructure.

So, that’s the reason we all get so mixed up when we hear about earthquakes:

1- The Ricther scales isn’t as simple as it looks

2- Scientists prefer to use extra criteria to classify magnitudes

So, the next time you hear that the Chilean earthquake was 800 times worse than the Haitian one, while its just 1.8 degrees difference and wonder why, or why if it was so much worse, was the death-toll was 1/300th that of the earthquake with 1/800th the size? It’s because of the misleading scale, which does not take into consideration a nation’s readiness, population density and proximity of an earthquake’s epicenter.

UPDATE on 11 March 2011

The earthquake that struck Japan today was an 8.9 magnitude, which as you can see is very severe and fairly rare when it comes to earthquakes. Japan, arguably the most prepared and experienced country in terms of earthquake and tsunami response, has suffered hundreds of casualties so far, demonstrating how powerful and unpredictable plate tectonics are.

The quake was felt over 400km away from the epicenter, 10-meter-high tsunamis were reported and the whole pacific basin issued a tsunami warning.

 

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How To Send An Anonymous Email

January 23, 2010 By 1 Comment

This is the first of many how-tos in the new How-To category =D

It’s extremely simple:

  • Go to www.anonymousspeech.com and register (just enter in some username and a password, no email or other such thing is required)
  • Send an email to anyone you want, it will be from the pseudoname you used (you can create as many as you like)
  • You can even send attachments via this service
  • However, the sender email will be something@vistomail.com or something @anonymousspeech (you cannot put @gmail or @hotmail)
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