Tweetminster lets you follow your MP on Twitter

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It’s nice to see Twitter going from strength-to-strength, and I genuinely believe that it’s got the potential to do for status updates and IM what Facebook did for social networking. The latest application to sit on top of the service is a TheyWorkForYou-style service called Tweetminster that lets you search for your MP and see whether or not they’re on Twitter.

Unfortunately my MP, Jeremy Corbyn, isn’t Twittering yet, but he’s the kind of guy who might, so I’m hoping he picks up on it soon. In the meantime, I now know that Jude Robinson [Lab] “is steaming over the Lib Dems’ Airport Inquiry” and Jo Swinson [LD] is “so heading home to change and go into Parliament”. Exciting stuff.

Tweetminster (via @jordanstone)

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MPs want age certificates and watershed for online video sites

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When it comes to “the Internets”, MPs do seem to ask the near-impossible. While I’m all in favour of protecting children from online nastiness, I don’t think trying to push existing methods on to the Web works.

The Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has warned that the Internet has a “dark side”, and protested over the delays in taking down images of child abuse once reported. Indeed, I agree.

However, they’ve also called for video sharing sites such as YouTube to create an age classification system for violent or sexually-explicit content, as well as introducing a watershed time before which such videos can’t be shown…