Tag: twitter
What happens to your user name when you die?
User names are starting to become an issue. One’s identity online was never really a problem beyond trying to get the top result in a Google search – not an easy feat if you’re name’s John Smith but as Dan or Daniel Sung, depending upon how I’m feeling, I’ve always enjoyed the luxury of being somewhere near the top.
The trouble is, that my name’s not so rare that I always get my choice of user name on all the big services out there. Most people’s aren’t but, again, that was never really a problem when it was just about e-mail addresses, but now that Google profiles becoming all the rage and services like Twitter actually affect my career, suddenly, my juvenile choices of [email protected] and [email protected] aren’t very useful any more.
I can’t get [email protected]. It’s too late, unless I want to add a bunch of underscores and a three digit number, and because of that I can’t get the vanity URL I’m after. Regardless of whether [email protected] has actually clued up to the possbility of his http://www.google.com/profile/dansung address (and he hasn’t because the link’s dead) the fact is that I can’t have it because I don’t have the [email protected] user name in the first place. Instead, I have to be satisfied in my petty revenge that enough spambots should have picked up his credentials by now and sent a few thousand messages to clog up his account.
So, how do I go about getting my name back, aside paying the guy for it? What if it’s some kid who never uses the account? What if the owner of [email protected] is dead? Any chance then?Well, I seem to remember in the terms and conditions when I signed up to hotmail that if you don’t use your account for 60 days or so, then MSN terminates it, and, in fact, having asked around all the majors – Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Twitter, that does seem to be largely the case. Here’s how it runs.
Gmail
Google was very helpful on the matter, answering my question directly and then pointing me towards the supporting terms and conditions.
Google will terminate your account in accordance with the terms of service if you fail to login to your account for a period of nine months is the phrase I was looking for along with the fact that people can actively delete their accounts.
Now, the tricky part is that, although the user names will become freed up, it will only happen after an unspecified time period and I’ve no idea whether that’s a matter of days, months or years. Still, there is some hope for [email protected] to eventually arrive at its rightful owner.
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! was also most accommodating. The answer was very different though. It seems, with their service, that once your name has gone, it’s gone forever. As it stands, inactive accounts are not terminated and will lie idle indefinitely.
On the plus side, they did launch Ymail just last year, so I might be in for a shout at bagging that one while the service is fresh. Yep, all mine. Eat that one [email protected].
MSN
No reply back from MSN as yet but I’ll stick with that 60-day account termination I remember from back in the day. No word on whether they recycle the addresses but I’m infuriated to see that I’ve only got a choice between hotmail.co.uk and live.co.uk with all .coms presumably available to those in the States or behind proxy servers of some sort, or, in fact, those with some other way round which I have, as yet, to work out.
Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice
That’s what Twitter has to say about things, but notice the use of “may” rather than “will”. I would assume that Twitter does recycle user names, though, because they’re hot on name squatting. Go and have a look at the whole section dedicated to it if you don’t believe me.
The catch is that I happen to know of a chap desperately trying to get his user name in full knowledge that its current owner has done sod all with the account for well over the six month period. He has petitioned Twitter but they’ve done nought about it. All mouth and no trousers it seems.
The trouble is that the internet is still young; an adolescent really. It’s only now that this kind of thing is becoming an issue and, given the surprise of most of the press officers when I called, it’s something that we the users are realising a lot faster than the big web players.
So, there’s a few ways this can go. Either they get wise to this and realise that they need to start releasing user names or they get wiser and start charging some kind of premium for them. That was Facebooks toe in the water this morning. I wonder how well that would go down if Google tried the same?
So, what happens to your user name when you die? Well, that depends. For now, it’s very possible you can take it with you to the grave. Then, it seems my choices are either begging Google for some kind of alert service for when my name is released or a cash offer to the current owner. If you’re listening [email protected], how does fifty quid grab you?
Breaking: Pirate Bay Judge biased?
This is currently a breaking story, so we don’t have a lot of detail right now, but Pirate Bay defendant Peter Sunde has accused the judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, of bias. He made the accusations on Twitter, claiming “the #spectrial judge seems to be working within the copyright lobby”.
Swedish news sources claim that the judge is a member of a couple of organizations that might have compromised his neutrality in the case. Firstly the Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) and secondly, the Swedish Association for Industrial Property. The former body also counts rights holders’ lawyers Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, and the latter pushes for stronger copyright.
It’s unlikely that this could have a effect on the trial, as it’s come to light after the judgement has been passed. The Pirate Bay’s lawyers have had ample opportunity to raise this. It does mean, however, that the verdict of the promised appeal could turn out very different.
Several law sources have criticized the judge for taking the case under these circumstances, but the judge has resisted pressure, saying; “I have not felt that I am biased because of those commitments”.
Eric Bylander, Associate Professor of Procedural Law at the School of Gothenburg, disagrees, saying that in such a high-profile case the judge should have been more careful. Peter Sunde is promising more detail later on today, so keep an eye on this developing story.
via @brokep and Sveriges Radio P3 (Google translated)
Twitter at work with SpreadTweet
If you work in a big corporate office and you crave Twitter salvation, but it’s been banned by the small-minded IT department, then I’ve got the solution for you. Spreadtweet. It’s an interface for Twitter that looks just like Microsoft Excel.
It comes in several flavours – OSX Office, Office 2003 and Office 2007, and it uses Adobe Air for the backend, but it’s relatively speedy and fully operational as a Twitter client. The developer admits that it’s “probably not” legal, so grab it while you can.
SpreadTweet (via @bryonyb)
Twitter gets the 'all-clear' after a weekend of virus antics
In a metaphorical ‘get your own back’ situation, everyone’s favourite bird-themed microblogging website, Twitter, was assaulted by worms over Easter weekend. Four waves of assaults hit the site, with those infected spamming out a link to a Twitter clone called StalkDaily.
The creator of StalkDaily, 17-year-old American student Michael Mooney, has admitted he was responsible, saying:
“I really didn’t think it was going to get that much attention, but then I started to see all these stories about it and thought, ‘Oh, my God’.”
While the attack could have been considerably worse if it had been more malicious in intent, security experts said they were surprised it had even been possible on the site, as Facebook and MySpace saw similar assaults quite some time ago. Twitter has promised to conduct a ‘full review’ of what happened.
OPINION: Don't forget about Facebook
With the tech world all a-twitter about, er… Twitter, and having little sexy accidents when talking about Spotify, it’s sometimes easy to forget about Facebook. In reality, Facebook is only a couple of years older than both Twitter and Spotify, and there’s still people out there who say things like “I don’t get all this Facebook malarky”.
Let’s start with the numbers. Facebook recently hit 175 million active users – if it were a country it’d be the 6th most populous in the world, between Brazil and Pakistan. More than 3 billion minutes are spent on the site every day – enough time to watch the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy 4.3 million times. Or read “War and Peace” 35,000 times.
Don’t forget that Facebook popularized the app store concept way before Apple, too. Sure, most Facebook apps are a load of old rubbish and their integration was an unmitigated disaster for the user experience (hence why they’ve mostly disappeared) but most iPhone apps are crap too. Seriously, how long does iFart sit on your phone before you delete it?
Despite being blamed for wanton destruction, Facebook even saves lives! News reached us this morning of a kid who was saved from a suicide attempt by a friend over Facebook chat. The power of having all you friends at your fingertips can stop people from doing silly things, and can rescue them when they do silly things.
So don’t forget about Facebook. Businesses – If you’re developing an Android app, stop and think – why not port this to Facebook, too? If you’re thinking of starting an ad campaign on Twitter or Spotify, remember Facebook’s userbase and think about using Facebook’s powerful ad tools to reach its bazillions of users. It’s not old hat.
The rest of you – go check in on your Facebook friends. Maybe you haven’t seen them since primary school, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing in common – on the contrary, you might have more than ever in common. Go poke that girl you ‘fancied’ when you were 13. She might even poke you back. The rest of the world is a little slower than you, mister early-adopter. Don’t forget about them.
Here’s a handy link. Click it, and spend half an hour remembering the web two years ago. You might even like it more: Facebook.
Tech Digest Podcast #2
Here’s the second podcast from the team at Tech Digest. This week, we got stuck in to Twitter being bought by Google, Conficker’s no-show, and whether or not it’s reasonable for networks to get upset about Skype on the iPhone.
In the middle section, Dan extolled the joys of the Kaleidescape home cinema system, while I tried to convince him to use a couple of services that boost your Twitter experience – Mr Tweet and Topify.
Lastly, we talked about about the death of some poor guy while using Wii fit, and the end of Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia. I miss mindmaze so terribly 🙁
A small round of applause to the venerable Andy Merret, a.k.a. the Tech Trumpet, for coming up with some jingles for the start and end of the podcast. They’re rather good, aren’t they? Thanks Andy!
Download the podcast directly here, or subscribe via this URL.
As ever, if you have any comments, topics that you’d like us to talk about, or general abuse, throw it our way by sending us a tweet at @techdigest or emailing [email protected].
UPDATED: Google in talks to purchase Twitter
Google is in talks to acquire Twitter according to sources in a Tech Crunch article this morning. Negotiations have been believed to be at both late and early stages, so we can probably take from that that the stages are in fact somewhere towards the middle.
Google’s valuation of the microblogging platform is thought to be well in excess of the $250 million that Facebook offered a few month’s back. The important difference to this deal is in the payment plan.
Zuckerburg Inc. was looking to use overpriced Facebook stock for the majority of the bargain whereas Google is ready to pay in both cold, hard cash and more stable, publicly-valued shares.
The big questions surrounding the deal are about what Google plans on doing with Twitter and what founders of the service Evan Williams and Biz Stone want out of it too. Twitter represents a real-time search of news and events happening now whereas Google results give weight to pages according to when they were indexed and how many people link to them. If Google does go through with the deal, they would effectively own search but whether they would improve Twitter or leave it to rot is another matter.
For a bigger discussion of the ins and outs of this one, download the Tech Digest podcast.
(via Tech Crunch)
Twitter hiring staffer to look after celebrities
Everyone knows that fame gets you everything you could ever want (except love, but who the hell needs that?) but until recently the brightest and most beautiful among us had to deal with Twitter just like anyone else does.
Not for much longer. The microblogging company is hiring a “VIP Concierge” to look after the celebs using the service. Here’s what they’ve put under ‘job description’:
“We don’t have a description written for this yet, but the job is to be a “high touch” point of contact at Twitter for the burgeoning number of celebrities on the service. We want to make sure they’re happy, using the product effectively, etc.”
“This person is probably pretty junior (it won’t pay a lot) but hopefully familiar with working with “Hollywood types.” They should be tech savvy enough to answer questions and solve basic problems (though they can fall back on our tech support). And they should definitely present themselves (and the company) well on the phone and in person. They should be proactive but not pushy. “
“It might make sense for them to be in L.A. but to come up to SF often. Obviously this is a very sweet gig for someone. The challenge will be finding someone who is good at the schmoozing but also humble and a fit with our culture.”
It’s probably a wise move for a company who’ve seen much of their growth thanks to high-profile tweeters like Steven Fry and Philip Schofield. Does it sound like you, or someone you know? Go for it! And tell them we sent you.
Job Ad (via TechCrunch)
Tech Digest Podcast #1
So, this morning, Dan and I got on Skype and had a go at recording a podcast. We chatted about the big stories of the week – Twitter and Last.fm trying to monetise their services, and the big media companies approaching Google to try to get their content higher in search rankings.
I’m a bit of a software person, whereas Dan’s into his hardware, so as a central feature, we thought it’d be fun to try to convince each other of the joys of a bit of software and a bit of hardware respectively. I plumped for Last.fm, whereas Dan tried to convince me I need Canon’s EOS 500D DSLR in my life.
Lastly, we took a brief look at some of the stranger news stories of the week – the 60ft penis on the roof and the CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith campaign. I wanted to talk about a few other stories here too, but we ran out of time.
Download the podcast as an MP3 here, or subscribe via RSS here.
It’s a little clunky, still – my voice buzzes a bit thanks to the cheap headset I’m using. We’re very much feeling our way around how the whole process works, so any recommendations and advice are more than welcome. Drop us a tweet at @techdigest or email me or Dan.
Twitter back on SMS to Vodafone customers
Twitter and Vodafone have struck a deal to see SMS updates and notifications back free of charge on UK handsets once more. The two catches, and they are whompingly large ones, are that you have to be a Vodafone customer and that the offer is only free for an unspecified limited period of time quoted as being “the first few weeks”.
You can use @replies and navigate straight to the site by the URL included in the message and the deal will be bundled for free into a number of Vodafone text packages. If not in your bundle, you’ll still be able to use it, but you’ll have to start paying when the limited period finishes.
It’s all reasonably good news if you’re on Vodafone but there’s still something of a bad taste in my mouth when the whole thing used to be free for all anyway. Despite being a Vodafone customer, I might go with my esteemed colleague, Duncan Geere, on this one and just not bother going back.
