A scrawled sign was placed next to a decapitated body near a main road in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo. Its message was simple: Stop talking about drug cartels on the internet — or anywhere else. “Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites,” the sign read, “I’m The Laredo Girl, and I’m here because of my reports, and yours.”

The execution of Marisol Macias Castaneda — known online as “The Laredo Girl” and as “Nena de Laredo” — is the latest in a series of attacks against Mexicans who go online to discuss drug violence. It’s an epidemic which a new report describes as “so horrific as to approach a civil war.”

The report, released Monday by the Texas Department of Agriculture and authored by retired Major General Robert Scales and retired General Barry McCaffrey, describes a conflict in which drug cartels have forced the “capitulation” of Mexican border cities, killed more than 40,000 people and have fueled “an internal war in Mexico that has stripped that country of its internal security to the extent that a virtual state of siege now exists adjacent to our own southwestern states.”

Residents in towns along drug trafficking routes have been forced out by cartels, leaving them abandoned. Throughout northern Mexico, civil society has “severely deteriorated.”

The authors go on to claim Mexican cartels have moved into Texas border counties to use as safe havens: hiding out from Mexican authorities under the nose of U.S. law enforcement, directing drug shipments into the United States interior and engaging in kidnapping. Cartels have built command centers in Texas comparable to brigade-level headquarters.

 

Cartel operatives are also becoming more confident. The authors note pickup trucks emblazoned with large “Z” stickers and Ferrari logos — symbols used by the Zetas cartel — are an increasingly common sight in Texas. Drug traffickers have also been spotted in uniform and have shown willingness to confront U.S. law enforcement.

During a press conference Monday, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples even warned that without adequate U.S. assistance to Mexico, the Mexican government may be forced to negotiate with the cartels following presidential elections next year. The Mexican government strongly denies any consideration of negotiating with criminals.

The McCaffrey/Scales report contains some problems. Talk about “spillover violence” is exaggerated and relies heavily on anecdotes. I listened to Laredo, Texas Mayor Raul Salinas incredulously tell an audience in Austin on Sunday that it’s “baloney” U.S. border cities are experiencing a surge in violence.

Indeed, FBI crime statistics show Laredo, El Paso and other border cities to be relatively peaceful for their size, though Scales and McCaffrey are right that FBI statistics alone don’t tell the whole story. Cartel-related violence does in fact occur on the U.S. side of the border. As recently as Tuesday morning, an apparent power struggle within the Gulf Cartel led to a fatal shooting on a highway in McAllen, Texas.

But to what extent cartel-related crimes are exaggerated — or not — in Texas, it’s the reverse in Mexico. Tortured bodies of “snitches” turn up in public. Reporters who attempt to expose the cartels are struck down with guns and grenades. As a result, people have shifted to social media for information on violence and how to dodge it.

Writing for the New York Times, Damien Cave described a terrified public using Twitter, Facebook and blogs to transmit information traditional media cannot report for fear of reprisal. Cave points out that while Mexico is very dangerous, the country is broadly middle class and inundated with cell phones. Facebook has a 95 percent penetration rate. A laundry list of sites like El Blog del Narco report violence daily, often in extremely graphic detail.

Last week, social networks buzzed with information after a paramilitary group dumped the bodies of 35 people — presumed to be affiliated with the Zetas — from the backs of two pickup trucks during rush hour in the eastern coastal city of Veracruz. Last month, two Veracruz residents were charged with terrorism and sabotage (the charges were later dropped) after spreading false rumors on Twitter and Facebook that area schools were under attack by gunmen.

Cave writes that although cartels have successfully bullied traditional media into being quiet, they “are clearly threatened by the decentralized distribution of the Web. And it may be harder for them to control.”

Which explains why two residents of Nuevo Laredo were found hanged from a pedestrian overpass Sept. 13, allegedly for posting to social media websites. Macias, who also worked as an employee for local newspaper Primera Hora, was then killed.

“For those who don’t want to believe, this happened to me because of my actions, for believing in the army and the navy,” the sign read. It concluded, “Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl…ZZZZ.”

by Robert Smith

How much would you pay for a burger with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion rings, cheddar and bacon?

At Corner Burger in Brooklyn, Hilda Hampar charges $9.25. At that price, tables in her restaurant often sit empty.

So she made a deal with Groupon. It sent out an offer to its thousands of subscribers: $18 dollars' worth of Corner Burger food for nine bucks.

"The next day [after] the coupon came out, this place was full," she says. "People were waiting outside."

Good news, except for one daunting piece of math.

 

Groupon charges a 50 percent commission. That leaves only $4.50 for Hampar to pay for the food and the overhead. For Corner Burger to make money, it had to squeeze something more out of the coupon customer.

"If they come and spend exactly $18, then I don't make any money," she says. "But If they come in [as a] table of four and spend $50, $60, $70, I do make a profit."

And, even better, the Groupon might persuade some cheapskates to give Corner Burger a chance.

Economists call this price discrimination: The ability to sell the same product at different prices, depending on how much customers are willing to pay.

This was always the principle of haggling — which Monty Python got exactly right in Life of Brian. You remember the scene:

 

HARRY THE HAGGLER: Ten?! Are you trying to insult me?! Me, with a poor dying grandmother?! Ten?!

BRIAN: All right. I'll give you eleven.

HARRY THE HAGGLER: Now you're gettin' it. Eleven?! Did I hear you right?! Eleven?! This cost me twelve. You want to ruin me?!

 

Haggling had perfect price discrimination. You could size up the rich folk and jack up the price. Or lower the price for the poor bloke walking away. Each time, you maximized your profit.

In the 1800s, though, with giant department stores opening, it became more efficient to post a single price. The volume of customers and sales was high, and the people making the sales weren't store owners but low-paid employees.

But merchants still wanted that haggle; they still wanted wanted to sell to the cheapskates.

So they invented coupons.

"If somebody is willing to scan the newspapers, clip the coupons, go to the store, and redeeem the coupon you can be fairly certain that that individual is a price-sensitive individual," says University of California, Irvine economist Richard McKenzie.

Paper coupons had a good run. But somewhere in the past couple of decades, they ran out of steam. Once they started to show up everywhere — even on the store shelves — they stopped driving business like they used to. They just offered the same deal to everyone.

This is where Groupon comes in. Groupon is different in several ways. Here are a few:

 

Huge discounts to get your attention.

A time limit to snatch it up so you'll jump in.

A high-tech shine: You can present your Groupon on a cellphone.

Customers pay upfront.

 

Groupon (and its revenues) grew so quickly that Google reportedly offered $6 billion to buy it. And Groupon turned Google down.

Now the coupon rush is on. This week in New York City, hundreds of daily-deal companies came together to look for investors and make deals. The place was full of people who said things like this:

 

Using coupons is hip. The one thing Groupon has done for the whole space is make the coupon business sexy. Think about going on a date with your girlfriend: When was the last time you brought a coupon with you? And it's not an embarrassment anymore.

 

The new coupon craze does have a downside. It took 100 years for paper coupons to overwhelm consumers. In just two years, there are now more than 400 daily-deal sites. Businesses report getting calls every day from another Groupon clone wanting to do a deal.

Hilda Hampar, the burger lady, just got a call from Google. It's getting into the business and wants her to offer another burger deal. She took it. Even if it brings her only 10 people, that's 10 new potential customers.

And if the lines are out the door?

"Let them wait," she says.

"Yeah, I got the job!"

"Shopping now -- home at four"

Post such status updates while also owing money and folks other than your pals might take notice. Social networking websites are becoming hotspots for collection agencies wanting to track down elusive debtors. What you publish can help them find you -- not to chat, but to get you to pay up.

Unfriendly uses of social networking sites
Debt collectors are hardly stumped when debtors aren't listed in the white pages. Many simply browse such social networking sites as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for vital clues. With the majority of Americans using these sites -- 72 percent of young adults and 40 percent of those over 30, according to a 2010 Pew Research poll -- this course of action makes sense.

"We often need to locate or investigate people and routinely use social media sites," says Washington, D.C.-based lawyer Thomas J. Simeone, who manages a firm of five attorneys. "Facebook is the first step now."

Simeone has his staff compare what the credit card company has on file to what the person is posting. "A quick search on Google usually turns up someone's page, which may have their current hometown and other identifying information to help you locate them -- employer, school, date of birth (with or without year), family members," says Simeone. "All of this information can then be used to locate someone -- either by itself or in conjunction with other sites."

The type of person they're looking for and the type of debt that person holds will dictate which websites a collector peruses, says Michelle Dunn, a former collector and author of the upcoming book "Get Paid: Weed Out Bad Customers, Collect on Past Due Balances and Avoid Bad Debt." "Most are using Facebook for consumer debt, but for the younger set would be MySpace," says Dunn. "Business-to-business credit would be LinkedIn."

According to a report issued by the private investigating firm Lemieux & Associates, your online friends are "an indispensable tool," even when settings are turned to private. By looking at people in a network and cross-referencing them with other database information that lists relatives and associates, "you can refine your search and confirm if they are the claimant you're looking for."

Once a collector identifies a debtor, they also find a treasure trove of employment, financial and contact information.

Information they're looking for
So what might you post that would spark a collector's interest? Everything from status updates, photos and public messages. You might reveal your daily schedule (this is gold for the collectors, if they're trying to catch you at home) and your cell phone number.

Collectors may also be able to see whether you have assets, or if you a spouse who could be held liable for the debt. Employment-related posts are especially valuable to judgment creditors who would like to begin a wage garnishment.

Dunn says such searches can also help verify or debunk a borrower's situation. "As a bill collector, you hear all kinds of stories," says Dunn. "Some people lie, some don't. If you check their social networking sites, and they write that they are looking for a job, it can help with validity and work to the person's advantage. However, if they say they're not working and have no money, but are posing with a new boat -- well, there's a problem."

Can they really do that?
According to Simone, finding people this way is both legal and appropriate. "Any information shared on such a site is legally available to anyone."

Dunn agrees that there is no legislation that specifically prevents collectors from finding people on social networking sites, but she points out the gray area. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which governs third-party collectors, was passed in 1978, predating the Internet. It doesn't cover precisely what a collector can and can't do to uncover and converse with debtors on these sites.

What is clear, according to the act, is that misrepresentation is illegal. Therefore, collectors cannot be deceitful and claim to be an acquaintance or colleague so you'll friend them. Doing so may also be against the terms of the website's policy, says Benjamin Wright, attorney and Internet law expert.

"For example, MySpace forbids someone from pretending they are someone else," says Wright. "If a debt collector were to misrepresent who he is and pretend to be a long lost uncle, that could be a violation of the terms of service, and in theory, could lead to some type of penalty."

Still, it's not against the law to request a friend connection and not disclose identity or purpose. This is an easy in to all your private information, as many people accept strangers into their network.

Another provision of the act is that collectors can't harass someone. So even if they find your profile, they can't post insults, warnings or write about your debt. Dunn advises collectors to "think about what the laws are when using the phone and the mail. You'll know not to post that they are a deadbeat on their wall."

It should be noted that not all industry insiders are embracing this method of locating debtors. Alexis A. Moore is a credit collections executive and consultant in Sacramento, Calif., who advocates for greater privacy protection. "This is a practice that makes professionals like me cringe because it is unnecessary when there are far more practical ways of collecting debts and conducting asset investigations and people locates today," says Moore.

Keep your friends close -- and your creditors closer
"More and more collectors will be using" social networking searches in 2011, says Dunn. She suggests consumers visit social networking sites created by and for those in the collection world.  Accountrecovery.net, for example, is "like Facebook for collectors," says Dunn. There, they can create profiles, join groups, share tips and discuss what the law is and how it's changing. Such an insider's perspective can be enlightening.

In the end, though, if you're indebted to a collection agency, they'll usually use any lawful means to contact you -- including intensive social networking detective work. So be aware that far more than your friends can read what you write.

And if you switch your settings from public to private, or use a pseudonym? "Even if you try to be anonymous, you are not necessarily safe, especially if you owe vast sums of money. Advanced searches can unearth more than you think," says Wright.

The solution is not to close out your pages altogether, but rather confront any financial problems you might have head-on. This way, you can keep creditors far away from your online friends and photo albums.

The latest comScore Top 50 Properties (U.S.) statistics make sobering reading for AOL, the former king of the portals in the 90s and early part of this century. While AOL is the number 5 ranked U.S. web property, with 104 million monthly unique visitors, it's now well adrift of the top 4: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Facebook. Facebook is just one spot above AOL, but has nearly 44 million more monthly uniques. Meanwhile a company that is virtually an unknown brand outside of the Internet industry, Glam Media, has just about caught up with AOL.

Glam Media had 91 million uniques in September, according to comScore. That's only 13 million less than AOL. Glam Media had 54 million uniques one year ago, so how has it managed to get to within sniffing distance of becoming one of the top 5 Web properties in the U.S.?

Glam Media is a network of web sites predominantly focused on lifestyle content, connected to a massive advertising platform. The flagship site is Glam.com, a web site for women that launched in 2005 and that competes with the likes of iVillage. Although Glam Media made its name by providing content for women, in 2008 it expanded into mens lifestyle content with the launch of Brash.com.

Glam Media calls itself the "the pioneer and global leader of Vertical Media," by which it means a combination of flagship properties and small publishers in a particular vertical - in Glam's case, lifestyle content. It claims to have over 1,400 publishers worldwide operating within its network. As well as Glam.com and Brash.com, a site called Tinker.com brings social media into the mix (primarily Facebook and Twitter).

Glam Media is highly ambitious. According to a recent article in business analysis site Crain's, Glam Media founder and chief executive Samir Arora "plans to grow Glam's head count to 1,000 from its current 300, with emphasis on technology hires." His goal is for Glam Media to be "no. 1 in all brand advertising to women."

Arora compares his company's model to cable television, saying that the 1,400+ sites in its network are like niche TV channels.

While Glam Media doesn't specifically compete with AOL, or other portals such as Yahoo! and MSN, it's interesting to compare the two models. Glam specifically focuses on 'lifestyle' type content, yet it also targets a very wide audience: basically all women and as many men as it can get. Glam Media and AOL are going after much the same audience: the mainstream.

The difference between the two companies isn't the content, per se. Because AOL does lifestyle content too. In fact it has its own network of sites in its living.aol.com section. And with the Seed program, AOL is attempting to tap into 'the long tail' of blogs and small publishers - just like Glam Media.

Yet AOL does much more than just lifestyle content. It does news, email, music, and so on. So it must be a concern to them that a relatively small upstart "vertical media" company is breathing down its neck in terms of visitor numbers.

I think it's refreshing to see a media company focus on something it does well - and growing that - rather than spreading itself over many different market segments. Although it should be noted that Glam Media does not actually own the vast majority of sites it includes in its network, which many people rightly see as a risk to Glam's model. After all, if you don't outright own the content then how much control over your brand do your really have?

Nevertheless, Glam Media is feeling confident. Founder Samir Arora told Venturebeat in March: "We should be bigger than AOL very shortly."

Judging by the current growth of Glam Media and the stagnation of AOL, that could be within a few months.

VIA:Mashable

A massive conspiracy to censor left-leaning political stories on Digg has been uncovered, in which tens of thousands of stories were “buried” by a right-wing group calling itself the “Digg Patriots.” Did you require any more proof that Digg needs to roll out the new version of Digg ASAP?

The alleged conspiracy (we have yet to confirm) was revealed by Alternet’s Ole Ole Olson, and it’s a doozy of a story. Olson went undercover and infiltrated the Digg Patriots in order to learn about their plan to censor stories that weren’t flattering to the right while promoting stories hammering the left.

Digg is one of the world’s most popular websites and a kingpin of social news, even if its traffic has been on the decline for the last year. Users vote on stories via the “Digg” or “Bury” buttons. Enough Diggs can send a story to the front page, garnering a massive wave of traffic for that story. Buried stories never see the light of day though, and that’s what the Digg Patriots were counting on.

The conservative-leaning group utilized a Yahoo Group and a service called coRanks to tell its nearly 100 members to Digg or Bury certain stories multiple times per day. It was founded in May of last year, meaning that this group has been operating for more than a year. The accused ringleader is Bettverboten, a still-active Digg power user with more than 1,500 submissions and 73,000 Diggs.

The result seems to be the removal of thousands of stories from the annals of Digg. According to Olsen, “this censorship is not restricted to political articles either. Articles about education, homophobia, racism, science, the environment, economics, wealth disparity, world events, the media, green energy, and anything even slightly critical of the GOP/Tea Party/FoxNews/corporations are targets.” They also targeted specific users they deemed left-leaning.

We have to admit, the Digg Patriots knew what the hell they were doing.

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A Black Eye That Will Soon Be Fixed

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The revelation of the Digg Patriots censorship conspiracy is a major black eye for the social media giant Kevin Rose built. It undermines the fundamental credibility of Digg itself. If 100 users can single-handedly tilt one of the world’s top websites to the right by controlling thousands of stories, how can you really rely on Digg as a valid source for the web’s top news stories? For what it’s worth, Kevin Rose tweeted that the company is “looking into this,” as it should be.

There’s not much the team can do about what’s already happened, though; those stories are forever buried. Banning the users involved in the Digg Patriots helps, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issue: that Digg is easily gamed.

However, the fix for that problem is almost here: Digg v4, a.k.a. the New Digg. Its launch is impending, and it couldn’t come any sooner. The revamped version of the social news website includes two big changes that should mute much of the gaming that goes on in the current version: the elimination of the “Bury” button and an emphasis on personalization that neuters the impact of hitting the front page.

Because of the impending changes, Digg will get past this episode without too much damage. It really needs to the clean the slate if it’s to make a recovery. Traffic is still going in the wrong direction.

From the FDA's letter:

The shared content is misleading because it makes representations about the efficacy of Tasigna but fails to communicate any risk information associated with the use of this drug. In addition, the shared content inadequately communicates Tasigna's FDA-approved indication and implies superiority over other products. Thus, the shared content for Tasigna misbrands the drug in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) and FDA implementing regulations.

The FDA also dinged Novartis for failure to submit the Facebook Share widget for approval as is required for pharmaceutical promotional materials.

Illegal text was from site metadata

The articles and images in the widget were drawn from online content generated by Novartis. The description of each link was pulled from the meta description in the page's code, which was also written by Novartis. Normally, that text is less than 200 characters and is visible to users on the results page of a search engine.

Novartis removed the Facebook Share widget after the FDA's request, but it also made another change. The company edited the description in the metadata of each page to conform to FDA rules.

Metadata not exempt

The FDA letter does not mention metadata. But the same rules that govern advertising, labeling and promotion also apply to metadata, according to a regulatory alert issued by healthcare marketing agency Digitas Health.

And this isn't the first time the FDA has taken issue with metadata, Digitas Health said - Sanofi-aventis received a letter in March 2009 for metadata on a website for the drug PLAVIX, prescribed to prevent strokes and heart attacks. "The letter received little comment at the time because it was released on the same day as 13 other letters relating to paid search engine marketing. Few people noticed that the infraction cited by DDMAC (the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications) related to organic, non-paid search engine results," Digitas Health said in its regulatory alert.

Metadata violations not uncommon

Social media has been on the FDA's radar for some time. The agency held so-called Part 15 hearings seeking input on a set of social media guidelines in November last year.

But metadata, which has been appearing in search engine results for a decade, does not seem to have been as high a concern. Some quick searches for popular drugs showed some companies are careful about what statements appear on the search engine result page. But others are not, posting text that could potentially constitute a violation if they appeared in an advertisement or on a website.

We're not lawyers. But the FDA cited Tasigna for making "representations about the efficacy" but failing to "communicate any risk information." This site description would appear to make representations about efficacy by saying Zyrtec "provides relief."

“140-character status updates to a network of followers.” That makes Twitter sound simple. But in fact, the social information platform has grown to be much more complex than its 140 character-limit suggests. The site not only connects people, but has also become an intricate information resource for everything from news to shopping deals.

Yet in many ways, the site’s actual functionality hasn’t exactly kept up with user interactions. Twitter’s interface has remained simple, which is why a lot of tweets take place through third-party sites and applications that make the experience more useful.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 20 third-party websites for making your Twitter experience more useful and easier to manage. Although this does not include the many desktop or mobile applications that are available for Twitter, we hope that it will make your browsing experience more enjoyable as you dive into the Twittersphere. Also, as a one-stop shop for Twitter apps, check out OneForty. We’d love to hear what’s missing from this list, including sites that you find useful in the comments.

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Web Applications: HootSuite and Brizzly

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With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. In some ways, HootSuite has the look and feel of TweetDeck with the big differentiator of it being a web-based application, not requiring any downloads.

HootSuite enables you to update to multiple accounts at once, and supports Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Foursquare. Similar to TweetDeck, these features make the application useful for maintaining your overall social presence. Moreover, you can allow other users to jointly update an account, integrate Google Analytics for your stats and schedule tweets and updates ahead of time.

The HTML5 interface enables you to easily include an image or file with your update by simply dragging it from the desktop into the message box, which will automatically upload the file with an “Ow.ly” shortener for sharing. The fast loading of the dashboard is perhaps one of the most notable improvements, making the site more usable for users who manage dozens of accounts. If you don’t like Hootsuite, you should also check out Seesmic, which has a lot of similar features, but a different interface.

Brizzly has a different functionality from Hootsuite, but may be more appealing because of its simple interface. Brizzly is specifically focused on Twitter and no other networks, which makes the experience somewhat less distracting. It also includes subtle, but worthy features like automatically expanded URLs, which shows you exactly where you are going if you click, and displays replies and direct messages in a threaded form, making it easier to follow the conversation.

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Filtering Through the Noise: TwitterTimes and Paper.li

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After you log in with your Twitter username, The Twitter Tim.es creates a page that displays stories by filtering through what the people you follow have tweeted the most in a more presentable stream that is updated regularly. Though the design of the interface isn’t the best, The Twitter Times is effective in showing you who has tweeted the story along with the story headline and blurb to give you an idea of what it’s about. In some cases, the site shows you the full text of the post. It also gives you options to view popular stories on Twitter from media sources and Twitter Lists.

The site helps you filter through the noise and keep up with what is trending among the people you follow. If you’ve been off the grid for a couple hours, you can get a sense of what people are sharing and the news that is important among your Twitter community at any given moment.

Paper.li has similar functions but a different presentation. Users can create their own “newspaper” based on who they follow. Users can also create newspapers based on a Twitter hash tag or a Twitter list. Instead of a stream, Paper.li presents content by creating a custom homepage that separates content based on popularity and topics. The site does a great job of making the content visually appealing by including thumbnails, YouTube videos and blurbs.

 

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Trends: TweetMeme and Trendistic

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TweetMeme is best recognized for its bright green buttons on websites (like this one), enabling users to easily tweet the article they’re reading. All of the information is collected at TweetMeme from across the web, giving a good sense as to what is trending on Twitter. The site enables you to filter by categories and topics (entertainment, gaming, etc.) and to showcase the most retweeted links. You also get a brief blurb from the link being shared and are able to filter by news articles, images and videos.

Trendistic also works well, but specifically for bigger Twitter trends and how they have performed over time. The site gives you an idea of current trends and presents them in a graphic format, showing you the percentage that the trends account for at any give time. For example, on July 8, “heat” accounted for 1.8% of all tweets at 9 p.m. during LeBron James’ big announcement that he would be joining the Miami Heat. You can also sort the trend based on timeframe, and get a code to embed the chart on your site.

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Twitter Lists: Tlists and PubliTweet

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Tlists is a Twitter Lists directory where you can search by list topic, view popular lists, and create your own lists. Users can also apply to join a list, and the creator is then notified and can approve them to join the list depending on whether they are a good fit. Lists are a great curating tool in rounding up like-minded tweeters in one place. It functions not only as a directory, but also as a stream of useful information around a specific subject. But after you have that list, how can you make it more presentable?

PubliTweet takes your Twitter Lists and makes them a lot more useful. It does this by providing a nice embed code that presents the lists in a handy stream that includes the text of the tweet, headline, thumbnail and blurb of the article they are sharing. You can take the code and plant the list anywhere on your site. Not only does PubliTweet make your Twitter Lists more useful visually, the tweets are also more shareable through convenient Twitter, Facebook and e-mail share buttons.

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Hashtag Stats: TwapperKeeper

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TwapperKeeper and Trendistic are great tools for getting some basic stats on how much a specific hashtag on Twitter is performing. Though there are several other sites that give you more options (often for a price), these two sites are simple to use in getting a general overview. TwapperKeeper lets you create an archive for tracking a specific hashtag, keyword, or username and collects the data and the number of mentions. If you’re interested in getting a sense for how many times a specific hashtag was tweeted, it gives you a total number, along with the ability to search precisely through the archive that you created, listing the recent tweets that have been tracked. The beautiful part is that you can also export the data and analyze it to your liking.

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Embedding Tweets: QuoteURL

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Though Twitter released a script that allows interactive tweet embedding, the code has had some issues and isn’t always ideal. QuoteURL seems to be the best option for creating embedable tweets. The app enables you to add multiple tweet URLs and embed them into a post. You can also embed an individual one, but if you want to get a stream of tweets to embed, this is the tool to use.

The application gives you a nice, clean embed such that users can see the text of the tweet, but it also preserves the interactivity of being able to reply, click on the username, or any links within the tweet. Essentially, it mirrors the experience a user has engaging with individual tweets on Twitter. This makes your tweets a bit more useful than just a screenshot, however, many sites and blogs have yet to adopt it because the embed doesn’t show up in blogger’s RSS feeds.

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Location: MapMash.in and Monitter

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Though Twitter has launched its own location feature with Twitter Places, which will likely be expanded in the future, there are several other sites that showcase location-based tweets. Local Twitter Trends displays trends in major cities and allows you to click on the keywords to see what people are talking about. It’s very simple and to the point, giving you an easy way to track the conversation in a specific place.

However, if you want to track news on specific topics, monitter might be the better choice. This site allows you to not only search for a specific location, it also lets you track three specific searches within that area — in real time — and displays the results in an easy-to-view, three-column format. You can also adjust the radius of the area that you’re searching.

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Discovery: WeFollow and Twellow

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WeFollow is a Twitter directory from Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, that emphasizes topics that users associate themselves with. Anyone can easily add themselves to the directory by simply tweeting out the hashtags that will make their usernames searchable in the directory. The site is great for discovering new users that you might share common interests with. It also enables you to view the top users in each category.

Twellow’s tagline is the “Twitter Yellow Pages,” and aims to be the directory to search for Twitter users based on industries and topics like biotechnology, food, home and garden, etc. In a lot of ways it is the ultimate directory for Twitter, also enabling you to search for users based on area. It also offers a very useful search engine.

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Influence: Klout and TwitterCounter

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Type a username into Klout and you can get a sense for how influential that user is on Twitter and their behavior. Klout gives you a score out of 100 based on reach, amplification and network after being compiled from numbers like the total retweets, message reach, unique mentions, retweeters, and more. The cool feature is the influence matrix, which defines the user and gives you a brief description of their behavior on Twitter. Klout also tells you who the user influences and is influenced by, as well as a topic summary of their tweets.

TwitterCounter tracks the top accounts and lists on Twitter based on how many followers they have and gives you some more basic numbers of influence based on growth and rank of the user’s account. The site provides some basic graphs tracking the number of the follower, following, and tweet growth over time, even setting a predicting number for where you will be in the future based on your average growth. It also enables you to easily compare several accounts at once, and build a handy widget for your site that tracks and displays recent Twitter visitors to your site.

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Photos and Videos: TwitPic and yfrog

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Among the first sites to make sharing photos on Twitter easy and popular, Twitpic is still one of the best. It’s also useful to browse through the public timeline of photos uploaded, and now you can even tie location to the photos you upload. It also lets you group photos into events, which is great for organization.

Yfrog lets you not only upload photos, but videos as well. The site is also extremely useful and easy to navigate. One simple Yfrog feature that Twitpic fails to include is a site search. Yfrog allows you to sort videos and pictures based on popularity, and showcases top search trends on the site. You can also easily share the photos across platforms and get an embed code for the image. Here’s an example of Glee star Mark Salling’s Yfrog post about a recent big catch:

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Polls: PollDaddy and TwtPoll

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PollDaddy has an easy integration for creating a quick poll that can be easily distributed on Twitter. The setup is easy. You create a poll question, select the answers (multiple choice, etc.) and the order you want them to appear, enter your username and post it to Twitter. The site sends a nice clean tweet with a link to the poll where users can vote. After setting the poll up, it is also quite easy to embed the poll into a post. It’s also worth mentioning PollDaddy has a great WordPress plugin that enables you to easily create polls within the content management system.

TwtPoll is similar to PollDaddy but has a different interface and allows users to answer questions through different formats, such as text, images or videos, Twitter handles or addresses.

 

via:mashable

Texting isn’t just for late night convos and killing boredom. Short bursts of instant communication are connecting some isolated African communities to vital information.

Because of widespread poverty in Africa, the technology culture there has followed a different path than the West. Because computers are so expensive, affordable mobile phones have become the ubiquitous form of communication. Between 2003 and 2008, Africa had the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. On average, more than one-third of the African population has a mobile plan, with some areas reaching almost two-thirds market penetration.

Non-profit organizations have seized on this unexpected opportunity to bring lifesaving health care information, quality K-12 educational curricula, and advanced farming techniques to millions. Here’s a look at some of these mobile awareness efforts.

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Health

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It’s impossible to overstate the health care crisis in Africa. Over 5.6 million people are stricken with HIV/AIDS in South Africa alone; upwards of 30% of the population in some age groups. Many are unaware that medical care is even available. Perhaps even more heartbreaking, the multi-million dollar efforts to provide antiretroviral drugs are in vain for those without proper instructions and monitoring.

Cell-Life Aftercare, a joint project between the University of Cape Town and Peninsula University of Technology, can remotely monitor 15 to 20 patients per heath care worker, provide supplemental medical information and relay information back to a central database all via mobile technology.

“The single greatest risk [to effective patient monitoring] is the lack of resources to roll out [antiretroviral therapy] effectively,” said Ulrike Rivett, founder of Cell-Life. “The areas with the highest prevalence of HIV have a shortage of skilled medical personnel, lack of good nursing and management staff and have limited financial resources.”

Instant communication combined with an eagle-eye view of disease demographics has already prevented at least one outbreak of typhoid in Uganda. The U.S.-based non-profit Academcy of Educational Development – Satellife developed a program to relay information through networks via personal digital assistants (PDAs). “The outbreak was contained because we could see that something was amiss,” said Holly Ladd, Director of AED-Satellite. “This would not have been possible with paper and pencil reporting, which is much more time-consuming.”

While we are far from stopping the serious health care issues that plague African communities, these early projects seem like an important and promising technological step.

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Instant Education

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With so many young eyeballs fixated on mobile devices, educators saw a great opportunity to reach kids who have traditionally struggled with formal education. MXIt, a mobile messaging and social networking client, reaches 40% of South Africa’s population according to a company spokesperson, and has teamed up with scores of organizations to provide educational information on everything from mathematics to driving instructions.

For mathematics, MXIt partners with cities and school districts to provide personal tutoring and curricula for use inside and outside of the classroom. For schools, teachers are given established curricula and student performance results to help them tailor future lessons. Outside the classroom, students can get answers to burning math quandaries through direct access to a real-life tutor. They can also refer a struggling friend.

MXit seems pleased enough with the initial results to extend the program. According to materials provided by MXit, a new project partnership with Nokia that began with 260 learners has been expanded to over 3,000 and will soon cover two more South African provinces.

Other educational projects include the aptly-titled “m-novels,” which aims to provide mobile-formatted novels to fiction-hungry teens (as of this writing, only one such book, Kontax, seems to be in circulation).

Finally, for young people striving for a driver’s license, MXit beams instructional videos and driver-knowledge questions to help them ace their test. According to material provided to Mashable  by MXit, over 85,000 people utilized the program in the first month.

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Agricultural Education and Equality

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For many in the industrialized world, so-called “price dispersion” is a mere inconvenience — we might splurge for a $9 bagel on New York’s 5th Avenue even if we could buy one for 99 cents further downtown. For people in low-income countries, however, price variance across markets can mean one less meal for a entire family.

Fortunately, research finds that cell phone permeation can help smooth out price variation across markets. One study shows that for the fishing industry in sub-Saharan Africa, mobile phone penetration reduces waste, increased profits by 8%, and decreased consumer prices by 4%. “[With a cell phone], I know the price for US$2, rather than traveling [to the market], which costs US$20,” said one grain trader in Zinder, Nigeria to researcher Jenny Aker.

Mobile phones also provide access to global markets and crop-saving weather forecasts in developing areas around the world. Ross Biddiscombe reporting for the Guardian found that:

“…using the Reuters Mobile Light (RML) mobile phone service, one grape grower in Maharashtra state, India, began sending his product to Russia for a higher price after subscribing, while a maize grower received an SMS message about bird flu in West Bengal which would cut his sale price, so he decided to store his produce, selling it for an increased profit when the market improved a few weeks later.”

Pocket-sized technologies are making the age-old uncertainties of agriculture somewhat more manageable for many in Africa and other developing regions. And for those with meager savings to buffer a crisis, it’s little wonder farmers are taking advantage of every opportunity to avoid them.

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Conclusion

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Cheap and efficient mobile technologies are significantly changing the lives of people in developing areas who are burdened by unequal access to resources and information. Health, education and agriculture are all benefiting from the collective I.Q. of a mobile nation, and cell phones are bridging the gap between isolated African communities and a global market eager for knowledge and talent.