BNO News: From Twitter To A Breaking Newswire

The newsgathering role of mobile-phone tool Twitter continues to gather pace, as one subscriber capitalises on his account's success to launch a breaking-news service/news aggregator.

As a Twitter service, BreakingNewsOn (BNO News) became known for breaking news before it hit traditional media houses' wires. The Twitter account was set up in May 2007 by Michael van Poppel, based in Tilburg in the Netherlands. He says he realised the value of news that September, when he got hold of an unpublished videotape of Osama bin Laden which he sold to Reuters.

Twitter is a micro-blogging/social networking tool for mobile phones and web users. Launched in March 2006, it enjoyed an explosive rate of growth in 2008, with registered users topping six million, a 600 per cent increase in just 12 months.

The service allows users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters (known as "tweets"). Messages are displayed on the user's profile page on the Twitter website (www.twitter.com) and also delivered to those who have signed up to receive them, so-called "Followers". (At this stage, the social networks on Twitter are not as large as those found on social-networking sites such as Facebook. Barack Obama, for instance, had 232,970 followers on Twitter and 5,073,529 Supporters on Facebook, on 4 February).

The 26 November Mumbai attacks are considered a watershed, when Twitter activity marked the point (as Forbes reported on its website) that citizen journalism progressed to "real time". 
"It was Twitter's moment. Users tagged posts with information or commentary on the crisis, turning a service that specializes in distributing short, personal updates to tight networks of friends and acquaintances into a way for people around the world to tune into personal, real-time accounts of the attacks."

Forbes points out that Indians were already "infatuated" with SMS, which went some way to explaining why the technology was so quickly harnessed in a crisis.

BNO News supplied 59 hours of continuous coverage of the Mumbai attacks, from 26 November. The BNO News blog (http://www.bnonews.com/blog) recorded on 3 December: "As the day went on, and as the news spread across the world, a record number of people joined BreakingNewsOn ...

"BNO News brought you updates from local media, international media, news agencies and even BNO News sources in Mumbai. BNO News worked over the course of the events on a detailed casualty list which showed the number of dead, the injured and their nationalities for each local hospital. The list was updated several times.

"BNO News also provided exclusive information from the Taj and Oberoi hotel management. Their staff shared up-to-the-minute details with our team about the situation inside the hotels and ruled out conflicting media reports.

"BNO's coverage on BreakingNewsOn also grabbed widespread attention among our current followers with hundreds of so-called 'retweets' [that is, tweets forwarded to other users] over the course of three days.

"And it also shows how journalists are following the service. De Pers, a national newspaper in the Netherlands, showed live updates from BreakingNewsOn on its website during the first six hours of the Mumbai coverage. Also, De Tijd, a newspaper from Belgium, cited information directly from our Twitter coverage in their stories. The story also told its readers to follow BreakingNewsOn for the latest news from Mumbai."

BNO signed up over 1,000 followers during and in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. It now (on 4 February) has 23,517 followers.(http://twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn).

The immediacy and growing popularity of Twitter has been a crucial part of BNO's success, and now Van Poppel hopes to expand the service into a breaking-news website (www.bnonews.com), planned to launch in late February or March.

Twitter alerts will provide an initial news item and a follow-up link to more reports on the BNO site. Alerts will be labelled "developing", "urgent" or "flash". RSS feeds, email alerts, compatibility with instant messaging platforms and SMS alerts are also in the pipeline.

BNO News "tweets" headlines from wire services and major news events, but currently does not link Twitter "followers" to the stories on the web. Twitter users often use URL-shortening services such as bit.ly to allow longer URLs to be used as links within Twitter's 140-character limit.

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Hank Aaron Says Bonds Can Keep HR Record

(CHICAGO)

He may no longer have the record, but Hank Aaron remains one of the classiest men to have ever played the game of baseball.

There's been quite a renewed uproar in baseball over steroids during the last week. With Barry Bonds in court defending himself on perjury charges for possibly lying about his steroid use, and Alex Rodriguez admitting that he took steroids while playing for the Texas Rangers, baseball once again finds itself mired in the muck as America's dirtiest past-time.

Whether this is fair or not -- certainly nobody in the NFL uses steroids -- doesn't matter, what does though is that baseball must try to clean up its image. Which is why commissioner Bud Selig has been scrambling to come up with anything that might appease the sports fan base, and even suggested earlier this week that Bonds be stripped of the home run record and that Hank Aaron be reinstated as the game's all time home run leader. It's an idea so ridiculous that not even Hammerin' Hank thinks it's a good idea. In an interview with Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Terence Moore published Friday, Aaron made it clear he does not want the record to revert back to the 755 he compiled in his 23-year Hall of Fame career. "In all fairness to everybody, I just don't see how you really can do a thing like that and just say somebody isn't the record holder anymore, and let's go back to the way that it was," Aaron told the Journal-Constitution on Friday. Aside from the fact that re-writing the record books could set a dangerous precedent, there's also the fact that Selig was planning on punishing Bonds for things that weren't even illegal in the sport. Not to mention that Bonds hasn't been found guilty of anything yet. Maybe the best thing Selig could do for the sport is step down as its commissioner. After all, he's the one who ignored the steroid problem when it was obvious to anybody paying attention to the game that there was one. All for the sake of keeping the turnstiles clicking, seats filled, and lining the pockets of team owners. Let Hank Aaron take over his job as King of Baseball, at least he seems to have sense and would restore class to the office.
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A-Rod Tested Positive for Steroids: Report

Alex Rodriguez won the American League home run title and the AL Most Valuable Player award when he played shortstop for the Texas Rangers back in 2003. But apparently he had a little help with his game. Four different sources have told Sports Illustrated that A-Rod tested positive for two anabolic steroids. 

He was one of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs that year. A-Rod balked when Sports Illustrated confronted him about the steroid use at a Florida gym this week. 

"You'll have to talk to the union," Rodriguez told the reporters. When asked if he could explain the positive results, A-Rod told them, "I'm not saying anything."

Rodriguez's name showed up on the list of players who tested positive in the Major League Baseball's 2003 survey testing. The testing of nearly 2,000 players was part of a joint agreement with the MLB Players Association to find out how deep-seeded drug use was and whether mandatory random drug testing should be imposed across the league, according to Sports Illustrated.  

A-Rod didn't get in trouble for his positive results because there were no penalties for a positive test in 2003, despite the fact that the MLB's drug policy had prohibited steroid use without a prescription for more than a decade. No one was even supposed to find out about the test results. They were supposed to be anonymous under the agreement, but the feds seized the tests a year later during the government probe of 10 MLB players connected to the BALCO scandal. 

A-Rod was never linked to BALCO, the company that supplied high-profile athletes with human growth hormone for years, but his test results were seized along with everyone else's. More than 5 percent of the players tested in 2003 showed up positive, so the MLB imposed random testing with punishments for positive results in 2004.  

The list of 104 players who tested positive in 2003 is under lock and key in California, but four independent sources familiar with the government evidence and testing results told Sports Illustrated that A-Rod's name was on it. He tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan, an anabolic steroid -- and went on to win his third league home run title in a row and an MVP award that year. With 553 career home runs, A-Rod is on his way to becoming the MLB's home run king. 

In 2007, the Yankees signed the 33-year-old to a 10-year deal worth upwards of $305 million, according to Sports Illustrated. But it doesn't appear there will be any cash consequences for Rodriguez's actions. Sources told the magazine there aren't any stipulations in the contract about steroid use that could detract from A-Rod's $275 million in guarantees.

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MTA Discovers TV

There was a time when the New York City public transit system was a marvel of modern engineering. And yet it was only yesterday that the MTA discovered television, this just a week after they admitted that they can't figure out how to use GPS.

In addition to the LED signs at the Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues station that tell riders when they can expect an L train, the MTA Thursday unveiled video monitors that let riders know exactly where along the train's route the L is. The monitors show the location of every train on the line and is updated every 15 seconds.
Just last week, after more than a decade of tinkering, Robert Walsh and Sassan Davoodi of the MTA confessed that the agency had yet to harness GPS technology that would tell riders the location of the next bus.
"Totally unacceptable!" bellowed outraged City Councilman John Liu of Flushing, reported to the New York Post..

Despite the fact that any moron can walk into a Best Buy and by a GPS for their car for less than $300, the MTA can't figure out how to put one on a bus and relay that information to electronic signs at bus kiosks throughout the city.
Of course it was just a couple days ago that they started letting people submit lost-and-found reports via the Internet.

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Google's Creepy New Plot Tracks Users

Google is releasing a new service today called "Latitude" which will display a user's location based on GPS, cell tower or WiFi triangulation of a mobile phone or laptop. While the software offers privacy settings and the company promises not to store location information, the new project is creepier than previous privacy-invading services like Google Maps Street View by an order of magnitude. The Mountain View company makes money primarily by selling highly-targeted advertising on Web sites, and CEO Eric Schmidt has gone on record saying the company sees mobile devices and location-based targeting as the next big revenue growth opportunity. Google's share price has plummeted to $350 from a high of $602 in the last year -- with even insider Paul Otellini, the CEO of chipmaker Intel who has a seat on the Google's board unloading thousands of shares. While Latitude is presented as a service to "See where your friends are in real time," even if you opt out of making your location publicly available Google's all-seeing algoritm can still use the information to better target ads as you browse sites with your smartphone. Black helicopters and tinfoil hats aside, it's not paranoia if they really are out to track you. [Source NBC BAY AREA-KNTV © 2009 NBC Local Media]

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Porn Clip Airs During Super Bowl On Phoenix's KVOA

PHOENIX — A Tucson television station's broadcast of the Super Bowl on Sunday was interrupted for some viewers by about 30 seconds of pornographic material, the station said. 
A short clip from an adult movie channel showing full male nudity interrupted the Comcast feed came just after the Arizona Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald scored on a long touchdown reception during the final minutes of the game, the Arizona Daily Star reported. 

The 30-second interruption was from the adult film Club Jenna and showed a woman unzipping a man's pants followed by a sexual act between the two, the paper reported. 
"I just figured it was another commercial until I looked up," Arizona resident Cora King told the Daily Star. "Then he did his little dance with everything hanging out." 
A Comcast spokeswoman said she had "no idea" how the porn got into the feed. KVOA TV said it will investigate the incident. 

"When the NBC feed of the Super Bowl was transmitted from KVOA to local cable providers and through over-the-air antennas, there was no pornographic material," KVOA president and general manager Gary Nielsen said in a statement. 
The KVOA statement said the station was dismayed and disappointed that some Comcast customers and their families were subjected to the material. 

"KVOA will continue to investigate what happened to our clean signal and make sure our viewers get answers," Nielsen said in the statement. 
Comcast spokeswoman Tracy Baumgartner confirmed that the company's standard feed was interrupted during the Super Bowl, although she said its high definition feed was not. 
Baumgartner said engineers were investigating Sunday night. 
Tucson media outlets reported that they received calls from irate viewers about the pornographic material. 

A spokesman for Cox Cable said the company had not been affected. 
"We have received no evidence that any inappropriate material was broadcast on any of our channels during the Super Bowl," Mike Dunne said. "The alleged incident appears to be isolated to the Comcast territory. We will offer our support to all appropriate organizations to help them determine what happened."

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Missing St. John's Student Found Alive

A missing St. John's student was found alive and was reunited with her family Monday after admitting she ran away rather than tell them she was expelled from school. Erica Desai,19, called 911 Monday morning from a pay phone at Stillwell and Avenue B, claiming she didn't know where she was. Desai said she had been abducted, but after further questioning by police she admitted to running away. Desai had been missing since Jan. 20 when a cousin dropped her off at her dorm near Union Turnpike and Utopia Parkway in Queens. Police said that university officials told them that Desai, a freshman, was expelled after being accused of using someone else's credit card. Surveillance cameras caught an unidentified man and woman using Desai's debit card at a Bank of America ATM at 44th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan on Jan. 21. Desai had also posted online messages saying she wanted to run away. Desai left the 107th precinct with her family on Monday night. She is not expected to face any charges.

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