UPDATED - For those stuck in Egypt without the Internet, Google, Twitter and SayNow have teamed up to create an innovative voicemail system: Call a number and leave a message, and the system blasts it out into the universe in the form of a tweet with the hashtag #egypt.

You can see the whole river of messages, all hauntingly uniform and anonymous, on Twitter at @speak2tweet. When you click on one of the short links, you're taken to a page on SayNow that plays back a unique message. Go ahead and take a listen for yourself.

Since loved ones will basically have to listen to each and every message with the hope of hearing their own friends and family members inside Egypt, the system does seem a little inefficient. And besides, it seems that the Mubarak government is shutting off cell phone service in anticipation of tomorrow's demonstration, so it may be harder for many Egyptians to get to a phone. Still, as a helpless bystander, it's both a relief and a sorrow to hear these voices escaping from the all-consuming crisis. 

UPDATE 1:40 a.m. ET Tuesday: Some more generous techies are helping translate all of the speak2tweet tweets, and posting them here at WordPress.

Some of the messages are heartbreaking: "I just wanted to say 'hi' to my brother and his wife since we didn’t get a chance to talk before they cut off the Internet." Others are hopeful: "I want to thank the army for the great message that they’ve sent to the Egyptians, in which they announced that they won’t resort to violence against the protestors." It really is a direct line to the eye of the storm.

UPDATE 5:40 p.m. ET Tuesday: More of the messages are hosted in audio and text on the site egypt.alive.in as well.

Twitter, Google

More on the crisis in Egypt from Technolog:

• Is Internet access a human right?
• Net-less Egypt may face economic doom Monday
• 'This is about social networks that are beyond the reach of Mubarak'
• What the Egyptian government doesn't want you to see
• Infograph: Egypt drops off the Internet

Catch up with Wilson on Twitter at @wjrothman, or join our conversation at the Technolog Facebook page.

We've got to give props to the amazing Hank Torres — who lost use of his arms and legs after a hang-gliding accident 30 years ago — for setting the Guinness world record for fastest hands-free typing.

Hank typed the following phrase — "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human." — in 83.09 seconds last Friday at the Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference in Orlando, Fla.

Hank had a nice set-up to help achieve his record. In fact, we are learning about this because, along with a head-tracking system called TrackerPro and a PC, Hank uses the Swype software keyboard found on many Android phones. (The maker of TrackerPro, AbleNet, now includes the Swype keyboard in the software bundle.)

Not only is it amazing what Hank can do with the keyboard, it's a pretty amazing demonstration of the keyboard's functionality itself. Just watch this video and tell me you're not impressed with him and with the software keyboard. You can't.

Catch up with Wilson on Twitter at @wjrothman, or join our conversation at the Technolog Facebook page.

The Egyptian Information Ministry tells CNN it's shutting down mobile phone networks ahead of tomorrow's "March of the Millions" demonstrations. 

While it hasn't been established that the government is behind the failure of Egypt's last public Internet service provider, the report confirms widespread predictions that it would seek to cut off communications with the outside world before the demonstrations begin. 

Many of those predictions got out to the rest of the world over a service Google set up over the weekend, which allows people to tweet by voice mail. 

"No Internet connection is required" to use the service, Google said on its official blog Monday. "We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there."

Many Egyptians are already taking advantage of the service, called Speak2Tweet; you can hear their tweets here. Presumably, traffic on that account will dwindle as cell networks go down overnight, but it shouldn't dry up completely, since the service works with landlines.

CarInsurance.org

Transformers

A super hardcore Transformers nerd — say, that fire fighter in the National Guard who legally changed his name to "Optimus Prime," or even the dude who just went with the middle name, "Megatron" — will surely appreciate the detail to which this infograph displays all 54 Autobots that transformed into a car between 1984 and 1987.

And indeed, this chart — put together for some reason by CarInsurance.org — will go far in educating the kids of today about how a pre-Michael Bay "Bumblebee" was, in fact, a 1967 VW Beetle. But it may be a little upside down to engage the average "Transformer" enthusiast.

According to my friend Pat Doheny, a fan of both Transformers and automobiles, "The bottom of the chart is funnier: 'The most popular brands used by the Autobots.' I would've started the chart with that." Maybe next time CarInsurance.org. Maybe next time.  

via Jalopnik

Moms age 40 and older have more friends on Facebook than their younger counterparts. And you may know some of them, who may have hit you up with friend requests, much to your dismay.

The study's author, Tammi Williams, told Britain's Daily Telegraph that her findings are based on an analysis of 2,000 Facebook users, which was done for a greeting card company.

The older moms were "able to capitalise on their wide range of contacts, including friends of their children and even their parents, to collect thousands of friends," the Telegraph said.

"One reason is because, when you get to 45 or 50 you have not only your friends, but your children's friends, acquaintances from school and others," Williams told the newspaper. "Children and teenagers tend to stick to their own age group."

Another reason — could this be?! — is that younger moms — especially those with younger children — don't have the kind of time that older moms might, especially if their children are older and in say, high school or college.

Williams also classifies Facebook users into six different groups, with the biggest being "Feel-Gooders," those "who enjoy the community spirit of Facebook and seeing what their friends are doing," the newspaper said.

The Feel-Gooders "like to collect as many people as they can," Williams said. They get involved in games like FarmVille and like sending virtual gifts to their neighbours."

The second biggest group, she said, are 'Do-Gooders.' Those are the folks — and you know them as well, and may be among them — who use the social networking site "as a tool to raise awareness of a campaign or cause — and also the group least likely to reveal personal information," the Telegraph said.

At the opposite end, Williams told the newspaper, is the "'All About Me' group — 'peacocks' who use Facebook to flaunt their successes, latest purchases and the other 'minutiae of their life.' "

"Ms. Williams called these women the 'ones most women love to hate." She said: 'They don't care if they lose a friend or two along the way — they're definitely not interested in other people.' "

Wow, surprise: Sounds just like real life.

More recent stories about the people who populate Facebook:

• Facebook hackers prank French kid -- because it's funny
• Porn stars love Twitter, hate Facebook
• Facebook-deprived man sues for $500K

Here's the kid who's little brother got pranked.

Dylan Zéroosiix's little brother is apparently un petit jerk on Faceboook — so much so that on the French version of the social networking site, his IM insults are listed as one of the reasons provided under the "report/block this person" button, right up there with "false profile" and "inappropriate photo."

Either that or pranksters hacked the French version of Facebook to add "le petit frère de Dylan Zéroosiix" (translation: "Dylan Zéroosiix's little brother insulted me in instant messenger") to the "report/block" prompt menu. 

Alas, as delightful as it is to imagine someone's bratty sibling running amok on the social network, it's a hack — the product of Facebook's laissez-faire monitoring of its open-sourced translation system.

Hacking, in fact, may be a bit strong for what likely happened here — gaming the translation system is more accurate.  In countries where English is not the predominate language, Facebook allows users to translate content and "vote" for the most accurate translation.

This works if everyone agrees to be a grownup about it. Get enough people to vote for something less accurate, and viola! "Dylan Zéroosiix's little brother insulted me in instant messenger."

When it comes to Facebook's crowd-sourced translation, Dylan Zéroosiix's little brother is just the latest example. Last summer, instead of logging on and seeing "Today is the birthday of ..." Facebook users in Spain were greeted instead by the unasterisked "F*ck you b*tches."

Before that, the Turkish translation for "Your message could not be sent because the user is offline," read as "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis."

Remember, this is the Internet, y'all, where users united to get "Justin Bieber Syphilis" to rise to the top of Google search trends. Pranks will happen.

Lately, a lot of Internet pranks have been popping up on Facebook. Hackers recently hit the fan pages of both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and French President Nicolas Sarkozys. Then there was the mystery ghost friend "Roy Castillo" who floated around in random newsfeeds last week, leaving victims unable to block or unfriend him.

In those cases, it's simple a matter of shutting down the bug that hackers exploited to gain entrance to the code. But as long as Facebook is willing to trust crowd-sourced translations, hilarity will ensue.

Sophos via Gawker

More stories about the annoying way we live now:

• Dude-centric Wikipedia needs more women
• Porn stars love Twitter, hate Facebook
• Mysterious 'Roy Castillo' haunts Facebook
• You're obsessed with Facebook. Here's proof
• Online degrees qualify cat to be your shrink

Helen A.S. Popkin writes about Facebook ... a lot. Follow her on Twitter and/or Facebook.

UPDATE: More information from EFF.

The FBI may have committed a minimum of 40,000 violations in its intelligence gathering since 9/11, in a report released Monday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In analyzing 2,500 pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, EFF found that the violations showed a disregard for the privacy of the average citizen, civil liberties and oversight. The EFF report also documents the willingness of private companies to turn over their customers' information to the feds, without "valid legal justification."

(The report is available on the EFF website.)

"Our hope is that it sheds a little light on the nature and scope of the FBI's intelligence violations since 9/11. The documents we reviewed give the public the clearest look at the violations the FBI has committed and should give everyone pause," said Mark Rumold, a fellow at EFF who works on the FLAG project (FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government). 

At the very least, the EFF gives a compelling argument for greater transparency in the intelligence community (though some may say that's an oxymoron in that spy vs. spy world) and more oversight through the Intelligence Oversight Board, an independent, civilian-based panel that reports to the president on the legality of foreign and domestic intelligence ops.

Valerie Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, told The Los Angeles Times, "that most of the FBI's reports to the oversight board were about technical errors that did not add up to misconduct. 'The number of substantive violations of someone's rights is very small and we take them very seriously,' she said. 

Caproni said details in the reports couldn't be disclosed for reasons of national security. The Justice Department and the FBI have significantly boosted oversight over national security letters and intelligence warrant applications since 2007, adding layers of auditing and compliance reviews, she said.

"We've fixed the problems that have been identified" on national security letters, she said, "and have put into place processes that should identify any problems that were previously not identified.

Caproni makes it a point to reassure the American public of the FBI's compliance: "Am I confident that, by and large, 99.9% of the time our agents are acting in compliance with the Constitution, the statutes, executive orders and FBI and DOJ policies on civil liberties? I am."

Rumold's reaction to Caproni's statements: "In 2005, when there was an inspector general report, they said the same thing. The guidelines she's talking about were put in place to protect civil liberties, so when the FBI is treating it just as 'technical,' it shows a bigger problem with the FBI's desire to protect civil liberties broadly."

The IOB, formed during the Ford administration, lost a considerable amount of its bite in 2008, when then-President George W. Bush issued an executive order that took away the board's authority to oversee each intelligence agency's general counsel and inspector general. Bush's order also deleted a requirement for a report from each inspector general due every three months. Further taking the legs off the board: no longer could it forward concerns to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, nor could it notify the president unless all the other department heads weren't getting the job done.

In the EFF report, some credit is given to President Barack Obama for an October 2009 executive order that "largely reversed the changes made to the IOB’s oversight authority, and nine appointments have been made to the larger President’s Intelligence Advisory Board." But that still didn't sit well with the EFF, which stated, "Nevertheless,  the White House has not disclosed the composition or membership, if any, of the IOB, which continues to call into question the legitimacy of current intelligence oversight efforts."

The 20-year-old EFF says it "has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights," with a great many of those skirmishes fought in court and through the 61,000 people who receive their action alerts and are plugged into their Action Center.

They throw down the gauntlet on the feds in a big beef over these violations, which they've categorized in three groups: "FBI violation of rules governing internal oversight of intelligence investigations; FBI abuse, misuse, or careless use of the Bureau’s National Security Letter authority; and FBI violation of the Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or other laws governing criminal investigations or intelligence gathering activities."

From 2001 to 2008, the FBI frequently and flagrantly violated laws intended to check abusive intelligence investigations of American citizens. While many hoped the era of abusive FBI practices would end with the Bush Administration, there is little evidence that President Obama has taken significant measures to change past intelligence abuses. Two years into his term, the President has not publicly disclosed any appointments to the IOB, and his campaign promise of unprecedented transparency within the executive branch has gone largely unfulfilled — especially within the intelligence community.

In the first grouping, violations included things like the FBI failing to submit notification of the investigation of a U.S. person to FBI Headquarters for three years, to failure to report a violation within 14 days of its discovery and probably most disturbing to the average Joe/Jane: continuing to investigate a person after the authority to do so had expired.

The second grouping is what will might make your blood run cold, as it has to do with the FBI issuing nearly 200,000 National Security Letter requests with almost 60 percent of the 49,425 requests issued in 2006 for investigations of U.S. citizens or legal aliens. If you didn't know this, companies that receive an NSL are under gag orders not to tell you that you're being investigated.

The FBI likely issued approximately 25,000 NSL [National Security Letter] requests for telephone and electronic communications records, 12,500 requests for financial records, and 12,500 requests for credit information annually from 2003 to 2006.
Perhaps most startling, however, was the frequency with which companies receiving NSLs — phone companies, internet providers, banks, or credit bureaus — contributed to the FBI’s NSL abuse. In over half of all NSL violations reviewed by EFF, the private entity receiving the NSL either provided more information than requested or turned over information without receiving a valid legal justification from the FBI. Companies were all too willing to comply with the FBI’s requests, and — in many cases — the Bureau readily incorporated the over-produced information into its investigatory databases.

If you think your information is private and that companies will guard it for you, this report shows that the opposite tends to be true. 

The FBI’s abuse of its NSL power has garnered much of the attention in the debate over the FBI’s abusive intelligence practices. What has not received as much attention, however, is the unwillingness of companies and organizations to guard their clients’ and users’ sensitive, personal information in the face of these NSL requests — whether the request was legally justifiable or not. Undeniably, if the FBI had complied with the law, the vast majority of NSL violations would never have occurred. Nevertheless, many of the businesses and organizations with which Americans trust their most private information are not applying any scrutiny to unjustifiable requests from the FBI and are not responding to valid requests in a responsible manner.

The third category catch-all also attracts the harshest words from EFF. "Violations falling into this third category were consistently the most brazen and egregious violations." To sum it up, the EFF says, the feds submitted false or inaccurate declarations to courts, used improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoenas and accessed password protected documents without a warrant.b 

The EFF doesn't want you to just absorb all this info and despair, becoming discouraged and cynical about your own government. They want you to do something about it! They want you, as a voter and actively engaged citizen, to crank it up with your congressional reps and revamp the USA Patriot Act, which is due to expire in late February. 

Instead of simply rubber-stamping the intelligence community’s continuing abuse of Americans’ civil liberties, Congress should seize this opportunity to investigate the practices of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, and to demand greater accountability, disclosure, and reporting from these agencies. Until then, the FBI’s pattern of misconduct will undoubtedly continue.

More information on the FBI in these related links:

• FBI friends Facebook, Google to get closer to you?
• FBI busted tracking student, demands GPS spy gear return

Wikipedia

This photo of a sign of the headquarters of the National Association Opposed To Woman Suffrage appears on the "Sexism" entry on Wikipedia.

The quintessential Wikipedia editor is a 25-year-old guy, a graduate student and typically overrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Can this lack of diversity affect the editing of the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia? "Absolutely yeah," said Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia. 

In a recent interview with NPR's "On the Media," Gardner said, "87 percent of Wikipedia editors are male, and so topics that would associate or correlate with being female are certainly less well covered than topics that correlate with being interesting to men."

These uneven numbers were revealed in a study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University. Despite its "all are welcome" credo, Wikipedia is running up against the "traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women," observed a New York Times story on the study.  

To address this, Wikimedia's Gardner told NYT she's set a goal to increase female contributors to 25 percent by 2015. The difference this could make on the site's entries is less tangible than simple comparisons.

For example, in illustrating the male vs. female disparity on Wikipedia, NYT offered friendship bracelets vs. baseball cards or toy soldiers, as well as "Sex and the City: vs."The Sopranos." The former, female-centric side of the comparisons had relatively short entries, compared the latter items.

Such comparisons, however,  fall short when it comes to arguing how Wikipedia might benefit from a larger female influence. One might reasonably argue that friendship bracelets don't have the history or the intricacy of baseball cards or toy soldiers, or that "Sex and the City," doesn't have the thematic resonance worthy of the extensive blather inspired by "The Sopranos." 

Further, the NYT comparison on Wikipedia's dearth of Mexican feminist authors vs. 43 entries on  "The Simpsons" characters isn't really fair. More people, male and female, are interested in and know more about "The Simpsons" than Mexican feminist authors … and the reasons for that is a whole other "Oprah" episode.  

What's interesting here is, that an attempt to draw simple comparisons to show how Wikipedia, or any other male-centric reference guide, suffers from a lack of female influence, reveals how complicated and touchy this issue is.

While female-centric topics of interest are important, it's the female perspective on subjects of general interest that mean the most in the long run. And rather than having long, drawn out discussions about it, maybe it's better to just get it done.

In pursing the goal of increasing female contributors to 25 percent, Gardner told NTY, "Gender is a huge hot-button issue for lots of people who feel strongly about it. I am not interested in triggering those strong feelings."

More stories about the annoying way we live now:

• Porn stars love Twitter, hate Facebook
• Online degrees qualify cat to be your shrink
• Facebook-deprived man sues for $500K

Helen A.S. Popkin writes about the Internet ... a lot. Join her on Twitter and/or Facebook.

Android has not only triumphed as the No. 1 smart phone platform in the world, but it is very likely to surpass iPad as number one tablet OS, despite the iPad's current 75 percent market share.

The observation comes from Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics, who talked to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Explaining that Android tablets had gained a 22 percent market share in tablet shipments in the fourth quarter of last year — a quarter where the iPad was on fire and the nearest Android competitor, the Galaxy Tab, was a rather weak offering at best — Mawston said, "If you were to ask me in two years time, will Apple have less than 50 percent of the global tablet market, I think that’s a certainty."

No one is calling the iPad a failure, or even an also-ran. In fact, iPad rankings in 2013 may very well look similar to the NPD phone rankings of the day, which show the iPhone as the No. 1 smartphone, Apple's big bear surrounded by Google's dogs. Android phones outnumber it and outweigh it, but only cumulatively.

The likely factor for Android tablet's quick rise will be price. According to an Appcelerator worldwide survey of 2,200 app developers released last week, price is the "most important factor of success." And by "price" they mean "cheaper than iPad." 

Just like the Android phones that now "sell" for zero dollars up front provided you sign a 2-year carrier contract, so too may arrive the "free" Android tablets, granted to you by carriers that value monthly checks over up-front wallet emptying. Apple is too careful about managing its brand — and its profit margins — to go that route.

One on one, though, the prospects look more grim for any particular Android tablet. "While there are plenty of Android tablets coming to market, unless they are priced significantly lower than iPad, I don't see any making a dent," mobile industry analyst Chetan Sharma told msnbc.com last week.

Android tablet makers "have to give something substantial in pricing or performance to make consumers think twice before buying an iPhone or an iPad," Sharma said. "It's hard to compete with Apple on performance because of their integration of hardware and software, so it's likely to be pricing."

More on Android and iOS:

• Android topples Symbian as top phone OS
• Don't worry, Wi-Fi-only Android tabs are coming
• Android getting games from Sony
• Verizon offering AT&T iPhone trade-in program?

Catch up with Wilson on Twitter at @wjrothman, or join our conversation at the Technolog Facebook page.

Charlie Sheena

Porn stars have a love affair with Twitter, which gives fans lots of opportunities to buy them gifts, while having a more contentious relationship with Facebook, which censors all the good stuff.

The Daily Beast gives us this illuminating juxtaposition and several x-rated examples to back it up. We're going to give you the PG-version. (Don't pout. Just follow the links.) 

After way too much foreplay, the porn industry has enthusiastically jumped in the sack with Twitter, which has given rise to fans connecting with their sex idols. This in turn has led to an unprecedented intimacy that seems to satisfy a semi-stalking need in thousands of repressed males and gives these adult entertainment entities constant ego boosts — and more tangible rewards, such as Amazon wishlist gifts.

The Daily Beast guided us to Pete Housley's Porn Star Tweet, a site that conveniently aggregates more than a thousand porn divas' Twitter feeds, as well as tweets about them. Housley gave the Daily Beast the behind-the-scenes details:

Porn Star Tweet tracks 990 porn stars who are followed by 9,140,066 users; the porn stars follow back 636,853 fans. On average, the stars tweet 6.7 times per day; seven percent of Porn Star Tweets contain a photo or video. In total, Housley says, "In 2010 we aggregated over 3 million tweets and 250,000 photos and videos."

While some stars, like Bree Olson, who recently partied with Charlie Sheen in a 9,000 square-foot Las Vegas lovenest, have amassed more than 93,000 followers, others are slowly, but steadily gaining traction. Since Charlie Sheen was on the brain, we took a look at his porn doppelganger, if he was a girl: @CharlieSheena, whose profile description reads: "Professional cat enthusiast/cat pianist. Semi-amateur comedian/race car driver & freelance urologist. The Virgin Mary of Whores." The LA-based starlette, who is featured on Burning Angel, a site that specializes in "alt, emo, tattoo, Goth, and punk rock hardcore porn," has nearly 9,000 followers.

Like her namesake, Charlie has no problems putting it all out there for the world to know her raunchy tastes. But she one-ups Sheen by giving fans the tools to be her sugar daddy: her Amazon wish list. (Which is not exactly new; porn stars have been linking to their wish lists off their own sites for awhile.)

She's not an unreasonable girl, this Charlie, in that she has a range of gifts for her followers to choose for her. They could spring for the $14.28 Clarisonic Replacement Brush Head (a girl's got to exfoliate!), $14.98 for the "Trailer Park Boys" DVD, or $6.99 for the Trailer Park Boys 2011 calendar. Or, they could really lavish some Material Girl excess on Charlie with the $95 Dior Miss Dior Cherie 3.4 oz Eau de Parfum Spray, the nearly $227 Pinzon Chamonix Full Reversible Dual Season Down Featherbed or the $199  Flip MinoHD Video Camera.

From the rest of her list, we also get that Charlie has some problems with split ends (shampoo), likes black boots, really likes Trailer Park Boys, is an Apple fan and wants a brand-new 40-inch flat-screen TV. In other words, she's not so different from the every day Jane who storms Target at 5 a.m. for Black Friday deals.

And that's probably the appeal of porn stars on Twitter. They're not just the moaning, writhing, athletically-inclined, surgically-enhanced sex machines seen on the small screen. They're real people, who go out for coffee, can't decide on where to have breakfast, go off on other people and oh yeah, talk very openly and frankly about sex. All kinds of sex, including incest, S&M, same-sex, groups, etc., so it's bound to offend many sensibilities. But they don't care, they're breaking down barriers between fans and the objects of their lust.

Daily Beast quotes two of the stars on this: "We go from unattainable fantasy to real people," said Bobbi Star. And from Dana DeArmond: "When I started to use Twitter I wanted people to see I am real person and not just a male fantasy, and that I do struggle with relationship issues, or general stress or my eating disorder difficulties that at times are a little more worrisome than others."

Not-so porn friendly: Facebook. Even though adult stars have Facebook profiles, they are at least some that are wary of the social network's arbitrary decisions. From the Daily Beast:

While MySpace was briefly in vogue in the porn community a couple of years ago, Facebook has proven hostile territory to adult stars, with many claiming their profiles are often deleted, multiple times, and for no reason they can understand. "Most porn stars have given up on Facebook at this point," Housley says. Andy San Dimas says, "Even if a fan posts a nude picture of you they delete your account."

But maybe porn is more attuned to Twitter, with its faster pace and immediacy in call and answer. The kinds of tweets that come from the porn world aren't for the meek, and though they would liven up your news feed, would probably startle a good portion of middle America. And what snapshots would they share? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of paying for it when you can get so much for free? Would they really want to share real family photos and break the illusion? 

Even without Facebook, porn will survive. Heck, even without Twitter, it will. But for now, tweets are in a friends with benefits situation that won't end anytime soon.

Related Facebook links:

• Online degrees qualify cat to be your shrink
• Facebook-deprived man sues for $500K
• Mysterious 'Roy Castillo' haunts Facebook
• Jon Stewart questions Egypt's 'Twitter revolution'

App Genius Corp.

No poop was harmed in the creation of this game, which includes the flinging of bananas if you like.

 I know when I play "Angry Birds," I get so frustrated I wish I could fling something other than our feathered friends at the walls protecting the pigs that have taken the birds' eggs. Would poop do the trick? It does in the new "Angry Birds" takeoff, "Angry Turds," (cleaned up and called "Angry T*rds in Apple's somewhat conservative App Store).

In this game, the "evil explorers have stolen all the monkey babies and it's up to you to save them!" says game developer Apps Genius Corp. in the App Store description of "Turds."

"There is only one way to stop them, throw some t**ds! With your arsenal of t**ds, coconuts, poop bombs and bananas you must defeat the explorers. Featuring physics based destruction, you must destroy the area and save the babies. Angry T**ds requires much skill and brute force to defeat the explorers."

Besides, as Apps Genius notes in a company press release, "Not only is flinging poop fun, but one might even say it’s therapeutic in relieving stress."

And, as we all know, "There is a 12-year-old that lives in all of us," the company says, "and we at Apps Genius have embraced it with Angry Turds, a novel spin of man vs. monkey ... Put a bunch of programmers in a room together and what do you get? Bathroom humor! And our team at Apps Genius is no different. Fortunately, we even had a 12-year-old help us with the design of the game."

Angry Turds is available in both free and paid (99 cents) versions. The free version has 10 levels; the paid version, 30 levels of "poop flinging fun," the developer says.

More stories about pigs and "Angry Birds":

• Pigs outraged as 'Angry Birds' sells 12 million copies
• 'Angry Birds' exec calls Android too complex
• 'Angry Birds' fail to negotiate peace treaty

Internet monitoring group Renesys updated its infograph on the Egyptian Internet blackout.

A recent Twitter blog post alludes to WikiLeaks and #Egypt in a call for freedom of expression.

Julian Assange changes his hair a lot to confuse assassins or something -- and other big takeaways from the "60 Minutes" piece on Assange and WikiLeaks.

Mark Zuckerberg's appearance during Jesse Eisenberg's monologue on "Saturday Night Live" accurately summed up in one word by Andy Samberg: "Awk-berg!"

Hate those annoying advertisements on Facebook? Here's 30 Facebook ad parodies to make you cry ... tears of hilarity.

Android dethroned Nokia as the world's biggest operating system, according to a new report.

Meanwhile, more people are looking to buy a Windows phone than BlackBerry.

The iPad 2 will come with a Kindle-like anti-reflection screen and three different connectivity options: WiFi-only, GSM and CDMA -- as well as four free iPad browswers to replace Mobile Safari.

Kanye West OWNS the Internet!

In closing, Ice Cream Guy Caught in Thundersnow is now a meme.

Egypt's government must return Internet access to the country by Monday or perhaps suffer massive economic damage, as banks and other economic institutions return to work without the ability to conduct commerce.

It's currently the weekend in Egypt, which means the government's decision to block all Internet traffic in response to protests may seem to many of the nation's 84 million inhabitants as more of an inconvenience than cataclysm.

"If you go beyond the weekend, real damage is done to capital flow and banking," Neil Hicks, international policy analyst for Human Rights First told msnbc.com, citing a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Egypt is part of the world's financial infrastructure, he said. "That's probably why most governments don't do this — it hurts the state and hurts the economy."

Not only would it impact government holdings, but it's sure to hit those investors, businesses and middle-class citizens who may support the status quo of the Mubarak administration.

It's counterproductive, Hicks explained, citing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's January 21 speech on Internet freedom. "States that uphold Internet freedom are going to do better economically," Hicks said. Cutting off the Internet is "damaging your own prospects for prosperity and growth."

"We've never had a lab in which to see what percentage of a country's economy relies on the Internet," Jim Cowie, chief technology officer of the global Internet monitoring firm Renesys, told msnbc.com. "This is the experiment."

Cowie cites Iran's 2009 presidential elections as the counter-example. After protests ensued, and spread onto the Internet, connections got slow, and the Iranian government monitored traffic carefully, "but they never turned it off."

Given the amount of damage likely to be sustained by not just the protesters but the ruling party if the Internet remains down Monday, perhaps the outage will end soon. If not, Egypt could be in even more trouble than it is now.

"I was befuddled when I saw they had turned off the Internet," Cowie said. "No situation is worth the economic cost. It just shows how close to the edge they must really be."

More on the crisis in Egypt from Technolog:

• Is Internet access a human right?
• 'This is about social networks that are beyond the reach of Mubarak'
• What the Egyptian government doesn't want you to see
• Infograph: Egypt drops off the Internet

Catch up with Wilson on Twitter at @wjrothman, or join our conversation at the Technolog Facebook page.

T-Pain

Care to guess what body part this is?

 T-Pain really likes technology. You can tell by the way he Auto-Tunes everything and also, because Toshiba totally hired him to remix their laptop.

"It' ain't hardcore unless it's hexacore!  Mega gigabyte, son!"

Sigh ... That never gets old.

Anyhoo … T-Pain really likes Facebook too … at least his latest tattoo indicates such. The Grammy-winning hip-hop artist shared a picture of his new ink on Twitter today, with this explanation "I get a tatt every time I come to Hawaii. I think this ones pretty sweet, unless facebook shuts down soon 0_o"

"Like" the new tatt or not (get it?!), give T-Pain credit for understanding the risks. Unlike this guy:

In closing, here's that Toshiba commercial, because like I said, it never gets old. (He's talking and gesturing wildly while eating a sammich! When is that ever not funny?!)

More stories about the annoying way we live now:

• Online degrees qualify cat to be your shrink
• Texting fountain lady's problems bigger than YouTube fame
• Map reveals where Twitter profanity is worst — or best

Helen A.S. Popkin writes about the Internet ... a lot. Follow her on Twitter and/or Facebook. 

"If two speeches and a social media site is all we needed to spread democracy then why did we invade Iraq, why didn’t we just, I don’t know, poke them," Jon Stewart quipped on last night's "Daily Show."

It's funny, and also a valid dig at U.S. citizens whose social activism ends at joining a Facebook page or retweeting #Twitterrevolution. Revolutions are brought about by the people on the ground. Egypt's government shut down the Internet not because it's a catalyst, but because it's an extremely efficient way for dissidents to send a message.

"Sometimes that message is political; sometimes it's coordinating the logistics — say, 'today's protests are at the corner of such and such,' writes M. Alex Johnson in his informative piece about the Internet shutdown in Egypt. "That's much easier now because of Facebook and Twitter."  

Note how Samantha Bee, as "Senior Tweet Analyst" plays the foil to Stewart's skeptic, while Aasif Mandvi pretty much says it all, playing the part of "Team Local Conditions."

via TechCrunch

More on the crisis in Egypt from Technolog:

• Is Internet access a human right?
• 'This is about social networks that are beyond the reach of Mubarak'
• What the Egyptian government doesn't want you to see
• Infograph: Egypt drops off the Internet

Join the coversation on our Technolog Facebook page.

A spam message wishing a Russian woman happy new year may very well have killed her, and saved hundreds of intended targets, according to an account by The Telegraph's Moscow correspondent, Andrew Osborn.

The woman, dubbed "The Black Widow," who Russian authorities suspect was part of the same militant group that killed 35 people at Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, was at a house preparing for the attack, which would have occurred on New Year's Eve at Red Square. Instead, the woman's mobile phone, which served as the device's detonator, was activated hours early by a spam message wishing her a happy new year. She was killed, while a man and woman suspected of being accomplices escaped from the house.

Russian security forces told The Telegraph that phones are usually kept off until the last minute for detonation, but in this case, "the terrorists were careless."

The Facebook's stand installed near the 'Caravan of Freedom', at the government's square in Tunis, Tunisia on January 28, 2011. Although the Tunisian government monitored Facebook, the social network was considered a key tool used in the recent uprisings. (Nicolas Fauque / Abaca)

While most people, including most Egyptians, took Internet access for granted as a constant, the suddenness of Egypt's Internet shutdown raises the question: Is access to the Internet a human right?

The vast majority of urban Egyptians, 78 percent, feel that it is, according to a BBC World Service survey conducted in December 2009 in Egypt's largest cities. In fact,  55 percent responded that they "could not cope without it." Ironically, only 6 percent of the surveyed Egyptians felt that state censorship of Internet content was a chief concern — the same percentile as the U.S.

But when the Internet is taken away, as it has been in Egypt, people feel as though their rights have been stripped.

"It's freedom of expression that is a long-standing core right," Neil Hicks, international policy adviser for Human Rights First, told msnbc.com. "Restriction from the Internet is a violation of the right of free speech."

But the Internet has increasingly become the core medium for speech, especially speaking out against one's government. "This is particularly so in repressive countries where other means of communication have long been controlled by the state," Hicks said. "The Internet and social networking that it permits have enabled activists to get around those traditional forms of censorships."

Even in regimes where the government uses sophisticated technologies to monitor Internet communications, there is a net gain for to free speech. "We saw that in Tunisia. The government was monitoring Facebook posting, and using snooping technology to crack down on the protests," said Hicks. Yet, he adds, "The communication powers that these technologies permit are greater than the danger."

Outrage around the world centers on this issue. Cynthia Wong, international project director for the Center for Democracy & Technology, released a statement criticizing companies for complying with a demand that so clearly violates understood rights: "Egypt's actions demonstrate how vulnerable mobile and Internet access companies are to pressure from government to take actions that directly harm human rights," she wrote.

"While we appreciate that some companies involved have acknowledged their role, events unfolding across the region underscore how critical it is for companies operating in these risky environments to have robust strategies to push back on government demands inconsistent with rule of law and respect for human rights."

According to the BBC World Service survey, 79 percent of the 27,000 respondents, across 26 countries world wide, do think access to the Internet is a fundamental right. Most Americans feel that it is, too.

But when the same question was posed by our friend Joel Johnson on the tech blog Gizmodo, the comments were far from unilateral. In fact, many commenters responded — thoughtfully — that Internet access can't possibly be a right:

"I can't classify media access as a right to every human," said commenter Riff-Raff. "Clean water, shelter, and adequate food to prevent starvation should be rights to every person; sadly they are not, in any country. There are far too many steps to accomplish first before Internet access can be considered a human right."

Another commenter, _Stormin, put it into economic context: "It's no more a right than a computer, electricity, a home, and a job to pay for those things."

Despite the surprisingly overwhelming mass of naysayers, there were reasonable arguments in support of this right.

"If we can't communicate, we can't organize, if we can't organize, then we are reduced to power of a single individual," said commenter gary_7vn. "Without the ability to communicate we are nothing."

Perhaps the most cogent argument in support came from commenter John Addis: "There are certain technological advances that are such leaps forward in human evolution that they do, in fact, become human rights. Vaccines, for example. Potable water. I believe the Internet has become one as well."

Though it's clearly a debate that has no single good answer, most would agree that something considered a constant, when stripped away, creates a massive vacuum of insecurity. Says the BBC World Service study, "Egyptian users are more likely than others in the Africa/Middle East region to indicate a dependence on the Internet." Though they were keen to observe that dependence before, they've probably never felt that dependence quite like they do now that it's unavailable.

Still, Hicks said, the closure may not have as great an impact as the Egyptian government may have hoped. "It may be a case, in Egypt, of shutting the door after the horse has bolted." The people are mobilized, they are acting. In many regards, the Internet has already done its job.

So, what do you think? Is Internet access your right? Or a privilege?

More on the crisis in Egypt from Technolog:

• 'This is about social networks that are beyond the reach of Mubarak'

• What the Egyptian government doesn't want you to see

• Infograph: Egypt drops off the Internet

Catch up with Wilson on Twitter at @wjrothman, or join our conversation at the Technolog Facebook page.

Adam Makary for Al Jazeera

Protests in Egypt (January 26, 2011)

Protests in Egypt (January 26, 2011). Credit: Adam Makary for Al Jazeera

In an unprecedented move to prevent the world from seeing the escalating protests and other displays of internal tumult, the Egyptian government has slammed the door on the Internet and text messages, hoping the world won't see more photos like these (from Al Jazeera's Flickr photostream) or videos that show raw footage of the civil unrest as it unfolds. But, like those pesky dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that find a way to survive and thrive, so too does footage that government doesn't want you to see find a way to viewers around the globe.

Searching for "Mubarak protest" on YouTube will yield hundreds of videos, several taken in the last few days by news crews embedded in Egypt, as will "Egypt Protest 2011." In Egypt, dissent against President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule has reached a boiling part on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, prompting the government to forego selective censoring in favor of an outright shutdown blocking communication from its 20 million users to the rest of the online world. 

This MSNBC slideshow gives those of us far away from the violence an up close view of a rapidly devolving situation, where "open revolt" has overtaken the streets of Cairo.

This video comes via a collection put together by Mashable, and puts you there in a way that we haven't been able to in a pre-YouTube generation.

And while attempts have been made to stifle Twitter and Facebook feeds, undeniable proof of the protests continue to come through, like this video, which I found from a Twitter link that led to a Facebook page. It looks to be shot today at the Kasr Al Nile bridge. We may be watching a revolution in progress.

News outlets on the ground have also been able to bring viewers to the action, like this video from Euronews that show thousands defying the protest bans.

Check back regularly at MSNBC.com for updates on this rapidly developing situation.

More stories about Egypt and the Internet:

• Infographic: Egypt drops off the Internet
• Entire Internet in Egypt shut down overnight
• Egypt's bloggers brave police intimidation
• Watching Egypt's protests

Last night Egypt virtually vanished from the Internet.

In a blog post, Internet monitoring firm Renesys said it "observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table." Renesys reports that "approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide."

The sudden drop of Egyptian Internet prefixes shown on the Renesys infograph reveals the startling efficiency with which a government can isolate a country that has few telecom providers. The action is also far and above any previous any Internet shutdown connected to political unrest, as Jame's Cowie points out in the Renesys blog:

This is a completely different situation from the modest Internet manipulation that took place in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked, or Iran, where the Internet stayed up in a rate-limited form designed to make Internet connectivity painfully slow. The Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.

Several hours after Egypt went dark on the Internet, Renesys observed a single outlet still providing service to its Egyptian customers, Noor Group, leaving the Egyptian Stock Exchange available at a Noor address. While it's unknown at this time why Noor is still running, Renesys points out that the Internet transit path diversity is a sign of good planning by the Stock Exchange IT staff:

What happens when you disconnect a modern economy and 80,000,000 people from the Internet? What will happen tomorrow, on the streets and in the credit markets? This has never happened before, and the unknowns are piling up. We will continue to dig into the event, and will update this story as we learn more. As Friday dawns in Cairo under this unprecedented communications blackout, keep the Egyptian people in your thoughts.

Renesys via Business Insider

More on the crisis in Egypt from Technolog and msnbc.com:

• Is Internet access a human right?

• 'This is about social networks that are beyond the reach of Mubarak'

• What the Egyptian government doesn't want you to see

• Entire Internet in Egypt shut down overnight

• Egypt's bloggers brave police intimidation 

Join the coversation on our Technolog Facebook page.

For Mustafa Fteja, Facebook is more than just a hobby. It's the main way the 30-year-old Albanian native has stayed in touch with friends and family all over the world for three years, and when he was inexplicably cut off from it, he did what every other person in this country seems to do when they're mad enough: he sued.

In seeking $500,000, Fteja is suing Facebook for disabling his account, in which he had about 340 friends and family and had spent "timeless hours creating content and relationships [Facebook] benefitted from," the suit contends. He wants it back on, and he wants the company to pay for the damage of alienating him from his family and friends (about $1500 per friend/family).

"I had the Facebook for one purpose — to keep in contact with my family," Fteja told The Daily News. His access to Facebook, he said, stopped in September, and repeated pleas to the company were for the most part unanswered, except for a generic e-mail sent to him two weeks later telling him he violated the terms of the Facebook agreement. These notices usually go to accounts suspected of being fake or uploading malicious content, or that "infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law."

There are a lot of mines to step on that could result in Facebook shutting down someone's account, according to its terms of service, and Fteja can't figure out what he did wrong.

"I know one thing - I didn't do anything," he told The New York Post (which lists him as 39 and a native of Montenegro. Gotta love those New York dailies.). "I didn't violate anything."

He aired his speculations to the tabloid. "Did someobody hack my account? I don't know. If it's that someobody hacked my account, Facebook should help me. If you have a problem with your AOL login, AOL helps you. Not Facebook," he said.

Fteja also thinks being Muslim may also have something to do with the shutdown, though that seems like a longshot to prove. 

He claims he has a higher purpose than the money in going after the social network.

"I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing this for justice. I believe there should be some, somewhere," he told The New York Post.

But Fteja probably should have read the fine print in Facebook's terms before filing his lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court, because Facebook explicitly states that any dispute has to be resolved in California, specifically in Santa Clara County, which happens to be Facebook's home turf.

It's tough slogging through the legal mukkety-muck, especially when it's written in SCREAMING ALL CAPS, but it looks like even if Facebook were to cough up some dough, it'd only amount to $100 "OR THE AMOUNT YOU HAVE PAID US IN THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS." Fteja's only recourse seems to be found in this last line: "APPLICABLE LAW MAY NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY OR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. IN SUCH CASES, FACEBOOK'S LIABILITY WILL BE LIMITED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW."

Well, it's not quite like the Internet going down in Egypt, but for Fteja, not having his Facebook seems to be a pretty big deal, comparable to rights stripped away from him when he was living in a communist country.

What do you think? What's your Facebook worth to you?

When Amazon announced that its third-generation Kindle "eclipsed 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' as the bestselling product in Amazon’s history," we knew it'd only be a matter of time before we heard the announcement that Kindle books outsell paperback books. And now, about a month after that Kindle announcement, it's here, from Jeff Bezos: "Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com."

This comes six months after Amazon announced Kindle book sales had overtaken hardcover sales and had predicted Kindle books reaching this milestone in the second quarter of this year, so it's ahead of schedule. Not only that, but the company announced that its fourth quarter sales topped $10 billion for the first time.

Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company has sold 115 Kindle books. In July, Kindle books surpassed hardcovers, selling 143 for every 100.

Hardcover sales still trail Kindle books, with the latter selling three times as much during this same period. These numbers stretch across "Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher." Amazon reminds us that "millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle."

The numbers are mind boggling: the U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 810,000 books including new releases and 107 of 112 New York Times bestsellers.

The price point of Kindle books may also have something to do with its sales: over 670,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 74 New York Times bestsellers. 

via Urlesque

That guy on the left? Dude drinks his own urine! For realz!

Egypt has the largest and most active blogosphere in the Arab world — but as of yesterday, the Egyptian government pretty much took the entire country offline. Here's what that looks like.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government knocked down dozens of doors in raids on pro-Wikileaks hacktivists.

It's now OK for photographers to take pictures outside public places and federal buildings — so there's, that.

Some dude on Staten Island is suing Facebook for $500,000 for shutting down his profile. Good luck with that, pal.

The white iPhone of legend made another short appearance — this time on the German Apple website — and in a blink, it was gone.

Yeah, don't expect a lot of AT&T iPhone subscribers to jump ship when Verizon's version rolls around — 90 percent of them are under contract.

Virgin is axing its unlimited mobile broadband plan.

Amazon now sells more Kindle books than paperbacks. (Stop whining Luddites! At least the kids are reading.)

Hey! It's an online Sci Fi writing website from Star Ship Sofa. Neat!

"Man vs. Wild's" Bear Grylls vs. "Survivorman's" Les Stroud in an Internet fight to the death! (I know who I'm rooting for, and it ain't the pretty boy who eats bugs.)

Get your pre-caffeine tech roundup every morning before coffee when you follow Helen A.S. Popkin on Twitter and/or Facebook.