Instagram

A photo on Barack Obama's Instagram page.

President Obama and his staff are quite savvy when it comes to technology — and social media, in particular — so it's really no surprise that there is an account on popular photo-sharing service Instagram in Obama's name. That account was used to share a photo for the first time on Tuesday night, during the Iowa caucuses.

Instagram — which currently requires its members to use an iPhone app in order to post photos — offers a variety of "filters" which can be used to alter images' appearances. It also has options which allow users to easily post photos to a variety of social networks — such as Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook — right as they upload them to Instagram.

According to the profile description on the @barackobama Instagram account, it is being "run by Obama 2012 staff" and invites people to "share a photo from the campaign trail" by using the #Obama2012 hashtag. (As an aside: Obama is known to be a BlackBerry fan, so we wonder if he'll actually use the currently iPhone-only photo-sharing service personally anytime soon. He'd have to head to an Apple Store or borrow a staff member's iPhone, after all.)

The first photo posted from Obama's Instagram account was, according to its caption, of the President speaking "via videoconference to Iowa caucus-goers" on Tuesday night. Links to the image were posted on Obama's official Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook accounts upon upload.

Twitter

Neither this photo — nor the use of Instagram — mark the first time the President has kept up an active social media presence. He already has — and maintains, with the help of staff — accounts on sites and services such as Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Foursquare and more.

Related stories:

• Instagram photography app finally coming to Android
• White House rickrolls bored Twitter follower
• Obama joins Foursquare, isn't even mayor of Oval Office

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

AP file

Judging by Twitter gossip, Fidel Castro must have more lives than your average housecat. Barely a couple of months go by before there is yet another widely spread — and false — report that the former Cuban President has died.

Euronews explains the latest series of rumors included an image of unknown origins, which appeared to show Castro's corpse in a casket. The news site also suggests whoever started the rumor may have done so in order to spread a computer virus, but so far we have not seen any reports of malicious software being linked to the Cuban president this time around.

It's worth noting that in Aug. 2011 — on another occasion that Castro's death was falsely reported — emails with infected video files went around and contaminated anyone curious enough to read something entitled "Fidel is Dead."

As far as we can tell after scouring the news wires and various major news sources, there's not a single confirmed peep about Castro's passing.

So what can you take away from this incident other than the fact that "death by Twitter" is equivalent to "dog bites man" at this point? Just that you should take a second to check on the validity of a claim before adding to the noise. Google before you tweet, folks — it's the new "think before you speak," after all.

Related stories:

• Twitter users shamed for whiny Christmas tweets
• Twitter tests 'Top News' and 'Top People' in search results
• The new Cuba (slideshow)

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

MySpace

Remember your dear ol' buddy Tom Anderson? I certainly hope you do — he was the first friend you had on MySpace.

Anderson left MySpace back in 2009 and nowadays he's seeing other social networks — and sharing his thoughts about them, as well as the site he co-founded so many years ago.

In a recent Google+ post, Anderson discussed the photo-censoring habits of social networks and the importance of removing offensive photos. He specifically called out TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler for complaining about having a profile photo — in which he is addressing the camera with a rude hand gesture — removed from Google+ without any warning before discussing how MySpace dealt with questionable images:

I would respectfully submit that we, the users of Google+ (and Facebook or Twitter) don't need to see you flipping us off, nor do we need to see you naked, or displaying something else generally considered offensive. When a social network let's that stuff slide, it turns into a cesspool that no one wants to visit ... sorta like MySpace was. 

Ouch! That's a pretty harsh thing for a man to say about his abandoned virtual child. But Anderson had a good justification for the criticism:

It was very difficult [at] MySpace to keep up with the "offensive" photos, and we had decent technology and many warm bodies on the case. (In fact, I'd guess the average person would be shocked how much time and resources we had to put into trying to stop that.) [...] Things that seem simple are not as soon as you have 10s of millions of users.

This isn't the first time Anderson has said something about MySpace that made us gasp. Previously he pointed out that "like most of you, [he doesn't] like using [MySpace] anymore" after being questioned as to why he has a Facebook profile.

Related stories:

• Google+ interest on the wane, say search statistics
• Say goodbye to Google's black bar
• How to make phone calls through Google+ Hangouts

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

Twitter

While Christmas may be over, the fuzzy-wuzzy feelings we got as we watched our loved ones joyfully unwrap carefully selected presents will last well into the next year. Unless, of course, our loved ones happen to be ungrateful brats — like the Twitter users exposed by a comedy writer.

You see, funny guy Jon Hendren — who is known as @fart on Twitter — spent a portion of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day retweeting folks who complained about the things they didn't get from Santa this year.

Some whined that they received the wrong color iPhones, others declared Christmas to be ruined because they didn't get cars, and someone even announced that she would move out of her parents' home if the right gift wasn't waiting downstairs.

Why'd Hendren compile these tweets? Was he aiming for a social commentary about the consumerism-driven society we live in? Was he doing research for a funny article?

No, he was just bored, as Hendren explained to TechCrunch: 

“I was visiting with my family,” says Hendren on the impetus behind his critique. "They'd all gone to bed somewhat early on Christmas Eve night, and I was lying awake playing with Twitter's search function on my iPhone (oddly enough)."

You can check out a selection of Hendren's tweets in the video below, and plenty more if you take a peek at his Twitter account (but be careful, because some of the language in those tweets isn't exactly mild).