Since Google launched Google Buzz, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around their strategy.    One of the first public (Buzzes? Buzzez? Buzz’s?)  I received was from Jeff Pulver, who posted a rather “wait and see” opinion on Buzz…

“Feeling a little buzz around me. It will be interesting to see how this platform evolves. Seems like another piece in the items which will help define the future of how we communicate using non-telephony platforms.” – Jeff Pulver via Buzz.

This prompted a flurry of other comments, including:

Joel Mark Witt - I’m loving Buzz. It is bringing the conversation to me… in my Gmail inbox … where I live most of the time.

geo GELLER - i am not sure this is not another distraction and too landlocked in email – its not twitter – its your email list which is nice but but but and further more hmmm

I commented on the similarity to FriendFeed and how I felt like my Gmail inbox was starting to become almost as forgotten as MySpace (or Orkut!)

Part of the conversation included a discussion of how people are linked up in Buzz.  Google apparently has been autoconnecting Buzz profiles to other Buzz users based on who’s already in your Google Contacts list and this is causing a bit of a stir in the privacy world…

WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw

Anyway…I agree with Jeff and certainly think  the Buzz has some growing to do.   It’s already much more user-friendly and easier to grasp than Google Wave (I wonder how many Waves there are about Buzz?).  Picasa provides photo sharing…Google chat is already integrated.  And if you integrate Google voice, then you have AudioBoo functionality as well.   Connect your Twitter and Facebook feeds, and suddenly Google is your social networking glue.  They should’ve called it Gluegle.

Buzz might just be Google’s secret back door into social networking.

Oh, and if you’re trying to figure out how to get started with Google Buzz….go here:  http://www.google.com/buzz

So I’m into day 4 of my Twitter exile. Sometime late Sunday I was actually on the Twitter website, logged into my @johnnydiggz account and the website logged me out mid-session.

When I went to log in again it said “Wrong Username/email and password combination”

This struck me as odd because I hadn’t changed my password and my browser was set to auto-log me in. I retyped my username and password several times to no avail. So I tried the next step: Twitter’s password recovery tool.

I went to that page, filled out the form and got this message:

Ok, we’ve sent the instructions to your email. Go check it!
You can keep this page open while you check your email. If you don’t receive the instructions within a minute or two try Re-sending the instructions

The problem is I never received this email. So I waited a day and tried it again…no dice. I tried logging into ANOTHER Twitter account…worked just fine.

Then I noticed this post on PCWorld Twitter Password Resets Linked to Torrent Sites. Was my account somehow part of this reset? The timing seemed about right, but I don’t belong to any Torrent Sites. This made little sense, but it was all I had.

THEN I went to Twitter’s support page and saw this: Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password. Okay…so something’s going down with Passwords. I get it. Whatever. Can I have my Twitter account back now? Where’s my password reset email???

Now it’s DAY 4. I’ve tried resetting my password, I’ve tried contacting Twitter Support (there’s an oxymoron for ya!) to no avail. I did find this post Unable to receive password reset emails that seems to describe maybe what’s happening.

Finally…after many attempts, I finally got some support from Twitter, in the form of an email (see…I told you my email was working!). Here is what they had to say…after 3 days…

Hi JohnnyDiggz,

Thanks for contacting us about your login issue. We have received your message and will respond as soon as possible.

Thanks!
Twitter Support

—–

I really wish I could Tweet my frustration. Perhaps someone would listen. If you’re out there in Twitter Land, please RT this.

*** Update DAY 6 ***

I’m still locked out. No additional responses from Twitter Support. I enlisted the help my friend @JeffPulver to see if he can help and I’ve noticed a bunch of people have been retweeting this post and even started a hashtag #lockedout. Thanks for your help…especially @PurpleCar @pfmonaco @Jfavreau @JadoreAlmore @pfmonaco

@PurpleCar Know anyone who has been and is currently locked out of Twitter? Let’s start a hashtag, maybe Twitter will notice. http://is.gd/7NEeX #lockedout @johnnydiggz

*** Update DAY 7 ***

I’m back in! I just tried the password reset tool for the umpteenth time and this time I received an email! I’m back in Twitter. Still no word from Twitter Support.

There’s an increasing breakdown of the traditional social boundaries between workplace and homelife, and personal and public information.

Let’s say a Facebook user in England sues another user in Australia for defamatory comments posted on the site. Who has jurisdiction over the case, which country’s laws should be applied:  England’s, Australia’s or those of the United States, where Facebook is based?

Can the law keep up with technology? – CNN.com.

Microsoft has reached collaboration agreements with Twitter and Facebook to get their members’ public status updates and messages indexed and presented in useful ways on the Bing search engine.

The partnership with Twitter has it working with Microsoft to optimize how Bing crawls and indexes “tweets.” Microsoft in turn will apply search algorithms to the Twitter messages, so that Bing users will not only be able to see a real-time feed of “tweets” but also rank them by how relevant they are to their query..

via Microsoft Strikes Search Deals With Twitter, Facebook – Business Center – PC World.

The Twitterverse is still recovering from the sudden departure of Courtney Love and her daughter.   Courtney Love has closed down her Twitter account just days after her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, went after Ali Lohan — Lindsay’s sister — on the micro-blogging service. Mother and daughter are both tweet-obsolete for the moment.

Love is dealing with a defamation claim after tweeting disgust at a fashion designer, and Demi Moore and Perez Hilton were also exploring legal action after their war of 140 characters or less with each other last month.

The law on what you can and can’t say on Twitter hasn’t been refined yet by a court, but assuming it follows the general defamation book, it’ll be hard to win a defamation lawsuit. But that won’t stop many plaintiffs from trying.

Tweet Delete: Celebs Exit Twitter – ABC News.

A court in the UK is allowing a law firm to serve an injunction via Twitter. According to the BBC, “the injunction – known as the Blaney’s Blarney Order – is due to be served at 1930BST and will include a link to the text of the full court order.”

The BBC adds that in the UK, injunctions can already be served by email, so it’s not completely out of left field for the court order via Twitter to be allowed. Nonetheless, it’s an innovative move by the court, and one we could see in the future as public figures look to protect their identity and brand on the social web.

You’ve Been Served … A Court Order, Via Twitter.

The folks at MySpace, always keen to jump at new emerging technologies, have finally opened up their platform to talk to Twitter.   Facebook did this about a year ago, about the same time I decided that MySpace was no longer useful.

So about a year ago I changed my status on MySpace to say “Find me on Facebook”.   I turned off all email notifications and said goodbye to that platform.

But now they’ve made it simple to link your Tweets to MySpace…perhaps injecting a digital amphetamine into MySpace’s arm.   I’ve hooked my Tweets up to WordPress (I use a plugin called Twitter Tools).   So, when I publish this message, a notification goes out to Twitter…and, theoretically, it should go to MySpace.

For Facebook, I use the RSS import function and import each blog entry as a Note.   I’ve found that linking Facebook status updates to my Tweets is a bit annoying because while my followers on Twitter are not always the same as my Friends on Facebook, enough of them overlap that I think they’d get tired of the redundant updates.

But MySpace….sure…bring it on!

Someone went to great lengths to target the Internet identity of one man: a 34-year-old blogger and economics professor in the Republic of Georgia named Cyxymu.

Attackers first unleashed a wave of spam email and then a distributed denial of service attack aimed at sending huge amounts of traffic to the professor’s Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, causing many to buckle and some to break under the strain of the traffic.

The motive is still a bit unclear,  seemingly something to do with a Georgia / Russia territorial dispute?   Anyway, I’ve been on the receiving end of a DDOS once and they’re not very easy to defend against.

Professor Main Target of Assault on Twitter – NYTimes.com.

Cybraphon is an emotional musical instrument robot comprised of 60 robotic components playing: a Farfisa wind organ, a Shruti box, a snare, a tom, a cymbal,  12 chimes, a dub plate and 10 other percussion items amplified through vintage gramophone horns.

Apparently Cybraphon has some sort of a rudimentary AI that processes emotions based on feedback from its online presence on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Cybraphon wants to be popular. Just by going to its website you will affect its mood and the kind of music it plays. Cybraphon regularly checks its MySpace page, worries about how many fans it has on Facebook, looks up its website stats and obsessively Googles itself to see what people are saying about it.

It’s so very cool but unfortunately I may have to travel back in time to destroy it before it destroys us all.

Cybraphon | Autonomous Emotional Robot Band.

Robot Band Plays Music, Obsesses About its Online Followers – Wired Magazine

So we have finished the first phase of Tweet3po with 9 neighborhood watch droids deployed, covering the bulk of Greater Orlando.

At present, we have the following neighborhood bots available for the City of Orlando Crime Watch / Citizen Reporter automated tweet bot:

• Baldwin Park, Orlando FL

• College Park, Orlando FL

• Colonial Town South, Orlando FL

• Delaney Park,  Orlando FL

• Downtown Orlando FL

• Lake Eola Heights, Orlando FL

• Lake Lancaster, Orlando FL

• Parramore, Orlando FL

• Thorton Park, Orlando FL

Anyone can subscribe to the Twitter Feed of the above Droids and they will receive Tweets of Orlando Police Department Dispach calls, creating a near-realtime online police scanner.  Followers who are Followed back by the Tweet Droid can send Direct Messages to the neighborhood Tweet Droid which will be Re-Tweeted automatically.

How do you get the Tweet Droid to follow you back?  I guess you just have to ask it?

Future plans include dashbord reporting console.   Dave and I were actually discussing this very feature in front of his house when 2 OPD cruisers approached the curb and asked if we had called them.  We hadn’t and Dave asked what address they were called to.  The officer said 850 E. Livingston.  Dave commented that there is no 850 E. Livingston.  And there is not.

But Dave was more concerned that he hadn’t seen a tweet for any calls to that address.  I confirmed I had not seen one either.  Had the great Tweet3PO system failed us right before our very eyes?

5-10 minutes after the OPD cruisers left, the Tweet finally did show up.  There’s a built-in 10 minute delay from the OPD Active Dispach Calls website reporting the data. But we have actual first-hand proof that it works.

We’re working on adding other cities now.  And reports.

I did notice this disclaimer on the city website regarding the Police Active Calls Data:

Disclaimer: Calls For Service are the result of a person contacting the police department and an officer would respond, but not necessarily complete a report due to the nature of the incident.  Reported Calls are those that the officer documented the incident as a criminal or possibly criminal act.  These reports are not all-inclusive and does not represent all types of calls. Due to public records laws; specific information may not be released.  However, if there are any questions or concerns, please contact the District 4 OPD Liaison Officer at james.young@cityoforlando.net.