Twitter and Instagram lit up on Monday as Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast. Social media were filled with emergency services information, photos, and comments.
Some of the tweets were poignant:
Praying for everyone going through Hurricane Sandy, you are all in my heart.
It's one of several fake Sandy photos making the rounds on the Internet.
But the guards were still at their posts at the Tomb of the Unknowns Monday afternoon.
Reddit set up a /r/Sandy forum, mostly used for entertaining discussion and funny pictures.
But social media haven't been just used for chitchat. They're emerged as a leading source of breaking news during national emergencies and events. In that spirit, The Washington Post published a guide to using Twitter without Internet access, sending and receiving messages via SMS instead.
@Kim Indeed. A tough time working from home is better than lost productivity all together. Loss of power or life are by far worse. I'm happy to see the IE crew in the North East are doing ok.
keveend - It's difficult to work because the people you need to work with might be struggling with the storm.
One of the reasons we rescheduled the Tuesday, October 30, 7 Days of Executive Education session was because we knew that many of the people we want to attend are on the East coast. IT managers would either be dealing with Sandy directly, or dealing with the fallout of their NY-based facilities getting hit. Better to do it another day when people are more likely to be available.
Even large, distributed organizations sometimes have core IT facilities in New York. A user in California might find himself unable to access core IT facilities even though he's looking out the window at clear, sunny skies.
What if Gangnam Style was actually a giant rain dance and we've brought this on ourselves? #sandy
I saw this tweet reposted on another site a few days ago and found it oddly uplifting. The rain might damp everything else, but it's good to know that people's humor can stand such a disaster. Like I said, oddly uplifting and puts a whole different meaning (if ever there was any) on the Gangnam viral craze.
I agree. When it comes to bad news, there really is no need to flood airwaves and social media with the same thing over and over again. Too much coverage will probably make people feel paranoid and think that it's way worse than it actually is. Moderation is key, especially in times like these.
I think this works out as a nice extended holiday for people who (a) have power and (b) can only function at their workplace. For those of us who can work remotely, it's just a week where everything is twice as hard to get done. (But even that is not as bad as not having power.)
Any call that comes to 911 is answered. Both life threatening and emergencies. It's the job of the person on the other side of the call to distinguish to which category it falls.
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The Memorial Day weekend begins with Geek Pride Day on Saturday. Kick off your holiday with nine news tidbits that are perfect for sharing at backyard BBQs and poolside get-togethers.
At the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit here in Nashville, I'm hearing many stories about how businesses have adapted their IT strategies in response to this rapidly changing, pressurized, data-driven commercial world.
Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
While interstellar travel presents huge challenges, it's "almost inevitable," according to a speaker at the Starship Century symposium here in San Diego.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
Showing results is the best way to win over social business doubters, according to Mary Maida, Medtronic lead information solutions manager. Internet Evolution's Mitch Wagner interviewed Maida at the E2 Innovate conference.
The restaurant chain's Chris Laping describes how the company drives innovation in everything from operations to team uniforms under his leadership. Internet Evolution's Mitch Wagner interviewed Laping at the E2Innovate conference.
A growing number of HR managers are suspicious of individuals who do not take part in social media and view them as anti-social in real life as well as online.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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