Get @theashes to The Ashes & The rude Duke of York

So this is hillarious.  A poor 22yr old American girl who happens to have had the twitter account @theashes since 2007 exploded in a rage when people kept asking her about The Ashes cricket tests currently being played.  At one point exclaiming "I AM NOT A FREAKING CRICKET MATCH!!!"  She has since become an instant Twitter celebrity now with the meme #gettheashestotheashes gaining enough momentum for Qantas & Vodafone to want to pay for her to see a game herself in Australia.  Apparently shes seriously considering it.. all through the power of social media!

So Prince Andrew verges on being quite rude & candid, he's allowed surely?  Although it is interesting to have an insight into what he thinks about other countries and policies.  So comes the latest scandal to flow out of Wikileaks Cablegate.  He's apparently been caught claiming "..the Americans don't understand geography. Never have. In the UK we have the best geography teachers in the world"  I'm sure there are plenty more gems to be found amongst these Cables still to come !

W. to visit Facebook HQ & The great UK chill

The interesting character that we shall only refer to as W. is apparently making a stop off to visit Facebook HQ to be involved in a Facebook Live event.  One would assume most of the questions being asked of him will come from Facebook staff (possibly even Zuckerburg himself), although a few select questions will probably come from the live chat happening during the event.

I just love the power of social media & how you can collate whats happening over an entire country / the world just by looking into what people are posting & where those posts are from.  Take this for example.  Every time big weather events happen it's inevitable that people will tweet about them, so this guy in the UK has made a map of the snowfalls in real-time depending on peoples tweets, where they tweeted from and the intensity of the snow as described in their tweet. Pure brilliance!

Jail time for the Pirates & Stoner Willie

The poor bastards lost their appeal and although their jail time was reduced the original fines handed down to them were increased to US$6.4M+.  These lawsuits are not only pointless wastes of taxpayers money there is little to no actual evidence in my opinion that illegal file sharing even dents the profits.  Here we can see that even though a slight dip occurred in 2005, generally speaking (the US box office at least) revenue has been steadily increasing since the 80s.  And before you say thats only because ticket prices have been increasing at the same time here we can see total admissions have held relatively steady through the last decade.  They've even increased a lot since the 80s.. wasn't the big cry back then that VHS home video rentals would kill the cinema industry?

So Willie Nelson is a stoner, who would've thought?  Did his laid back attitudes, peace loving ways, long hair & beard give it all away?  Or was it this latest news that finally made you realise? I think this tweet sums it all up for me..

Crowdsourcing FTW !

So todays topic isn't exactly a "trend" so to speak on Twitter but never the less I find it rather interesting.  The whole aspect of creating a much more social web / internet has lead to some amazing concepts.  Crowdsourcing & Microfinancing being two of the most powerful in my opinion.  They have been getting a lot of buzz for the past couple of years and now slowly starting to get more mainstream media attraction.  Such sites as kiva.org & kickstarter.com are right up there to be the next big way to fund small but amazing projects in this post recession era.  Obviously sites like wikipedia.org would not exist without crowdsourcing it's information (you don't think few hundred or even thousand people could really re-write a continually evolving encyclopedia on their own did you?).

One other way people are slowly turning to crowdsourcing is through content creation.  Some might call this lazy, but I see it as potentially game changing. What other projects could foster such close ties with the people who will eventually consume this content than if they themselves helped create it.

The death of a Queen & Giving thanks !

So it was the 19th anniversary of Freddy Mercurys passing and the Tweets are streaming in to commemorate the occasion.  I must admit, I had no idea he passed away only 19 years ago.  To be honest I've always thought it was a lot earlier.  I grew up during the 80s when Queen was all over the radio! One can only imagine the passing of such a musical legend of his time was as widely mourned as MJ was just over a year ago. RIP Freddy Mercury, 5th Sept 1946 - 24th Nov 1991.

On a much brighter note for some parts of the world comes Thanks Giving.  Now I know little about this Turkey eating holiday (we save our Turkeys for Christmas on this side of the globe) but it seems its just as simple as giving thanks for a decent harvest.  Although with social media at play these days people are expressing what they themselves are thankful for in life.  Ah the power of global connection.

Cookie Monster for SNL & an Achy Breaky Birthday

For some ghastly reason it seems everyone all of a sudden wants a big blue cookie munching monster to host the hit comedy tv show Saturday Night Live.  Twitter is a buzz today following a video posted to Sesame Streets Youtube account depicting an audition by the Cookie Monster.  It seems he would like to branch out from his cookie munching career into comedy.  This will no doubt go "viral" & I can almost guarantee it will lead to SNL being fronted by the blue beast in no time.   If I had to guess only to silence the trollers out there screaming for the next 30sec laugh from the online world.

In other unrelated news, if we believe everything the Internet has to say Miley Cyrus is now 18.  Scary thought if you live in a country like mine that allows drinking & night clubbing at that age.  Happy Birthday Miley. Now I bet she really Can't Be Tamed.