Picture on June 20 2009, posted on TwitPic by madyar http://twitpic.com/7wjz2

Here is a short selection of Twitter messages about the situation in Iran at this time:

• TehranBureau : People reportedly attacking police near Laleh Park and pushing them back, first injury transferred to Khomeini Hospital near the clashes
• Mirriaam : they beat & arrest every one with green wristbands or cloth
• iranpirooz : I saw a very elderly man crying for victory and freedom in kargar street Tehran
• TehranBureau : From Tehran: they’re killing people here
• iranpirooz : Near Paiga Basij in Tehran – police and militia are loading trucks with arrested young protesters – source VOA
• iranpirooz : Iranian Militia were acting like wild animals against protesters – most inhuman beatings I have ever seen. God help us.
• TehranBureau : crowds from ferdosi sq to enghelab sq to azadi and fatemi
• TehranBureau : some forces are refusing to attack the people, but basij and special forces are attacking people
• Mirriaam : 2 chopper r spraying hot water on ppl
• iranpirooz : Crowd are shouting “DEATH TO KHAMENEI” in streets
• Mirriaam : Heavy clashes on azadi street, chants of death to khamene’i,The street is full of rocks and fire
• Mirriaam : police using tear gas, water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters in Tehran,They are beating “ppl” in Enghelab St not only protesters
• TehranBureau : basij is even attacking young girls and women
• iranpirooz : Protesters have attacked Paiga Basij (Basij Military Centre)
• iranpirooz : Many helicopters seen in Tehran
• Mirriaam : Houses in alleys open doors to injured protesters,hallway is full of beaten people
• TehranBureau : forces dressed as civilians are beating on people and using tear gas to keep them from entering the square, they are being dispersed into … lower streets
• TehranBureau : reports from Azadi square and that whole area say very brutal clashes taking place
• TehranBureau : Gunshots continuously heard from Ghasr-ol-dasht street
• TehranBureau : Got A Call: Many People Injured By Police and Militia Near Tohid SQ.
• TehranBureau : Eye Witness: At Least 20 injured Protesters transfred to Loghman Hospital in last 30 [now 50] mins.
• Ashavan : People are not backing off. I hear shooting…around teh block. But people are coming back to the street. no one cares.

The Consulate General of Israel in New York is on Twitter, and will hold a Twitter news conference this afternoon.

Consulate General of Israel in New York

Nearly 15,000 Sailors chosen at random have been asked to share their thoughts on telework and technology through the first Navy Telework and Technology Survey, available now through mid-January.

The survey, which is being conducted by the Navy Personnel Research, Studies, and Technology (NPRST) division, asks Sailors to voluntarily provide their opinions regarding teleworking and their use of various technologies that might be used to telework. Telework is an important component of the Navy’s life/work balance efforts that are being promoted by Task Force Life/Work.

Key technologies being explored in the survey include handheld devices such as cell phones, iPods, and digital cameras, as well as traditional computer-based technologies such as the Internet and social networking. As part of the survey, respondents may choose to participate in the first Navywide survey through cell phones, which expands on a recent text message survey conducted with Navy recruiters.

“Surveying Sailors regarding their use of text messaging and other technology is cutting edge, innovative, and exciting research. With text messaging we are able to collect meaningful data in a flash,” said Dr. Paul Rosenfeld, head of the Institute for Organizational Assessment at NPRST.

NPRST exists to help the Navy better recruit, select, classify, train, manage, assign, and care for its people by employing a unique blend of innovative scientific and functional expertise. NPRST investigates, develops, and validates new technologies, methods, and business processes to improve the readiness, performance, and quality of life of Sailors and Marines.

US Navy

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai / Bombay last week have resulted in many mentions of Twitter in the old media, because the people on Twitter covered the attacks as no media outlet could. Dozens of people in Bombay and worldwide were watching television, listening to radio and looking out their windows and reporting what was going on. All of the news about the attacks was aggregated in one place.

We saw a similar phenomenon with the most recent Los Angeles wildfire outbreak. People reported what they say on Twitter far faster than the old media could report.

What makes Twitter a successful news reporting tool, or security tool? What would interfere with that process?

Because of the costs to Twitter, most of the world cannot access Twitter via SMS from their cellphones. They must have Internet access. If you’re at your desk, that also means electrical power for your computer. So, success is first predicated on having electrical power and unfettered access to the Internet.

The Mumbai attacks demonstrated how many people use Twitter for news. They also showed how the medium can be abused by spammers, rumor mongers and others who are not involved with the meme. With up to 100 Tweets a second on a topic, good information can be lost in the volume of messages and false or useless information can proliferate rapidly.

How many times was the completely false claim made that the Indian government wanted to shut down Tweets about #mumbai due to security issues? Hundreds, at least.

Sitll, the hashtag #mumbai, just like the tag #lafires, served to aggregate the related Tweets quite well and the Twitter Search services kept the stream current.

Hurricane Ike showed both the promise and the problem with Twitter. #ike brought us lots of information from people on site experiencing the hurricane. Then, they lost power or Internet connection, or, in one or two cases may have been injured or killed. The reporting was partial due to the limits imposed by electrical service and Internet access.

Were I a government agency, I would be looking for good Twitter management tools. The API is available from Twitter so I could contract for a tool to be designed and programmed. That would take a number of years and cost far more than budgeted. Or, i could find a couple of existing tools and see if they could be used in concert.

The search tool is the most obvious. It will generate an RSS feed so there are two options for the user. What a governmental agency should be able to do is monitor a Twitter search, hashtag or other, and then extract the Tweets that convey desired information. You might need several people monitoring, or you might be able to create a search that weeds out the garbage. It depends on what you are looking for.

Another thing that could be done is the creation of your own Twitter network. Since Twitter allows users to restrict Tweets to only select people, an agency could create a number of Twitter accounts and interlace all of them using the restriction parameter. Facebook and Flickr can do the same thing, so with a little work and planning a network could be created for both messages and photos that would be invisible to the general public. It wouldn’t be secret but it would be invisible to nearly everyone.

That would give an agency a robust network for important messages, pictures, etc. that have to be seen by a number of people in realtime or near realtime. Imagine firefighters shooting pics to Flickr and those pics would be available to command almost instantly. A soldier Tweets his position and the location of an enemy force without speaking or using the radio.

If nothing else, monitoring Tweets about an emergency may provide additional data. “I can see fire on xxx street” tells firefighters something. “I hear shooting by the library” does the same for police. There will be issues, false reports, etc., but they are all issues that already happen with our emergency services.

If nothing else, government agencies should consider the value of having hundreds if not thousands of people reporting to them during an emergency. Twitter will describe the state of mind of the people the emergency is affecting. It might even be a good idea for a governmental agency to fund Twitter enough to enable the SMS messaging system worldwide.

The deputy commissioner of police argued that the terrorists, who were holed up in two major hotels and became involved in floor-by-floor firefights with police, were gaining tactical information from TV. Using powers under Section 19 of the country’s Cable Television Networks Act, he ordered a blackout of TV news channels.

“Transmission of various clippings/live relay/coverage of the actions being taken by the police against the terrorists in South Mumbai is causing impediment in the police action … thereby endangering the lives of the police personnel as also of the hostages,” the order stated.

Cable and satellite channels went off air for nearly half an hour before the order was rescinded.

Media chiefs present at a meeting between the MIB, the Indian Broadcasting Federation and News Broadcasting Assn. hit back by accusing the government information departments and ministerial interfaces of failing to keep up with developments in the media industry.

They said it was unclear which officials had authority to speak to the media, that government and media had never agreed to procedures for coverage of national emergencies, and that the Press Information Bureau is set up to handle print rather than broadcast and online media.

Through blogs, file-sharing and social networking functions on the Internet, dozens of eyewitness reports, some coming from within the two besieged hotels, delivered information faster than conventional media and challenged some of its reporting. Twitter, a user-generated service that delivers text message-sized “tweets,” for instance, reported that there was still gunfire inside the Taj Mahal long after Indian media had said it was finished. Others transcribed lists of casualties from the hospitals faster than mainstream media could access it.

Variety
By PATRICK FRATER