If you’re a burglar, and you are tired of staking out homes only to be stymied as you break in because the owner is still there, have I got an application for you!

Stop staking out houses and start staking out the new site, Please Rob Me. Instead of watching to see if there is activity in a house, you can locate users in your area who are mindlessly using Foursquare to broadcast their location to everyone on Twitter. Picking a mark is easy! Enter your area and look for someone who is eating a meal, attending a sports event, in the middle of a pub-crawl, or doing any number of other activities which might give you enough time to pull a major heist.

Once you’ve chosen your mark, click on their Twitter profile and get their real name. Look up their real name in the phone book or online, and then head on over to the ‘house of easy pickin’s’. That’s all there is to it! And if you bring along your smartphone, you can even adjust the thoroughness of your burglary as you track their  progressive tweets and Foursquare check-ins. It couldn’t be easier!

Of course there is always the chance that someone might not live alone, but hey — there are ways to figure that out, too!

How much would you pay for this kind of knowledge and this kind of access? $50? $100? $500?

How about FREE … and you can get it right here.

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There’s a saying in the restaurant business that goes something like, “if you lose one customer you’ve actually lost ten.”  You see, if just one of your guests has a bad experience at your establishment chances are they’re going straight home to tell ten of their friends about their experience and the result being the ten friends avoiding your restaurant too.

Any chef or restaurateur knows the restaurant business in not a touchy-feely, one.  It’s cut-throat, frenetic and often times downright stressful.

It seems the power of social media having a greater impact on the restaurant scene in New York City, now more than ever before.

It all started last week during the blizzard which pounded the East Coast.  It seems the chef owner of a restaurant in the East Village, Joe Dobias, tweeted that his deliveries from upstate purveyors had arrived, but not fish from a local supplier.  This wasn’t Chef Dobia’s first use of Twitter either.  He’s known for voicing his complaints over the internet.

The chef didn’t post the supplier’s name, but the next morning, Robert DeMasco of Pierless Fish — who also delivers to restaurants like Daniel and Esca — called Mr. Dobias to tell him that his business was no longer welcome.

That’s when the fire storm on Twitter really started…..

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(Image courtesy of Seesmic)

Though there is a lot of love for Twidroid Pro for Android, I’ve taken quite the liking to Seesmic for Android. It has a clean, simple interface and is quite consistent across platforms. For those who have been living by Twidroid Pro, though, there were some missing features. Read on to see what updates are in Seesmic for Android 1.2.

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It looks like social networks are coming under attack more and more frequently from phishing attacks, as well as other security breach issues.  This time, its Twitter.

From the post on CNet:

“As part of Twitter’s ongoing security efforts, we reset passwords for a small number of accounts that we believe may have been compromised offsite,” the company said in a statement.

Some Twitter users apparently “used their Twitter username and password to sign up for an untrusted third-party application which then posted Tweets to their account,” a spokeswoman said.

This came in the wake of a number of users reporting that emails from Twitter asking to change their passwords kept coming in to their inboxes.  Personally, I received four emails myself.  I wasn’t sure what it was about, but changed my password anyways.  Its better to be safe than sorry.

Just another sign of the times I guess.  Nothing’s done the old fashion way anymore.

Now you can show the one you love your affection via candy and Twitter.  “Twitter and Sweethearts candy today will unveil plans to stamp Tweet Me on the familiar heart-shaped, fruity candy that has embraced short messages long before Twitter was even a glitter.”

Twitter will be announcing it’s newest partnership, this time with Sweethearts candy, the makers of those little tasty Valentines Day hearts.

“Tweet Me” will be featured stamped on some of this years batch of the little candies.

Sweethearts also will be launching an iPhone app that allows folks to send virtual Sweethearts boxes with personalized messages that can appear on anyone’s Twitter page.

Via Cali Lewis Via USA Today.

Its time once again for Random social networking news from around the Internet!

“Waving” around to get attention: Well, according to an article over at The Register, it looks like all the craziness around getting a Google Wave invite has finally died down and is pretty much dead.  The Google “alpha” release product just isn’t inspiring the frenzy it once had, now that people are trying to use it.  Google Wave hasn’t reached the ease of use like GMail or Google’s other applications…yet.  Anyone want one of my invites?

ICQ returns from the dead: The folks at TechCrunch have found out that ICQ, one of the first instant messaging applications available, is back from the dead. ICQ has released version 7 of its desktop client.  The client now interfaces with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and several other social networking sites. Its only for Windows, but hey, its never too late to look up an old friend on ICQ.  I still have my number!

Join the TweeterClub: Just when you thought there wasn’t anything new for Twitter to to, well, along comes TweeterClubs.  How this works? From TechCrunch,  ”Once you log into the site with your Twitter account, you can enter the tweet on the TweetUp tab. Your tweet will appear in both the club and on Twitter automatically. TweeterClubs will only show the tweets that come from the club members and when you log in, you are automatically a member.”  Time to start a Gear Diary club!

Because it’s the iPhone:  While not strictly social networking, the iPhone is a social networking platform.  These two stories caught my eye and just had to be mentioned.  First, anyone remember that iPhone application I Am Rich?  It cost $999.99 and just showed a gem.  It was an abuse of the Apple App Store.  Well, now there is another $999.99 application called BarMax CA.  But this one is worth it.  Its a study aid to help lawyers pass the bar exam.  And the other?  Walking and talking on your iPhone can be dangerous to your health.  From an article at the NY Times, a woman was talking on her iPhone and walked herself into a parked truck.  Ooops.

Well, that is all the news that is fit to print!  To quote Dennis Miller, stick a fork in me because I am done!

There has been a buzz building about the new Sherlock Holmes movie due out on Christmas Day.  So what happens when Twitter application TweetDeck combines with the promoti0nal power of Warner Bros?  You get the TweetDeck Telegram Co.  The promotional version has black-and-white icons and a couple period images, etc to make users think they are in the 19th century.   It also adds a new column for 221B-related tweets that tie into the online Sherlock Holmes video game.

Twitter is one of the greatest 21st century marketing tools, so why not let the movie industry use it to promote new blockbusters?

One note, if you want to use this new 221B version of TweetDeck, you will have to download a new application.  This is not an overlay to existing TweetDeck installations.  Sorry folks…

But, its all elementary dear reader…elementary…

Apparently last night at ~10PM Twitter was hacked by a group calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army, based on info at TechCrunch.

Apparently it was a ‘redirect attack’ as one of the founders noted:

Update 9.: Biz Stone blogged:
As we tweeted a bit ago, Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed. As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. We will update with more information and details once we’ve investigated more fully.

This is definitely not the first security-related issue we’ve seen with Twitter, nor is it likely to be the last. However, it reminds us of the fact that not only is everything you post on Twitter public and permanent, but the spreading integration of sites and services means that the compromise of one site could lead to widespread security issues. As was also noted in the article:

Update 3.: It is suggested that if you use the same password on your Twitter account with other accounts, now would be a good time to change your password on those other accounts.

Very good advice … we all know that maintaining passwords for a variety of sites with differing requirements is a major pain, but especially in the case of accounts storing personal data and financial records, it is worth doing whatever it takes to be safe.

Source & Image: TechCrunch

If you have a Symbian smartphone (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, among others) you are going to want to stop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and download Nimbuzz!

Why?  Not only will you get messaging, chat, and cheap international calling — you also get what may be the most powerful Twitter app for the Symbian platform, as well as  pop-up notifications for chats and events — all with Nimbuzz running in the background.  Have a touch screen?  Nimbuzz has added kinetic scrolling to give you the best multimedia experience on your Symbian phone. The Nimbuzz mobile VoIP messaging applicaton integrates these features with your social networks and instant messaging clients (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Hyves, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, AIM, etc).  The free application has been so popular that T-Mobile USA recently launched their TAP phone with Nimbuzz preinstalled.

Nimbuzz is currently being used by more than 13 million users worldwide, with another 40,000 new users being added daily. Interested?  Read on for the full press release.

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kwiclick is a fabulous new Firefox extension that enhances the way you interact with content from services like Google, Twitter, YouTube, and more.

I just installed it and after on a few minutes of use am hooked.

In a nutshell kwiclick allows you to perform a search of text in Firefox by simply highlighting and clicking.  And going one step further kwiclick pulls your search results out into a separate, smaller window you take with you as you browse.  You can bring up the window to view your previous results at any time.  You can tell kwiclick what services you’d like it to search from Twiiter, to Google to Maps, YouTube and more.

You can also pull out videos from YouTube and other media related sites and view them along side your browser or send videos you like right to Facebook with only one click.

Check out the video below of kwiclick in action.

You can download the free Firefox extension here.

The uber-popular social networking site Twitter, which lets people update their status with a 140 character messages has launched a brand new mobile version of their web site.

The site, which is available by heading to http://mobile.twitter.com on your mobile phone, has an all new look.

It’s just a preview so Twitter says the site works best on @Webkit browsers – Android, iPhone, Nokia S60 and Palm Web OS phones all come with these browsers installed. Other browsers like @BlackBerry work too, but they haven’t done all the fine tuning yet.

With the countless amount of full featured Twitter apps available in the iTunes App Store, I don’t see many people jumping to use this instead; but on other phone’s where Twitter applications are not as plentiful, perhaps.

It looks like Twitter has finally finished rolling out it Retweet functionally to everyone.  But did you know you could do this vis SMS?

If you  send “RT USERNAME” to 40404 (at least in the U.S.) it will automatically retweet the last tweet of whatever username you entered has sent to Twitter.  Not too shabby, especially for those of us with unlimited texting capabilities.

Thanks Tech Crunch for the news.

With all of the ups and downs of today’s economy, wouldn’t it be nice if we could get some help from the professionals?  Ways to save, invest and budget our money?  How about loans and investing strategies?  Now how about being able to get it via Twitter?

Mint.com, the popular online personal finance site has partnered with Twitter to provide Money Tweets.  Money Tweets are a way to receive advice and education on finances, as well as current news that can impact our financial future, all via the Twittersphere.

Mint.com’s Money Tweets includes five categories, allowing people to read whatever content most interests them:

• Topics – Collects information relating to budgets, saving, investment, loans, and retirement feeds.  These tweets are from the experts, such as the Wall Street Journal.
• Tweets about Mint.com – Tracks, in real-time, what people are saying about Mint.com in Twitter.
• Tweets from Mint.com - Updates followers on the latest from Mint.com.
• Questions – A question of the day.  A way to bring about discussion and brainstorming on a relevant topic.  Kind of a twitter whiteboard-like discussion.
• Popular – Keeps followers on top of hot financial topics.

To find out more, go to the Mint.com site.

I just signed into the GearDiarySite Twitter account to find that it’s been added to Twitter’s new Retweet to Share Tweets beta group. What does that mean exactly? It’s actually a pretty cool new feature.

As explained in the Twitter Blog:

We’re still working out the final details, but this sketch gives you the basic idea. Let’s say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that’s me), and @gregpass but you don’t follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.

Note “retweeted by” attribution and “retweet” option.

Imagine that my simple sketch is your Twitter timeline. You’d see @ev’s tweet even though you don’t follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (The star, reply, and retweet options only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don’t see them all the time.) Also, if you find my retweets annoying, then you’ll be able to turn them off.

Now if I could just get this feature on my personal account – that’s where I do most of my retweeting!

Are you in the beta? Have you tried it? Do you like it?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how Twitter has changed the corporate culture for Comcast.  In  fact, the chatter first started back in January with a big to-do in Business Week. So, is Twitter actually helping provide real customer service?  Is this just a Public Relations gimick, or is it truly — um — Comcastic?

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