On Campus - Thursday, November 12, 2009 12:30 - 0 Comments
We Want to Make You a Digital Campus
When I applied to NYU in the fall of 2005, I distinctly remember that one of the essay questions on the application forced me to ponder, “Why, aside from its location, do you want to attend NYU?” I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggled with coming up with an answer to that one. NYU’s convenient Greenwich Village location is no doubt one of the main attractions of the university, but an intimate, traditional campus environment is automatically sacrificed when your school is located in the heart of an overpopulated city. President Sexton has described NYU as “a large community made up of smaller ones,” but sometimes it feels like even those smaller ones aren’t small enough. We at NYU Local want to change that… at least online.
If you’ve given in to the Twitter craze, hopefully you’re already following our account. Yesterday our City Editor, Kenny Hsu, introduced a new list that seeks to organize every NYU student, organization and professor with a Twitter account into one easy-to-follow list: in short, we want to create an NYU campus on Twitter, a one stop shop for all tweets NYU. We hope it’ll successfully render a sense of community–at least digitally–that students can join and follow, so that our school can stop feeling so fragmented and start feeling like a real university. Find it, follow it, love it–and if you want to be added to the list, just @ or DM us.
On Campus - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 11:22 - 2 Comments
The Demise of the Twitter Fail Whale (Update: Fail Whale Still Alive!)
We were on Twitter when the site failed on us, a common sight on Twitter nowadays. But, unexpectedly, Twitter’s iconic Fail Whale (”Twitter is over capacity”) was absent. Instead, there appears to be a tiny, awkward robot informing tweeters of an error on the site. Does this mean a tragic death of the Fail Whale? Has the Fail Whale failed himself? Stay tuned.
Update: Although the general consensus is that Twitter is “over capacity” far too often, the Fail Whale appears to still be alive, according to commenters.
Entertainment, Featured - Monday, October 12, 2009 10:00 - 3 Comments
Amuse Yourself with the Exploitation of Embarrassing Tweets
Revolutionary news aggregator or glorified online soapbox? Twitter’s population skyrocketed during 2009, establishing an elite class of users whose tweets enlighten our ADHD-brains in digestible 140 character chunks. Then there is everyone else. Without getting into the whole mind-casting versus life-casting debate, here are some entertaining websites that exploit people who tweet before they think.
Twaxed
“Beware Before You Share,” or you might find your tweets twaxed. This website has all the hilarity of FML and texts from last night, but goes a step further by revealing the identity of the user responsible for the reprehensible tweet. Here is a sampling:
On Campus - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 16:23 - 5 Comments
Top NYU Twitters to Follow (besides @NYULocal)
So far, 2009 has become the Year of the Twitter, especially on the hyper-connected NYU campus. Students tweet about free Red Bull and professors tweet links to their research. “NYU” even became a trending topic during Take Back NYU!’s Kimmel occupation last semester, just below “Rihanna photo.” So what if you got an A in Writing the Essay? Try summing up your entire weekend in New York in 140 characters or less…including a Twitpic! That’s $200,000 of tuition made useful.
Anyways, here’s a list of the best NYU-related Twitters to follow (after the jump). Add some more suggestions in the comment box, or tweet at us at @NYULocal.
Entertainment - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:22 - 4 Comments
Twitter Approval Matrix Tells Us Who To Follow
By now, everybody loves Twitter—or since the backlash is now officially on, loves to hate it—but what do you if you have just recently caught on, and you are struggling to figure out who to follow? New York magazine has a handy-dandy Twitter Approval Matrix so that you can figure out who has the coolest 140-character brain farts, and whose tweets are probably being updated by their publicists (pssst: Martha Stewart.) Here are a few things that caught my attention:
- Our very own Jay Rosen is the highest on the Insightful/News-sharing quadrant.
- Soleil Moon Frye made it? I haven’t seen anything with her in it since Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
- Sean Combs/Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddle-Poo tweets about tantric sex. Is it necessary to say something is irrelevant if we already know it’s irrelevant?
True story: This past Monday, my journalism ethics class invited Craig Whitney, Standards Editor at the New York Times, to have an informal Q&A session about ethical and legal issues that the Times faces. Continue…
On Campus - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 13:19 - 1 Comment
NYU Student Devises Prenatal Tweeting Device
Corey Menscher, a student in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (’09), has been in the news recently for inventing a method by which his unborn child could update a Twitter account. CNET’s Technically Incorrect blog has a small piece on Menscher and his Kickbee invention, which would register a hard enough kick from the unborn baby Tyler (born last week) via a belt worn by Corey’s wife Ellen. Peep the Twitter here.
The local news clip above gives a few more slightly useless details about the Kickbee’s development as a project for Menscher’s NYU graduate school class. More info on Corey can be found at his portfolio website which includes links to his personal Twitter and Tumblr.
With a dad like that, Tyler should be writing for Local in no time.
Entertainment - Friday, December 5, 2008 15:21 - 6 Comments
The Real Shaquille O’Neal Is Blowing Up My Twitter Feed
Last month, when someone started posing as NBA star Shaq on Twitter, he ended the shenanigans by creating his own page, as reported in the New York Times. Seriously.
THE_REAL_SHAQ is a steady “tweeter” and a wise soul, often quoting himself throughout the day, often by his self-appointed nickname “The Big Aristotle.” He shows frustration with his team in a post that reads, “Whatthe hell is wrong wit da suns,” and speaks on his philanthropy in updates like, “On my way to oklahoma city, gettin ready to send 2 million lbs of peanut butta to africa.” Kazaam. Continue…
