BlackBook: Twitter Might Actually Be Useful
As a lifelong hypochondriac and a fan of the movie Outbreak, it was with great interest that I read Jared Keller’s new piece on Twitter and disease control on The Atlantic‘s blog. For the attention deficient among you, here’s the gist: because complaining makes us feel alive, people tweet about being sick. When lots of people in the same location tweet similar symptoms and/or diagnoses, it can be posited that a particular illness – the flu, say – is spreading rapidly in said location. Therefore, looking at data from Twitter is an easy way to manage disease outbreak. This is good.
Square for Mobile Phones Can Revolutionize Payments
Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey, has launched a new company, Square, which enables people to take credit card payments through their mobile phones (the iPhone application will likely cost only $1). The product is aimed at cutting out the need for merchant accounts with the likes or Visa and Mastercard, but is also intended to allow individuals exchanging money. The company is called Square because the small plastic device which is plugged into the bottom of the iPhone is a white plastic square with a small jack attached. The technology will be easy to use and is scheduled to roll-out early 2010.
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