Michelle Obama Sends Her First Tweet

This week, First Lady Michelle Obama personally pressed the button to send out her first tweet, complete with a hashtag, a URL and her initials.
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Twitter Loves TV, and the Feeling Is Mutual

Twitter’s pitch: Buy ads with us, and we’ll make your ads more valuable. Comedy Central gives it a shot with tonight’s “Comedy Awards”. And coming soonish, perhaps: embedded TV broadcasts on Twitter.com itself.

Twitter for the iPad Says Hello!

BoomTown does not plan to get into the endless so-and-so launches an Apple iPad app news cycle, because it is not really news, except to the more breathless fanboy tech bloggers. But Twitter’s intro of one tonight in the App Store is probably more important than most. “Twitter for iPad,” said the company, “makes it even easier for people to explore Tweets and discover new content and accounts on Twitter.” We’ll reserve judgement on that.

Tweets, Google Maps Help Solve Mystery of Portland Explosion

On Sunday night, a loud boom shook parts of Portland, Ore.–and drove residents onto Twitter and elsewhere on the Internet to figure out the cause. On Twitter, people used the hashtag #pdxboom to relay news about the noise. And in a sign of the potential for using social media in emergencies, one resident soon set up a Google map that residents could use to indicate how loud the sound was in their area.

Almost Famous: Chris Messina of Google

In this installment of “Almost Famous,” which we call “Need to Know,” focusing on less prominent but very important tech execs you need to know better, we did an interview with Chris Messina. He’s a recent get by Google who is all about opening the Web. He’s a designer by training, so be ready for all kinds of visual metaphors, like walled gardens, tearing down silos and keeping the Web from looking like Nascar.

Twitter Buzz Over Iran's Gmail Ban

As soon as news of Iran’s ban on Gmail broke, Twitter was awash with outrage about Iranian censorship, but also with jokes about whether Google’s new update service had prompted the decision.

NoTube: Supreme Court Blocks YouTube From California’s Prop 8 Trial

Here’s a historic first you won’t be seeing today: Coverage of a federal trial via YouTube. The Supreme Court has put a halt, at least temporarily, on plans let Google’s video site stream coverage of the “Proposition 8″ trial, which kicked off today in a San Francisco courtroom.
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Pepsi Apologizes for "Before You Score" iPhone App

Looking for obnoxious chauvinism? There’s an app for that. Pepsi’s Amp energy drink issued an apology for its new iPhone app, called Before You Score, which drew outrage from some female consumers who deemed the application sexist.