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A Pakistani court formally charged five young Americans of plotting terrorism in the country yesterday, their lawyer said, in a case that has raised alarm over the danger posed by militants using the Internet.
 
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Bullock gets ‘Blind Side’d by alleged affair
It seemed too crazy to be true — America’s sweetheart Sandra Bullock fell for Jesse James, a heavily tattooed former bodyguard for Slayer turned custom motorcycle maker who was once married to a porn star.
 
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‘The age of the freak is almost here’
For the past few years the tourist shops near where the SXSW Music Conference takes place have been selling goods emblazoned with the axiom “Keep Austin Weird.” And if the first night of live music was any indication, visitors, revelers and performers are taking the sentiment to heart. Here are a few of the highlights from Wednesday
 
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‘Free’ ad leads to fraud suit
NEW YORK. A Wisconsin college student is suing credit firm Experian — the brains behind the ubiquitous FreeCreditReport.com jingles — for fraudulent advertising after she inadvertently signed up for a monthly $14.95 monitoring service.
 
My Travel
The key to Kyoto
Kyoto’s temples and Geisha culture are legendary, but this city is no slouch when it comes to mixing in a large slice of contemporary, too.
 
Published 22:38, June the 4th, 2009
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Study: Twitter’s close to completely useless

Ten percent of users create 90 percent of content, researchers find

“If you’re trying to get what a representative cross-section of the public is thinking, you’re probably better off staying away from Twitter.”     Piskorski

 

It may seem like everyone — from Ashton to Oprah — uses Twitter, but really it’s a tiny fraction of the people using the fast-growing social network phenomenon who generate nearly all the content, a Harvard study shows.

That makes it hard for companies to use the microblogging site as an accurate gauge of public opinion, the Harvard Business School study showed.

Twitter Inc. is a social networking Web site in which users post messages of 140 characters or less — known as “tweets” — that can be viewed by other users who elect to follow them.

The Twitter bandwagon has been alternately praised and mocked. A segment on “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” presented an overexcited recitation of “Sweet Tweets” from celebrities such as Miley Cyrus: “This line is insane! Am I ever going to get my latte?”

The Harvard study examined public entries of a randomly selected group of 300,000 Twitter users. In May, the researchers studied the content created in the lifetime of the users’ Twitter accounts.

They found that 10 percent of Twitter users generated more than 90 percent of the content, said Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, who led the research. More than half of all Twitter users post messages on the site less than once every 74 days.

REUTERS/METRO