Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
Facebook, Twitter and the tools that enable them sometimes get a bad rap. A recent example: a weekend article in the San Francisco Chronicle, which quotes mental health professionals who worry that addiction to our digital tools will lead to a breakdown of interpersonal relationships and a rise in attention deficit disorder.
A new study from the University of Minnesota does not address those issues but does suggest social networks are a good way to get young people engaged current events and civic affairs, and have much potential as teaching tools.
The semi-annual Web Hacking Incidents Database report finds an increasing number of malicious attacks targeting users of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks.
Despite widespread censorship in China, 92 percent of Internet users there use social media, compared to 76 percent of U.S. netizens, according to a new study by Netpop Research.
A study by Internet analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group finds a correlation between profit growth and how well companies engage customers via social media.
With Twitter serving as a key conduit of information coming from Iran, is the small company up to the task of being a player in geopolitics? It's a question posed by CNET staff writer Caroline McCarthy in a recent post.
Culture in the digital age is being created from the ground up, and just about anyone with a computer or smartphone can become a content-producing superstar, according to Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's magazine and author of the new book And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture.
The average sentence length of a Twitter message is 1.40 sentences. Gerunds are more popular on Twitter than off. The second most popular word on Twitter is "I."
These are a few of the things the Oxford English Dictionary has learned by studying millions of Twitter messages.
Guest: Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large of the OED
Online social networks will become a major economic force over the next decade, with powerful groups dictating what products will be made, who will produce them, and what prices they'll pay, according to a recent report by Forrester Research.
Sonoma County, California winery Murphy-Goode is seeking a blogger/tweeter to hang with winemaker David Ready for six months. The Murphy-Goode lifestyle correspondent will write about wine making and promote the company on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Wanna-be wine bloggers are submitting 60-second videos to promote their candidacies.
Applications for the job close June 19th. It pays $10,000 per month for six months, and includes housing.
Who will buy Twitter? Is Twitter even for sale? The tech sites were buzzing last week when it was reported Google was in talks to acquire the microblogging service. That is until Kara Swisher, the Wall St. Journal columnist, dispelled the rumors when her sources reported that product partnerships -- maybe. Merger? No.
Kara Swisher says the reaction this rumor of a Twitter-Google merger has gotten will surely be studied at Google. But at the moment, it's pure speculation.
Also on today's show, a couple of readers weigh in on Jon Gordon's story earlier this week when a representative of the Taser company talked about cameras police would wear to record an incident.
(Bob Collins is filling in this week for Jon Gordon.)
Thirty-five percent of adults who go online have accounts on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networks, according to new survey data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Just eight percent were on social networking sites four years ago.
New research finds that more than half who adolescents who use the social networking MySpace have posted information about sex, substance abuse or violence. The research, published in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, also shows adult attention can help kids be savvier about what they disclose online.
CNN's Rick Sanchez is not high on crack as his recent Twitter update stated. Sanchez had his account hacked, as did dozens of other users of the microblogging service.
Other recent victims include the President-elect, Britney Spears, and Fox News.
And over the last few days Twitter users received a series of messages promising free iPhones and debt relief. The messages directed them to a site that asked for their user names and passwords.
