-Thou Shall Not Tweet-

"Don't tweet" seems to be the message that all high-profile sports players are seeming to get from incidents with other players tweeting.

Just yesterday, I heard about running back Larry Johnson of the Kansas City Chiefs getting in trouble for using 'gay slurs' on Twitter. Apparently, while replying to a tweet from a follower he used the F-word that rhymes with "bag." This was after questioning head coach Todd Haley's experience on Twitter. Jarrett Barrios, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, called on the Chiefs to take disciplinary action against the running back and seize the chance to educate on the dangers of homophobia in sports. Johnson has not been suspended but banned from all team activities indefinitely until the matter is resolved. He has apologized.

This isn't the first sports player to get heat from tweeting. The entire Texas Tech football team was banned from tweeting by their coach when linebacker Marlon Williams tweeted about their coach being late for a meeting the day after a big loss to #12 Houston. Team captain Brandon Carter (you need to see his picture) also got in trouble for breaking team rules and tweeting near the end of September about how he thought their season was going bad.

The Miami Heat have a similar rule about Twitter. They are banned from using Twitter at the arena, practice, or gametime.

Another player who got in trouble for using Twitter was New York Jet's receiver David Clowney. He sat out a game for tweeting about his playing time, or lack thereof. It wasn't even an overly negative Tweet. It said, "1 play in the 1st Half, 4 plays in the 2nd half ... A bit disappointed about my playing time but very happy and satisfied about the win."

Personally, I know these people are in the public eye, but, aren't they still people? Why are they getting in trouble for tweeting what they are feeling? I think that there should be some freedom of speech allowed. I realize that what you tweet about reflects on your organization, but, it is on a social network. Everyone may not agree with what they tweet,but, it is not like they are saying this in an interview or on the team's website. Personally, I say give them some freedom of speech if I have to listen to everything that "common people" have to say.

What do you think? Do you think these rules make sense? How do you feel about what they said? Do they deserve freedom of speech?

Real World Van Wilder?

This is the link to the article. I have a cowboy hat.

DDC Cribs- NDSU Edition

Welcome to the first and last edition of DDC Cribs. In this blog you will read about the fame and fortune of being the NDSU President.

North Dakota State University president Joseph Chapman announced Wednesday that he is resigning. Chapman has been president for a decade and student enrollment has grown every year he has been in office. Research expenditures for the university have grown from less than $50 million when he started to over $100 million in the past several years. Under his guidance NDSU athletics have jumped up to Division I NCAA athletic program.

Now I know some of you are asking "Wow, that sounds like a good track record. Why did he resign?" I will tell you why. Somewhere in his reign President Chapman started throwing money around. He got his latest heat for the cost of his "crib." Originally the estimate for building his house was $900,000. You know as well as I that you cannot get a decent house in Fargo for $900,000 (sarcasm). So, the price of the project grew and grew and ended up being over TWO MILLION DOLLARS which had to be paid by the Development Foundation which is made up of donations. Two million minus $900,000 equals $1,100,000 over budget... yikes.

This isn't the only problem Chapman has had with money. Apparently there have been cost overruns in some recent NDSU building projects. Also, when Barack Obama was inaugurated, Chapman, being the good American that he is, made a trip with his family to go see it for over $22,000. UND sent their President to the inauguration for $2,167. That is less than 10% of the cost of Chapman's little trip. Oh, and it turns out the first lady Gayle Chapman (not the one in Prince's band) was drawing a $50,000 salary from the Development Foundation.

With all the controversy over these things the heat was turned up on Chapman and he decided to resign. He said "It just wasn't fun." However, I'm sure throwing around thousands upon thousands of dollars was, in fact, fun.

So what do you think? Think he should have resigned? Think he likes the bling a little too much? Think I have an obvious bias against the 1-4 Bison which stems back from the heated rivalry for The Nickel?

It's Getting Hotmail In Here, So Change Up All Your Passwords

Okay, first off, let me apologize for the lameness of my title. My writers have the week off. It was a poor attempt of a parody of an outdated Nelly Song.

I read this week in the Tech & Gadgets Blog on MSN that Hotmail as well as Yahoo, Gmail, and AOL have all been targeted by phishing attacks over the weekend. The phishing attack harvested at least 10, 000 passwords from Hotmail and numerous other passwords from the other email sites.

I have had a Hotmail account since fifth grade. It was the first tool I used to communicate over the internet with my friends. I know that many people have had a Hotmail account for a long time. One of the practices that Microsoft recommends is for users to change their passwords every 90 days. However I did NOT know that. I have had the same password for my Hotmail account for about five years. This is one tip I urge you to follow after reading this blog.

Along with this advice here is a summary of the five tips from PC World that will help you avoid becoming a victim of phishing attacks:

1) Be skeptical. Don't give out personal information including your user name, password, or account numbers via email. Don't reply to suspicious emails and if you aren't positive that a message is legitimate assume it is not.

2) Contact directly. Whenever you do get an email from a "trusted" source that wants you to give them information or click on a link you should contact them directly. Go see them in person or contact them on the telephone.

3) Analyze statements. Check your bank statements for suspicious activity. Internet banking is a good tool here so you can check if you have suspicious charges or withdrawals. If anything turns up contact your financial institution.

4) Use current web browsers. The newest web browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 have built-in phishing protection. They can find malicious sites and warn you in advance.

5) Report attacks. If you think you are being a victim of phishing, report it. Report the suspicious emails to your ISP and to the Federal Trade Commission.

Some of these are common sense. Others I hadn't thought of. I had never thought of reporting suspicious activity to my ISP or the FTC. I don't really pay attention to phishing protection either. What about you? When's the last time you changed your password? Do you follow these steps? Have you recieved any suspicious emails?

Man Vs. Beast?

Hello readers, despite this hilarious picture of an old lady and her humongous dog, this week we are talking about a fairly serious matter: The difference in sentencing between NFL players Michael Vick and Donte' Stallworth. (By watching those videos you can tell they are both tremendous athletes.)

Today I read a headline that said that today Nike denied a new contract with Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Michael Vick. However, on Wednesday, a spokesperson of Vick's said that he was re-signing a contract with Nike.

This made me think back to the whole Michael Vick incident. As many of you probably know in April 2007 Vick was caught being involved in an illegal dog fighting ring that had been going on for five years. In August of 2007 he pleaded guilty to felony charges. Since then, he missed two seasons of football (much to Falcon's fans dismay), spent 18 months in prison, a few months of house arrest, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, and has been the arch-enemy of PETA. Now, I am OKAY with that. I am a dog lover but I am definately NOT affiliated in any way with PETA. I just thought the punishment fits the crime.

However, with our next contestant on "Who is Rich and a Moron?", I don't think the punishment fit the crime. On March 14, 2009 Donte' Stallworth was out drinking at a Miami bar the night after receiving a 4.5 million dollar bonus from the Cleveland Browns. Coming out of the bar the next morning he decided to get behind the wheel of his Bentley and drive. Around 7 a.m. he struck and killed Mario Reyes, 59. After pleading guilty, Stallworth financially settled with the family, was sent to prison for 30 days, put on two years house arrest, and suspended for ONE season with reinstatement after this year's Super Bowl. Now, like Vick, he has a group that is unfond of him- MADD.

I am not even going to state my opinion further on this matter. I want to hear from you. Do you think this is fair? Thirty days of real jail for killing a person compared to 18 months for killing dogs? Should Vick have a smaller sentence? Should Stallworth have a larger sentence? Maybe they should have equal sentences?

'Zines of the Future

Sports Illustrated, Time, and Cosmopolitan are all top-selling magazines. As we all should know, print media such as magazines and newspapers are dying off because of what you are doing now- reading free media from the internet( let it be known that I didn't think of that saying myself, I stole it from this guy's blog). With this, questions arise on what will happen to these failing magazines so I took the initiative of exploring the world wide web to see how I could answer that question.

I was logging into my MySpace page when I saw an advertisement to read Revolver Magazine's free digital issue (warning: digital issue contains profanity). As I was digitally "flipping" through the magazine I found it very interesting. It is laid out just as if you were reading a magazine. At first I was weary at how the text was small, but, after clicking on the page it zoomed in and it was easy to read. Although I am not a fan of death metal bands like Dying Fetus and Suicide Silence that Revolver is known for covering, I thought it was a good idea for them to make digital magazines. I imagine they would be cheaper to produce, save paper, and it is right on your computer. What I think would be negatives are the jobs lost for the people involved in printing and not owning a physical copy. There is something about buying digital print that doesn't seem worthwhile. You can't hold it or cut out pictures.

Another idea I found about the future of magazines came in a different form. As you can see in this video, last year Esquire came out with a prototype of a magazine using e-ink. This made it possible to make small amounts of animation to make the pictures move. This turned out to be kind of a flop because people didn't seem to care about the animation and price increased. However, if they ever succeed to make it wirelessly receive the new information, I think that could be a good idea.

The final idea I found came in the form of Mine Magazine. As a ten week experiment this summer, Mine Magazine consisted of a selection of five sets of articles from eight major publications sent to you in one convenient magazine (physical or digital). This is a good idea because you only got what you wanted. However, once again, you can find all the information on the internet.

So do you think these are good ideas? Would you buy these? What do you think the future of magazines is coming to?

Hey Zack, I'm Happy For You And I'mma Let You Finish But I Think That A Blog About How Information Spreads Through Social Media Would Be The Best Blog

(Title Continued) Of All Time

...Okay Kanye, I will do precisely that.

By now I'm sure you are sick to death of the Kanye West VMA story (trust me, I am). But, let me write the last piece of information on the internet that you read on the subject.

On Sunday I was sitting in my dorm not watching the VMAs when all of a sudden my homepage of Facebook explodes with status updates that read "OMG Kanye" and "Kanye is a jerk." This got me interested. I commented on a friend's status asking him what happened. Moments later he gave me the scoop on what had happened.

On Sunday at the VMAs while Taylor Swift was making an acceptance speech for her first ever award for best female music video, (for those out of the loop- this was the first VMA ever given out to a country artist- kind of a big deal) Kanye West (who has a history of whining at awards shows) got on stage, took the microphone, told everyone who he thought should have won, gave Taylor back the mic, and got offstage. This left Taylor Swift shocked and almost in tears with a performance to give in five minutes.

After my friend explained this to me I needed to see what happened with my own eyes. Did I turn on the TV hoping they would replay it? NOPE. I jumped right over to YouTube and typed in " Taylor Swift Kanye West 2009 VMAs." Sure enough, ten minutes after the incident, there was a video of the incident. Sadly, due to copyright laws, I only got to watch the video a small number of times before it was taken off, but, I did get to see it.

This is what amazes me about social media and technology in general. Within twenty minutes of the incident, I had heard about it, watched the video three or four times, read numerous tweets on the subject, and chatted about it with friends. The next morning I even saw the video of Kanye on Jay Leno's show online.

Imagine, 25 years ago when people were outraged by Madonna's "Like A Virgin" performance at the VMAs, you only got to watch it once IF you had MTV unless you or a friend "taped" it on their VCR.

So there you have it; One of the beauties of social media- getting all your celebrity gossip in a time-efficient manner. Oh, and if you haven't had enough making fun of Kanye yet I recommend you go to http://www.immaletyoufinish.com/ - you won't regret it.