Posts tagged Twitter
Was the Fox News Politics Twitter account (@foxnewspolitics) hacked?
Unusual activity on the news division’s account seemed to suggest as much late on Sunday night.
The account’s icon had been changed from the Fox News Politics logo and featured the following new description: “H4CK3D BY TH3 5CR1PT K1DD3S.”
WASHINGTON — It was only fitting that the circus surrounding Rep. Anthony Weiner’s admission on Monday that he had, in fact, sent lewd messages to random females over Twitter ended with a lewd question referencing a wiener.
“Were you fully erect?” an apparent plant from a shock jock radio show shouted as the New York Democrat ended a painful apology news conference in New York City’s Sheraton Hotel.
Tent pole jokes aside, the inquisitor highlighted a remarkable fact: A man regarded as one of the smartest strategists in Democratic politics and a likely 2013 New York City mayoral frontrunner had fallen from the rising star to national punch line in less than a week.
And the embarrassing scandal inevitably raised the question of whether the career of a politician — even one as skilled as many thought Weiner was — could survive it. A quick poll of New York politicos and D.C. pundits found few saying he could. But they also noted a geopolitical factor that worked to his advantage: This is New York — stranger things have happened.
“He needs to have a multi-year commitment to a comeback strategy,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative and oft-described crisis communications expert with experience in the Clinton White House. “I’d tell him that you have to realize it will take you multiple years to get back to the position you were in just a week ago.”
Weiner may realize that much. Indeed, the congressman vowed he would win back the trust of his constituents over time. But even in New York City that will be tough, requiring a sort of discipline that many who are familiar with Weiner do not think he possesses.
“He ought to have a goal about not thinking about a political renewal but a personal renewal. If he does anything that looks like he is trying to rehabilitate himself, that would be a terrible mistake,” said Lanny Davis, the crisis management guru who was brought into the Clinton orbit to handle the ex-president’s own lewd conduct. “The last thing he should be talking about is political rehabilitation. That is a terrible mistake. This is not about his political career.”
Oscar winner Russell Crowe flew to England this week to share his wisdom about acting with a thrilled group of students at Durham University.
The ‘Robin Hood’ star, 47, was all smiles while posing for photos with his new protegees. Crowe told the BBC, “We did a little vocal warm up, then I took them outside to do an exercise in leadership and using the space around you.” He called Durham “gorgeous,” adding, “I’ll be bringing the wife back.”
The actor-turned-educator raved about the students on Twitter after the master class: “Brilliant day at Durham University. Many thanks.” Calling the experience “a privilege,” he added, “Great group of kids, funny, smart, brave, I really enjoyed myself.”
Crowe’s visit was facilitated by a longtime friend, U.S. journalist and author Bill Bryson, who has been the school’s chancellor since 2005. Fulfilling an old promise to Bryson to visit the campus as a guest mentor, Crowe went public last month with a tweet announcing his plans to teach.
Once he arrived, Crowe taught a class titled ‘Leadership and Original Theatre.’ The college reportedly lacks a drama department, so a select group of students from the campus theater club were chosen to attend Crowe’s lecture. The Aussie star explained his teaching approach to a local radio reporter.
Bryson said, “It’s just unbelievable. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me at least since my wife married me.”
“He has found space in his life to do this, and not just to do it, but to do it so well,” added Bryson. “It was an absolute inspiration to the students….He’s given them 100% of his attention and all his energy. It was just fantastic.
Ke$ha and T-Pain may be music’s new “it” couple, judging by the flirty-looking photo shoot documented on Twitter.
The ‘Sleazy’ singing party girl and the godfather of auto-tune expressed their infatuation with one another earlier this week. “Last night I found out I’m in love wit @keshasuxx,” the rapper posted to his page. “Um. F——-g love u @TPAIN. U get me. Come find me,” Ke$ha tweeted back.
The social media foreplay culminated in a public announcement from T-Pain, “Ladies and gentlemen I’ve upgraded from loyal stalker. Get ready for K-Pain @tpain and @keshasuxx,” and the above photo of the pair snuggling up with a bottle of Hennessey and a lap full of dough stacks. Looks like the two not only love each other, but booze and big bucks too.
And just like that, Serena Williams’ sex(y) new Twitter avatar is gone. Gone after maybe half a day, with the old picture of her in a tennis outfit back up. Someone must have gotten to her and suggested something about common sense and hypocrisy.
Last week, a man was arrested for allegedly stalking Williams, having gotten too close to her, too many times all over the country, even in her dressing room at Home Shopping Network. On Thursday, she posted a new avatar on her Twitter page, a photo suggestive of us peeping at her through a lace curtain while she unknowingly looks the other way in white bra and panties.
It’s a sexy photo, she looks great and it’s not pornographic. To be honest, I would actually find it to be somewhat artistic if it weren’t for the serious business of stalking women. What was her message anyway? What was she trying to say? Just this: Look at me.
Instead, what she was saying was this: Peep at me, but don’t stalk me.
Huh?
Williams has masterfully branded herself, now as a celebrity tennis player and not a tennis playing celebrity. The brand is to sell sex now, with tennis as an afterthought, if that. And the way she does it is to walk right up to the line and push it a little, take half a step over it. Give her credit: No tennis player can get people talking the way she can.
(If she’s still a tennis player).
Women’s tennis has been selling sex for decades. And this avatar — even just the talk of it –and all of Williams’ other sex(y) photos and videos lately will draw more TV viewers to women’s tennis than Francesca Schiavone emotionally kissing the red clay at Roland Garros. With women’s tennis a little boring now, sex is selling the sport more than the game is selling itself.
Still, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic photos are never quite as gritty as Serena’s. First, she did the video game commercial in thigh highs and black leotard. Next, the bright pink body suit on the practice court. And now this.
I’m guessing Erin Andrews might be uncomfortable with the Twitter avatar, having had a stalker peep at her in her hotel room. This view of Serena might not be too far off of what he saw of Andrews.
Whatever, Williams is so much bigger than women’s tennis now that she can hijack the game just by producing occasional photos of herself like this. By the way, in secondary Serena news, she also pulled out of the French Open Thursday, as she continues to recover from blood clots found on her lung. So the focus will go to the other players, such as No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki.
Hah! The focus will be wherever Serena says. With that power, and over two million Twitter followers, does come some responsibility. Fortunately, someone figured that out, even if it was a little too late.
It was back in March that Jordin Spark’s shrinking figure became a topic of conversation, and now the ‘American Idol’ alum is showing off her slim side via Twitter.
The singer tweeted this photo of herself wearing the mismatched polka dot bikini, saying “I don’t know why but my bathing suit reminds me of fruity pebbles. :)”
Sparks has always been open about her body image and has often spoke out about her healthy curves. Well hats off to you, Jordin. You look great and your suit is rather cute too!
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — The wildest week in NFL history had one more twist at the end and it means football is off limits again.
The NFL locked out its players Friday night after its first legal victory in the fight with the players over the future of the $9 billion business.
The players who showed up smiling and relieved to be back at work Friday morning are now cooling their heels. The ups and downs of the day — and the weeks and months of this labor dispute — may be taking their toll with the first preseason game little more than three months away.
“It’s crazy and it’s really, really making it difficult to plan,” Bengals quarterback Jordan Palmer said. “It’s just really hectic. Everybody I’ve talked to is very thrown off by the situation.”
Raiders quarterback Bruce Gradkowski vented on Twitter: “Gosh I just wanna get back to work and play! I feel bad for our fans having to put up with this.”
The day began with dozens, if not hundreds, of players reporting to team facilities all over the league. They met with coaches, picked up playbooks and went through workouts for the first time since they were locked out after talks for a new collective bargaining agreement broke down March 11.
“From the players’ standpoint I think everybody is pleased we’re not locked out anymore, especially the rookies,” Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said on CNBC in his first public comments about the dispute since he became a plaintiff in the still-pending federal antitrust lawsuit filed against the owners.
Not so fast, Tom.
U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s order lifting the 45-day lockout on Monday was temporarily stayed by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The NFL made its decision a few hours later.
Teams “have been told that the prior lockout rules are reinstated effective immediately,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told The Associated Press.
Agent Peter Schaffer said he has advised his clients to abide by the court’s ruling.
“You can’t have convenient justice,” Schaffer said. “Whatever the ruling of the day is, it must be followed. So I have told my players to stay away from the facilities.”
The appeals court is expected to rule next week on the NFL’s request for a more permanent stay that would last through its appeal of Nelson’s injunction, a process expected to take 6-8 weeks.
“Nobody’s happy about any of this,” Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson said. “But it is what it is. The lockout is back into effect.”
Teams had announced plans for organized practices and camps as early as next week, but those have again been put on hold.
“Chaotic,” Vikings receiver Bernard Berrian wrote on Twitter. “I dunno where to go.”
Coaches and general managers scrambled to bring their first-round picks in on Friday during what proved to be a brief window of time. They started to give the youngsters crash courses in what they wanted them to work on in the event that the lockout does drag on into the summer.
Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland said teams had no choice but to “go with the flow.”
“It was good to see the players today, great to see some of those guys, and wish it would have lasted a little longer,” Ireland said.
The NFL’s victory came in a venue considered more favorable to businesses than the federal courts in Minnesota, though it was a narrow one. The 2-1 decision from a panel of the 8th Circuit included a lengthy dissent from Judge Kermit Bye, who suggested temporary stays should be issued only in emergencies.
“The NFL has not persuaded me this is the type of emergency situation which justifies the grant of a temporary stay,” Bye wrote.
Jim Quinn, the lead attorney for the players, downplayed Friday’s order and was heartened by the dissent.
“Routine grant of stay and totally expected,” he said. “The only surprise is that Judge Bye is so strongly against giving them even a tiny stay because the league obviously can’t show it is necessary.”
Agents were concerned with how undrafted rookies will find work with teams unable to sign free agents after the draft concludes on Saturday.
“The owners will create a huge injustice to their own GMs and personnel departments if they don’t allow the signing of undrafted free agents,” said agent Joe Linta, whose clients include Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco. “They may not care about the players, but they should at least help their own scouts, coaches and personnel people who have worked so hard in the scouting process.”
The volatile atmosphere is rocking a league that thrives on routine and stability, and it doesn’t figure to settle down soon.
“It seems like you hear something different almost hourly,” Lions defensive end and player rep Kyle Vanden Bosch said. “This is a difficult situation for everybody involved.”
Attorneys for the players had argued against a stay of Nelson’s order, suggesting that the public and the players, with their short careers, are at far more risk when the business is stalled.
“Professional football is part of the fabric of American life,” the attorneys wrote. “Because the uncontroverted record of evidence shows that the 2011 season could be canceled or significantly curtailed without an injunction in place, a stay may deprive the public of professional football altogether.”
Said Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver: “It’d be great to have everybody back in the building, but the real thing is we’ve got to get back to the negotiating table and get a CBA.
“Tough day,’’ Williams wrote on her Twitter account about midnight Pacific on Tuesday.
This is a big deal. Williams had a major medical issue. But she also avoids what could have been a disaster: If she had taken the court for, say Wimbledon, with an undetected blood clot in her lungs, it is possible she could have just dropped right there.
It is manageable from here, and presumably she’s now on blood thinners, and will be for six months or so. But that presents its own problems, as far as her tennis career.
While on blood thinners, in theory, if she cuts herself diving for a ball or something, she will bleed and bleed, with her body unable to stop it without immediate medical help.
If her health is stabilized, and the immediate danger avoided, you still wonder how much more we will see of her on the tennis court the way we know her.
She is 29 now, the start of old age in tennis. To be honest, she has rarely kept herself in the best of shape. And now this. She is being monitored.
People Magazine reported that Williams was seen several times in recent days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The funny thing, and so typical of Williams, is that she also was seen at red carpet Academy Award parties, apparently looking fabulous.
She hasn’t played on tour since July, when she won Wimbledon. After that, she suffered a mysterious foot injury. She has given conflicting explanations for what happened, and even whether her foot surgery was absolutely necessary.
But last summer, she told USA Today that she had stepped on broken glass at a restaurant in Germany, cutting tendons in her foot. In that story, she said the surgery wasn’t mandatory, but only to avoid having a “drooping toe.’’
Now she has been out for eight months.
Throughout her career, Williams, and to a lesser extent her sister, Venus, has been the face of American tennis, and also of women’s sports.
She has been her sport’s most polarizing figure, with an incredible mix of highs and lows.
She has been a role model to young girls, maybe the best example in the history of sport of a strong woman. I once suggested that she would be the perfect new model for Miss America, strong, smart, athletic, beautiful and not the size 0 dangerously promoted as the ideal to girls in magazines, movies and TV. She has been an amazing story of a black girl who grew up in the tough town of Compton, Calif., and dominated a sport historically made up of wealthy white people.
At the same time, she has clearly thrown matches in less important tournaments, made promises to play and then not kept them. And she also made worldwide news at the U.S. Open in 2009 when she foot-faulted then went into an f-bomb-laced tirade of threats against the line judge who called it.
Who would have thought her career would end so strangely, if that’s what’s happening here?
I called my own doctor, James Cunnar M.D. in Naperville, Ill., to get a grasp of how serious this is, and what might have happened.
He said — without having seen Williams — that it all adds up. The pulmonary embolism, the clot, likely was the result of her foot surgery. The surgery could have left “a clump of pooled blood.”
“It sits there, and coagulates, or clots. She probably has not been extending the foot, so the calf muscles are not moving the blood out of the leg.
“The clot formed, and it travels up … and gets stuck at the end, which is your lungs. It just lodges.’’
He said she likely felt chest pains and was tired, short of breath and possibly dizzy.
“This is serious,’’ he said. “She’s not coming back in two weeks.’’
Is it life-threatening?
“Oh yeah,’’ he said. “It can be life-threatening.’’
It can work like a clogged pipe. And then, as more things keep getting pushed into the pipe, the clog grows. Eventually, in a body with a clot, it is hard to get the blood through.
Trying to piece together a timeline, it seems that Williams went to see her foot doctor in New York last week.
“Yes,’’ she wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “NO BOOT GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!’’
With her boot removed, she flew back to L.A., where the clot was discovered. She had a procedure done, which likely included an IV for anti-clot medicine. Doctors don’t usually remove the clot, but stabilize it and help the body to fight it.
On Sunday, she was at Elton John’s AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party. And then on Monday, back to the hospital for the hematoma, which is a pooling of blood under the skin.
She was expected to play at a Nike exhibition this month in Oregon, the start of her return, but pulled out last week, saying her foot wasn’t healed enough yet. Next up, is the U.S. Fed Cup team in April, and that would seem unlikely now. If she doesn’t play, and the team ends its season with a loss, then Williams will not be eligible to compete in
the 2012 Olympics.
Forget about that now. Forget about any of the polarizing things.
This is real. This is serious.
Chris Brown has lightened up!
Just a few days after Rihanna downgraded her restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, Brown debuted new blonde locks in a Twitter photo he posted of himself on Sunday.
“Look at me now,” he captioned the pic.
Hours later, the R&B star seemed shocked that his makeover was headline-worthy.
“It’s crazy how me changing my hair makes CNN!!” he posted. “Isn’t there more important news!! Just proved my point!!!”
Brown’s new album, F.A.M.E., drops March 22.
Part of Twitter‘s appeal is that people can ‘connect’ and engage with celebrities online, even if most of them consider it to be, and treat it like, just another push marketing channel rather than a multi-dimensional communication system.
Be that as it may, Twitter owes a lot of its popularity to notable celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, P Diddy, Ellen Degeneres, 50 Cent and plenty of others using and promoting the service.
Now, some company called VS Technologies is suing Twitter, alleging that it infringes on a patent of theirs, entitled “Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people”. For real? For real.
In the complaint, filed earlier this week (and embedded below), VS Technologies alleges that Twitter has purposefully infringed the above-mentioned patent, US patent no. 6,408,309.
Straight from the documents:
As it pertains to this lawsuit, very generally speaking, the ’309 Patent discloses methods and systems for creating interactive, virtual communities of people in various fields of endeavor wherein each community member has an interactive, personal profile containing information about that member.
For reasons unknown, the company was awarded the patent back in 2002. Since I can’t find any information or website about the company, it appears like they did absolutely nothing productive with their ‘invention’, and thus I’m declaring it a YAPT (Yet Another Patent Troll).
VS Technologies is asking for damages to be paid, which, and I quote, should adequately compensate the company “for Defendant’s infringement, which by law cannot be less than would constitute a reasonable royalty for the use of the patented technology, together with interest and costs as fixed by this Court”.
Yeah, good luck with that.
