Facebook Poke Lands Woman In Jail

Here's an interesting article I found by the Tennessean about a woman getting arrested for a poke on the Facebook social networking website. The woman, Shannon D. Jackson, was arrested after poking another woman on the website. As the article points out, the virtual poke violated the terms of an order of protection the woman had on Jackson because it was used as a means of contacting her.

From the article:

According to the affidavit filed in Sumner County General Sessions Court, Jackson is accused of using the “poke” option on Facebook to contact a Hendersonville woman, thus violating the terms of the order of protection, which stipulates “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

Now, I haven't really met any college student with an order of protection against them, but they, along with millions of others, use Facebook. College students have probably heard not to post anything they wouldn't want their bosses or other authority figure seeing or knowing on the website, but here's another reminder about that from another angle.

(Picture from justgiving.wordpress.com)

Blackberry Widgetizes Its Smartphones

While the Blackberry smart phone is mostly popular in the business world, I've noticed a pretty big trend on campus: mostly everyone has them! If it's not a Blackberry than it's definitely an iPhone, the touch screen phone by Apple that's proven to be one of their biggest mobile competitors.

The mobile war between the two phones might be getting a little bit more heated up after a recent announcement that is sure to affect Adelphi's students.

Research in Motion, the company behind the popular Blackberry smart phone recently announced that it would be developing a Widget platform for their phones. Widgets are applications that look and feel like a regular application. The only difference is that Widgets use browsers and web technology rather than being downloaded. Likewise, this new platform will use the existing Blackberry browser to render these applications.

Now, that doesn't mean too much just yet, but the possibilities are pretty much endless. Think of it like the iPhone. It has applications you download onto the phone, but it also has an amazing amount of web applications ran through its browser. And, that's exactly what RIM seems to be aiming for.

Now all Adelphi students will have to do to get access to crazy chat or video applications is run these widgets. The idea is basically to be able to do everything the Blackberry hardware permits you to do, but a little bit more like the iPhone.