Twitter's New Revenue Generator

Business Insider is reporting that Twitter is finding new ways to monetize and the latest appears to be via an account called @earlybird. Twitter PR told ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick,  "There are interesting things in store for @earlybird. Keep waking up early and you might be the first to find out what they are." Looks like they are taking a page out of Dell's book.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitters-newest-revenue-plan-daily-deals-2010-7?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#ixzz0snd8Og7h

Border Crossing Wait Times Tweeted By Canadian Border Services Agency

The Canadian Border Services Agency is now trying to assist travelers to the US via Twitter, at least through this busy summer season. "The CBSA is committed to applying low-cost technologies like Twitter to keep service delivery standards high without increasing costs to the taxpayer," Stephen Rigby, the president of CBSA says in a news release on the agency's website. This page will take you to the agency's instructions for it's feed in this 3 month pilot project. It works like this:

You can simply follow @cbsa_bwt or use the hashtags below to select your desired crossing and search for tweets on the estimated wait times in effect.

St. Stephen, NB / Calais, ME #CBSA_STS
Belleville, NB / Houlton, ME #CBSA_WSR
Stanstead, QC / Derby Line, VT #CBSA_STD
St. Armand, QC / Highgate Springs, VT #CBSA_SAP
Lacolle, QC / Champlain, NY #CBSA_SBL
Cornwall, ON / Rooseveltown, NY #CBSA_CWL
Lansdowne, ON / Alexandria Bay, NY #CBSA_TIB
Queenston, ON / Lewiston, NY #CBSA_QLB
Niagara Falls, ON / Niagara Falls, NY #CBSA_RBB
Fort Erie, ON / Buffalo, NY #CBSA_PBR
Windsor, ON / Detroit, MI #CBSA_ABB
Windsor, ON / Detroit, MI #CBSA_DCT
Sarnia, ON / Port Huron, MI #CBSA_BWB
Sault Ste. Marie, ON / Sault Ste. Marie, MI #CBSA_SSM
Fort Frances, ON / International Falls, MN #CBSA_FFB
Emerson, MB / Pembina, ND #CBSA_EMR
North Portal, SK / Portal, ND #CBSA_NPL
Coutts, AB / Sweet Grass, MT #CBSA_CTS
Surrey, BC / Blaine, WA #CBSA_PCH
Surrey, BC / Blaine, WA #CBSA_DPA
Delta, BC / Point Roberts, WA #CBSA_BBY
Huntingdon, BC / Sumas, WA #CBSA_HTD

If you are travelling to Detroit this morning you'll be happy to know that:

#CBSA_ABB Commercial Flow: No delay, Travellers Flow: No delay

Twitter Bug Uncovered Quite By Accident

In a twist of irony, news of a bug that allowed Twitter users to cause other users to unknowingly follow them was quickly spread across the internet via social sites and popular blogs. The NYTimes Bits blog explains the discovery "The bug was first revealed by a Turkish man who wanted to tell his friends on Twitter about a band called “Accept” that he enjoyed listening too. When the man typed “Accept pwns” into the update box on Twitter he noticed that a user by the name of @pwns was now following him on the site."

Twitter had this brief message on it's official blog: "We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them. We’re now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we’re aware and this too should shortly be resolved."

Huh, sounds more like an Easter egg or developer backdoor than a bug...

Following Google On Twitter

The folks at Google like to tell us about their every move just like the rest of us Twitter fiends, in fact the Google crew has a number of active Twitter accounts which they've posted links to in the Official Google Blog. If you are a fanboy (or fangirl) of Google and have a particular product that you'd like to keep tabs on check out the list, odds are it's probably covered. According to the OGB "Like lots of you, we've been drawn into Twitter this year. After all, we're all about frequent updates ourselves, and there's lots happening around here that we want to share with you. Of course, we enjoy watching, and contributing to, the tweetstream (we hope you find our tweets useful, too)."

Here are just a few to get you started:

twitter.com/Google - Google's central account
twitter.com/Blogger - for Blogger fans
twitter.com/GoogleCalendar - user tips & updates
twitter.com/GoogleImages - news, tips, tricks on our visual image search
twitter.com/GoogleNews - latest headlines via Google News
twitter.com/GoogleReader - from feed reader team
twitter.com/iGoogle - news & notes from Google's personalized homepage
twitter.com/GoogleStudents - news of interest to students using Google
twitter.com/YouTube - for YouTube fans
twitter.com/YouTubeES - en Espanol
twitter.com/GoogleAtWork - solutions for IT and workplace productivity