Today marks 5 years since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet. The company is now worth an estimated $10 billion and posts an average of 1 billion tweets per week.

I was fairly late to the Twitter scene…I joined in 2007 to land grab @jennjarvis, but didn’t start actively tweeting until 2008. Now, like so many other pieces of technology, I can’t imagine life without it.

Here’s a video put together by Twitter to mark this milestone. They asked some celebrity tweeps to talk about why they use Twitter.

Oh, and my very best friend shares a birthday with Twitter, so I have to give her a little shout-out. Happy birthday Janelle!

Posted under Twitter, Web/Tech

As concerns grow over the potential for a nuclear disaster in Japan, I thought I’d share some links and info I found today.

Live Video streaming by Ustream

This is a live stream of a Geiger counter that is supposedly in Tokyo. As I am writing this, there are more than 11,000 other people watching the pixelated little screen.

I also found this National Radiation Map for the U.S. It’s populated by a live feed from Geiger counters across the U.S. and shows the location of nuclear power stations across the country.

GeigerCounters.com is essentially sold out according to their website.

Verizon and AT&T have waived fees for text donations, as well as text messages and wireless calls to Japan.

Posted under Weather, Web/Tech

There’s a lot of information swirling out there on the World Wide Web following the devastating earthquake and tsunamis today.

At one point this morning I had four separate video streams on my desktop from Japan, Hawaii, Seattle and L.A.

I wanted to compile a few tech related things I’ve run across today.

Donations:
Sprint announced it is waiving text message fees for text donations to the following groups. To donate to the American Red Cross, text REDCROSS to 90999. To donate to the Salvation Army, text JAPAN or QUAKE to 80888. I’ve donated to Convoy of Hope, a great organization that my father worked for and that I interned with several years ago. To donate to Convoy of Hope, text TSUNAMI to 50555. AT&T posted a tweet earlier saying it was waiving fees to text donations to the Red Cross, but there has not been an official announcement.

YouTube:
Aside from the compelling video available on every news site in the world, a great source for user-generated content is YouTube’s CitizenTube. Cars floating in the tsunami waves, people screaming and running for cover, and fires with flames and smoke rising towards the sky. A lot of it is disturbing, and beware because it is raw and unedited.

Twitter:
The three most popular hashtags today have been #prayforjapan #tsunami and #japan, although I’ve seen a host of others including #sendai #quake #jpquake

Google:
Google has set up the Google Crisis Response  and the Google Person Finder. The Person Finder is available in 5 languages and currently tracking more than 18,000 records.

Groupon:
Groupon is selling donations of $5, $10 or $25 for the International Medical Corps.

Posted under Twitter, Weather, Web/Tech