Kyle LeBoeuf

I covered citizen journalism a while back during the hurricanes. I talked about how regular joes like you and I are among the first to break news to the rest world about various events through services like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The words “citizen journalism” are once again generating a lot of buzz in the blogosphere at Twitter users are among the first to break news to the world of the Terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Debates in the blogosphere have the distinct advantage of having clearly drawn sides.

On one hand, you have those that think that citizen journalism (specifically via unfiltered services such as Twitter) is a valuable and somewhat valid source of news. This group is led by Michael Arrington and the fearless bloggers over at TechCrunch (a favorite website of mine, by the way).

The other side is obvious. This is the group that downplays the role of Twitter and Facebook in news reporting. This is a smaller, less vocal group. I’m not going to even bother linking some of the blogs involved in this, as you can see them in Arrington’s article.

To deny the role of social-SMS services in news reporting is to stare something blank in the face and tell it does not exist. It is utter ignorance.

Open your eyes. Read the Twitter updates. Read more than just a few. Many of these bloggers claim that the information is often inaccurate. This may be true to an extent, but often these same people will correct themselves for their mistakes. If you know how to sort through the garbage (which is usually easy), you can see the hard facts coming first hand from someone who is on-seen. I used Twitter as a means of staying in contact with some people who weathered the hurricanes that hit the Gulf coast late this past summer. Often times, I got a lot more details about what was going on than what was being said in the traditional news outlets.

Come on people, let’s have some common sense. To discount Twitter as a valid news outlet is downright stupid.

Kyle will be sure to inform anyone of interesting things he witnesses first hand via his Twitter account. Visit http://www.twitter.com/kyleleboeuf or text “Follow kyleleboeuf” (without quotes) to 40404 with an SMS-capable mobile phone.

kyle at kyleleboeuf dotcom

So a tragedy occurred today.

At around 10:40 AM this morning, I realized (quite horrifically) that I had left my iPod sitting under the chair in my previous class. I scrambled back to retrieve the iPod, but alas…it was already in the possession of someone else.

So I’ve had to go through my day without my iPod blaring in my eyes. I am quite distraught.

I had a big attachment to the thing. It was a big part of my daily routine, including driving in my car, walking between classes, working in the office, and even sleeping.

I have no idea what I’m gonna do. It’s gonna be a rough few weeks.

Lifehacker shares with us the news that Firefox is reportedly used by 20% of the internet users out there, according to Mozilla. That’s huge.

You might think “well that’s not much. That’s only one in five people”; but considering that the world’s most-used browser is built-in to the most used operating system, those numbers are pretty awesome.

That means that people are getting tired of the insecurities and out-dated features included in IE. That means that people are trying to “Take back the web”.

Join the campaign to spread Firefox. Let’s increase that market share!

Click the button to get Firefox.

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

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