Kariuki has 300 followers, but he estimates that his tweets directly and indirectly reach thousands of residents. Many of the residents cannot afford smartphones, but they access tweets through a third-party mobile phone application.

Using Twitter saves a lot of time and money. “I no longer have to write letters or print posters which take time to distribute and are expensive,” Kariuki said to the Associated Press.

Kariuki also sends messages of hope, and he plans to use Twitter to promote peace during the upcoming presidential election. According to the Associated Press, it’s the first election since the 2007-08 post-election violence in which 1,000 people in Kenya died.

I’m constantly amazed by how people creatively use Twitter to better their lives and communities. What’s the most innovative way you’ve seen Twitter used?

Twitter has a clear policy to not mediate content and confirmed to Mashable that this policy was upheld in this instance.

This isn’t Twitter’ first rodeo (and likely won’t be its last) when it comes to upsetting government officials. This leads to the big question: Should Twitter monitor its content?

My personal answer is no. The beauty of Twitter is that it provides a channel for people to freely share information and content. If Twitter starts monitoring what people post, it will detract from what makes it great.

What do you think? Should Twitter mediate rumors and controversial content?

As an unrelenting advocate for usable, functional and (of course) good looking websites, I’m especially proud of this recognition. The Nielson Norman Group is a leading user-experience research firm with worldwide name recognition among the web and user experience design community.  As a long time reader of Jakob Nielson’s Alert Box, it’s humbling to know that our hard work and dedication is going to be used as an example for other designers to learn from.

Peak has worked on the Business Markets Intranet since 2007, when we helped turn a meandering, hard-to-use and outdated collection of HTML files and broken links into a streamlined, user-friendly intranet site powered by a custom content management system powered by Ruby on Rails.

In 2010, the CenturyLink (then Qwest) team engaged us, in partnership with Denver-based EffectiveUI, to redesign the site, revamp the content, and create an even more engaging, task-oriented website for it’s Business Markets team. We delivered a new site that not only added powerful tools that educate users, but also recognizes and empowers them as valuable parts of the organization.

We’re extremely proud of the result.  It’s not easy to get recognition outside of the client organization for intranet sites since they’re obscured from the public by firewalls and passwords!

Business Markets Intranet Team: Bruce Black (CL), Brad Umbaugh (EUI), Jeff Hansen (CL), Brenda Van Der Steen (CL), Emily Puffett (CL), Timberlyn Wilson (CL), Rhia Bucklin (Peak), Rick Wangen (Peak), Shelley Washburn (EUI), and Michael Salamon (EUI).

A study conducted by NPD Group shows that “nearly three quarters of U.S. small and medium businesses (SMB) with fewer than 1000 employees have plans to purchase tablets over the next 12 months, with the iPad being the most considered tablet among those firms planning an upcoming purchase.”

Obviously, this is bad news for tablet competition. The Amazon Kindle Fire has been the only tablet to compete with the iPad. However, its operating system is consumer-focused and it lacks hardware desirable for business use.

Microsoft is making a big tablet push next year, with plans to release the Windows 8 Tablet. Windows-based tablets have traditionally not fared well; however, it seems the upcoming tablet will be more fun and useful. Windows 8 is being developed to elegantly perform on both traditional computers and touch-based tablets. Most businesses use Microsoft software, so the new tablet could be an attractive option.

Do you think the Windows 8 Tablet will compete with the iPad? What are your tablet plans for 2012?

Christopher Penn writes we need the “Big Bad” to establish a baseline of what not to do. He continues to highlight the idea that sometimes – as marketers – we are our own villain. One of my resolutions for next year is going to involve better planning of marketing campaigns and building better partnerships with like-minded folks. The better your network, the less likely you’ll become a villain: both to your network and to your own efforts.

Funny side-story: for Christmas this year a good friend of mine got me the book “How to Be a Villain” which has hilarious descriptions of terms, scenarios and situations compiled from years of film, stories and real-world examples. I’m about half-way through this riot of a book and so far nothing seems to highlight marketers or advertisers as villains. (Phew)

Do your business resolutions for next year include executing better campaigns, avoiding simple mistakes or destroying your competition? Do any of your resolutions include wearing a cape?

The game allows players to connect two to eight iOS devices via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to create the game board. Once connected, players can enjoy the game, which follows conventional Shuffleboard rules and scoring. Kids love watching the puck move seamlessly from one device to the other, with the objective of bumping their siblings’ pucks off the table.

Ultimate Shuffleboard is changing the way people play mobile games. Most mobile games on the market today are designed for users to play alone or against others via the Internet, fostering an anti-social environment. However, Ultimate Shuffleboard is an interactive app that users play face-to-face. It appeals to kids and adults, so it’s the perfect game for families to enjoy together this holiday season. Game play demo is available here.

Ultimate Shuffleboard is available in the U.S. for $.99 and is priced accordingly in other regions. Ultimate Shuffleboard is compatible with iOS devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch) and is available worldwide from Apple’s App Store or at www.ultimateshuffleboard.com.

Established in 2000 and headquartered in Seattle, Peak Systems is a full service firm that builds custom web-based solutions with specialties in mobile applications, web design and enterprise application development. Peak Systems’ mobile applications have been featured by Apple’s App Store, Macworld, Tuaw, and other thought leaders in the industry.

-###-

While COPPA has a number of hoops to jump through to protect a child’s identity online, Google doesn’t seem to have any warning system in place to notify a user that her account is on the chopping block. Nuking a Google Account also means that all access to all Google properties is denied. This includes recently launched Google Chromebooks, which employ a 2-Step verification process to log in with your Google Account.  In short, if you’re under 13, Google doesn’t want you…yet.

The Dear Sophie campaign – a father-daughter conversation in Gmail – as described by Google to the Post implies the “understanding is that the girl in the story does not have access to the account, but that she will have access to it ‘someday.’” In fact, Sophie is assumed to be under 13 throughout the campaign, so she has no access to Google, Gmail or any of the content from the campaign. These actions are consistent with Google’s actions to remove an under-age Google Account. Nothing is misleading about Google’s actions and Mr. Warren isn’t upset with the COPPA rules, just the way Google enforced these rules.

So we’re stuck in a world where devices, apps, web interfaces and online experiences are “so easy a baby could use them“, but they shouldn’t. Are your kids online? Do they use your accounts to get online or their own?

Needless to say, we were pretty excited when we were approached to sponsor an Instagram challenge on @instamood. Instamood runs weekly Instagram photo challenges, which receive hundreds of responses.

Challenge requirements:
Each week, instamood chooses a theme (skyline, trees, etc.) to guide the contest. This week doesn’t have a specific theme but has one requirement: photos must be edited with Diptic and Instagram. It’s the instadiptic challenge!

How to participate:
Participation is easy! And you can submit as many photos as you want. Submit photo(s) that you edited with Instagram and Diptic to @instamood with the #instadiptic challenge hashtag.

What you can win:
The contest winner will receive a $10 iTunes gift card.

Contest Duration:
The contest will run from Dec. 9-16. So submit your photos now!

Instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom, announced that there are two folks currently working to build the Android version, but he has not announced a release date. Compatible with iOS devices, Instagram receives a large amount of requests to build an Android version.

As found in a mashable article: “We have two people working on Android now,” Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram said at LeWeb in Paris. “I’m excited to be able to see our numbers today nearly double.”

How do you think this upcoming release will affect Instagram’s user base? Do you think it will double as Systrom predicts in the quote above?

Two thoughts come to mind with this latest social network launch, first: what about all the social media applications that are being used to power communities, analytics and engagement? We dig Sprout Social but their application doesn’t seem to connect to Twitter branded pages (or Google+ pages, for that matter). This implies community and brand managers would have to manually create and update their brand-pages, migrate their current accounts/communities all to the new system in anticipation for their beloved tools to be updated.

Second, is it just me or does the new layout for Twitter look a lot like older versions of MySpace? (Also: finding older versions of MySpace as examples has only proven to be embarrassing and therefore omitted.)

Will you update your Twitter presence to use the new branded pages?