Research: South Africans most active tweeters

JOHANNESBURG?? Young people tweeting from BlackBerrys and iPhones are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, with South Africans by far the most vociferous, according to new research published Thursday.

Kenya-based Portland Communications and Tweetminster published findings indicating Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation and is fast becoming an important source of information. More than 80 percent of those polled said they mainly used it for communicating with friends, 68 percent said they use it to monitor news and 22 percent to search for jobs, the companies said.

The research analyzed more than 11.5 million geographically pinpointed tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011. That was complemented by a survey of 500 of Africa's most active tweeters.

South Africans, with the continent's biggest economy, were the most prolific with over twice as many tweets at 5,030,226 than the next most active country of Kenya with 2,476,800 tweets. Surprisingly, Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, had only 1,646,212 tweets from its more than 160 million people. It was followed by Egypt with 1,214,062 and Morocco with 745,620 tweets.

African tweeters are young, averaging 20 to 29 years, compared to 39 worldwide, the report said. And some 57 percent of analyzed tweets were sent from mobile phones, mainly BlackBerrys and iPhones.

The researchers noted how few African business and political leaders were joining Africa's burgeoning Twittersphere.

"With some notable exceptions, we found that business and political leaders were largely absent from the debates playing out on Twitter across the continent," they said. "As Twitter lifts off in Africa, governments, businesses and development agencies can really no longer afford to stay out of a new space where dialogue will increasingly be taking place."

Among noted Twitter users are President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Kagame got into an infamous Twitterspat last year with journalist Ian Birrell of The Guardian of London, with the two trading tweets about human rights and repression in the central African nation. The cyber-conversation first was joined by Kagame's foreign minister, and then went global.

While Kenyan soldiers and fighters of an extremist Somali Islamist group have been fighting each other, their spokesman has taken the battle onto Twitter, with taunts, accusations and insults being directly traded in a rare engagement on the Internet.

On Thursday, South Africa's new Corruption Watch campaign launched, including a Twitter account where tweeters encouraged each other to make it "the No. 1 followed Twitter account in South Africa."

The research, called "How Africa Tweets," found Twitter is helping form new links within Africa. The majority of those surveyed said at least half of the Twitter accounts they followed were based on the continent.

Beatrice Karanja, head of Portland Nairobi, said: "We saw the pivotal role of Twitter in the events in North Africa last year, but it is clear that Africa's Twitter revolution is really just beginning."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46147373/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

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Demi Moore seeks help for exhaustion, health issues (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Actress Demi Moore is seeking professional help to treat "exhaustion" and "overall health" issues, her spokeswoman said on Tuesday, following her split late last year from husband of six years, Ashton Kutcher.

"Because of the stresses in her life right now, Demi has chosen to seek professional assistance to treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health. She looks forward to getting well and is grateful for the support of her family and friends," Moore's spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters.

The statement follows media reports that Moore was rushed to hospital on Monday night after paramedics were called to her Los Angeles home. Celebrity news website TMZ.com cited substance abuse as the cause, but that could not be confirmed.

Moore's representatives declined any further comment beyond the written statement.

"Ghost" star Moore, 49, filed for divorce from 33-year-old "Two and A Half Men" actor Kutcher in November 2011, after a San Diego woman went public about a brief fling she had with Kutcher.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/en_nm/us_demimoore

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Scientists say Facebook's roots go way back

Coren Apicella

A woman from Tanzania's Hadzabe tribe studies a social-networking chart.

By Alan Boyle

Hunter-gatherers exhibit many of the "friending" habits familiar to Facebook users, suggesting that the patterns for social networking were set early in the history of our species.

At least that's the conclusion from a group of researchers who mapped the connections among members of the Hadza ethnic group in Tanzania's Lake Eyasi region. The results were published in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

---

"The astonishing thing is that ancient human social networks so very much resemble what we see today," senior author Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard Medical School, said in a university news release. Researchers from Harvard, the University of California at San Diego and Cambridge University worked together to document the Hadza's social networks.

"From the time we were around campfires and had words floating through the air, to today when we have digital packets floating through the ether, we've made networks of basically the same kind," Christakis said.

Another co-author of the study, UCSD's James Fowler, said the results suggest that the structure of today's social networks go back to a time before the invention of agriculture, tens of thousands of years ago.

For decades, social scientists have puzzled over the origins of cooperative and altruistic behavior that benefits the group at the expense of the individual. That seems to run counter to a basic "tooth and claw" view of evolution, in which each individual fights for survival, or at least the survival of its gene pool. One of the leading hypotheses is that a system to reward cooperation and punish non-cooperators ("free riders") grew out of a sense of genetic kinship between related individuals. But how far back did such a system arise?

Harvard Medical School researcher Coren Apicella discusses what she and her colleagues found during their studies of Tanzania's Hadza people.

To investigate that question, researchers spent two months interviewing more than 200 adult members of the Hadza group who still live in a traditional, nomadic, pre-agricultural setting. To chart the social connections, the researchers asked the adults to identify the individuals they'd like to live with in their next encampment. They also looked into gift-giving connections by giving their experimental subjects three straws of honey ? one of the Hadza's best-loved treats ? and asking them to assign them secretly to anyone else in the camp. That exercise produced a complex web of 1,263 "campmate ties" and 426 "gift ties."

Separately, the researchers gave the Hadza additional honey straws that they could either keep for themselves or donate for group distribution. That was used as a measure of cooperation vs. non-cooperation.

When the researchers analyzed all the linkages, they found that cooperators tended to group themselves together into one set of social clusters, while non-cooperators were in separate clusters. Even when other factors were taken into account, such as connections between kin and geographical proximity, the cooperation vs. non-cooperation distinction was significant. That finding suggested that even in pre-agricultural societies, social networking strengthened the connections between people inclined toward different kinds of behavior.

"If you can get cooperators to cluster together in social space, cooperation can evolve," said Coren Apicella, a postdoctoral researcher specializing in health-care policy at Harvard Medical School and the Nature paper's first author. "Social networks allow this to happen."

The researchers said the dynamics of the Hadza social networks ? including the kinds of ties that bind a group's most popular members and the reciprocal connections within the group?? were indistinguishable from previously gathered data about social networks in modern communities.

"We turned the data over lots of different ways," Fowler said in the news release. "We looked at over a dozen measures that social network analysts use to compare networks, and pretty much, the Hadza are like us."

Beyond the Facebook angle, the rise of relationships between cooperative individuals has larger implications for the study of human evolution. "This suggests that social networks may have co-evolved with the widespread cooperation in humans that we observe today," the researchers wrote.

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10234789-facebooks-roots-go-way-way-back

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Mystery Sony-branded Arc appears in Resident Evil trailer, Umbrella Corp. doesn't comment on rumor or speculation (video)

While most rumors of a high-definition Arc were laid to rest with the reveal of the LTE'd Xperia Ion and the sumptuous Xperia S at CES, it hasn't quite stopped smartphone fans poring over the web for a sniff of its possible existence. This time -- get that salt shaker ready -- it's a cameo in the trailer for the latest cash-in release from the Resident Evil franchise. The hardware is certainly that of an Xperia Arc, but it's the first time we've seen a Sony-branded version -- no Ericsson here. Although it's not enough to convince us just yet that we're looking at a super-screened Arc, with Sony rumored to be readying plenty of phones for 2012, it looks like the Arc HD rumor zombie may need another bullet in the head.

[Thanks Alex]

Continue reading Mystery Sony-branded Arc appears in Resident Evil trailer, Umbrella Corp. doesn't comment on rumor or speculation (video)

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PSU's O'Brien: An 'honor' to follow Paterno (AP)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. ? Bill O'Brien calls it an honor to follow the late Joe Paterno as Penn State's next head coach.

In an interview Monday in the same corner office that once belonged to the man known in State College as JoePa, O'Brien said he will forge his own coaching identity and that no one will ever replace Paterno, who won 409 games and two national championships.

Paterno died Sunday at age 85, a little over two months after his son, Scott, said his father had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

O'Brien never got to speak with Paterno in person following his hiring on Jan. 7.

The two did talk by phone soon after O'Brien arrived. O'Brien said he wanted Paterno to know he would preserve the Penn State traditions of winning and emphasizing academics.

"It wasn't a long conversation, but at the end it was pretty neat. I just wanted to make sure he knew that I was going to work very hard to keep it going here," O'Brien said.

O'Brien's still working at his old job, too ? as offensive coordinator for the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots. He's traveling between Foxborough, Mass., and Happy Valley juggling duties.

O'Brien most recently arrived back in State College on Monday, and he plans to join his players for a viewing for Paterno on Tuesday before returning to New England on Wednesday night.

"To me, it's an honor to follow a guy like Coach Paterno," O'Brien said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_sp_co_ne/fbc_penn_state_o_brien

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BlackBerry maker co-CEOs step down as co-CEOs (AP)

TORONTO ? The new chief executive of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion said Monday drastic change is not needed after he assumed his new job following the departure of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who stepped down as co-CEOs and co-chairmen of the once-iconic, but now struggling company.

The RIM founders have been replaced by Thorsten Heins, a little known chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG.

The Canadian company turned the email smartphone into a ubiquitous device that many could not live without, but U.S. users have moved on to flashier touch-screen phones such as Apple's iPhone and various competing models that run Google's Android software. RIM has suffered a series of setbacks and has lost tens of billions in market value.

RIM's survival has been in question but Heins said he didn't think significant change was needed and said the moves were not "seismic" changes. He said he was committed to the vision and new software platform favored by Lazaridis and Balsillie, who announced Sunday they would step down from the top jobs but serve in other roles.

Heins said RIM has to improve its U.S. marketing in an effort go beyond the traditional corporate customer and attract consumers.

"In the U.S. we were very, very successful coming from the core enterprise business and in the public opinion this is still where we're skewed to," Helms said on a conference call on Monday. "We need to be more marketing-driven. We need to be more consumer oriented because this is where a lot of our growth is coming from. That is essential in the U.S."

Shares of RIM fell 3.9 percent, or 66 cents, to $16.34, after the conference call Monday morning after initially moving up almost 4 percent in premarket trading.

RIM said last month that new phones deemed critical to the company's future would be delayed until late this year. And its PlayBook tablet, RIM's answer to the Apple iPad, failed to gain consumer support, forcing the company to deeply discount it to move the devices off store shelves.

Many shareholders and analysts have said a change or sale of the company has been needed, but the sudden departure of the two founders from their top jobs wasn't expected despite their promises that they would examine the co-CEO and co-chairmen structure.

Balsillie and Lazaridis have long been celebrated as Canadian heroes, even appearing in the country's citizenship guide for new immigrants as models of success. They headed Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM together for the past two decades.

"There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now," Lazaridis said in a statement.

Lazaridis will take on a new role as vice chairman of RIM's board and chairman of the board's new innovation committee. Balsillie remains a member of the board.

The two remain two of RIM's biggest shareholders.

"I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company," Balsillie said in the statement. "I remain a significant shareholder and a director and, of course, they will have my full support."

Analysts have said RIM's future depends on its much-delayed new software platform as RIM has tried and failed to reinvigorate the BlackBerry. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in late 2010 that RIM would have a hard time catching up to Apple because RIM has been forced to move beyond its area of strength and into unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company.

Heins, 54, said Lazaridis and Balsillie took RIM in the right direction and said he's committed to the new software.

"We are more confident than ever that was the right path. It is Mike and Jim's continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today. I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company's future," Heins said.

Barbara Stymiest, a former chief operating officer of the Royal Bank of Canada who has been a member of RIM's board since 2007, has named chair of the board of directors. RIM also announced that Prem Watsa, the chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, is a new board member. Watsa has become a significant shareholder.

Lazaridis said he was so confident in the future direction of the company that he intends to purchase an additional $50 million of the company's shares on the open market.

RIM was worth more than $70 billion a few years ago but now has a market value of around 8.9 billion.

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, said that after missing the software transition caused by the iPhone, Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis put RIM's future in doubt.

The company still has 75 million active subscribers, but many analysts believe RIM will lose market share internationally as it has in the U.S. Market researcher NPD Group said RIM's market share of smartphones in the U.S. declined from 44 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2011.

Balsillie acknowledged in December that the last few quarters have been among the most challenging times in the company's history.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_bi_ge/cn_rim_ceos_resign

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Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Reynolds to star in "Big Eyes" (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES, Jan 22 (TheWrap.com) ? Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Reynolds will play Margaret and Walter Keane in an indie biopic about the couple whose art -- especially paintings of doe-eyed children -- became a pop phenomenon in the 1950s and 1960s.

While their art was reproduced and marketed around the country, their home life was unhappy: Margaret Keane was the artist, but her husband took credit. In fact, it carried Walter Keane's name, rather than the shy Margaret's.

When the two divorced, both claimed rights to the paintings. Ultimately -- in federal court -- Margaret Keane painted a picture to prove that she was, in fact the artist. When the judge asked Walter Keane to paint, he declined, saying his sore shoulder prevented him from painting.

The judge found for Margaret Keane.

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski wrote and will direct the film. Tim Burton is producing through his Tim Burton Productions. Lynette Howell and Jamie Patricof are producing through their Electric City Entertainment.

"We are ecstatic to have this dream cast for our dream project," the directors said in a written statement. "Walter is a larger-than-life antihero -- charming, funny, dangerous and a little crazy. Ryan will knock it out of the park. As for Reese, she will be perfect as Margaret -- soulful, decent, transforming from vulnerability to learning to fight for herself."

Alexander and Karaszewski know their biopics: They wrote "Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flint" and the Andy Kaufman biopic "Man on the Moon."

With Burton, they're working on a new version of "The Addams Family."

"Big Eyes" has been on Alexander and Karaszewski's to-do list since at least 2009.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120123/film_nm/us_reesewitherspoon

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