Everyone has those moments where your mom gets a screen name or your high school frenemy pokes you and you think, Man, technology is the worst. Along those lines, did you know that the terrorists use social networking sites too? True story! It appears that Al Qaeda has been distributing training manuals with instructions for would-be terrorists on how to use digital platforms to accomplish their, erm, goals.

Columbia will use any excuse to throw a capital-S Summit, so in a few weeks the Law School will host Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Access 360 Media and the U.S. State Department to discuss the “best ways to use digital media to promote freedom and justice, counter violence, extremism, and oppression”:

These young leaders will form a new group, the Alliance of Youth Movements, which will produce a field manual for youth empowerment. The field manual will stand in stark contrast to the Al Qaeda manual on the basics of terrorism, found by Coalition Forces in Iraq… [It] will form the cornerstone of a much larger online “hub,” where emerging youth organizations can access and share “how-to” guides and tips on using social-networking and other technologies to further their causes.

The Howcast press release doesn’t provide details on what exactly in the terrorism manual requires an in-kind response, but the forum was specifically inspired by an anti-FARC Facebook group that helped organize millions of Colombians to demonstrate against the guerrilla organization. Whoopi Goldberg, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and MSNBC’s Luke Russert are scheduled to speak. Read the rest of this entry »

The notoriously internetly-inept Aaron Sorkin, writer behind Studio 60 and The West Wing, recently confirmed rumors that he is working on a screenplay for Producer Scott Rudin and Sony Pictures about how Facebook was invented. In case you don’t have enough friends on Facebook already, Sorkin (or his assistant, or hapless recent-college-grad intern or whoever) has set up a Facebook page and group! Go on, tell him your most embarrassing Facebook stories–they might wind up in the movie.

Or maybe they won’t–rumors abound that Sorkin’s Facebook movie is actually an adaption of a forthcoming book called Face Off by none other than Bringing Down The House author Ben Mezrich. According to 02138, sources “close to the deal” report that Sony and Rudin optioned Mezrich’s forthcoming book, which purportedly sold for a staggering seven-figures over the summer.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see what’s really going on here. But, the really pressing question is, who do you guys think should play Mark Zuckerberg in the movie?