Tweet For Liberty
by NicolaCairncross on August 1, 2008
in Money Gym | TV
Nicola says: Over on the Twitter conversation aggregator site, Quotably, I was browsing the http://quotably.com/popular section and came across this amazing story! Keep those mobiles charged up, you active lot!
(CNN) — A one-word blog post from a cell phone helped to free an American student from an Egyptian jail, but it took the signatures and support of thousands of activists to get his translator out.
Mohammed Maree, an Egyptian translator, is free after being detained for nearly three months.
When detained in April, graduate student James Karl Buck turned to his cell phone and typed the message, “Arrested,” alerting all his friends on the microblog service Twitter site.
Upon his release shortly afterward, the first thing Buck did was send another message, “Free.”
On Tuesday, nearly three months after the American and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested, Buck turned to Twitter again — this time to tell everyone that Maree was safe at home.
The post: “Mohammed is free, Mohammed is free!”
Twitter, a social-networking blog site, allows users to send status updates, or “tweets,” from cell phones, instant messaging services and Facebook in 140 characters or less.
Buck spent much of the time after his release working to free his friend. But it was not until shortly after Maree’s release that Buck and his translator were finally able to speak — through instant messenger.
“He was totally in good spirits; he joked with me,” Buck said. “I told him he was a hero, and that because of his case and what he suffered, he’s brought a lot of attention to the government’s behavior in Egypt.”
Immediately, Buck said he apologized to the translator because he felt guilty about his detention.
Buck, 29, a graduate student from the University of California, Berkeley, working on a photography project for his master’s thesis, met Maree, a 23-year-old Egyptian veterinary student, in Mahalla. Maree offered to help Buck as he photographed anti-government protests over low wages and rising food prices in April. 
See Buck describe what he saw and captured on film during the protests »
During one of the demonstrations, Buck and Maree were detained. En route to the police station, Buck sent a message via Twitter, and his school hired an attorney and was able to get him released within a day. But Maree remained in jail for nearly three months.
Wealth Twitterings
by Nicola Cairncross on July 6, 2008
in Money Gym | Diaries
I’m embarking on an interesting project at the moment….turning my Money Gym ebook into Wealth Twitterings. I’m trying to turn each Wealth Tip into a twitter of 140 characters or less, but I’m finding that each Tip makes a few twits so I will end up with more than 101 twits, more like 365 which is one twit a day. I’ve done six today already because I’m impatient….check them out on this blog on the daily update, or visit http://www.Twitter.com/wealthcoach to follow us, and then download Twhirl which is great fun, to keep up to date.
