Publisher's Notebook

Twitter allows you to share your life, 140 characters at a time. If you haven’t joined the social media service yet, take heart that there are tweeters on there who are waay behind you.

BuzzFeed, which calls itself the purveyor of “the hottest, most social content on the web,” has compiled a wickedly funny list of “The Top 10 Most Unforgivable Twitter Spelling Mistakes.”

Needless to say, some tweeters need to fight their auto-correct function or at least to proofread before posting. Or if this is how they really spell, maybe you’re not missing much by avoiding Twitter.

There are folks who call on angles for divine help and those who rail against the bad manors of others or against hippocrates (posers, not the Greek guy). Some high school tweeters can’t wait to go to collage. There is at least one entry I won’t repeat in a family blog.

And items #2 and #1 are guaranteed to give you a laugh you’ll want to share with others all day long. This stuff just writes itself.

That headline may not be the catchiest of state nicknames, but it’s accurate.

The Maryland legislature has passed a bill that makes the Free State the first jurisdiction to prohibit employers from asking for the social media user names and passwords of prospective and current employees.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the bill protects Facebook and Twitter info, among others. The measure passed the Senate unanimously and by a wide margin in the House. It now goes to Gov. Marvin O’Malley.

Similar bills are pending in Illinois and California, the Sun reports.

Closer to home, the Virginia State Police made waves last month when it came to light it required trooper applicants to provide their social media user names and passwords as part of the application process. Officials called their practice a “virtual character check.”

The Virginia ACLU protested; for what it’s worth, the Maryland chapter of the ACLU was instrumental in pushing the just-passed measure in Maryland.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here’s an item that presents a novel twist for divorce lawyers.

There have been plenty of cases in which a parting couple decide who gets pets or unique property.

And social media has become one of the routine sources to mine evidence and information.

But what happens when the couple has maintained a joint account on Facebook or some other social media site? Who gets the friends? Who gets to keep the Farmville dollars they have collected?

Anita Ramasastry, a law professor in Washington state, looks at these issues in a piece entitled, “Divorce, Digital Identities, and Virtual Property.”

You might read this item, recall your own misspent undergraduate days and be glad you applied to law school in the pre-Facebook era.

A whole lot of law school admissions officials have been going online to review their applicants’ digital trail to determine whether to say thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Kaplan Test Prep just conducted a survey of law schools and some 41 percent of admissions officers admitted that they had Googled the names of applicants.

Thirty-seven percent said they had been on Facebook, seeking information.

The survey was conducted by phone this past summer. A total of 200 ABA-accredited law schools were contacted, with responses recorded from 128 of them.

The bad news for a student with something sketchy circulating in the ether is that this stuff matters. Almost a third – 32 percent – of the admissions officers said that information learned online had hurt an applicant’s chances of admission.

What are the admissions people looking for when they Google or Facebook? Many bar licensing groups – including the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners – impose character and fitness tests as part of their vetting process. So, in two words, they are looking for good judgment.

Jeff Thomas, director of Kaplan’s pre-law programs, said in a release, “Clearly, an applicant’s digital trail can be an indicator of whether or not he or she possesses this quality.”

Forewarned is forearmed.

Random tweets from Twitter, collected during the past week:

Notes on domestic relations, from @qwertying:
I just read last year 4,153,237 ppl got married. I don’t want to start any trouble, but shouldn’t that be an even number?

Deep thoughts, provided by @rolldiggity:
It’s sad how Wile E. Coyote is remembered for his violence, and not for his brilliantly realistic paintings of tunnels.

Helpful hints, not from @heloise, but from @ablanchard519:
Dropped ipod in the sink last night, so i dried it off and thought it was toast. Put it in a bag of rice overnight and the thing works fine!

Technology updates, courtesy of @rfelty:
Leaf blower finally gave out. Picking up a new model. Think they’ve improved in 5 yrs. This one is also a WiFi hotspot.

And a fair-warning tweet to pull out on a no-good, very bad day, from @PubChick:
Today’s bad mood was brought to you by the letters F & U.

Facebook, the social media giant, has sprung a number of new changes on its millions of users this week, and the early reviews are not good.

Among the changes:

• The old News Feed now shows up on the right side of the screen in a constantly moving crawl as your friends provide new updates on their activities or comment on each other’s cute cat pictures.

• The center of the page provides a list of “Top Stories” which apparently provides updates from some of your friends, but not all. There is no explanation of why an item is a “top story.”

• In what seems to be a feature taken directly from new competitor Google+, you can set up “lists” based on, well, whatever you want. You can set up a school list, or a work list, or a list based on some common interest. It’s up to you, if you want to invest the time.

• You can decide which of your Facebook friends are your “close friends.” As if Facebook hasn’t already presented you the dilemma of whether to accept the “friend” request of someone who really is only an acquaintance….

If this seems like a lot of work to fix something that wasn’t really broken, you’re right.

I have yet to see anyone who really likes it (one friend claimed to like the changes, just to be an iconoclast). I saw more than a few friends last night who reposted a photo with a banner that said “Hate the New Facebook.” Mysteriously, those posts had disappeared by this morning.

One friend out in the Seattle area had reposted a Dr. Seuss-style poem: FB Poem #2: I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like Facebook spam. I do not like the new Facebook change, I do not like my friends rearranged. I do not like them in a row, down below or coming up and appearing slow. I do not like them by family, friend, city or state. I do not like the page to hesitate. I do not like the Facebook change, I do not like my friends rearranged! I do not like this new Facebook crap. Kill it, smash it, make it scrap (author unknown).

Brad Panovich, a meteorologist in Charlotte, is a Facebook maven and he has posted a couple of videos on the new Facebook. In particular, he has a video with advice on how to jigger the list function to the list function to get your News Feed pretty much in its previous format. It’s worth a look.

And if you are really, really unhappy with the new Facebook changes, I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg will give you your money back.

Tourists visiting Colonial Williamsburg got an unexpected treat on Tuesday.

After a historical reenactment from revolutionary days, an apparent tourist at the back of the audience broke out in song. Then another tourist joined him. Then another.

Before you knew it, there was an entire choir singing a patriotic ditty.

Actually it was an entire choir…the Mormon Tabernacle Choir staged the performance, flash-mob style.

They are on an East Coast swing and including a stop in the Colonial Capitol.

The crowd was asked to join in and sing “Yankee Doodle,” unaware they were singing with the world-famour choir.

Colonial Williamsburg filmed it all and posted the performance on YouTube. The choir gets going at about 3:30 during the clip.

The Daily Press also has a report.

Trend Alert: Here’s one you may not have seen yet, but odds are, it will make its way into your life soon.

There is a movement, mostly spurred by social media such as Twitter, to start referring to the Metropolitan DC area as “the DMV” (as in District/Maryland/Virginia).

What’s wrong with “Nation’s Capital” or “Metro DC,” you ask? When you’re limited to 140 characters a post, those titles take up much-needed room.

The Washington Post first flagged the development with an article back in July. The Post writer’s take was generally positive, likening the need for a cool regional nickname along the lines of “H-town” for Houston, or “the 612″ for Minneapolis (taken from the area code) or “the ‘nati” for Cincinnati. OK, Cincy needs to work on this.

TBD, the TV station/news website covering the Metro DC area (I’m not succumbing yet), notes that “the DMV” has been pretty controversial. TBD has solicited comment from Twitter users with alternate hashtags, #dmv and #nodmv.

The “no” votes are winning. Reasons for the thumbs-down:

One guy tweeted, “@TBD #nodmv, mostly because I live in #NoVA and want nothing to do with Maryland. #EffMD”

Another woman said, “@TBD No DMV. Don’t associate my favorite city with the most god-awful place on earth: the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

That sounds pretty reasonable.

[UPDATED JULY 6]

In honor of Independence Day, Slate ran a contest asking Twitter users to tweet the Declaration of Independence.

Imagine trying to reduce Thomas Jefferson’s 1,300-word magnum opus to 140 characters. Actually, it was using 124 characters; contestants had to include the hashtag #tinydeclaration.

Hundreds of people entered, and Slate noted that the entries fell into two camps – the literalists, who sought to recreate the Declaration’s political flavor, and the humorists, who sought to be funny.

My favorite came from NEHgov (the office of the National Endowment for the Humanities), in the form of a purported message to King George: “Dear George, it’s not you. It’s U.S.”

Slate posted the winners over the weekend.

The third runner-up, “for straddling the delicate balance between the literal and humorous,” came from @Boston1775: “We seek independence based on noble and universal ideas combined with petty and one-sided grievances.”

The second runner-up, hailed “for his direct and confrontational tweet,” was from @TJMonticello (Mr. Jefferson’s own Monticello): “All peeps are equal. Sick and tired of your tyrannical BS. Seeking independence. Your permission requested, not required.”

For “both historical accuracy and a Twitter-worthy modernization of communication,” @badanes took first runner-up: “Our Rights from Creator (h/t @JLocke). Life, Liberty, PoH FTW! Your transgressions = FAIL. GTFO, @GeorgeIII. -HANCOCK et al.”

The winner? A guy called @ApocalyseHow, who was a writer for Conan O’Brien and for “The Daily Show,” according to his Twitter bio. Slate complimented his entry for “reminding us that brevity is the soul of wit”: “Bye George, we’ve got it.”

Every year for the past few years, some delegate or senator has introduced a bill in the General Assembly to outlaw texting while driving. In 2010, one of the measures was House Bill 212, which, once the Assembly convened, was promptly referred to the Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety (i.e., legislative Siberia), where the bill languished. It ultimately was “laid on the table” (a nice euphemism for “killed”) before the session ended.

The teenagers who text must have hired the same guy who lobbies for the tennis moms in SUVS and salesguys in cheap suits and cheap cars, both of whom yack on the cell phone while driving. Bills to stop same routinely go down each year as well.

A Facebook friend of mine in Utah re-posted this picture, which is now making the viral rounds. The featured church is in Alabama. Feel free to refer to it if and when you are lobbying against texting-while-driving bills next January: