DRONING OUT THE NOISE: You may recall Josh Begley as the passionate app maker who made headlines in August when his Drones+ iOS app -- an alert service for U.S. drone strikes -- was rejected three times by the powers-that-be in Cupertino. Now the NYU grad student has doubled down on his drone-strike awareness by challenging himself to tweet every drone attack to-date in 10 minutes or less. Mashable reports that the challenge is in part an assignment from the Narrative Labs course at NYU -- a class exploring storytelling through real-time platforms. Begley's fingers were only able to crank out 54 of the estimated 354 events which you can follow @dronestream. The entire exercise, along with KONY, Arab Spring, and other social media phenomena with minimal impact has us wondering if tweets, pins, and shares will actually become meaningful tools for increased dialogue and awareness, or if they are doomed to go the route of the TV -- a mind-numbing source of entertainment. If you'd like to replicate Begley's experiment with your class, tell us a little about your school and community, and we'll point you to some interesting data sources.
