Daily Archives: July 21, 2012
Shooting unfolds in real time on social media
Anderson Cooper anchors “AC360” from Aurora, Colorado, scene of the deadly movie theater shooting, tonight 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET on CNN.
(CNN) — The posts show how quickly life can change.
“Everyones dressing up as Batman, im going dressed as Bruce Wayne… Albeit a short stubby unsexy Bruce Wayne #CouldntFindBatmanMaskInTime,” wrote one Twitter user, identified online as Zach Eastman.
“Going to see the final batman tonight! So EXCITED!!!” wrote another Twitter user, @DjaylaRene.
And, in hindsight, most chillingly: “Of course we’re seeing Dark Knight … people should never argue with me.”
Gunman kills 12 in Colorado theater shooting
James Holmes, 24, was identified by two federal law enforcement officers as the man who opened fire during a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” at an Aurora, Colorado, theater early Friday. At least 12 people were killed, Police Chief Dan Oates said.
Police break the apartment window of James Holmes, the suspect of a movie theater shooting Friday in Aurora, Colorado.
An ambulance is parked outside. Of the wounded, at least 20 were being treated at the University of Colorado Hospital, said spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery. “They’re arriving by police, by ambulance. Some are walking in,” she said.
Agents search the suspect’s car outside the theater.
People grieve during a vigil for victims behind the theater where a gunman opened fire on moviegoers in Aurora on Friday.
A woman grieves during a vigil for victims behind the theater.
A distraught woman is counseled by Pastor Quincy Shannon, left, of the New Hope Fellowship and an unidentified advocate in front of Gateway High School in Aurora, Colorado, where the families of the missing are meeting following the shooting at the Century 16 movie theater.
Lin Gan wipes away her tears as her mother, Juan Gan, guides her to their car after meeting with counselors at the Gateway High School in Aurora on Friday.
Lin Gan, of Aurora, Colorado, holds back tears as she speaks to reporters about her experience in the Century 16 theater on Friday.
People embrace before a vigil for victims behind the theater where a gunman opened fire on moviegoers in Aurora on Firday.
The car belonging to the suspect is removed from behind the theater where the shooting took place on Friday.
Investigators work on evidence near the apartment of of James Holmes on Friday.
Memebers of the Aurora Police Department. SWAT walk near the apartment of James Holmes. Police have Holmes,24, of North Aurora in custody.
Television news crews gather in front of the home of Robert and Arlene Holmes, parents of 24-year-old mass shooting suspect James Holmes, in San Diego, California. on Friday.
A popcorn box lies on the ground outside the Century 16 movie theatre.
An NYPD officer keeps watch inside an AMC move theater where the film “The Dark Knight Rises” is playing in Times Square on Friday. NYPD is maintaining security around city movie theaters following the deadly rampage in Aurora, Colorado.
Adariah Legarreta, 4, is comforted by her grandmother Rita Abeyta near the Century 16 Theater in Aurora.
A cyclist and pedestrians pass a theater showing the latest Batman movie in Hollywood, California, on Friday. Warner Brothers said it was “deeply saddened” by Friday’s massacre at a Colorado screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Obama supporters observe a moment of silence for the victims at a campaign event at Harborside Event Center in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday.
Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster, was one of the victims.
A woman waits for news outside Gateway High School, a few blocks from the scene of the shooting at the Century Aurora 16.
Aurora police chief Daniel J. Oates speaks at a press conference near the Century 16 Theater on Friday.
Agents search the trash container outside the suspect’s apartment in Aurora.
A Federal ATF officer carries protective gear onsite at the home of alleged shooting suspect James Holmes.
Obama speaks on the shootings at the event in Fort Myers.
Moviegoers are interviewed at the Century Aurora 16.
Officers gathered at the theater Friday.
Investigators were a common sight at the theater Friday.
Authorities gather at the shooting suspect’s apartment building in Aurora. Police broke a second-floor window to look for explosives that the suspect claimed were in the apartment.
Screaming, panicked moviegoers scrambled to escape from the black-clad gunman, who wore a gas mask and randomly shot as he walked up the theater’s steps, witnesses said.
University of Colorado Hospital spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery said that all of the wounded had injuries from gunshot wounds, ranging from minor to critical.
Onlookers gather outside the Century Aurora 16 theater.
A woman sits on top of her car near the crime scene.
Police block access to the Town Center mall after the shooting.
Cell phone video taken by someone at the theater showed scores of people screaming and fleeing the building. Some, like this man, had blood on their clothes.
Witnesses told KUSA that the gunman kicked in an emergency exit door and threw a smoke bomb into the darkened theater before opening fire.
What is believed to be the suspect’s car is examined after the shooting.
Police Chief Dan Oates said there was no evidence of a second gunman, and FBI spokesman Jason Pack said it did not appear the incident was related to terrorism.
Repubican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney delivers remarks regarding the shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater on Friday at a campaign event in Bow, New Hampshire.
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Photos: Colorado movie theater massacre
Those posts surfaced before the shootings early Friday morning at a late-night showing in Aurora, Colorado, of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” in which 12 people were killed and dozens more were injured. All three people who were quoted above appear to have been in the theater complex when a heavily armed gunman opened fire on moviegoers, according to police.
The third post appears to be from Jessica Ghawi, who was reported dead in the shooting. Ghawi was a former sports-news intern at a television station in San Antonio, according to that station, Fox 29. “It’s true, my former intern Jessica Ghawi was a victim in the shootings last night. She used @JessicaRedfield as her twitter handle,” wrote a Twitter user identified as Mike Taylor.
In the hours after the shooting, her friend mourned her death in real time.
Listen to theater shooting 911 calls
Obama: Such evil is senseless
Video: Chaos at theater shooting scene
Witness: People bleeding in theater
“Devastated,” wrote a sports radio host in Denver, identified online as Peter Burns. “Lost a very close friend in the shooting last night. @JessicaRedfield came to Denver to pursue sports career. I’m shaking.”
Aspiring sports reporter Ghawi feared dead in shooting
The horrifying posts highlight a shift in the way our society tells the story of a tragedy, and also how we react to it. Before Twitter, smartphones and YouTube, it would have been impossible for an event like Colorado’s “Batman Massacre” to have played out for the global public in real time.
The shooting is just the latest instance of social media being used to document a tragedy or a news event even as it is unfolding. A Pakistani man last year unwittingly live-tweeted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. And the war in Syria is being documented in large part by citizens and members of the opposition movement who risk their lives to post YouTube videos and photos of the violence.
NRA tweeter was ‘unaware’ of Colorado shooting, spokesman says
But the social media posts about the Colorado shooting are a haunting reminder of the visceral power of first-person accounts of tragedy. And also a sign that society these days deals with grieving after an event like this in a much more public and immediate way than in years past.
Reports of the 1999 Columbine school shooting, for example, which happened only 17 miles from Aurora, spread in a much different way. Thirteen years ago, witnesses talked to TV crews rather than uploading their stories instantly to the Internet with mobile phones.
Shooting turns movie into surreal horror: ‘This is real’
Some reports from the Aurora movie theater appeared to come out as the shooting occurred.
“Now I’m thinking it was bullets coming through the wall from 9 causing smoke and fire cracker sounds. #aurorashooting #batman #shootng,” a Twitter user identified as Jamie Marshall wrote.
“Never seen so many cop cars in my life. Its a parade of lights,” wrote Isaac Ramos.
“Everything keeps replaying in my head. It was so unreal,” @DjaylaRene wrote.
“I am getting ready to cry. So scared. I need a hug. I almost got shot 9 times. I had a chance to be like 50,” wrote another Twitter user, @Abenistar.
He later added: “I seen a person bleeding out their mouth and gasping for their last breath. This ain’t right. #Century16Shooting. Thunk the world is ending.”
Shaky YouTube videos show people screaming, crying and rushing out of the theater after the shooting, some of them with bloody wounds. Another video, apparently taken outside the building by a person who was in the theater next to the shooting, offers a glimpse into the mindset of a person who has just witnessed tragedy. The amateur videographer sounds to be at a loss for words.
“Oh Jesus. July 20th, 2012. Aurora Century 16,” he says, in a sort of real-time confessional about the event. “There has been a massive shooting here. A lot of people wounded, a lot of people dead. I can’t really take pictures, just because I’d rather (be) helping people than wanting to take pictures of some pretty ghastly (expletive). There’s some guy in a gas mask apparently — teargassed theater 9. We were in theater 8. Just lit it up. It hit a lot of people, a lot of younger people. Oh. It’s pretty — it’s pretty bad.”
Timeline of worst mass shootings in U.S.
Officials also turned to the Internet in an effort to make sense of the events.
The Red Cross is asking people who witnessed the shooting to tell loved ones that they were OK over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
“People don’t know how close you were, so help alleviate that anxiety,” spokeswoman Patricia Billinger told USA Today.
And other officials used the Internet to offer sympathy.
“We certainly appreciate the nation’s thoughts and prayers as our police department continues to investigate the terrible theater shooting tragedy that occurred today,” the city of Aurora wrote on its Facebook page. “Our condolences go out to the victims and their family members.”
Are you there? Share your story with us on CNN iReport and post your tributes to the victims.
CNN’s Doug Gross and Dorrine Mendoza contributed to this report.
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Diptic photo app worth a free download
Diptic is available on the App Store for free through July 19, and then will return to $0.99. (It’s fixed at $0.99 on Google Play.) We used the iPad version for this review, though most of our notes apply to the iPhone and Android versions as well.
What Diptic gets right
Diptic does one thing — photo frames — and does it well. It offers more frame orientations than we’ve seen in any other app — 19 in total, in combinations from pure two-photo diptychs up to six-way, sliced-and-diced setups. The interface is intuitive, mostly just tapping and dragging and some pinching to zoom.
The edits are simple but effective, including brightness, saturation, and contrast adjustments. The dozen or so effects are classy, with a selection of popular looks, like cross process, sepia, pinhole, and the like (see: Instagram).
And like all decent photo apps
Article source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/usatoday-TechTopStories/~3/F3bo-zJuyRg/1
Great gear for your mobile work-style
Let me suggest three letters, my friend: WFH, short for work from home, a ubiquitous acronym in the start-up world.
Go explore and work from your favorite coffee shop, park or beach. These gadgets will keep you productive, even if you’re in summer Friday mode.
Verizon MiFi keeps you connected
Even if you’re not putting in face time, you need to be visible online. That means being available on instant messenger, responding to emails and you know, actually getting things done. That’s where Verizon’s Jetpack MiFi 4620L Hotspot comes into play.
The Jetpack can connect up to 10 devices at once, enough to power a small team workstation, and at 4G (3G if that coverage isn’t available in your area), it’s blazing as well. During periodic speed tests, I found the network to reach 10 Mbps downstream and about 4 Mbps upstream, comparable to many home Internet
Article source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/usatoday-TechTopStories/~3/yORS02tyjhU/1
Facebook CEO gets super-low 1% rate on home refinancing
But wealth experts say the Facebook co-founder’s loan – at just 1.05% – is symptomatic of a new credit gap in America between the haves and have-nots.
While the wealthy are able to take advantage of record-low rates and home loans at between 1% to 2%, many Americans are having trouble refinancing their homes at more than 3%. Many other Americans can’t get loans at all, or are struggling to pay double-digit interest rates for credit-card debt.
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STORY: Homes of new tech titans
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VIDEO: Mark Zuckerberg’s special refinance deal
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STORY: Silicon Valley’s high-tech mountain retreat
Experts and economists say the credit gap could, over time, make America’s high level of financial inequality even higher.
“You run into a situation where people in the bottom 30% are dealing with huge fees and fine print and the top has very straightforward loans with low rates,” said
Quick, easy, fun photo books
Fast forward to my family and you’ll find that I don’t fill albums with printed photos—I create photo books. Fortunately, photo book sites have attractive templates you can use to fill your books, so they require a lot less artistic talent and time to produce a good result.
First, the process of compiling photos for a book is easy. Many sites will pull photos in from Facebook and other sites where you’re already sharing your photos, as well as from your computer.
Once you have your photos, most photo book sites can auto-fill your book based on when and where you took your photos. You choose a template that complements your photos—summer vacation, trip to Europe and many, many more—and the site does the rest.
You can then go in and tweak the pages to highlight the most important pictures. And if you want to include old
Article source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/usatoday-TechTopStories/~3/koUT0gm8DmA/1
