Tweeter saves the day

University of California-Berkeley graduate student James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail through a one-word blog post he made with his cell phone. The blog post was written and published with the social networking blog site Twitter.

Buck was in Mahalla, Egypt, to cover an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested. Finding himself police station-bound, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Very brief and effective, the message cum blog post only had a single word: "Arrested."

Buck only learned about Twitter a week earlier, having been taught by blogger-friends in Egypt. Almost instantaneously, the Twitter message Buck sent alerted  colleagues in the United States and friends in Egypt.

Well, just one proof of the many ways technology and social networking help...