Tonight’s concert will be an acid test for streaming live video on YouTube. In the past, Google (who owns YouTube) has said they were not interested in live streaming because of the cost. In recent months, they have begun experimenting with live streams of an Obama press conference and the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The concert begins tonight at 8:30 PM PDT. That’s pretty late for those of you on the east coast, and if you’re in Europe, prepare to wake up in the wee hours of the morning. In reality, choosing to webcast a west coast concert was a shrewd choice, as the time alone will reduce the audience a bit. I like U2, and I’ll be tuning in to see how well the stream holds up under stress. It will be interesting to see how many people are able to watch simultaneously.

Just visit http://status.twitter.com. The folks at Twitter post updates here whenever they are experiencing networking problems, over capacity issues, etc. It’s a good place to go just to make sure the problem isn’t with your own Internet connection.

What do you do when Twitter goes down?

Of course, you wouldn’t do that, would you? What creative uses of Twitter have you discovered?

Enter TwitterCounter – a free service that will let you analyze key metrics for your Twitter account (or that of any other Twitter user, for that matter). You can also chart comparisons for up to three Twitter accounts (similar to Alexa for websites); see your friends, update history (posts per day) and more.

In addition to the basic, free service, TwitterCounter is working on a “pro” version. According to their settings page:

“We are developing a Pro account for users who want to see more stats, browse back more than 3 months, track retweets, export data in Excel and CVS format and more. The Pro account will cost $32.50 a year. Are you interested in hearing more about this when it becomes available?”

They also have a clever blog widget called TwitterRemote that you can add to your blog or website. Much like similar tools from Google, Yahoo or Facebook, TwitterRemote shows recent Twitter users who visit your blog.

It will be interesting to see if TwitterRemote is able to monetize their users by enticing enough of them to convert to pro accounts. I suspect it would be attractive to businesses using Twitter, to help them manage their social presence, but it’s an increasingly competitive space.

Meanwhile, data junkies like me have another tool to play with.

“iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.”

The finger-pointing reached a head when the Google Voice app for the iPhone was apparently held up indefinitely for review. AT&T has previously stated that approval of the app was solely in the hands of Apple. Apple appears to have been threatened by the Google app replacing much of their own device’s built-in phone functionality, particularly the visual voice mail.

Customers have been clamoring for this for a long time, and at least for, the ball is very clearly in Apple’s court.

Source: Mashable

Over the weekend Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers’ credentials were exposed on a third-party site due to a likely phishing scheme.

One site indicated more than 10,000 Hotmail credentials may have been compromised. Translation: User names and passwords were illegally posted online. Most appear to be accounts in Europe and include @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com accounts. If your account was on this list, you will need to fill out the form linked in the Windows Live Team post to regain access to it, as they are blocking the known compromised accounts for obvious security reasons.

If you haven’t yet read How To Avoid Phishing Worms on WLM please take time to do so. While the illegal list was removed, for a period of time, this information was available to those who may use it for phishing schemes. It is important to know what to watch out for, and how to protect yourself.

In general, always exercise caution when deciding to click a link. Sometimes it’s better to just say no.

More from Noise to Signal.

The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft.

Rich Kaplan, VP Customer and Partner Advocacy at Microsoft said “It is with great pride we announce that Doris Kenney has been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). All of us at Microsoft recognize and appreciate Doris’s extraordinary contributions and want to take this opportunity to share our appreciation with you.

“As a recipient of this year’s Microsoft MVP award, Doris joins an exceptional group of individuals from around the world who have demonstrated a willingness to reach out, share their technical expertise with others and help individuals maximize their use of technology.”

Of course, we at BigBlueBall are especially proud of this honor, but we are not surprised. Doris has been actively involved in our forums for a long time, sharing her expertise and helping people every day.

Congratulations, Doris!

Related Links

• Doris Kenney’s MVP profile

Start Messaging

To enable MMS messaging, connect your iPhone to your computer and click “Check for Update” in iTunes. Once the update is completed, restart your iPhone by turning it off then on again. Note that iPhone OS 3.1 is required so you may need to perform that software update first. Once you connect to iTunes, you will be prompted through the correct steps.

I’ve been able to successfully test this within the AT&T network, but still cannot send or receive MMS messages across carriers. Can anyone else confirm if this is working or not?

The new installer now gives you an option to install the ‘Digsby Toolbar’ and asks if you want to contribute unused CPU cycles to sponsored research. While all of the adware/sponsor programs used in the old Digsby installer were optional, the new installer makes opting out easier and more obvious — a real plus considering that most users don’t really read the fine print during installation.

What’s New?

MySpace users can now use Digsby to connect to their contacts using MySpace IM, without opening a browser. And yes, in spite of the fact that MySpace seems to have fallen off the face of the planet from a press standpoint, there are still 70 million users, making it over 3x bigger than Twitter.

The real meat of the changes are in Digsby’s Facebook integration. Now you can fully interact with your Facebook Newsfeed right from Digsby. You can post your status updates, comment on friend’s activity, “like” status updates and browse photos. And of course, you can use Digsby to connect with your Facebook contacts via Facebook Chat. It’s a great way to stay connected, even when you don’t have Facebook open.

Download Digsby