Alisha Arnold, one half of the couple running the site BirthorNot.com and ostensibly crowdsourcing the decision on whether she and her husband should abort their baby just before the legal limit for abortion kicks in, has been fired from her job for the negative implications the stunt has had on her company.

The Eagan Minnesota software company TempWorks distributed a memo to staff confirming that Arnold was terminated by the company for publicity surrounding the “debate” (several news outlets have since quoted Pete Arnold as saying the couple never would have gone through with an abortion, though his wife is adamant she would have) and furthermore, TempWorks has forbidden all employees from maintaining relationships with Arnold on sites like Facebook. It’s an employer mandated de-friending!

A news outlet local to the Arnolds spoke with a local labor law expert, who said the company is legally within their rights for both mandates:

We showed the memo to a University of Minnesota Labor Law Professor. William McGeveran told us private companies do not have a legal obligation to proect the free speech of its employees.  He also says employees might not like it, but the company can also tell its employees who they can and cannot be friends with on Facebook and other social networking sites. If employees do not like the restrictions, McGeveran says they have the option of leaving the job.

Arnold, who was referred to by the company as a “grave threat,” told press she was “shocked” and “didn’t expect any of this.”

Woman behind BirthorNot.com fired from job for behavior on internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

A married couple who live near Minneapolis- both of whom are 30- are seemingly crowdsourcing the decision of whether they should abort their baby or allow it to come to term and be born.

As Gawker points out, this is 99% likely not to be exactly as it appears. It has to be an attempt to draw attention to something, but exactly what the point is has not yet been revealed. The poll on the site, sponsored by PollDaddy, is currently leaning toward the “don’t abort” side, but when Gawker posted the tale, the results were skewed far more in favor of the “do abort” option.

Interestingly, the couple have not given any reasoning for what would be a relatively late-term abortion (20 weeks) other than that they are not sure they’re “ready” to be parents. Gawker broke down possible reasons the couple, Pete and Alisha Arnold, created the site:

1) It’s is an idiotic prank. Pete and Alisha are intent on becoming famous any way they can, and they’ve hit on an outrageous way to get media coverage. But if this all was a prank, wouldn’t they have gotten the word out before now? They’ve been blogging since September.

2) This is a pro-life stunt. Pete said he’s a non-practicing Catholic, while Alisha is a Methodist. Although the Arnolds describe themselves as political independents with Libertarian leanings, Alisha likes Glenn Beck on Facebook, and a Google search turns up an old pro-Bush comment Pete made on CNN. (Pete said he voted for Bush in 2000, but not in 2004.) Could this site be a confused parable to illustrate the peril of putting an unborn baby’s life in the hands of voters?

3) It’s true. Pete and Alisha are actually going to choose to have an abortion based on an Internet poll.

You can view the spectacle at the Arnolds’ website, BirthorNot.com. This isn’t the first time social media has participated in an abortion- a woman made headlines a few months back by live tweeting her medical abortion. What’s your take on the whole thing? Attention whoring? Performance art? Political statement? Could anyone possibly be considering a second-trimester abortion for the lulz? I’ll posit a theory touched on but not fleshed out by the Gawker analysis- this is to draw attention to later, elective abortions, with which many Americans are more uncomfortable than earlier or medically necessary pregnancy terminations.

[Gawker, BirthorNot]

Couple crowdsources abortion decision on their website… vote now? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Is your dealer ripping you off?

It’s not really like you can go online and comparison shop, and when buying weed, you’re kind of lucky if your “guy” calls you back at all. Chances are you and your mates all buy from the same dude anyway, so unless you’re in California, it’s not a super competitive industry. While it can’t help you score, however, a new website aims to at least to let you discover if you’re paying too much for sucky bud.

You can anonymously submit the amount paid, quantity and quality level to PriceofWeed.com, and an interactive map will show you what other people around the country and the world are paying for their pot. A red dollar sign indicates areas with the highest weed prices, yellow for middle-range pricing, and green symbols denote the least expensive areas to get high. (Apparently, no one in Wyoming nor North Dakota smokes up, so they currently have gray “no data” legends.)

The site has a Tumblr as well, so when additions like a Google Maps mashup are added, you can run and tell that. Are you spending too much on marijuana? Does the idea of revealing your illicit substances budget on the internet make you paranoid? Do my hands look blurry to you?

[via]

New website crowdsources price, quality of pot is a post from: The Inquisitr

A contest hatched by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), offered $40,000 to the first group to find ten red weather balloons at secret locations across the US.

More than 4000 groups participated in the project, designed to commemorate the Internet’s 40th birthday by illustrating the power of social networking and crowdsourcing  to solve time critical tasks. The balloons were launched at 10am EDT yesterday. The contest was originally open until December 14th, but a group of MIT students using volunteers promised a cut of the prize found all ten balloons in under nine hours:

On MIT’s Web site, a link was posted inviting people to sign up to help find the balloons and urging them to invite their friends. It said the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team “is interested in studying information flow in social networks, so if we win, we’re giving all the money away to the people who help us find the balloons!”

It detailed a chain for giving away the money, beginning with $2,000 given to each person who first sent in the coordinates of each balloon.

The locations of the balloons were disclosed after the contest ended:

The 8-foot red weather balloons were moored at 10 different locations. These included Waterfront Park, Portland; Union Square, San Francisco; Chase Palm Park, Santa Barbara; Chaparral Park, Scottsdale; Katy Park, Katy; Lee Park, Memphis; Centennial Park, Atlanta; Collins Avenue, Miami; Tonsler Park, Charlottesville; and Glasgow Park, Christiana.

MIT team finda DARPA balloons in less than nine hours, wins prize is a post from: The Inquisitr

For those of you not familiar with Kiva it is a “microlender” that has developed an excellent reputation.. Along with partners in the field, that uses the power of ‘the community’ to provide microloans to people in third world countries. The loans actually come from people who join as members of Kiva and lend their own money (usually in $25 increments) to people who have been listed on the Kiva site.

Kiva collects the money gathered from all the people making these microloans and then deposits it with their partners in the field where the loan applicants live. It is these partners in the field who actually issue the requested loans and collect the loan repayments, which are then transferred back to Kiva. At this point when the original loan is repaid to Kiva the organization then returns the amount you loaned to you. At that point you can elect to make another loan to someone else or withdraw your money.

As an organization Kiva has been incredibly successful with a very low number of loans ever being defaulted on, and with people coming back for additional loans.

In light of the current economic situation in the US the “microlender” has decided to expand its lending operation into the United States. The expansion of services will kick of today and will let needy small businesses in the US vie for funding alongside other struggling entrepreneurs from places like Vietnam to Moldavia.

The US listings will start with about 45 businesses in Boston, New York, Miami, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Since 2005, Kiva has raised more than $75-million from 500,000 people and lent the money to about 180,000 entrepreneurs in 44 countries. About 98 per cent of the loans have been repaid on time, Shah said.

Although there is little doubt that the credit crunch is stifling the growth of U.S. small businesses, Shah said some of Kiva’s staffers remain convinced the loans are needed more in poorer countries.

“It will be interesting to see if someone from South Central Los Angeles will be able to get a loan on our site more quickly than a small business in south Sudan,” Shah said.

Source: The Globe & Mail

As a side note I made my first Kiva loan the other night so it will be interesting to see how this all develops because I would prefer in some ways to help someone from down the street rather than on the other side of the world.

Kiva to start micro-lending in the US is a post from: The Inquisitr

There is a lot written about the concept of crowdsourcing or as some like to call it – the wisdom of the crowd. For a lot of people in social media it is one of the cornerstones of the web in our brave new digital world. In a lot of case I think it is more bullshit marketing that anything else as everyone gets all in a hump over making things go viral and using the crowd to get the word out.

At the opposite end of the spectrum though are some rather interesting ideas that are trying to use the vast numbers of people using social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and other social media services to get a sense of what our cultural icons are when it comes to things like movies and music. The first one I ran across – via Friendfeed – is FlickChart and the idea there is for members to cycle through all the movies in the FlickChart database and select which one of two is their favorite movie.

You keep doing this and if you want also share each set you are picking a favorite from to services like Friendfeed and Twitter.

The idea with FlickChart is to assemble a list of our culture’s most favorite movies. Not voted on by movie critics or listed by financial success, but rather by a true popular vote.

Now today I happen to run across the same sort of idea for music (via David Griner at The Social Path) through a service called We Are Hunted. The idea here is that the site scours fellow social media services like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, forums, P2P networks and blogs to find out what songs are being talked about.

A new Top of the Pops

In the physical world, charts are built on shipped albums. Online charts have been a simple count of digital downloads. We Are Hunted is different. We discover new music from around the web and detect sentiment, expression and advocacy to understand what people like and dislike.

These two example are what I think of when I think about looking for wisdom of the crowd and I find myself much more likely to look to them for suggestions of what to watch or listen to than I am to critics and trade Top 100 lists.

What do you think of this type of crowdsourcing?

Grassroots crowdsourcing of pop culture is a post from: The Inquisitr

The site, claiming 9 million volunteer members, lets anyone sign up and post a problem. Users — who are ranked in expertise and helpfulness by other members — then offer solutions. You can also search existing queries submitted by others to see if the answer you need has already been posted.

During our visit, the solutions featured on the front page included things such as a Motorola phone that wouldn’t charge, a pen drive that wouldn’t accept new files, and a BMW with a flashing engine warning light.

FixYa does also offer a pay-based option in which you can chat directly and immediately with a high-ranking expert via IM or phone. The expert keeps a portion of the fee. Unless you need instant assistance, though, you could just as easily post into the free forum system.

FixYa has been around since 2005. It’s now grown to about 30 employees and claims 10 million unique visitors a month, a rate its founder says continues to increase by about 12 percent every month.

FixYa Offers Free Crowdsourced Tech Support is a post from: The Inquisitr