The city of Los Angeles has an opportunity to win two championship basketball titles this season. Kobe Bryant led the Lakers to yet another NBA championship, and Candace Parker can easily do the same for the Sparks in the WNBA.

Last season’s Rookie of the Year and MVP took some time off to have a baby. Now, she’s back and ready to play.

Parker let the world know via Twitter that: “I’m bbbbaaaaacccccckkkkkkk!! headed to first practice!”

According to ESPN, Parker practiced for the first time since her maternity leave but told the Los Angeles Times she would have a better idea about how she is adjusting after finishing contact drills.

After getting back into the basketball groove, Parker expects to be back on the court in five weeks — which is plenty of time for her to make an impact on the rest of the regular season as well as the playoffs.

A Japanese group called the Koress Project have announced development of a tiny little box that posts your heartrate to Twitter, so your friends and loved ones can see how you’re doing. The Akiduki Pulse Box, as it’s called, requires a heart monitor to work, but takes care of posting details about your health for you.

The Akiduki Pulse Box is 100% open source, and Koress is already making plans to commercialize the device and even hold seminars to teach others how to manufacture the device themselves. The device’s running joke is that if your heart should stop beating, all of your Twitter followers will know you’re dead.

Here’s the big question: As silly as the Akiduki Pulse Box might seem at first… Is this the next logical step for Twitter? Devices and services that automatically post information about you, so you don’t have to do it manually? Can you imagine what other hardware or software devices might be produced with “Twitter automation” in mind? Maybe a program that monitors kids’ homework progress so parents can get updates on how it’s coming? Repair service professionals who have devices hooked up to their machinery that Twitters to let you know what’s being done to your car or computer or whatever, as it happens?

Images: Mycom Journal.

Twitter continues to become more and more mainstream these days. Being talked about by a variety of celebrities as well as being mentioned in more and more commercials every night it seems. The question is whether or not it’s got a trick up its sleeve that you may not have thought of before now.

You’re probably well aware of the twitter 140 character limit that was established to work with the limits set by mobile phone carriers for SMS text messaging. Did you know that you can take advantage of twitter and use it as a free texting distribution service for people to use who may never know what twitter is or use it themselves.

Anyone with a cell phone can "subscribe" a twitterer’s updates. If the person twittering uses those updates to communicate news and instructions to that group of people, twitter can provide just that tool.

All you need to tell people to follow your updates is the following:

From their cell phone have them send a text to 40404 with the message "follow yourusername". They’ll then receive the following message response back:

Welcome to Twitter. Please confirm by replying with your name. Standard message charges apply, ’stop’ to quite or ‘help’ for help.

In actuality that will then create them a twitter account with the name they text back. It appears twitter will add a number to the name to make it unique if it already exists. For example in testing for this post I now exist at jasonbean1 and bnpositive1 on twitter. I’m still testing to see how I might get access to those accounts if I ever wanted to start truly using twitter.

After creating your account you’ll receive the following text message:

Hi, Jason Bean! Have friends send ‘follow JasonBean1′ to this # for your updates. ‘help’ for more. What are you doing?

When you follow someone you’ll receive the following message response:

You’ll receive a message every time Bnpositive updates. To silence, send ‘off bnpositive’. For more commands, send ‘help’.

Did you catch all that? Free text messaging tool using twitter. Obviously it comes with all the other benefits of twitter too.

Vizio is about to up the ante with the release of its “XVT” line of flatscreen TVs, certain models of which will come with a slew of pre-loaded applications that give you access to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, along with video download services like Netflix and Blockbuster.

It comes with a wicked cool remote that, like some cell phones, includes a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

The full list of Internet apps is as follows:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Yahoo! Widgets
• Netflix
• Blockbuster OnDemand
• Amazon Video On Demand
• Rhapsody
• Vudu
• Revision3
• Showtime
• Pandora

The Vizio XVT will be available this holiday season with these options in 42″, 47″, and 55″ models, for $1,199, $1,699, and $2,199, respectively.

Image: Copyright 2009 ©Vizio.

PCMag.com currently has an article titled “Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners“. I was eager to read the article to see if there was anything really helpful. Perhaps it’s the “…for Beginners” that I should focus on, as these things don’t seem so much as tips as basic instructions.

Here’s what they listed as their tips:

• Shrink Your URL’s
• RT = Retweet
• Direct Messaging
• Use the @ Sign
• Search For Your Friends
• Categorize Your Tweets for Added Exposure
• Share Pictures
• Tweet from Your Phone
• Pick a Good Desktop Client
• Download a Mobile Client

Maybe you agree with me and think these are more instructions and not real “tips”. What tips would you suggest for people? Here are a couple of mine to get you started:

• Tweet First, Follow Later - at least have a few tweets in your history before you start following more than a handful of people. People won’t follow you unless they can see what you’re talking about
• Update Your Avatar - give yourself a personality and let us see who you are or put an image with your tweets. It makes following you and recognizing you much easier as you tweet
• Complete Your Profile - more details about who you are will convince me to follow you or not

Now, what are your tips for users? Let us know in the comments!

Did you notice a bit of free time in your schedule this evening? Were you online? Did you even realize what was missing? Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that sucking sound of the void left in the web space with all those tweets going silent!

Twitter was down this evening between 8pm-9:30pm PST. What did you do to fill your time without twitter? How did you let people know what was going on with you in your life? I ended up using Facebook to change my status a bit more than normal. But I also sat down and watched TV with the family and enjoyed some homemade milkshakes and smoothies.

What did you do with that extra hour of your life that you got back this evening? I’m really curious. Did you just find yourself going somewhere else online to kill the time? Did you disconnect completely? Were you completely aghast and just stared in stoic silence at your computer like a scene from "Awakenings"?

Let me know. I’m like a cat over here waiting to be killed!

According to Drew Rosenhaus’ Twitter (@RosenhausSports), Will Allen has signed a two-year extension with the Miami Dolphins. The 30-year-old cornerback has spent the last three seasons with the Dolphins after beginning his career with the New York Giants.

For specifics on the contract, here is what Rosenhaus said on Twitter:

We would also like to announce that we have signed Will Allen to a 2 yr extension with the Dolphins worth $16.2..million over the next 3 seasons.

Will’s deal includes $10 million in guarantees.

I’m really happy for Will Allen to be able to continue his career in Miami for the next 3 years. He has become a mainstay for the Dolphins.

While with the Dolphins, Allen has played 47 out of a possible 48 games. Last season, he played in all 16 games and totaled 50 tackles and three interceptions. His three interceptions were the highest he’s had in his career since he had four as a rookie for the Giants in 2001.

In the 2009 NFL season, Allen is expected to keep starting on the left side for Miami. He’ll get help from Sean Smith and Vontae Davis — two selections by the Dolphins in the 2009 NFL Draft.

Will Allen Extension Announced on Twitter (Image: Zuma Press)

I was recently talking with a friend of mine about how they’re using some social media websites and tools to help them with their small business. They have their own website, are active on Facebook and twitter.

As I was visiting through their site and tools, I noticed that the link to their website in their Facebook profile had been tagged as "abusive" by other Facebook users. This was a surprise to the business owner as they’d never spammed anyone using Facebook or repeatedly posted the link to their site in their own updates or messages.

Normally when you see alerts like this the serving website will provide a link for how the owner of the link can follow-up or submit a rebuttal for their site. No such information from Facebook. Does anyone know the procedures for requesting a reason for why a site is submitted as abusive or how to recover your site and links from this status?

The NCAA may have a new text messaging rule to limit the contact coaches have with prospects, but there’s no rule against social networking…yet. And many coaches are taking advantage of that.

Division I and II coaches are allowed to contact recruits one-on-one using direct messaging services on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking websites. These types of messages are considered emails, which are permissable according to NCAA rules. Coaches can’t instant message or chat with recruits, but social networking opens new doors.

While public messages (such as posting on a Facebook wall) isn’t allowed, direct messages are often programmed to be sent directly to cell phones. The students have control over it, but if they set up their profile to have messages sent to their phones, it is almost like getting a text message from the coach.

Twitter has also been extremely helpful for coaches, who can update with general announcements frequently. By following recruits on Twitter, they can also get a sense of the student, learning how to better appeal to them.

Many coaches aren’t yet using Twitter, but on the other hand, some have embraced it. Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin uses Twitter because, essentially, other schools are using it. Illinois coach Ron Zook is pleased with the NCAA’s decision that Twittering is allowed. Of course, Pete Carroll is all over it, and has been from the start.

I think we’ll see more and more coaches joining the Twitter train, but the real question is this: will the NCAA further restrict using this technology?

Image via Twitter.com.

You know that the internet age is upon us when we are getting Plaxico Burress updates via Twitter. Burress’ agent, Drew Rosenhaus, is on Twitter (@RosenhausSports) and he gives updates on many of the players he represents. A couple of his recent updates have been regarding Burress.

-Plaxico got a call from an NFL head coach yesterday and he will be meeting with senior NFL executives in the near future.

-Ran wind sprints with Plaxico Burress. There are at least 2 teams that are very serious about signing him so he has stayed in great shape.

Both of these tweets were made on May 15th. While the exact teams who are interested in signing Plaixco Burress are unknown, there are a few teams that make sense. The Philadelphia Eagles, Baltimore Ravens and Tennessee Titans are three teams that could use a game-changing wide receiver.

Burress got released earlier in the NFL offseason by the New York Giants. He also has legal trouble that may result in a hefty suspension from the NFL.

Plaxico Burress (Image: Newscom)