Until last night.

I was absolutely glued to my computer from the hours of midnight to 3am watching the live reports of a young man named Spencer Mills. Mills, who goes by the name @oakfosho on Twitter, was covering the build-up and eventual raid on Occupy LA protestors in Los Angeles. Armed with a six-modem backpack and a Sony Handycam (including night vision) provided by UStream, Mills broadcasted live for several hours, and he did so seamlessly. His live stream was crystal clear, to the point where I said repeatedly that TV stations should be jealous of his technology. He was funny, informational, confrontational – but most of all, he was interesting.

"Grandmothers for Change"

The most interesting moments leading up to the police raid were Mills’ interviews, particularly with a group called “Grandmothers for Change” – a few elderly women who said they were down there, and willing to be arrested, so things could change for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Mills even stopped several police officers for information, and the police officers seemed more willing to give him pertinent details than they did “regular” media.

Sure, Mills had a few flaws in his interviews. He said the words “right on” about a million times. But professional journalists have just as many crutch phrases. His coverage was good enough for the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, which took his stream live several times throughout the night.

Mills really shined, however, when police arrived shortly after midnight Los Angeles time. He jumped into breaking news mode and did a damn-near breathtaking job in covering the raid as it happened. When police told media to turn off their camera lights, it was no big deal for Mills. He was already in night-vision mode, so you never lost visuals of the action. Even when guns were pointed at him, Mills remained calm. At one point he asked the officer to take his finger off the trigger, and the officer did so. Mills then thanked him and moved on.

So where were the 24-hour cable networks during this time? Apparently sleeping. MSNBC was airing a re-run of The Ed Show. CNN was re-airing the Piers Morgan talk show. And Fox News was on that horrible Red Eye show.

So there was this one guy, kicking the collective asses of three cable news networks at legitimate breaking news. No breaking news opens, no double, triple or quad boxes, no over-produced maps and graphics, no team coverage and no commercial breaks needed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to solely rely on citizen journalists for my news because of last night’s events. But it did make me realize I shouldn’t be afraid of citizen journalism when done correctly. I hope it was a wake-up call for myself, and for other professional journalists, that there are better ways to tell a story.

I can, however, share a story of the strange coincidence of where I heard the news – a place that bookmarked my fairly recent conversion to Apple fan boy.

Wednesday around 6pm, I found out of Steve Jobs’ passing while walking out of an event for SXSW in Austin. I got a phone call from my girlfriend, saying she hadn’t seen any confirmation but rumors were flying on Twitter. I talked with her for a few minutes about his battle with cancer and his resignation a few weeks ago. Like most Apple fanatics, I knew this day was coming soon. It still didn’t make it any easier to hear. I’ll be honest – it felt a bit strange to get emotional at the death of a stranger. I shared that thought with my friend Joe Ruiz, who texted to make sure I saw the news. It was a weird couple of minutes.

I stopped at a park in downtown Austin to just soak everything in. That’s when I remembered coming to SXSW Interactive in 2010 as an Apple hater, scoffing at all the people with expensive laptops, iPhones and elitist attitudes. A few months later, a funny thing happened. I watched the Steve Jobs keynote about the iPad. I bought one a few weeks later. A few weeks after that, I got a MacBook Pro. A few months later, I got an iPhone. By the time SXSWi 2011 rolled around, I was a full-fledged Apple fanatic.

I’m often asked why I love Apple as much as I do. Honestly, it’s a hard thing to explain. I’ve never really been much for the “cool” factor, so that’s not it. I think the biggest reason is it seems like Apple products know you better than you know yourself. Every move makes complete and total sense. I remember showing a student last semester how to eject a flash drive from an iMac in our lab. She had never used a Mac in her life, she said, and didn’t understand why everything with them “had to be so difficult.” I responded with, “Just drag it to the trash to get rid of it.” She sat there for a few seconds and said, “Oh. That makes sense.” Once you start using Apple products, you really want to use nothing else. It’s not elitist or hip. Just better.

So yes, I never had the chance to encounter Steve Jobs while he was alive. I did get a chance to use his fantastic products, though. And that’s good enough for me.

Please, everyone. Relax.

This outrage happens every time Facebook makes a major change. Every time, the outrage goes away after a day or two when people finally get used to the change. Then the next time it changes, people demand the return of the “old” Facebook.

Am I ecstatic with every change Facebook made? No. Far from it, actually. In fact, I had a blog written and ready to go about Facebook’s new subscription option. I laid out an argument of why subscriptions turn Facebook into Twitter, which diminishes the usefulness of Facebook to me. But I’m glad I never had a chance to post that blog because today’s outrage made me remember what Dr. Cindy Royal preached in grad school: These are free platforms that we don’t have to use. This e-card says it a little more eloquently than I just explained.

It’s hard to imagine it’s already been ten years since that morning. It’s also hard to imagine how differently that morning would have played out if we possessed the technologies we do today.

So much has changed in the way we live our lives in the ten years since 9/11. Everyone, these days, has the ability to be a reporter. Many people have smart phones with them 24/7. Sharing information, pictures, whereabouts, etc. is the norm.

“Imagine the photos texted from within the crumbling towers,” said USA Today tech writer Jon Swartz. “Imagine the potential narrative, if properly cobbled, from various tweeters. Also, imagine the last-minute goodbyes from some.”

When Jon sent me that response, I got a little choked up. I didn’t know anyone who died in the 9/11 attacks, so I don’t pretend to have as intimate a connection with it as many Americans. But the thought of people saying final goodbyes to their loved ones in such a public fashion is a really, really tough thing to think about.

Then there are the videos. Just think – instead of one video of the second plane hitting the tower, there likely would have been thousands.

“It still took awhile for us to see some of those images from the ground,” said Joe Ruiz, an engagement editor at NowCast SA who was recently part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom at The Seattle Times. “I remember the cloud closing in on a videographer who ducked into a Starbucks. That video would have been seen immediately. I don’t know what that does to you as a viewer trying to comprehend that at once.”

There are also logistics to consider. If we had current technologies on that morning, there’s little chance Flight 93, at the very least, gets off the ground. That day also put an emphasis on the importance of the country’s network remaining stable. As we all saw that morning, the network failed. Websites crashed. Calls couldn’t be made. There was an overload of people looking for information.

In addition, social media would likely have played a key role in the organization of relief, help and recovery.

“We saw how social media were used in the UK to mobilize the clean-up effort following the recent riots, by helping people connect with like-minded strangers to help their community,” said UBC professor Alfred Hermida, one of the world’s leading social media researchers. “During 9/11, blogs were used for appeals for blood donors and to help find missing friends and relatives. Today this would have likely taken place on Facebook, with people coming together through these networked and distributed technologies to help each other through the tragic events of 9/11.”

I don’t claim to know much, but here’s what I do know. Social media and advancements in technology have changed the way we consume news and comprehend major events. We learn from each other now. Look no further than the capture and death of the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. News of President Obama’s press conference became news of bin Laden’s death within a matter of 15-20 minutes. The news conference announcing the death almost seemed like an afterthought once it finally happened. Together, we not only shared the news but also helped each other understand the magnitude of the moment. I’m not sure that happened on 9/11.

“I do remember feeling a bit isolated in my home during those first few hours, glued to the television and getting little information from online sources,” remembered Dr. Cindy Royal, a New Media professor at Texas State University. “It may have been comforting to have the connection of social media, to know what other people were experiencing and feeling at the time. But the outpouring of emotion could have easily become overwhelming.”

Of course, technologies like social media would not have been without flaws on such a day like 9/11. You can only imagine the amount of misinformation that would have spread around the globe in a heartbeat. But as I always do, I’d like to think social media would have helped that morning. They would have told a more complete story. They would have helped facilitate aid. They would have helped people know their loved ones were okay. And yes, as painful as it is to imagine, they would have also helped others know their loved ones were not okay.

This article in Forbes says not yet, but it’s getting close. And I tend to agree.

When Google+ debuted about a month and a half ago, it was all the rage. People scrambled for invites. More than 25 million signed up. Certain Internet celebrities made news for leaving Facebook and going solely with Google+.

And now? My feed of 80 or so friends has dried up. I, myself, updated Google+ for the first time in a couple of weeks last night. The advantages many people cited over Facebook (lack of spam, no games) are now irrelevant with the arrival of games and spam. In fact, the last ten accounts to follow me on Google+ appear to all be spam.

Will Google+ stick around? Sure it will. But it seems like we’re on the downside of the diffusion curve – and that’s not a good sign for Google.

I said several weeks ago, despite the Internet community making a big deal about privacy, I didn’t think there are enough people so unhappy with Facebook to completely make the switch to Google+. It looks like that was the case.

Seems weird to declare one of the fastest-growing websites of all time dead after a couple of weeks…but we’re getting there.

After Gingrich chided the media yesterday for not acknowledging his large following on Twitter compared to the other candidates (Mitt Romney has a little less than 63,000 followers), a former Gingrich staffer told Gawker that 80% or so of those followers were bought and paid for. The staffer said another 10% of the followers came from “follow back” users, who promise to follow back if you follow them. Finally, the staffer said 10% appear to be real followers.

With 1.3 million followers, there’s no way to prove any of this without receipts from the services that sell followers. Gawker, however, took a cursory glance at Gingrich’s account and did notice a lot of follows from profiles with no pictures or no tweets.

If true, this is pretty sad. I’ve never understood the whole “pay for followers” mentality. In the business world, I’ve seen plenty of so-called social media experts who promise a certain number of followers to potential clients. There’s no way to do that without some type of shenanigans. Truth is the best type of followers – real, legit users – will come to you because of your content or your brand name. That’s it.

Here’s one tip I use to tell if someone is buying followers. It’s non-scientific, just to be clear – but it’s a fairly decent rule of thumb: more followers=more lists. The more followers a Twitter user has, the more lists that user should be a part of. So if you see someone with 4,000 followers only listed 12 times, a mental red flag should be raised. Of course, it’s going to be hard to do that with someone as well known as Gingrich – so that rule of thumb only applies to us regular folks.

As I said, it’s kind of sad that we even have to have this discussion.

The craziness of the past two days of post-lockout free agent releases and negotiations is tailor-made for Twitter. Sure, blogs and websites like ESPN.com and ProFootballTalk.com are also flourishing, but Twitter’s flow of instant information cannot be topped in this situation. It’s exactly why I spent six months of my life writing a thesis about how news organizations break news via Twitter. The two are a natural fit.

So who are the Twitter superstars in the post-lockout NFL frenzy? There are the usual suspects, Adam Schefter (@adamschefter) and Chris Mortenson (@mortreport) from ESPN. Just to show you how crazy it’s been, ESPN’s John Clayton (@claytonespn) joined Twitter Tuesday and tweeted 48 times (that’s a good amount, especially for someone’s first day). By 2am, Clayton already had close to 110,000 followers. Pro Football Talk has a great Twitter account, as well (@profootballtalk). And if you’re a Cowboys fan, there are plenty of options for Cowboys news and information. ESPN Dallas has Todd Archer (@toddarcher) and Calvin Watkins (@calvinwatkins). The Dallas Morning News has its own Cowboys account (@dmn_cowboys). Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket (one of the most popular radio stations in the entire country) has a number of personalities on Twitter, but your best bet for analysis is Bob Sturm (@sportssturm).

If you’re an NFL fan and not on Twitter, you’re really missing out. You just have to make sure you’re following trustworthy accounts. As is always the case, there are plenty of people who misuse Twitter or any social media platform.

First impression? Wow.

Spotify is a music-streaming service that’s been available in Europe for several years. It’s basically iTunes on steroids – a music service that has every song you wish you could buy.

There are three versions of Spotify. The free version is supported by audio and visual ads. There also appears to be a time limit associated with how much music you can stream. The Spotify Unlimited plan costs $4.99 a month with no time limits and no ads. There’s also the Spotify Premium plan for $9.99 a month, which allows you to stream on your smart phone and listen to music on your desktop without an Internet connection.

Right now the download is only available by invite. You can get an instant invite if you are an influencer on Klout, although Klout’s site crashed today because of the immense traffic. You can also instantly download the service if you pay for one of the upgraded plans.

Spotify’s selection of music is impressive. The quality is even more impressive.

Those two factors give Spotify a big advantage over other streaming services, like GrooveShark. There may be more, but I don’t pretend to be an expert on music streaming services. If someone knows of bigger differences, please leave a comment. And unlike Pandora, you get to pick the music you’re listening to. Spotify is the iPod Nano to Pandora’s iPod Shuffle.

I can’t wait to get even more familiar with Spotify. Believe the hype on this one. Spotify is pretty awesome.

(By the way, I got to hear Spotify founder Daniel Ek deliver a keynote at SXSWi two years ago. Here’s a portion of that discussion.)

First impression? The G+ Hangout function is pretty impressive. I chatted for an hour or so last night with my friends Breanne and Joe (and one of Joe’s friends later jumped on). The layout is very user friendly. You have one main box, which you can switch between staying on one person and letting Google automatically switch to who’s talking. Everyone else in the Hangout is in smaller boxes underneath. There’s also YouTube integration, which sends a message to other people in the Hangout that you’re watching a YouTube video. They click the button and the video pops up on their screen with all the chat windows dropping underneath. We ended up having a lot of fun instantly switching each other’s video selections.

The video quality isn’t as good as the Facebook-Skype integration, but there wasn’t too much of a drop off. The G+ Hangout function still seems a little buggy, as well. I kept receiving notices that my microphone wasn’t working (it was) and that I lost connection (I hadn’t). I also had to close the window and reload it four or five times over that hour-long chat. Those are all small things though that will get worked out over time.

The other day I said Google+ didn’t feature a reason to leave Facebook. I was wrong. The Hangout group video chat is definitely a reason to stay with G+.