The "Nerd Alert" Report...

@Oprah has gone and done it: she's gotten a Twitter account, and in less than a week, has a half million followers. Her first tweet? Well it didn't go so well. Gayle's on too! [Valleywag]

In the future, your tweets will register straight from your brain waves. Okay, so this isn't as far away as you may think. Direct brain-to-Twitter messages are pointing the way to better communication systems for paralyzed patients. [msnbc]

A group of tech executives from Google, YouTube, Twitter and others are touring Iraq to share their thoughts on "how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building" [Valleywag]

Robots are narrowing the gap with humans. At a "Robobusiness" conference in Boston last week, companies demonstrated a robot firefighter, gardener, receptionist, tour guide and security guard. Robots are getting smarter, more capable, more human. [McClatchy]

Start.io is hosing a launch party next Tuesday at Le Poisson Rouge.  They are going to show their nerd following, which will no doubt include some Tumblettes, a quick demo on their site for the digital saavy who want a cleaner startpage. [Jacob Bijani]

We are getting excited about Dan Abrams media news site Mediaite.com which is almost ready to launch. The official date is set to be the Tuesday after Memorial Day, but the editors, including Colby Hall, Rachel Sklar, and Glynnis MacNicol are already hard at work on the site which Abrams claims is "going to be very judgmental, very opinionated, and there's definitely going to be a humor aspect to it."[The Post]

4Chan, the notorious online bulletin board where hackers hang out took over the Time 100 list. The results were hacked with an auto-voting program spread on 4chan.  They spelled out "Marblecake" which apparently is a sexual reference.  Confused? Go HERE.

Microsoft finally enables Web-Based IM into Hotmail, following Yahoo and Google's lead, which happened years ago. What the hell took them so long? Who knows. [Tech Crunch]

The U.S. now has almost as many paid bloggers as it does Lawyers.  We are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452k of those using blogging as their primary source of income. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Are you addicted to the Internet? Download Freedom, the application that disables networking on an Apple computer for up to eight hours at a time! [GG]