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James Taranto -

McCain completely refuted and destroyed his critics’ claim he’s a war-monger. In his acceptance speech in front of Walter Reed Middle School, he said he wasn’t.

Facebook Connect

Facebook recently launched Facebook Connect, a way for developers to integrate some of the functionality and data of Facebook into other websites, like Digg, shown to the left.

Through Facebook Connect, users with Facebook profiles will be able to log into other sites and connect their Facebook identities and friends to that service using their existing profile.

Facebook Connect has four primary features:

• Trusted Authentication – Anywhere during the user’s experience that the developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted. This is a proprietary authentication mechanism, but is more streamlined than the existing method and will not require a redirect back to Facebook.
• Real Identity – Users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the open Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.
• Friends Access – Users will be able to take their friends with them wherever they go on the open Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites, and will be able to show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.
• Dynamic Privacy – As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date.

Do you want to test out a demo? Check this out - somethingtoputhere.com

Facebook Connect has the potential to expose millions of new users to nonprofits like Idealist, granting easy access to our services. And when new users sign into Idealist through Facebook Connect, his or her activities on Idealist will show up on their Facebook friend steam. This will exponentially increase exposure of our site to millions of potential new users. Sounds good to me.

Timelining

I’m sure you’ve either seen timelines used in class or run across them at some point on the web, usually used in a graphical context to highlight events and helping you visualize a stories bigger picture. Without the graphical context, it’s easy to gloss over important facts and miss the significance of an event’s timing.

A number of start-ups are helping users easily create attractive timelines for their own uses. Dipity, xtimeline, Dandelife and MyTimelines are a few sites competing in this space and let the user plug in their own data and rss feeds to populate timeline events.

Check out these examples:

• Barak Obama
• Disney
• Profile Example

MITs SIMILE Timeline is an open source project that lets users develop timelines and host them on their own sites. The application is fully customizable and lets you retain control of your own data. Check out their super awesome dinosaur timeline.

Timelines are definitely interesting for summarizing the importance of an event but are also useful for tracking the growth and evolution of a story in real time, picking out patterns and predicting future results based on past occurrences.

Why is the latest (among many) McCain gaffe so great?

(via anonymousliberal.com)

First, and most obviously, it underscores the economic message that the Democrats are trying to convey. We’re in the middle of a major housing crisis and people are struggling to keep from losing their homes. The economy is the number one issue, and the Democrats are trying to paint McCain as being out-of-touch and unaware of the problem. Obama’s sharpest ad over the last week was the one that played McCain’s prior statements about the strength of the economy and asked: “How can he fix the economy if he doesn’t even know it’s broken.” This gaffe plays beautifully into that theme.

Second, the gaffe badly damages the “everyman” image that all Republican presidential candidates, including McCain, try to convey. It’s hard to image a more out of touch statement. Comedians will have a field day with it.

Third, it goes a long way toward neutralizing McCain’s central attack theme: the “celebrity” charge. Who seems more like a “celebrity”: Obama or the guy who has to ask his staff how many houses he owns? Maybe Paris Hilton can sympathize.

D.J. Coffman at willdrawanything.com designed a custom Ghosthead illustration for just a few bucks, much along the same vain as Apelad at Hobotopia did in 2007. Take a look -

(via allhatnocattle.net)

(via laughingsquid.com)

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