Oh man. I know fumf has been waiting for this day… I’m not exactly sure this is good for the NRA, however, since Nugent has a bit of a reputation for, well, being completely bat shit psychotic. Sure, he will connect with a big portion of the audience, but part of the problem will be reaching out to anti-gun advocates, and I don’t really see that working out.

RTFA: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/20…

Barack Obama jumped over a bunch of longer-experienced presidential candidates to win the White House, so will that pattern take at the National Rifle Association? It might, considering rocker and hunter Ted Nugent’s popularity among NRA members. We hear that the Nuge is being urged to get into the race, and a key NRA insider tells us: “He does have a grass-roots following.” That’s for sure. The singer of “Cat Scratch Fever” fame and 23 albums is being promoted on Facebook. While Nugent is an NRA board member, he doesn’t have the type of top slot in the organization normally needed to springboard somebody into the presidency. Even Charlton Heston, who played Moses in Hollywood, worked his way up to the presidency.

RTFA: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM…

They called it a “virtual nurse-in.”

Earlier this week, 11,000 mothers who use Facebook changed their profile pictures to photos of themselves breastfeeding children to protest against the social networking site’s decency standards.

It’s the latest blow in a continuing battle between Facebook and some of its users since it began removing photos that show breastfeeding.

The single-day protest, known as the Mothers International Lactation Campaign, was organized by Stephanie Muir, an Ottawa woman and mother of five who is one of more than 87,000 members of the group “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

The group is pushing Facebook to change its policies regarding breastfeeding pictures and its regulations surrounding how much of a woman’s breast can appear in photos posted on the site.
…
This isn’t the first time Facebook – which boasts 140 million users – has ignited a controversy after pulling breastfeeding photos.

In June, 2007, a San Diego woman named Kelli Roman complained that the company removed photos of her nursing her baby. After Facebook refused to change its policy, she started the protest group on the site that Ms. Muir and thousands of others joined.
…
Facebook, however, is standing by its position. Only photos that contain a “fully exposed breast” – which Facebook defines as a picture showing the nipple or areola – are removed, the company said in an e-mail.

Facebook said it takes no action against the “vast majority” of breastfeeding photos, as long as they do not contravene the site’s terms of use.

This is hilarious and great. There’s no question this protest is over a matter of principle, so you just gotta love the humans.

Now, although breast feeding is all well and good (and in fact offers dramatic health and cognitive benefits for the person being breast fed), I have to say that when you pair the protest with the official Facebook response, quoted above, the situation reveals itself as being amazingly hilarious. Facebook does allow images of mothers breastfeeding so long as they do not show the nipple or areola. So, it’s not an issue of Facebook banning breastfeeding pictures … it’s an issue of Facebook banning pictures that involve both breastfeeding and the good old areola. So, are these women posting pictures of themselves just hanging out topless with a kid about to latch on?

Anyway, good times with humans. I highly recommend reading the article, as it closes with statements from a spokesman from the TopFree Equal Rights Association. Classic!

RTFA: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&sto…

This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML.

RTFA: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/09/french-press-…

This is probably the biggest hoax in the history of Facebook. It happened in France and is one of the most discussed stories in the French blogosphere right now. It all started a few weeks ago with a simple third-party Facebook application that was aimed at designating, every quarter, a new “Facebook Worldwide president”. A young 28 year-old French man by the name of Arash Derambarsh decided to run for the presidency believing this was a real election (or faking to believe) and started to invite his friends and even created an official program: stimulate tolerance across religions, fight illiteracy, and promote French culture worldwide. Until then, there was nothing really worth talking about.
But here is the crunch: Arash landed at the top of the application and became “president” (for the record, during the first session the application had been installed 140k+ times and the “candidate” received officially 9k+ votes..). He used that information and got some coverage with French media that started to report the news and really believed that a French man had become the new worldwide president of Facebook without even taking the time to validate the facts or understanding what this title implied.

Eh hehehe hehe

RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/facebook-ad…

Have you used Facebook to give a shout-out to businesses you like? Best make sure your profile picture catches your best side, because you might be an unwitting star in those businesses’ next Facebook ad campaigns.

In November 2007, the Palo Alto, California-based social network announced a highly targeted advertising platform, called Facebook Ads, at a splashy media event in New York. Since the platform’s release, most of the focus has been on a feature called Beacon, which informs people in your Facebook network about what you’re doing on affiliated third-party sites. For example, if you buy tickets to a new flick on Fandango, your buddies will find out which movie you saw through a line in their Facebook news feed. Privacy advocates, lead by political organization MoveOn.org, cried foul, leading Facebook to curtail its Beacon program and add the ability to opt out of the service.

Almost overlooked in the Beacon hubbub were the new display advertisements dubbed “Social Ads.” These ads, bought by participating businesses, insert your name and profile picture directly into their pitches. Based on anecdotal evidence, the ads started to roll out right before the holidays.

According to Facebook, a user has to take a “social action” in order to trigger the appearance of their name and picture in an advertisement. According to Facebook spokesperson Brandee Barker, that could be almost any activity that the user does on Facebook, “such as the download of an application and the acceptance of a friend request.” It could also include becoming a “fan” of a business by clicking a link on that company’s Facebook page.