I am totally into Facebook.

I think that it has the potential to change things as much as Google has done. And after all, we are now really the Google generation, aren't we? A generation that is outside of age based demography and is more about memetics. A group of people who are always on....

But Facebook is beyond this again. And if you haven't tried it, you really should. There are definitely some annoying features - like the constant barrage of new apps. And that wears thin very fast.

But some of the applications are super cool. And really add value. One of them is the Facebook bookmarklet which you can add to your Firefox browser and kind of makes blogging redundant in some respects. It enables you with one click to add a reference to a web page/story to your facebook profile, which in turn means that all your friends get to see it, and that leads them to comment.... Much more viral than a blog which requires someone to actually come and visit you and your writing.

Then there is the Blog Friends application, and the more I see of it in action, the more I like it. I think it is still relatively small in terms of its distribution across the Face at present, but this application really has some serious potential. It presents a really fast access to your friends' blogs and their friends' blogs and means that you get a kind of randomized RSS feed of content, opinion and information that is really valuable...

I have been in touch with the CEO of Brain Bakery, the UK company that developed Blog Friends, and he seems like a really smart and visionary guy. I hope he and the company do well from Blog Friends. This sort of application, if applied to conventional news feeds, could be totally awesome.

Worth joining Facebook just to experience this stuff. Facebook and applications like the ones I have mentioned are going to absolutely change the face of media over the next few years.

We are at the beginning of the golden age of accelerated meme transfer.

Amazing to see how many key people in the White House have quit. Now it is Gonzales.

Since politicians and those around them really do seem to develop hides like elephants, with well honed lines like "core and non-core promises" designed to rationalize why certain promises wont be kept in the face of public opinion being very firmly against them, you have to figure when lots of people quit, it is not just the malaise of the home straight of the term of office. No one likes to give up power.

But over the last couple of weeks we have seen Karl Rove go, together with Tony Snow - both very high profile players. Now the AG.

One only wonders what secrets lie beneath.

And if that is the case, how much politicians in Australia have been pulled into the maelstrom. I doubt that we will ever find out...

Kevin Rudd is on Facebook. So is John Howard.

Kevin has so many friends he has hit the Facebook limit....

John Howard has..... well, check it out here.... Is this a case of identity theft?

Next week Rachel Slattery is putting on an event about blogging next week.

I will be talking on the panel. It is called "Blogging is as Useful as Talkback Radio".

Not sure I agree with that.... Personally I think it is more useful....!

But then I am biased.

If you want to find out about the event. click here.

I have loved Garrison Keilor's writing for years.... both in the books that he written and his epic presentations on The Prairie Home Companion.

Here is a piece he wrote about Karl Rove. It is called "No Wonder They Call Him Turd Blossom". (That of course was Bush's name for Rove).

Here is a bit of it:

Here is an article I came across written by an American now living in Japan.

Its well worth reading.... especially if you are an American!

As a long time visitor to the US - going every month or so on business up until the middle of last year, and now going a couple of times a year, I now have relatively little desire to go there except to do my business and then get out.

And it concerns me that Australia is going down the same road, and almost as fast. Morally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt, with the war in Iraq being the lynch pin that is pulling down the economy of the US and through it, the rest of the world....

And did you see that video of Dick Cheney in 1994 talking about why the US didnt stick around in Iraq when the previous Bush was pres. Because it would have been a quagmire, he said.... Funny about that, isn't it?

Here it is courtesy of YouTube.

Here is an article I came across written by an American now living in Japan.

Its well worth reading.... especially if you are an American!

As a long time visitor to the US - going every month or so on business up until the middle of last year, and now going a couple of times a year, I now have relatively little desire to go there except to do my business and then get out.

And it concerns me that Australia is going down the same road, and almost as fast. Morally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt, with the war in Iraq being the lynch pin that is pulling down the economy of the US and through it, the rest of the world....

And did you see that video of Dick Cheney in 1994 talking about why the US didnt stick around in Iraq when the previous Bush was pres. Because it would have been a quagmire, he said.... Funny about that, isn't it?

Here it is courtesy of YouTube.

Story from The Independant in the UK about the demonstrations at Heathrow:

Very good reading!

Here is an excerpt from the article written by Johan Hari:

he press coverage has howled about "bomb plots" and "anarchists" and "eco-fundamentalists" - so as they watched the Heathrow protest against Weather of Mass Destruction erupt this weekend, many ordinary people will be asking: why?

Why are so many people so disturbed by the idea of a third runway at Heathrow that they are prepared to scale buildings and face down the police to protest against it? In the late 1960s, a pair of psychologists called John Darley and Bibb Latané conducted an experiment that helps to explain what the protesters are trying desperately to do. The subject of the experiment - let's call her Linda - was taken to the top of a tall building and put in a room with three other people. She was introduced to the others as more random people were plucked off the street, and they were all told to fill in a questionnaire before the test began. The room then began to fill with thick black smoke.

Linda didn't know the other three people were actors who had been told not to react to the smoke in any way. What Darley and Latané discovered about human nature in the experiment was extraordinary. Linda would look at the smoke and try to make anxious eye contact with the others - but when she saw they were carrying on as normal, so did she. No matter how many times they ran the experiment, only when Linda - or any of the dozens of other subjects - could barely breathe would she stand up, interrupt the others, and say: "There's a fire!"

We are, collectively, sitting in that smoke-filled room, carrying on as if nothing is wrong. The hottest years on record have all happened in the past 20 years. Hurricanes have doubled in intensity since the 1970s. Half of Bangladesh is under water now, today. The Arctic ice is disappearing even faster than climate scientists feared. Well, everyone else is carrying on as if it's normal. Keep your head down, keep filling in the questionnaire; it will all be OK.

Building a third runway at Heathrow is one extreme symptom of this carry-on-the-smoke's-not-there mindset. The science shows unequivocally that every airport is a minor act of ecocide, and every flight helps to send the planet's climate spiralling a little bit further into chaos.

Video tools are moving fast. Making movies which mash up a range of sources and create a very new, very believable reality are here. What's real or not will be the hard question now. It used to be TV was reliable because you saw it; no longer. Maybe trust devolves to brands or names you can absolutely rely on. That's hard. Even the BBC is troubled this year admitting to a string of errors and issues. Perhaps, reputation becomes the critical thing in a world where everyone can create content. The new opening for media organizations?