Iraqi Shoe Thrower to be Released Early for Good Behavior

Iraqi Shoe Thrower to be Released Early for Good Behavior: "The journalist had thrown his shoes at Bush in a press conference. Bush was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic: 'This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.'

Facebook's iPhone update paves the way for apps

Facebook's iPhone update paves the way for apps: "The social network's latest iPhone application update sure does make it feel like an app launcher of its own. Are Facebook apps making their way to the popular handset?"

Gimp 2.7 Beta Improves Text Editing, Streamlines Saving [Beta Beat]

Gimp 2.7 Beta Improves Text Editing, Streamlines Saving [Beta Beat]: "

Windows/Linux: Look ahead to what's being baked into open-source image editor GIMP's 2.7 with an early beta release. The developers tell you right in the installation process that it's 'unstable,' and even make you promise with a checkbox not to bug them if things go wrong. Still, if you're eager to see smoother, intuitive text editing, a streamlined saving and exporting process (no more warnings about 'flattened' JPEGs!), and other improvements and small features, you can grab a Windows installer from FileHippo or grab source code for Linux building at GIMP's FTP servers. [via Download Squad]

Head to head: Snow Leopard vs Windows 7

Head to head: Snow Leopard vs Windows 7: "Head to head: Snow Leopard vs Windows 7 Our definitive verdict - should you be upgrading your OS?

"

5 Most Popular iPhone Navigation Apps Compared Head-to-Head

http://www.ismashphone.com/images/5-most-popular-iphone-turn-by-turn-navigation-apps-review.png

A handy chart that compares the five most popular apps for the IPhone for turn by turn navigation. Any real user feedback, please post replies.

MIKE REMEMBERS TED KENNEDY FOR THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Ted Kennedy failed to match brothers’ legacies, but forged own flawed future

BY MIKE BARNICLE

Wednesday, August 26th 2009, 6:30 PM

He died on a soft summer night, at home in Hyannis Port, a few days after a storm, the edge of another hurricane, ripped the waters of Nantucket Sound, turning the sky an angry gray.

But now, on the day after he died, the air was clear and there was only the heat of the August sun beating down on the boat, the Mya, that Ted Kennedy so often took to sea, seeking comfort from the past and refuge from the illness now ravaging his system.

Some months before he died, he sat on the porch of the big, white clapboard house he shared with his wife, Vicki, his dogs and his memories - the Hyannis Port house both a home and a museum containing the story of seven decades in the life of one man and a single country.

“When you’re out on the ocean,” I asked, “do you ever see your brothers?”

“Sure, all the time, all the time,” he answered, his voice a whisper. “There’s not a day I don’t think of them. This is where we all grew up.”

And this is where it came to an end, the long dynastic thread woven through world wars, politics, scandal and redemption.

At 77, Edward Moore Kennedy was a man who learned to live with his flaws, his failures and a prematurely ordained future that never was and, after 1969, could never be.

He was the most Irish of four brothers, had the loudest laugh and the biggest voice. He was familiar with pain, emotional and physical. He was sentimental, given to song, poetry and painting. His own hand-painted watercolors adorn the walls of his house.

He suffered greatly from self-inflicted wounds - Chappaquiddick, an affinity for alcohol - as well as the weight of constant expectation that he would, could, might rise and eventually take the White House.

But disruptions caused by the hand of two different gunmen in two different American cities altered him forever, detoured him from the family dream, pushed him to live without a calendar, measuring his days and hours by the whim of a fate he knew he could never truly control.

He became, Kennedy did, a religious man, often attending early Mass with his wife at Our Lady of Victory in Centerville on Cape Cod, knowing that his Catholic faith was rooted in forgiveness.

It is easy to consider how Ted Kennedy might have approached the Lord:

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been - What? - Three weeks? Three years? Three decades? - since my last confession.”

And his penance, if you will, was to serve as a surrogate for three dead brothers and the cargo of lost and wounded children left in the wake of war and assassination; to lose and immerse himself in the freedom of being a legislator rather than be shackled by a myth or become a political vessel for others driven by dreams of dynasty.

He carried his Cross through all the decades, carried it with honor and nobility. He heard every slur, each slander, lost his only quest for the Oval Office and emerged from defeat with a deeper knowledge of who he was and what was meant to be: a life lived in the United States Senate, to negotiate, deal and fight for laws that simply changed how we lived.

Now, the house by the sea, a place once filled with high hopes and even higher ambition, is quiet. And last night’s dusk arrived with a brutal truth: This man who came through the fire of life, scarred but whole, is silent forever, while the fog of memory, seven decades deep, becomes legend on the summer wind.

PS3 Slims selling early, selling out quickly

PS3 Slims selling early, selling out quickly: "Even though the system isn't supposed to start selling to customers until the first week of September, many retail outlets are already putting the PS3 Slim on store shelves."

Xbox 360 Elite drops to $299, loses HD cables

Xbox 360 Elite drops to $299, loses HD cables: "After weeks of rumors, Microsoft's finally confirmed it--the Xbox 360 Elite is dropping to $299. But that's not all that's getting dropped..."

Facebook 3.0 for iPhone pours on the features

Facebook 3.0 for iPhone pours on the features: "The third major edition of Facebook for iPhone pours on a heap of new features, many of them focused on friends and photos. Get a glance of what's in store."

Xbox Live's Twitter and Facebook free for Gold, for trial by Silver members

Xbox Live's Twitter and Facebook free for Gold, for trial by Silver members: "

Always read the fine print. Part of a footnote from this morning's Xbox 360 price cut press release bore this little oh-by-the-way: 'Xbox Live Gold Membership will be required for Twitter and Facebook when they are available.' When MCV followed up on the tucked-away tidbit, a Microsoft spokesperson suggested that the press release's statement was 'inaccurate' and that the company was 'still formulating its plans' for integrating the social networking services into Xbox Live. A few short hours later, those plans appear to be formulated.

A Microsoft representative has clarified to Joystiq, 'Facebook and Twitter on Xbox Live will be free to Gold members, with a free trial period also available for Silver members.' Specific details on what's included in the trial are not currently available, but clearly Microsoft is continuing its policy to reward Gold subscribers for their, well, subscriptions, despite what must be a tempting motivation to make Twitter and Facebook free-for-all features. Social networking's the killer app, after all -- and Microsoft could use some new ammo in the console war.

Gallery: Facebook / Twitter on Xbox 360

Xbox Live's Twitter and Facebook free for Gold, for trial by Silver members originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments"

North American PS3 Slim ad campaign 'Does Everything'

North American PS3 Slim ad campaign 'Does Everything': "While definitely not as unsettling as the Japanese 'Play Face' advertising campaign, or as costly as the £82 million European marketing push, the recently revealed PS3 Slim ad campaign for North America possesses something unique for the world of video game promotion -- actual humor. PlayStation.Blog revealed the first two television spots for the western hemisphere's 'It Only Does Everything' campaign. The first, featuring a startling Jonah Hill lookalike, is posted above. The second is embedded after the jump.

We'd like to extend a big round of applause to Sony's marketing team. Congrats guys! You've finally managed to market Sony's gaming hardware in a manner that makes a freaking lick of sense.

Continue reading North American PS3 Slim ad campaign 'Does Everything'

Top 10 Cat Quirks: Animal Planet

Top 10 Cat Quirks: Animal Planet: "Cats are loving and intelligent pets that can display some strange behaviors. Check out the top 10 cat quirks to see if your kitty's weird behavior is actually normal!

"

Is Craigslist really a mess?

Is Craigslist really a mess?: "An excoriation of Craigslist and its principles by Wired suggests the site is some weird cultish embarrassment. However, what does the fact that it is so successful say about us?"

UPS drops ALL Fox advertising, Not Just Glenn Beck!! Updated

UPS drops ALL Fox advertising, Not Just Glenn Beck!! Updated: "Rich Hallabran, spokesman for UPS Stores, said today he has not only temporarily halted buying ads on the Glenn Beck Show but also on the Fox News Channel altogether as reported by AP Television writer David Bauder"

Start Saving Now. Its Not Going To Be Cheap

Analyst Predicts Apple Will Offer Television Set by 2011: "'A senior analyst at Piper Jaffray predicts that the company will enter the television market by the year 2011 with “an Apple-branded television set with digital video recording and home media functions (music, movies, games, interactive TV) built-in.” "

10 Firefox Add-ons To Find Friends On Social Networks

10 Firefox Add-ons To Find Friends On Social Networks: "

It is a strange irony that a wall message, a tweet or a scrap sounds sweeter than a chime of a doorbell. Call it the social networking phenomenon. We have all been touched by it and for me, at least personally, social networking has proved to be a succor (not sucker!) in trying times. And in happy times too as I have managed to reach out and connect with long lost friends and make new ones across the globe.

If you take stock of your own friends list you will surely find that at least half of them have come through the lost and found power of social networks. And if you take stock again, you will find that our online habitat is mostly a few of these social networking sites and of course, the omnipresent browser.

What I would do without the browser and those little byte sized Firefox add-ons which make it a whole lot richer. Using Firefox outfitted with the right “find friends” add-ons, I can home in any of the social networking sites and hobnob with fellow groupies.

So let’s head over to the Mozilla Add-ons gallery and see what’s in store for us who like to schmooze over bandwidths.

Firefox Super Search

It’s like a master list…a who’s who of search engines. The add-on installs as a toolbar. There are 160 of them with almost 70 that can be used from the toolbar itself. The layout is categorized into different types of searches. So after using it a few times one shouldn’t have a problem dropping down to the right search engine.

Though not specifically for ‘searching friends’, there are a lots of them which help you hunt for them over the net. There are basically two ways to search – blue icons mark the ones you can use directly from the toolbar; green icons are the directory lists for which the shortcut is given in the add-on.

The list of searches is long and varied – reverse lookups, social search, people search, public records search et al. apart from generic web searches.

BuddyFetch

Buddyfetch is an experimental “find friends” Firefox add-on that searches across many social networks IMs and dating sites. It gets added as an additional search engine in the search engine bar. You can search for buddies based on common interests, gender, age, language or location. Use the filters and single or combination keywords to find people after your own heart.

LinkedIn

This one is for the serious guy, not for the tween, the teen or the tweet. LinkedIn is the world’s most popular social network for the professional. If you are one among the 45 million members from a cross-section of 150 industries then you are sure to find a likeminded friend or contact here. The Firefox search add-on makes the job a tad easier by adding a search engine to the Firefox search bar. Not very impressive but its simple functionality lets you search from the bar.

You can also keep an eye open for the updated version of the LinkedIn Companion for Firefox which doesn’t seem to be working for Firefox 3.5x yet.

Facebook Toolbar

The Facebook toolbar brings the social networking site and your circle of friends to your browser. The toolbar lets you do your thing like search and connect with friends, receive notifications and share content. You can set your status via the toolbar and get the same of your friends. Upload photos and quick link to all areas of Facebook. If you spend most of your time poking and defacing your friends walls then this one is for you.

Friendbar

This add-on is less about finding a friend but more about keeping them. Though the add-on installs at a slightly hefty 1MB, it offers real time benefits for the Facebook and Twitter buffs. The interface almost resembles a media player with streaming real time updates (photo and text) of activities in the two social sites.

To complete the effect there’s a play-pause button too. You can post, tweet and reply from the toolbar. Instant TinyURLs makes sending interesting links easy as a tweet. The settings panel lets you configure the Twitter update frequency and other sundries like the look and the scrolling style.

FireStatus

This very unobtrusive experimental add-on lets you send status updates, notes and URL links synchronously to multiple social networks and services, like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Delicious and identi.ca. It also displays updates from them in notification pop-ups, for real-time communication with friends. It installs near the status bar and a right click on the icon opens up all its features.

PeekYou Status Bar

Yes, this one is almost the web equivalent from the peek-a-boo game we have all played as kids. This is a search engine enhancement as it shows the people behind the search results. That is the guy who is associated with the site.

According to the developers it works with most of the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com, and Clutsy.com. The add-on installs as a status bar and updates the info with each site that’s loaded on that page. Clicking on the small profile pics next to the search results or the bar takes it to another detailed info page.

It looks like a work in progress as numerous well known blogging names were not displayed. You can also check out profile listings from the homepage of PeekYou where you can search by name, location and tag.

Identify

This add-on also does a similar ‘unmasking’ job as the last one. Identify though goes one step ahead and collates together available profile info on the man behind a website or blog from many different sources and lists the other social sites where he can be found. All it takes are two keystrokes once a page loads – On Windows it’s Alt – i. Of course, expect hits and misses so do double check the info always.

Kutano

If friendships are forged around common interests then a browser add-on like Kutano is a big help. Kutano basically connects the webpage you are browsing to the comments it’s generating in Twitter-space. This add-on won’t get your old friends but will certainly help make a few new ones. Kutano opens up on a sidebar and lists all tweets and discussions on related to that site/page…whether it’s good or bad. Kutano lets you respond and start discussions yourself. You can share the discussions in Facebook and MySpace with a click.

Yoono

I won’t say too much about Yoono as Wez has shown in detail how to Stay Socially Connected Online With Yoono . Suffice to say that this add-on acts like a central command center for social connectedness. Connect with your buddies on social networks and on IMs like Google Talk Yahoo, MSN or AIM. After log-in you can start searching for friends who are on Yoono by using an address book of Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or AOL, or simply by their Yoono username.

These ten Firefox add-ons are not only about searching for friends old and new using the power of social networking. They are also add-ons which make social networking more seamless by bringing together the different services under a common umbrella. They also underscore the one universal fact – it’s easier to make friends than it is to keep them. Let’s hope these add-ons add to the heart that beats for a friend.

Has your social connectedness hinged around any of these add-ons?

Image Credit: Striatic

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"

Get the facts about the stability and security you get from health insurance reform | Health Insurance Reform Reality Check

Get the facts about the stability and security you get from health insurance reform | Health Insurance Reform Reality Check

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New Rule from Bill M

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-smart-president_b_253996.html

1st Football Game In Cowboy Stadium on Largest HDTV Screen

http://gizmodo.com/5333374/first-football-game-in-cowboys-stadium-played-on-worlds-largest-hdtv

How bout them HI-DEF Cowboys!