In The Beginning - Just Curiosity

Excerpt from An Independent Call the amusing story of a New Hampshire McCain supporter.

In the beginning I just thought I’d go see the different candidates at the campaign events in New Hampshire. Four years prior, not long after I moved to New Hampshire from Massachusetts, my sister was volunteering for Senator Kerry’s campaign. She’s a loyal and active Democrat; our parents are Republicans. We talked on the phone after the Iowa caucuses when Howard Dean screamed during his concession speech. She hadn’t heard it called the ‘I have a Scream Speech’ yet, and I said that I felt for him. I figured if I were in politics that would be the sort of thing that would take me out. It wouldn’t be scandal or corruption; I’d simply do something so embarrassing that no one would take me seriously again.

My sister told of a news clip she had just seen of a woman who had met Senator Kerry, then fainted. The video looked like a shot from the Wizard of Oz with Senator Kerry standing over a pair of feet. I was starting to realize that I had missed quite a show by not attending Primary events, so I simply thought this time it would be interesting to see. I certainly had no plans of picking a candidate early, and no interest in joining a campaign. I thought it might give me something to write about on my website, but basically I was just curious.

Friend Connect Challenges MyBlogLog

From etech.eweek.com Google Opens Up Social Networking

While many site providers have been intrigued by the idea of adding social networking capabilities, for the most part efforts in this area have been unsuccessful. This is mainly due to the fact that the last thing most people want to do is join yet another social network, especially one that is tied to a specific Web site.

But this week may see a big change in the ability of Web sites to add social networking capabilities. Both Google and Facebook released services that make it possible for Web sites to easily add social networking features that don't require visitors to join a brand-new social network.

For the last couple of days I've had the chance to test out the beta of Google Friend Connect. Google Friend Connect lets any Web site operator easily add functionality to a site that lets visitors join the site, see other users of the site, and participate in social networking activities such as commenting on and rating content.

From a strict feature standpoint, there isn't much in Google Friend Connect that seems all that new. In fact, Yahoo's MyBlogLog service has been providing similar capabilities for some time now.

However, what makes the Google Friend Connect service stand out is its extreme openness and its potential for near-unlimited extensibility. That's because, rather than using proprietary technology, Google Friend Connect heavily leverages open technologies such as OpenID, OpenSocial and OAuth.