Amid all the initiatives in which Internet companies are supposed to make friends with each other—such as Facebook’s Platform and Google’s rival OpenSocial initiative—the announcement today by MySpace may well be the most useful to ordinary people and thus the most important.
MySpace has created a series of handy tools that solve real problems. Well, they are real to the extent that anything involving socializing through a keyboard and screen is real. Never mind that MySpace calls all this its “data availability initiative.”
The first problem it solves is how every site wants users to create a profile—a page with your picture, your favorite TV shows and what you ate for lunch. Lots of people want to have online profiles—that desire helped attract many of MySpace’s 117 million users. But fewer people really want to re-type and update profiles all over the Web.
So MySpace created an easy way to zap the information from your MySpace profile onto the profiles of other sites. Sign up for Twitter—the microblogging service that has obsessed a hardcore slice of Silicon Valley—and you can pull in the photo on your MySpace profile rather than uploading a new photo. One neat trick is that any time you update your photo or other information on MySpace it will instantly be updated on the sites on which you placed the data.
The service won’t be turned on for a few weeks, so we can’t see it yet. But from the way it is described, the privacy issues are handled in a straightforward way. Data is only moved from MySpace when you authorize it. MySpace will give users control over what data is given to whom. And users can cut off the exchange of information at any time. (MySpace says that sites that participate will have to promise not to keep any of the photos and other information they display, but I’m not sure how they can enforce that.)

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Users of Facebook will start seeing the site’s new chat feature showing up in their browsers starting today, the company has announced.
According to a blog post by Facebook’s Josh Wiseman, users won’t have to install anything or set up a buddy list. Once chat is turned on for your account (Facebook is rolling it out over the next day or two), all of your Facebook contacts will be accessible via the tiny app. Also, news from your Mini-Feed and notifications from your installed apps will show up interspersed with your chat conversations in real time.
Like the rest of Facebook’s features, chat will launch without you having to sign up for it, and the Mini-Feed headlines will be incorporated by default. According to Wiseman, you can turn off the option to see your Mini-Feed within chat in the privacy settings. You can also collapse chat windows and temporarily disable chats by changing your chat status to "offline."
As far as I can tell after searching the site and digging through all of my settings, the chat feature can’t be removed — it’s just part of the Facebook experience now. Along with pokes, status updates and the rest of the "who’s doing what" noise. And of course, as soon as you log in to the site, your friends will see you pop up in their chat contacts list so they can immediately start asking you questions about Lost or basketball or what you ate for lunch.
Here’s a suggestion: open, standard-based access to my Facebook contacts through the client of my choosing — like Google Talk, which took Google’s Chat application out of the browser. I like the idea of having instant, real time access to my Facebook friends, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on Facebook. Also, I may want to log into Facebook without having to deal with incoming chats — or the threat of them — at all. But it’s not likely, since Facebook has been rather open about its intention to make the site the hub of our online social lives. The reason they launched chat is to keep people using Facebook for longer periods of time. Why off-load one of the stickiest features yet?

blog.wired.com

Happy Easter, West Tennessee, and happy fourth day of spring.
This is a tad better than last Easter Sunday on April 8 when folks attending sunrise church services had to deal with record-low temperatures in the low 20s. It warmed up to the 50s during the day, but the wind was still a bit nippy for the kiddies hunting eggs outside.
With a morning low of about 32 today and a high of about 55, Easter will still be on the cool side this year. But there’s nothing like the warmth you feel on this special day if you celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
For many, Easter is the first family gathering of the year. That, of course, means favorite foods in abundance.
At my mother-in-law’s house after church, her clan will be treated to ham, potato casserole, deviled eggs, fruit salad and other goodies, including a new recipe for a rich chocolate cake. I’ve been thinking about that for three days.
After enjoying that “buffet” and a quick nap, the plan is to motor over to my mama’s house in Middle Tennessee. Most of her company will have gone home by then, but the dinner-table leftovers will be waiting. They include a chicken casserole with rice, corn pudding, steamed veggies, spiced peaches and a cherry-pink salad. Aunt Buck will bring her famous potato salad, and Aunt Fluff will provide chess pies.
If a family meal isn’t on your schedule but you’re up for a special Easter treat, you might consider taking a drive to an area Tennessee State Park restaurant for its Easter buffet. Selections and prices vary, but they all start serving at 11 a.m. and continue until closing. Prices do not include drinks.
West Tennessee parks serving the buffet are Paris Landing State Park ($14.95) outside Paris (731-642-4311), Pickwick

jacksonsun.com