What's wrong with this ad?

I just noticed this ad in the sidebar on Facebook:

I read the title and was very excited for a moment, but then I looked more closely at the picture and my excitement turned to "HUH?!?"

I do love the shoes (a friend of mine just got a pair which I was drooling over) but..."Captain America Approved"???

Announcing: Mary's Ramble Annex

I've been a bit frustrated lately. I've had this mental argument with myself going on for some time about what to do with links I want to share, but don't necessarily want to write an entire post about. I sometimes share those on Twitter, sometimes on Facebook, sometimes I just hit "Share" in Google Reader which puts them on a public page at my Google Profile, as well as posting them to Google Buzz (where I never seem to go anymore, sadly) and the list of those ends up on the "Recently Read" page here (which will probably go away soon). None of these options are very satisfying, though. I'm basically just handing the links off to someone else to handle. They are shared in someone else's format, difficult-to-impossible to edit, and difficult to find again later. 

I've often thought about just sharing the links on Mary's Ramble, but there are nights I want to share EVERYTHING I see, and I really don't want to fill up someone's RSS feed, Twitter stream, or Facebook wall with a ton of trivial stuff. That's not what I feel like people have signed up for when they follow this blog. I'd like to keep MR, as much as possible, for the times when I have something of my own to share.

I've often thought about starting a Tumblr blog (or something from a similar service), but every time I almost set one up, I decided it really wasn't what I wanted. 

At last, I decided to create Mary's Ramble Annex. That way, if you're not interested in the five things I read when I couldn't sleep last night, you don't have to be annoyed by it in the feed from the main blog. But if you are interested, you can click through once in awhile, or subscribe, or whatever, knowing that it's likely to be high-volume and low-commentary.

We'll see how it works, or if it works. 

When farmers play Farmville...

via GoComics

Personally, I just tell myself I'm playing a game called Interlibrary Loan...it's really exciting. Really. Trust me.

Heh...

A chuckle for you at the end of the day:

Facebook Photos Help to Incriminate Bigamist: "A word of caution to any would-be bigamists who may be reading this: If you’re posting photos of your second wedding to Facebook, you might want to make sure your first wife can’t see them."

Facebook Facepalm: I'm going to go cry into my huge pillow now

Update: Spammers have now jumped in, so it's gone from funny hoax to actual scam: WARNING: Don’t Click On ‘Facebook Will Shut Down’

The other night, I came across a link claiming that Facebook is closing down on March 15. Since it was in the Weekly World News, and since I'm such a big fan of So I Married An Axe Murderer, I couldn't resist posting the link along with a reference to the Weekly World News Garth Brooks Juice Diet.

If you're not familiar with the movie, here's a clip. The relevant bits are at 2:00 min. for the juice diet reference and at about 3:25 min. for the discussion of "The Paper."


My brother was the only one to reply to my Facebook post and he obviously got the joke. However, Tuesday I was horrified to hear on Net@Night (the link may not work until the episode is posted) that many people thought the story was true!

Huh? Who were these people? Maybe Charlie Mackenzie's parents aren't so unusual. Since I didn't see any of my friends post this on Facebook, I hope I can rest assured that they're all smarter than the average user. (Good for you, friends!)

However, if you know any of those gullible people, you can point them to this informative video which may make them feel a little better:


(via cnet)

Friday Fun: Social Network parodies

The Social Network comes out next week. I listened to the audiobook of The Accidental Billionaires (the book the movie is based on), and I have to admit although the book was interesting, I'm not sure how compelling a movie it can be. I fear endless montages of dramatic typing, but I've heard good things so far. I'm sure I'll see the movie, I'm just not sure whether I'll shell out the money for the theater or wait for it on video.

As soon as a full-length trailer came out earlier this summer, parodies started cropping up, recounting the "histories" of other social media companies.

First, the official trailer for The Social Network:




And now, the parodies. Trust me, they're worth sitting through. :)

Twitter...



YouTube...



...and MySpace

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip


Are you planning to see The Social Network? Would you rather see any of these other movies instead (or as well)?

A good tip. Make note of it:

Do Not Post Pictures of Strippers on the Hood of Your Cop Car on Facebook: "It's a tale as old as time whenever Facebook was invented. Officials from the Moncks Corner, South Carolina police department won't release the name of their boundary-deficient police officer, but offer that he is an officer no longer." (via Gawker)

Whoops.

There's that saying "To err is human, to really foul things up you need a computer." These days, as long as you have a camera phone, you can even skip the computer.

via TWiL on FriendFeed

I do not "Like!" (with 70% less tin foil hats)

Last week Facebook rolled out its new Open Graph (seen as the new Facebook "Like" button across the web). I'm the Queen of Oversharing on the web (maybe in frequency rather than depth) but I don't feel comfortable with Open Graph.

Last night, I wrote a fairly snarky "Put on your tin foil hats!" kind of post, but this morning I found a post by Valeria Maltoni which says basically what I wanted to but in a much more level-headed way, and she links to most of the sites I was going to. So, here it is: Five Reactions Around the Web on Facebook Announcements

Once you've read through all that, if you want to know how to opt out, Mashable has a step-by-step tutorial. For now, I've opted out. We'll see what the future brings.

Unfortunately, there isn't another social media site quite like Facebook out there. It's allowed me to reconnect with friends and family I haven't seen in years, and that's hard to walk away from. So, I won't be going as far as deleting my account, but I will be keeping a weather eye on Facebook's horizon.

Update: This doesn't mean I won't "like" stuff you post directly on Facebook - that's a horse of a different color. I just won't be using the button on sites outside of Facebook.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/pong/ / CC BY 2.0

Friday Fun: Facebook Electronic Friendship Generator

Will you choose the Red Pill?

I had no idea today was the 10th anniversary of The Matrix until I logged in to FriendFeed this morning and discovered this:



So cool.

I've been playing around on FriendFeed for awhile. I can see it becoming a great tool for me, though at the moment I only have one real-life friend on there. The rest of the people I interact with or just "follow" are very techie people like Robert Scoble (as my friend said, "Well, he's everywhere") or innovative librarians like David Lee King. It'd be great to see how FriendFeed would work with more of my real-life friends on there.

I've tried explaining FriendFeed to people before, and I always end up saying it's like Facebook, but without all the pokes and pirates and ninjas, which I know a lot of people like, but I'm just not into those things. I stay on Facebook because people I know are there, but FriendFeed seems to do a better job of encouraging conversation (Isn't that what social media is about?) over throwing a drink at your friend. If we're going to have drinks, let's get together in real life and have drinks. Those virtual ones just don't do it for me.

If you decide to choose the red pill, er, I mean give FriendFeed a try, come on over and subscribe to me once you've signed up.

And now I think I'll go watch The Matrix...again.