Web sites can ask users for their Facebook user name and password, instead of creating an identity verification system themselves, and offer their users the ability to import their list of friends from Facebook.

For a long time business has had the need to keep a master list of all their people.  The term used is a directory, most directories now standardize and a format called LDAP.  While there are different flavors (Microsoft has Active Directory, Apple has Open Directory) there is a core standard for many other programs to be able to “look people up” in the company directory for everything from email passwords to printer access.

It looks like Facebook would like to be “THE” directory for social networks.  That is, it wants to be (and is well on its way) to becoming your authoritative reference for “whose friends with who”.  I don’t know whether such a connection is a one time transfer, or if there is more dynamic syncing.  It will be interesting to see if other companies fight this.  Clearly there are a lot of application developers that would like to just focus on the feature, and not recreate the network, and for them this will be a boon.  I still think its spooky to have any one company be THE reference for social networking, but Facebook seems to be heading that direction.

Phillips convincingly demonstrates that the real unemployment rate in the United States is between 9 and 12 percent, not the 5 percent or less that is officially claimed. The real rate of inflation is not 2 or 3 percent, but instead, between 7 and 10 percent. And real economic growth has been about 1 percent, not the 3-4 percent officially claimed during the most recent Wall Street and housing bubble that has burst.

This seems like stuff that is hard to prove absolutely, but I can certainly understand the political motivation behind such fudging.

First - There is an issue of the latency in large production quantities of both raw materials and finished goods.  Dow Chemical may make a batch resin, that then is made into luggage.  Each of these is made in relatively large production runs, then may be bought in large shipments.  Each of these steps adds a certain amount of time buffer.  Here is a quote from the above article

Costco’s profit was up in the first quarter, but James D. Sinegal, the chief executive, says he is “starting to be confronted with unprecedented price increases” for the merchandise that Costco buys to stock its stores. His first response has been to buy in extra large quantities so that he has stock on hand to carry him through subsequent price increases.

“We just made a big purchase of Tumi luggage,” Mr. Sinegal said.

So the 138 barrel oil prices are just making their way into some of the raw chemical materials now, they may take months before these higher prices reach the inventory of the luggage maker, and it may be months more before Costco has to buy another big shipment of the now much more expensive luggage.  We may watch oil prices hour by hour, or day by day - but the impact many highly processed complex products can lag quite a bit.

Second and perhaps a bigger issue is that companies, under the general impression that oil prices will be going back down, and in a highly competitive retail market, have decided to not pass on many of the energy cost increases, but instead have taken the hit in their own profits.  As profits were high at the start of the recent run up in oil prices, they could afford to be a buffer - but as oil prices stay high, and profits continue to shrink, they will have to pass on these higher energy costs.

Since last spring, the average profits of the nation’s corporations — from behemoths like Goodyear to small neighborhood retailers — have declined at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent, government data show.

If this rate continues, companies will HAVE to pass on the higher costs to maintain any profit, and then inflation, which has been hidden by this buffering has the potential to slam hard - on top of continued job cuts and decreased corporate profits (read stock prices), and the housing decline etc etc.  I guess you could label me a bear.

So if you are standing on a street, what exactly is the point of being able to pan around and see what is right in front of you on your phone?  Now maybe around the corner is cool - but the compass part of that would only confuse you I think.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.