Facebook Facechange Coming Soon

Facebook is coming with a new redesign of its member profile interface in June.

The goal behind the update is to reduce profile clutter. Facebook is known for it's clean layout, which many of its members value over the often cluttered MySpace profile pages.

Facebook has grown to about 70 million members and developers have created over 25,000 applications for the site. Member profiles have become very busy with comments, graphics, lists, alerts and the like. And this even though Facebook members have limited ability to alter things like fonts and colors.

The redesign will attempt to unclutter the profiles by redistributing their components to different tabs. The new plan calls for four main tabs—for the activity feed, basic member information, photos and applications. Members will be able to add more application tabs.




The activity feed tab will feature a new authoring control panel, called the Publisher Box, for creating and posting content. Meanwhile, the profile will have at the top a new horizontal navigation line with drop-down menus for its core features.

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

All that's needed to join Facebook is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.

[Video] U.S. tourist drugged, killed by train in Rome

In the News, May 25 2008

AP photo

Memorial Day, 2008. President Bush will lay a wreath at Arlington Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns for one last time today on Memorial Day.

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Soldiers are treated to High Rollin' Weekend.
A few dozen fellow soldiers took a private jet to Las Vegas over the weekend for an all-expenses-paid getaway with all the perks normally saved for casinos' richest regulars.

They were greeted at the airport by Wayne Newton, chilled backstage with the guys from Blue Man Group and hobnobbed with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who runs Las Vegas Sands Corp. and paid for the trip.

The trip, organized by the Armed Forces Foundation, brought 40 wounded soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md., to the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Armed Forces Foundation officials said the trip was a dream distraction from the everyday life at the hospitals, where the soldiers lived while recovering from their injuries.

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We salute out oldest living Veteran on Memorial Day.

AP Photo: Frank Buckles poses for a photo as he tours the National World War I Museum.
Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last known living American-born veteran of World War I, was honored Sunday at the Liberty Memorial during Memorial Day weekend celebrations. The 107-year-old veteran said at a ceremony to unveil his portrait which was hung in the main hallway of the National World War I Museum. Buckles toured the museum for the first time, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States presented him with a gold medal of merit.

Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the "war to end all wars" in April 1917.
He was rejected by the Marines and the Navy, but eventually persuaded an Army captain he was 18 and enlisted, convincing him Missouri didn't keep public records of birth.

Buckles sailed for England in 1917 on the Carpathia, which is known for its rescue of Titanic survivors, and spent his tour of duty working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk in Germany and France. He rose to the rank of corporal and after Armistice Day he helped return prisoners of war to Germany.Buckles later traveled the world working for the shipping company White Star Line and was in the Philippines in 1940 when the Japanese invaded. He became a prisoner of war for nearly three years.

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"Indiana Jones" hits it big this weekend

Harrison Ford stars in Paramount Pictures' "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The fourth installment of the epic saga "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," grossed an estimated $101 million from Friday to Sunday, plus $25 million from its opening Thursday, distributor Paramount Pictures said. The company expects it to earn another $25 million on Monday.

BOX OFFICE TOP 10

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," $101 million.
2. "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," $23 million.
3. "Iron Man," $20.1 million.
4. "What Happens in Vegas," $9 million.
5. "Speed Racer," $4 million.
6. "Made of Honor," $3.4 million.
7. "Baby Mama," $3.3 million.
8. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," $1.7 million.
9. "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay," $900,000.
10. "The Visitor," $800,000.

"'Indiana Jones' did incredibly well for a film that comes 19 years after the previous installment," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of tracking firm Media By Numbers LLC.


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More Storms Hit the Plains.
Powerful storms packing large hail, heavy rain and tornadoes made for a deadly Memorial Day weekend across the nation's midsection, killing at least seven people in Iowa and a 2-year-old child in Minnesota.

This old barn stands in a wheat field as a sever thunderstorm passes in the distance near Ogallah, Kan., Thursday, May 22, 2008. Severe thunderstorms dropped tornadoes across much of northwest Kansas.

Phoenix Mission to Mars

Phoenix has landed on Mars.
In an attempt to uncover clues to the geologic history and biological potential of the Martian arctic, Phoenix will return data from either polar region providing an important contribution to the research on Mars. "Follow the Water" and will be instrumental in achieving the four science goals of NASA's long-term Mars Exploration Program.

--Determine whether Life ever arose on Mars

--Characterize the Climate of Mars

--Characterize the Geology of Mars

--Prepare for Human Exploration

The Phoenix Mission has two bold objectives to support these goals, which are to (1) study the history of water in the Martian arctic and (2) search for evidence of a habitable zone and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary.

The first pictures, which the lander began taking shortly after touching down near Mars' north pole -- the end of a 422 million-mile trek -- showed a pattern of brown polygons as far as the camera could see. The landing on the Red Planet's arctic plains -- which ended a 296-day journey -- was right on target, a feat NASA's Ed Weiler compared to landing a hole-in-one with a golf ball from 10,000 miles. The Phoenix's 90-day mission is to analyze the soils and permafrost of Mars' arctic tundra for signs of past or present life.The lander is equipped with a robotic arm capable of scooping up ice and dirt to look for organic evidence that life once existed there, or even exists now.

The lander took a photo of the ground's polygonal pattern, similar to icy ground in the arctic regions of Earth.SA's Mars Phoenix Lander began sending photos of the planet's surface on the first day of its three-month mission "to taste and sniff the northern polar site's soil and ice," the space agency said.

"We are not going to be able to answer the final question of is there life on Mars," said Smith, an optical scientist with the University of Arizona. "We will take the next important step. We'll find out if there's organic material associated with this ice in the polar regions. Ice is a preserver, and if there ever were organics on Mars and they got into that ice, they will still be there today."

		NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm