This week on Facebook

Facebook Mail Facelift

You may be one of the lucky ones to get the new Facebook inbox. They’ve been testing out a more easily navigable interface by rolling it out to a few thousand users at a time. TechCrunch believes they’re trying to make Facebook mail competitive with heavy hitters like Yahoo! and gMail.

Huffington Post Integrates Facebook Connect

You can now use your Facebook identity to log in to Huffington Post, see what your friends are reading and share stories you like with your friends. Arianna Huffington announced the integration through Facebook’s blog.

Try it at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/. The signup process is not very intuitive, and I haven’t found it particularly useful yet, but it’s a very interesting experiment. Expect more publishers to start adding similar functionality.

This week on Twitter

FCC Launches Twitter Account

Follow them at @fccdotgov. They got 1,200 followers within 24 hours of launching and have received quite a few mentions throughout the Twittersphere, largely due to Internet users’ vested interest in broadband and mobile phone policies.

Twitter to Provide Location Data on a Tweet by Tweet Basis

From the Twitter Blog:

We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

Exciting!

This week elsewhere

Army Using Wikimedia

The NY Times reports:

In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life.

Looking forward to seeing how this works. Wikimedia is a great piece of software, and we’ll be looking for case studies to find out how the Army is training personnel to use it.

MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock

Adrian Holovaty announced it on the EveryBlock blog. By way of background, Holovaty is something of a genius hybrid journalist and programmer. He worked at the Washington Post before starting EveryBlock which is described as:

EveryBlock is a new experiment in online journalism, offering a news feed for every city block in 15 cities. Enter any address, neighborhood or ZIP code in those cities, and the site shows you recent public records, news articles and other Web content that’s geographically relevant to you. To our knowledge, it’s the most granular approach to local news ever attempted.

A very ambitious project. We’re glad to see it getting some attention and funding.

The Latest Mobile 311 app iBurgh

We’ll eventually stop covering these kinds of tools, but here’s a quick writeup on Pittsburgh’s newest iPhone app: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/17/iburgh-complaint-department-for-iphone-gets-to-the-heart-of-city/

Described by city councilman Bill Peduto as “the first mobile application for city government,” the app lets iPhone owners snap a picture of their favorite eyesore or attractive nuisance, attach a quick note, and send the geotagged information to the city’s 311 operators.

Editor’s Note

We hope you’ve noticed how common it is for organizations to make large announcements through simple blog posts. Press releases still have their place, but a conversational blog post is becoming the de facto way for online organizations to make big announcements.