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In addition to pointing to CNN debunks false report about Obama, I wanted to summarize it. I struggled a bit, but luckily a great new magazine GOOD summed it up well (emphasis mine):

A conservative magazine started a rumor that Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia that taught fundamentalist Islam. Then they falsely sourced Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the tip. This might have been a pretty ingenious campaign smear a few years ago, but these Rove-like tricks don’t seem to work anymore. CNN did some good, old-fashioned journalism and quickly debunked the story. Republican strategists should denounce these tactics if they want any chance in ‘08. The American public is finally wise to it.

Let me reiterate their conclusion: this shady business won’t fly in the ‘08 election cycle.

(If you’re not familiar with GOOD, take a look and consider subscribing (100% of your subscription money goes to an organization of your choice.)

Watch the video demo of photosynth from microsoft’s labs to see what’s possible when the world has zillions of photos of everything. (Hint: you can go inside them in 3D.)

…then you definitely want to install this Firefox extension that seamlessly integrates del.icio.us with Firefox’s internal bookmarking system: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3615/.

Really, it just feels right. It works just how it would if you designed it yourself. Seamless. Flawless. I’ve been bookmarking about 20x more links since I started using this tool. Love it. Install it now.

Notes

• During the installation process be sure to click “sync” to avoid losing your current Firefox bookmarks and links-bar bookmarklets.
• Don’t worry, you can still save private bookmarks by clicking “Do Not Share” during the normal bookmarking process.
• You can still use “keyword search” and navigation keywords, but it’s a bit non-obvious. To create a keyword, save your link, then save it again to see the keywords field show up.

Enjoy!

Heather Champ announced yesterday on the Flickr Blog good news for Flickr users Past, Present, and Future. If you’re an existing regular user, your upload quote rose from 20mb to 100mb. If you’re an existing Pro user, your upload quote rose from 2GB to Infinity. If you’re not a current Flickr user, it just got easier for people to gift accounts to you - and no longer just upgrades to pro.

Thank you Flickr!

I’d never heard of jumpcut.com before, but Yahoo! just acquired them and after playing with it for a few minutes I agree that it’s pretty slick. (Update: In fact, after remixing the video below in less than 30 seconds, I think it’s actually really slick.)

Jumpcut is a video site, but the coolness is their web-based online video editor. With an easy to understand Flash interface you can rearrange and trim clips and add snazzy transitions. Also cool: you can email video from the video camera on your mobile phone to the site. Every video has a “remix” button, that when clicked makes the video you’re watching editable and mixable with your own content or other content on the site.

You can slice and splice the clips. You can import Flickr photos to use in your videos. You can pull in mp3s and audio clips. Title screens are cake.

As with most video players, this one is in Flash and seems to Just Work.

All and all, a pretty cool piece of web-based software.

Update: Jumpcut announced the acquisition with a “Great Combos” video. I remixed it in 30 seconds:

I wouldn’t have guessed it, and most wouldn’t by looking at the trends, but Bambi Francisco at MarketWatch reported a few minutes ago on comScore numbers showing that of the 7.1BB vidoes streamed by 106MM unique people

“Yahoo! [is] the No. 2 most popular video site as measured by video streams. Yahoo ranks No. 1 as measured by unique streamers (similar to unique visitors), but barely beats out MySpace. YouTube ranks No. 3, having generated 649 million video streams in July. … MySpace’s figures do not include YouTube videos viewed on MySpace. The views are only of the site’s own videos viewed either on their property or embedded across the Web on blogs or on distribution partners. So, YouTube’s 649 million video streams count the videos viewed on YouTube as well as blogs that might have embedded a YouTube video.”

Yahoo also has the second-highest streams per streamer at 39.

YouTube streamed 79.9% of Yahoo!’s count, while Google came in 8th with just 7.4% of Yahoo!’s streams (and only 7.9 steams/streamer).

I have no problem admitting that I’ve watched tons of YouTube videos, and, while a much smaller number, I’ve watched many more on Google than Yahoo. I’ve never watched a MySpace video. YouTube’s player Just Works, and that makes all the difference. No matter what happens in the industry shakeout, I am personally grateful to them for making video a reality online.