Good article in the New York times on how Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web- which is an example of how we don’t necessarily need more Social Networks as much as we need a way to call Social Network information into every site experience, according to the article.

While there really should end up being just a few repositories of the data – instead of a zillion networks, Facebook is the closest to realizing a cloud that can touch most sites:

MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.   I think that’s a good thing, at least, for now.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

Just wondering if it makes sense to do one thing Google wants vs. another?  I mean, there’s a new tool Google released 2 weeks ago that tells you all the keyword phases you could advertise on connected with a theme, that you are letting money on the table, by not advertising these words (which is good for Google).

On the other hand, assuming I did not advertise but just took the time to create meaninful content on these keyword phrases, maybe I’d get the traffic, except I would have to really streach what I’m writing about and maybe make up stuff I really don’t know very much about.

And I think that would be doing a disservice.

Or I could go and work on the Google Search Wiki for the keyword phases a care about and make sure I comment all over the place and make sure people know my point of view – and get traffic that way.

I would opt for the latter over the former – as this is the future of Search and is more honest and transparent, in my opinion.

I’m pretty proud that I went to Aix last year, to see Cezanne‘s mountain – as I promised to do.  This is one of the results of that trip.

My video footage and voiceovers are going to be used to annotate one of Paul Cezzane’s greatest paintings – Sous Bous – at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

I’ve been glowing about it for the last two weeks, and I got the first message about it on my birthday, November 9th.  While I’d like to go back to Aix (maybe next Spring, with Marsha Wooley‘s Denver Art class – if she goes next year) – I decided to not go to LeWeb3 08 this year – even though I’ll be there in heart – because what I really wanted to see was more of Cezanne’s mountain.

Of course, it always helps to go with friends.  Anyway – here are the videos from my Paris and Aix Trip in June 2007 that attracted the attention that lead to this.

And here was my first day in Aix -