If Facebook and social media are good for nothing else they're good for making the stupid of the stupid really rise to the top.

Example No. 5,873 of this can be observed over on the New York Times' Facebook Page. The Times posted a few old photos of Mario Cuomo in the New York Governor's Mansion as part of a story detailing his son Andrew Cuomo's rise to the mansion.

One of the photos is of the elder Cuomo surrounded by bagels and eating a waffle for breakfast. A UK-based 'fan' of the New York Times comments "an American eating donuts for breakfast, why am I not surprised?"

What ensues is ... well ... just take a look below. (I particularly like the Facebook users' insistence that the everything bagel is covered with 'sprinkles.')

So what did I take out of Halloween 2010: My wife is a wizard with the glue gun.

Carolyn's 'milk and cookies' costumes for the boys were the hit of Port Royal, SC, and quickly are becoming a viral sensation on Facebook and Twitter.

When I first posted a shot of the boys to Twitter last night I got a lot of praise for how creative I was.

Well let me put this in no uncertain terms: This was all Carolyn!

Leading up to Halloween I joked around that we were The Cleavers, you know with the homemade costumes and all. But it's true, we really are probably as close as you can get these days to the all-American family, and I adore my bride for doing all that she does so that we can be that.

Maybe next year the boys will be ice cream and apple pie. 

If you're my friend on Facebook you may have caught wind of this already, but here's my beef with Hagray. Flickr user daviddmuir

I just received my AppleTV in the mail (review to come soon) and started the process of upping my home Internet speed. So I called Hargray and asked what it would take to go from 3 mbps to 5 mbps.

Well after a short and Abbot and Costello-esque conversation with the customer service rep I realized that Hargray offers a minimum of 5 mbps these days, a change that was made since I became a subscriber. But they'll only up you to 5 mbps from the 3 mbps if you call and ask. 

What's up with that?

So in this day and age when customer service is job 1 (oh, by the way, Hargray doesn't answer questions posted to its Twitter account) and people are looking for ways to save money, Hargray has decided to pull the wool over the eyes of this customer; a customer who already was thinking about either getting rid of cable altogether or switching from Hargray. 

Really!?

One of the most annoying things is that it doesn't auto-refresh and offer a true live stream but instead requires me to click to update.

As long as Tweetdeck remains a free service I'll probably stick with that on the PC and Droid. 

I won't get into all of the ins and outs of the #NewTwitter, but something I've found as it was rolled out to me this morning that was not covered with the official Twitter announcement (at least not that I saw) is that the new layout drastically narrows the rails and subsequently eliminates a large portion of the area that was open to a custom background.

The rails are so narrow that designing anything worthwhile in those sections will be very difficult and really not of much use.

Before

After 

It’s that combination of watching people pick over the shelves like a pack of vultures while also offering their sympathy to the soon-to-be defunct business owner.

Ramp up the sadness that much more when it’s a bookstore that’s closing.

And ramp it up even a little more when that bookstore has been open 30+ years.

Bay Street Trading Company can’t be more than 1,000 square feet, but I circled its outer walls at least five times this afternoon as the store took its last gasps of air: a 75% off sale.

I, like so many others, was searching for that find, that book I just couldn’t live without. Ultimately it wasn’t there, which is probably why Bay Street Trading Company is going out of business in the first place.

It’s owner told the local newspaper that “It's definitely due to the economy.”

Yeah, it’s that, but maybe it’s also due to our shorter attention spans and our waning dependence on the printed word, which is what I meant when I said that "find" just wasn't there. As one customer in the store with me today said: “It’s because of all of those electronic pad reader things and websites.”

Yes, the electronic pad reader things (read as the internet) already have signaled the death knell for our newspaper industry, and now are claiming one of our last bastions of culture and the home of original geekdom: our bookstores.

So I'm working on a business card that I would use for consulting work, and I'm wondering what social media/chat usernames to include on it.

I obviously am including my phone number, email address and Twitter account. 

But what else?

Should I include my Facebook page? My Skype handle? My Google Talk name?

What do you have on your card?

I’m not going to really get into the workings of that, there are enough resources out there that can explain it better than I.

Here are some links:

http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/facebook-places-guide/

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-places-privacy-2010-08

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6450/Facebook-Places-Launches-Allows-Businesses-To-Check-In.aspx 

Instead, I want to discuss how those in social media are being asked, and forced, to plan for what they can’t see.

Very excited about the release of the beta version of Tweetdeck for Android today.

I've been using Twidroyd on my Verizon Incredible to manage all of my Twitter accounts and have been semi pleased with it. Had considered paying for the Hootsuite for Android app, but am glad I waited to see what Tweetdeck comes up with.

I'll be sure to hop all over this release today and shoot a review up here ASAP.

You can read about the changes at All Facebook or at Facebook's Developer Blog.

The biggest change is that custom tabs now will be narrowed to 520 pixels. So all of you admins out there will have to go back and tweak your images and tabs. The changes will take effect the week of Aug. 23, but currently are in preview mode for page admins.

That being said, at least Facebook gave some notice this time.

A few months back Facebook tweaked the maximum pixel width for custom tabs without giving admins notice, leaving many pages with blank landing tabs. (well they sorta gave notice but not to the extent that they're doing now. Live and learn I suppose) The outcry from that led Facebook to go back to its 760 pixel width.

But what you haven't seen is this embarrassing Philly-based anchor for Fox News who feels the need to stretch the word "rope" out for way too long.

Check it out. You don't have to wait long, it's right at the 4-second mark:

Since I feel I somehow have to tie this post into social media, apparently a Facebook 'liger' page was started for this flight attendant yesterday, and he's already got more than 27,000 people following.

Check it out here.