I’m researching the presence of alumni from my Alma Matter on various online social networks as part of my general interest in improving our alumni association’s effectiveness.

I’m (nominally) on Myspace, FaceBook, Livejournal, Friendster and Tribe, but I’d like to check out Orkut, but I don’t know if I know anyone who is already a member, so I’ll ask here, is there anyone who can set me up with an invite?

A month or so ago I checked out Google Reader and I wasn’t impressed. They recently released an update, so I decided to check it out.

They’ve introduced an expanded River of News style view which shows the full text of each item, which addresses my main objection about not being able to quickly scan new feed items by scrolling through the list. This is a big improvement, but it would be nice if it would show more than 20 items at a time, especially since, in my experience, it takes a noticable amount of time to load the next 20. It does autoload the next 20 as you scroll to the bottom of the page, but it still introduces an irritating little pause in my skimming experience.

The expanded view makes it worth considering, so I’m going to load the OPML reading list from my desktop reader and see how it works for me. I’ll share my impressions here.

Your honor, in the matter of Bush vs Keillor, Attorney General Gonzalez would like to present Exhibit A and moves for immediate execution of the accused for crimes against The President.

Those responsible for Fox News should be rounded up and sent to a secret prison in Syria:

Foley is, of course, a Republican. If he weren’t, do you really think so many members of the republican house leadership would have been pimping for him?

That George Orwell was really onto something.