Did you know that Nick O’Neill was busted for marijuana possession? Granted, it wasn’t the same Nick O’Neill that runs this blog, and it took place in 1982, the year this site’s Nick O’Neill was born. But if you were looking for information on this particular Nick O’Neill, wouldn’t that be good information to know?

A new Facebook app called TrueScoop digs up the dirt on anyone you can think of. It’s a free service, so you can probably guess that you’re restricted to the information that’s available via public records across the U.S.
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That was quick. Five days after making the decision to block Facebook from legislative computers in the state of Maryland, the head of the assembly’s information technology office announced that he will reopen access to Facebook, likely by the end of the week.

Why the quick turnaround? The office ban of Facebook’s social networking site brought on protests from lawmakers, reports The Washington Post. The protesters expressed a strong enough need to utilize Facebook for work purposes, but it was a fear of spreading viruses that led Maryland’s General Assembly to block both Facebook and MySpace in the first place.
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What’s in a name? A whole lot. And when your surname is Kills The Enemy, you’re swiftly reminded of that when Facebook swiftly deactivates your account. 28-year-old Parmelee Kills The Enemy had to send Facebook scanned copies of a government identification document to prove her real last name after the social networking site deactivated her profile, according to KX Net.

A Native American, Parmelee’s name is a hot topic for Facebook, social networking users and advocates. Nebraska journalism student Nancy Kelsey wrote a news story about Parmelee’s issue with Facebook, even going so far as to create a Facebook group called “Facebook: don’t discriminate against Native surnames!!” The group already has 1,000 users, and highlights ongoing issues automated systems have for individual scenarios.
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Gift Creator is a new application on Facebook that lets you create your own gifting application. It works much like the Quiz Creator applications that gained popularity last year, and there is in fact a quiz creator option within the Gift Creator app. It’s easier to use than the Gift Creator option, and doesn’t require any additional downloads.

The Gift Creator option, however, will require that you install The Facebook Developer App, since you are effectively creating an application that acts almost autonomously within the Facebook platform. You won’t need any programming skills in order to complete the application or the installation. All you need to create a gifting app is a title, a description and an image. Each image you upload represents a single gift. Facebook users can send this gift to their friends.
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Forget Tweetups. A Facebook flash mob in a London train station became overwhelmingly popular last Friday when a user identifying himself only as Crazzy Eve posted an event on the social network, reports CNN. Modeled after a successful T-Mobile commercial showing hundreds of people dancing to music at the Liverpool Street Station, the sudden outburst at the strike of 11:00 am took commuters and bystanders by surprise. T-Mobile’s motto at the end of the commercial? “Life is for sharing.”

The message from the mobile service provider was so inspiring that Crazzy Eve took it upon himself to create an event on Facebook, where the dancing crowd was so large that many commuters couldn’t even get to their trains. The event was only scheduled for 15 minutes, and organizer Crazzy Eve left after then, for fear that the crowd was in fact too large and he would get in trouble by the police. But it appears that the even remained non-violent and good-humored until the end, with no need for police interjection.
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Are social networks to blame for viruses running on company computers? The Maryland General Assembly has completely blocked social networks Facebook and MySpace from the computers of state legislators and their staffs, citing an increase in viruses and malware that are affecting the computers of the Maryland General Assembly, according to New Line. Michael Gaudiello, who is the Office of Legislative Information Systems Director, sent out a memorandum telling the staff of the new 2009 policy.

It seems a bit strange that the social networks themselves are to blame for malware, but the memo states that weeks of analysis concludes that many of the infecting programs are originating from pages hosted on Facebook and MySpace. So to decrease the number of viruses affecting the machines of the Maryland General Assembly facilities, both Facebook and MySpace have simply been blocked all together.
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Application publisher Slide is teaming up with Katalyst Media, the original content production company co-founded by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg. The partnership will involve exclusive distribution of the production company’s new series through Slide FunSpace, called KatalystHQ. This show offers a behind the scenes look at the inner workings of Kutcher’s production company. What’s most notable about this new deal is its exclusive partnership between Katalyst Media and Slide FunSpace, which is among the top five Facebook applications (see stats here).

That also makes KatalystHQ the firs sponsored web series to premier on Facebook (watch it here). While there doesn’t appear to be any direct partnerships with Facebook for this deal, it is interesting to see how third party applications within asocial network can build a brand and a business around their products.
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Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps has made a statement on his Facebook fan page apologizing for a photograph that shows Phelps smoking marijuana at a college party. At least Phelps is being proactive about the situation, given his celebrity status as an athlete. Perhaps he’s taken cues from other athletes that have had to deal with a number of different drug-related situations–the public tends to be more forgiving when a celebrity is forthcoming from the start.

The Facebook fan page post from Phelps reads as follows:

“I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23-years-old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public - it will not happen again.“

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We all have skeletons in our closet, but we don’t typically expect those skeletons to emerge and make millions of dollars for other people. It can be a scary situation to face, and if you’ve spent a considerable amount of time building a reputation around a pristine image, then compromising that image isn’t really an option.

That’s part of Valleywag’s conjectured reasoning for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having finally made some sort of amends with Eduardo Saverin. A fellow classmate at Harverd, Saverin has had an ongoing feud with Zuckerberg, maintaining that he’s a co-founder of Facebook and deserved some recognition. Now that Ben Mezrich, best-selling author of “Bringing Down the House,” is working on a book detailing the ugly side of Facebook’s beginnings, perhaps Zuckerberg is hoping that settling the score with Saverin will minimalize the amount of material he could have otherwise provided for Mezrich’s upcoming book.
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If you thought Facebook birthday notifications were helpful reminders of your friends’ big day, then you’ll love the new feature Facebook added today. You can now send a virtual birthday gift to your friends up to seven days in advance of their actual (listed) birthday. Facebook is offering two options for the new early birthday gift delivery: directly from your friend’s wall or via Facebook birthday e-mail reminders, which contain a direct link to send your friend an early birthday gift.
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