Kevin Poulsen is reporting on a bug in MySpace that is allowing folks with photos stored in the system to have them viewed by anyone, instead of following the restrictions supposedly set in place by the system requiring a user be friended first.  Of course, this isn’t exactly the best sort of bug to come to light at a time when MySpace is attempting to work with the Attorney Generals of America to make MySpace a safer place, especially for minors.

The glitch emerged last fall, according to Kevin’s report, and has allegedly created a cottage industry of advertising supported pedophilia websites based entirely off stolen photographs from profiles of children under 16.

MySpace representatives haven’t yet commented on the ongoing issue yet, which is surpringly simple to perform (and doesn’t even involve an illegal zone transfer).  Simply enter the standard URL for your photo album, and replace the Friend ID with the Friend ID of the intended target.

It is absolutely ridiculous that a bug like this has survived so long in plain site, as the topic has been talked about first as far back as late last summer on forums, and early fall in the general blogosphere. That it still remains unaddressed with anything other than lipservice further supports my initial reactions to the 49 AG agreement with MySpace.

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MyBlogLog today is rolling out a tiny new feature you’ll likely be noticing on sites that employ the MyBlogLog widget.  They’re calling it their “seal of approval,” and it will tell you that the site owner has gone through a verification procedure, assuring  MyBlogLog, and thus visitors, that they do indeed have write access to the blog featured on the community page.

I had to ponder for a minute to try to grasp the advantage in this.  Presumably, if a widget appears on a web page, it could only get there because the site owner put it there.  Common sense would tend to dictate that there aren’t that many roving bands of hackers roaming the intarwebs breaking into blog servers and installing the MyBlogLog widget.

MyBlogLog says that it is presently just a “visual indicator,” but will eventually be developed to show “higher levels of truthiness” presumably to show how far the site owner has gone to verify site credentials.  Perhaps in the world of eCommerce this is an advantage, but in the world of blogging, credentials and “truthiness” is determined by reporting credibility, in my experience, rather than how many hoops the site author has jumped through.

I’d be interested to learn more about the problem this service is designed to fix, but with the given description from MyBlogLog and accompanying help files, it just isn’t clear to me.

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It’s already 2008, election year, and most of the websites that are covering the elections in some capacity have already begun to do so. So it’s a little late in the game for Truveo, but there’s really no harm done. Things haven’t actually heated up in the political arena nearly as much as they’re about to. The video search engine now owned by AOL is launching a site that aggregates election-related videos from across major television networks, popular user-generated video sites, and from the campaign’s own websites as well. Access the new site here.

The options for the politics-centric site let you favorite certain videos, grab the feed, and filter by each politician. You can also filter results by most viewed for now, yesterday, this week, this month, and all time, as well as the top ranked, most relevant and most popular. You can also filter content by region, or choose to watch only the commentary if you’d like. And while the main site is segregated by Democrats and Republicans, it’s a little more complicated to sift through the video based on its origin.

This may not be important to many people, but I’m personally apt to view videos according to various news sites, blogs or campaigns’ websites. Ask anyone who gives a half a hoot about politics and they’ll be able to tell you that political coverage on NBC News may differ from coverage on FOX News. There are several websites that are being trolled for video contributions as well, including its newest partner ClipSyndicate, meaning the amassing of all this video political coverage is a large work of distributed partnerships indeed.

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Fave Media has just announced funding, to the amount of $1.6 million, from a “variety of private investors,” according to the release. The Chicago-based company has a local search engine called getfave, that has two main areas of interest: its local search and its video results. One major component of getfave is its video advertising capabilities, which is currently powered by Brightcove and lends video search results to those seeking local information.

getfave hasn’t been around for very long: the search engine site launched in October of 2007, and it’s looking to provide targeted search results that connect local businesses and users. Sifting through the results on the site, it’s easily assumed that getfave’s primary source of revenue is the promotion of businesses that utilize video in order to advertise their company. While this doesn’t appear to interfere with your actual searches (meaning you won’t get a video result over a more relevant result simply because it’s a video), there is a pretty large emphasis on the use of videos as a way of advertising one’s business.

This is in part for the sake of the consumer, who can check out the video before calling or visiting a business, and for the business as well. It can be somewhat likened to ads in the Yellow Pages: the bigger you are, the more you stand out. If you have a video ad amongst a long list of text search results, you’ll stand out. Being in Chicago, it was easy for me to really test out the search engine to see if it’s a viable alternative to other local search engines as well as Google. I was surprised by the amount of videos that were actually available throughout the site, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the recent funding goes towards efforts of getting more businesses to post videos on getfave as well.

The main area in which getfave differs from most other local search engines the lack of user-generated data–there are no reviews from neighbors, no rating systems, etc. As a matter of fact, there’s no contextual data either, aside from the basic address/phone number contact info and a map that appears as an expansion option once you click on a result. Nevertheless, getfave is still very new, and will surely put the new funding to good use.

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ESPN has been doing a lot lately. Free games online, citizen journalism, etc. These are all fairly big steps. So what’s next for ESPN? It will be adding coverage for professional video gaming. Does that include SIMS 2? Cos I could be world famous for plot lines that replicate any movie with Joan Crawford or Carey Grant. And I personally find video games far more interesting than watching a poker game on television. I may even find it occasionally more exciting than watching, say, basketball? That’s just me.

Today, ESPN has signed a multi-year agreement with Major League Gaming. See, when you abbreviate it, Major League Gaming becomes MLG. And that rhymes with MLB. So when Stewart Scott starts reporting on what happened in the 2008 Pro Circuit competitions, you won’t even realize that he’s not talking about sports. And I’m pretty hyped about possibly seeing some banter from Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser about the latest round of Gamebattles. Seriously!

Jason Lee Miller over at Web Pro News, riding high on the success of his predictions, even went so far as to make another: by 2011 we’ll see some pay-per-view gaming competitions sponsored by Google’s “surprise entry into the console market, a high tech, lightweight, data-in-the-cloud-driven, Apple collaboration called iGame.” He’s probably right, except for the year. Why not go for a debut at the 2008 Olympics, and make it ad-supported? Before you know it, Toyota Tacomas will actually be available as dragon-slaying weapons in WOW, and both Toyota and IBM will “ideate” together to supplement the costs of Google’s collaboration with Apple’s “iGame.”

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been selected to keynote the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, which takes place March 9th in Austin, TX. While Facebook certainly remains one of the most closely watched companies in the tech scene, one wonders if Zuckerberg is really the exciting and charismatic speaker that you would typically want to kick-off one of the biggest tech conferences of the year. Our readers were decidedly negative on Zuckerberg’s “60 Minutes” appearance last Sunday, with 74% of respondents saying he either performed poorly or was average and lacked charisma (see chart below). Only 6% thought he did excellent.

So, while Zuckerberg may be the most coveted persona in the tech industry right now, he may also put the audience to sleep instead of get them fired up for the boozefest technology showcase. What do you think of the choice? Who would you want to kick-off SXSW?

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Just because I’m the lone “married with kids” guy on staff here at Mashable, everyone automatically expects me to be an expert on Hannah Montana. I find it demeaning and insulting that I be stereotyped in such a way.

Unfortunately, the stereotypes are true. My wife has been following the career of Ms. Montana through the local news reports where tickets to one of the events have sold (amidst great controversy, mind you) for upwards of $3,500 a ticket. My wife marvels at the price, and I thank my lucky stars that I’ve been blessed with male offspring thus far. Quite honestly, while I’m familiar with the details of the craze surrounding Hannah, the motivations behind it have baffled me.

There are very few acts I’d pay over $100 to see, much less $3,500. Fortunately for me, Brad over at UStream has lined up an event with cheapskates like me in mind. This evening, at 5:30 PM PST / 8:30 EST, Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montanna will be walking the Red Carpet for her “Best of Both Worlds” 3-d premier, and UStream will be there to bring it live to the denizens of the Internet. Brad says that they’ll also be taking questions from the chat room for everyone confirmed to appear at the El Capita Theatre in Hollywood, tonight, not just Hannah.

That means if any of your kids are fans of teen stars Jonas Brothers and Ashley Tisdale, they’ll get a chance to talk to them! It won’t be a total snooze-fest for the adults, either, as Jim Belushi, Donny Osmond, Harry Hamlin, Lisa Rinna, Madison Pettis, Rick Fox, Rob Morrow, Tony Plana, and Vanessa Williams have all confirmed their attendance as well.

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Behance Network is a service that Kristen first covered last summer, and is an interesting service created for professional artists to share and work within a helpful and constructive community. They were in attendence this year at the Open Web Awards, and stopped by with guest host for Mashable Conversations, Brad Hunstable of UStream.TV.

This interview is the first in a video series taken by Brad from the Open Web Awards that we’ll be broadcasting here at the blog and in our podcast over the next several days.

The embed is available below, or you can download the MP4 file directly here.

Subscribe to the podcast here.

You can check out Behance here.

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Magnify’s video network was always about sharing, and the new Graphic Share Library is another way in which the network is letting you work with other users for a custom media-centric experience. This new Graphic Share Library is an “open source” approach to enabling themes and other elements to be utilized across all the Mangify members.

It’s a creative sharing space for giving and taking: templates with color themes, graphic backgrounds, icons, and even CSS tweaks will help you better personalize your Magnify network and channels. This is particularly important for those users that would like to integrate the design of their Magnify network into their existing websites as much as possible. Anyone that runs a web-based operation and realizes the benefits of incorporating free, third-party services for added features and context to their own site knows that a simple color choice can throw the whole thing off.

To get things started, Magnify has revealed a Graphics Bonus Pack with 75 different elements, spanning templates and themed channel graphics for things like sports, food, newspapers and politics. These themes include a new navigation icon as well as new “Video Upload” icons and divider graphics. There’s also a new tab for site builders that gives you easy access to the new tools and community sharing options.

Themed websites and applications are nothing new: a very large community has been built around this concept for Wordpress and MySpace, and Mozilla is also quite vested in fueling its designer base for the benefit of all users. Given Magnify’s growing options for integrated use of its service, it’s not surprising to see the video-sharing service go in this direction.

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SellaBand is taking things to the next level, with a concert tour for 2008 and an official announcement of its partnerships. You may recall that SellaBand is a service that lets music fans take a stake in their favorite artists in order to help fund their record. Once enough shares have been purchased ($50,000), then an artist gets to head off to the studio and make an album. A new partnership with The Orchard means that these artists get to work with industry professionals, and take advantage of some marketing know-how.

I discussed at length the SellaBand model when the company announced its partnership with Amazon, which will be selling artists that have reached the threshold and have been able to make an album. More recently, The Orchard has been added to the mix, joining SellaBand’s other partners Amazon and Heineken Netherlands for sponsoring the concert tour.

The partnerships take full effect on January 21, 2008, and the dates for the concert tour have been announced for Rio Grande, NM, Boston, MA, London and Amsterdam. Heineken has in fact renewed its partnership with SellaBand, with some upgrades thrown in there. The beer company will be sponsoring the live events as well as “SellaBand Presents…” which are compilations of top SellaBand acts.

What SellaBand is doing is ramping up its own online marketing potential, which is not only good for the artists, but for the fan shareholders as well. SellaBand has achieved this rather quickly, which is important for adoption rate by users in a very wide sea of online music tools, many of which are heavily reliant on its user base for the promotion of its artists.

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