Some house­keep­ing: I’ve added a new gadget in the center column of the home page that allows you to inte­grate your Face­book account with dig­i­tal emu­nc­tion. (Click here and scroll down if you don’t see it on the page you’re read­ing.) It’s very easy to use: click the Face­book Con­nect button and follow the instruc­tions that follow it.

What hap­pens if you do? Amaz­ing things, I’m told, includ­ing the grant­ing of unspec­i­fied super powers, the chance to be nom­i­nated as the junior sen­a­tor from Illi­nois, and the deliv­ery, to your home, just in time for Christ­mas, of a cer­ti­fied “Get out of the Reces­sion Free” card that you can use to sell your home or cash out your stock port­fo­lio at early 2007 prices.

Less thrillingly, you’ll be able to cross-​post your com­ments to Face­book, see who’s vis­ited the site recently, and find out who among your Face­book friends has been hang­ing around here. In the future I expect that you’ll be do other things as well, but I can’t promise any­thing. Face­book makes it very easy to con­trol your pref­er­ences for who can see what (check under the Appli­ca­tion Set­tings menu in Facebook).