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Will you use Facebook’s new messaging service?

It’s official.  Soon you’ll be able to adopt your very own “facebook.com” email address.

Facebook announced a new all-in-one messaging tool on Monday, after much speculation that the social networking giant was planning a so-called “Gmail-killer.

But CEO Mark Zuckerberg stressed that his company’s new service offers a whole lot more than just email.  The new tool allows users to send instant and text messages in addition to standard email and Facebook notes, he said.

“This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it,” Zuckerberg told reporters at a press gathering in San Francisco.

Over time, Zuckerberg argued, more and more people will switch from basic email to the integrated, cross-platform mode of communication offered up by Facebook’s new service.  More than 350 million of Facebook’s half-billion users now actively send and receive messages on the website.

Whatever people choose to call it, the new tool offers Facebook users new reasons to spend even more time on the site, posing a potential challenge to popular email platforms such as Google and Yahoo.

Is the recession harder on women?

In 2009, more men are putting an emphasis on stability and security in their job and are looking for a girlfriend as a potential wife, according to the annual Great Male Survey by askmen.com

But how are women fairing in comparison?

Yahoo! Shine asked 19,000 women in the Great Female Survey and found that more women see their career on hold. Fifty-six percent stated that any upward movement in their career is cut off because of the economic crisis while only 24 percent of men saw the same problem.

Asked how their unemployment status had changed recently, 28 percent of women said they had to take a pay cut, pay freeze or lost their job altogether – 10 percent more than their male counterparts.

Looking ahead, women were split on wether the worst of the crisis was behind them, whereas every second man thought it would get better from here on out.

Any light in that tunnel?

Private employers are slashing jobs and the services sector, which powers most of the economy, is in its worst slump ever. “It’s impossible to find any ray of light here,” Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis, Missouri, said of the job losses last month.

With the government working to bail out banks, and possibly automakers, and with a top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama underscoring the need for an economic stimulus package, do you think things will get better and when?

Bailout vote fails: disaster or a vote for the people?

By a vote of 228-to-205 the House of Representatives rejected a compromise plan that would have allowed the Treasury Department to buy up toxic debt from struggling banks. Is the rejection a “complete disaster” or “a vote for the people who did not issue or accept a sub-prime mortgage?” Join the debate in the comments field below.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

It’s become a truism that Americans are driving less due to high fuel prices. Here are five signs that signal a decline in demand:

1. Drop in volume: The fall in U.S. oil demand in the first half of 2008 was the biggest in 26 years, according to the EIA.

2. Less time on the road: Americans are spending less time behind the wheel, according to the Dept. of Transportation

3. Taking the train : A record number of riders are turning to mass transit to get around

4. Fewer buying gas : Retail gas sales have dropped below year-ago levels

5. Safer roads : Fewer drivers mean fewer road accidents, according to Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway is the parent company of Geico, one of the largest U.S. auto insurers.

Is the writing on the wall? Share your signs of dropping oil demand.

Pinching pennies

Times are tough for Americans as their wallets take multiple blows from the housing slump, rising oil and food prices, growing unemployment, inflation fears and recession talk. Many homeowners are facing negative equity, with mortgages bigger than their property’s value.

Even as recently as November, households were going into debt to maintain spending, but new numbers show that Americans are saving at the highest rate since March 1995.

With gasoline prices topping $4 per gallon, fewer Americans will be hitting the road for holidays. Die-hard sports fans are making sacrifices even as they refuse to give up the luxury of going to the game.

What are you sacrificing to make ends meet?

Caption: A vendor sells candy to fans attending the MLB interleague baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs in Chicago June 27, 2008. REUTERS/Frank Polich

from UK News:

Should we have an oath of allegiance?

Lord Goldsmith's suggestion that students swear allegiance to the Queen when they leave school has prompted a fierce reaction.

Civil rights lawyer Baroness Kennedy said the proposal made her groan and described it as a risible and empty gesture.

Teaching union boss John Dunsford of the Association of School and College Leaders told the BBC it was "a half-baked idea that should be left to go mouldy".

Goldsmith says he welcomes the debate, noting that similar cynicism greeted the introduction of citizenship ceremonies for new immigrants in 2004, which he says have been a great success.

He says it is up to the government -- if it accepts his recommendations -- to decide what form that ceremony should take.

But he told BBC radio on Tuesday that he personally favoured students swearing their loyalty to the Queen.

The ceremony would be just one of a number of measures to reverse a "diminishing sense of national pride", which include a national public holiday along the lines of Australia Day.