Yahoo has launched a downloadable tool to put your MyYahoo on your desktop.

Check out the product pitch:

- Choose from over 250,000 RSS feeds covering virtually everything on the Web

- Use your existing My Yahoo! settings to track your stocks, news, and weather

- Search the Web using Yahoo! Search directly from your desktop

Interesting. The battle for your desktop real estate will take many forms. I’m guessing that the use of RSS for news and stock information is just an early hook. People will include their photos from Yahoo photos, etc?

I made a brief reference to this earlier, but now I’ve got the picture to prove it. Among the (very) amateur photographers working the Inauguration on Thursday was none other than Jeb Bush (or as I like to call him, Pro Tem). That seems fine. But take a look at Jeb’s choice of gear to cover this momentus event.

It’s a friggin disposable.

A funny thing happened on the way to freeing the world forever from the grip of tyrants and dictators…

I heard a few pundits and presidential historians describe the President’ inaugural address as radical. It was really only radical when one compares it to W’s actual actions and demeanor during his first term.

Take a look at this outtake:

America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies. We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people.

America’s belief in human dignity will guide our policies. Yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators. They are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.

I’ve got to admit, this is pretty much how I think our government should behave. And it’s not altruism. Like the President’s speech writers, I do believe that a liberated world is a safer world.

One of the words that President Bush didn’t utter during his speech was Iraq. And yet, the speech can easily be read as an explanation for our actions related to that country.

But that is not how the war was sold. And we never had a public debate about whether or not the spread of freedom by way of an optional war is the way we want to move forward.

Once the dust had cleared, freeing the Iraqi people was the last in a long list of war marketing messages that was left standing.

And what of all of the other countries who have little respect for human rights? It seems to me that our treatment of foreign governments over the past four years has been much more closely tied to their support of W’s use of military force than to their internal treatment of their own citizens.

So I liked parts of the speech. But I’m not too sure that the direction W has taken us gets us any closer to the vision he described.

I wonder if his speech writers ever plan to run for office?

There are those who believe that gay people are born gay. There are others who argue that people choose to be gay or become gay at some point.

Then there are those who know the truth. Gay people are gay because they watch SpongeBob SquarePants.

US conservative groups are up in arms over a music video featuring children’s TV heroes such as the cheerful cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

Focus on the Family and other groups say the video – a remake of the Sister Sledge hit, We Are Family – is a vehicle for pro-gay propaganda.

If they were joking it would seem pretty funny.

Since I wrote about TiVo’s strange hestitation to use the web as a marketing tool yesterday, I’ve talked to a couple of people at a major portal and a big media site. Both indicated that they approached TiVo with an offer to put “TiVo This” buttons on their various television listings. Yet no deal got done.

Don’t get me wrong here. I love TiVo. I think it is the greatest consumer electronics device I have ever used. But I just can’t understand how these incredible marketing opportunities could’ve been missed (or more accurately: actively dismissed).

A Brazilian woman has given birth to a seventeen pound baby.

At least someone out there in the world is more uncomfortable than John Kerry and the rest of the Dems are today.

Strangest inauguration moment: Jeb Bush was taking photos with a little disposable camera. If this is really a dynasty, can someone hook these guys up with a couple of D70s or something?

On this day, we should all be reminded that the inauguration of a president is truly a glorious moment in American life and it is time for us all to put differences aside, lock arms and celebrate the swearing in of President Bush as one, united country.

I should probably mention that the folks at Ketchum gave me a couple hundred grand to write that.