Disqus is currently installed here on The Broad Brush and other blogs I run. I settled on it a good while back and it’s generally been good to the blog and the commenters.

Their team has released a new version in beta. I’m a fool, so I’ve installed it in place of the current release. So far it appears it didn’t eat the old comments. Let’s let it rip.

What do I want from you? Even the smallest comment you feel up to leaving. It’s easy. There is no registration required or you can sign in with  your Twitter or Facebook or other IDs.

Say anything, leave a cryptic code, include a link or three. Try to break it if you’re up to it. Oh, and leave a video comment if you’re brave.

Cheers to Disqus.

So you’ve read that you can enjoy Mafia Wars missions and more in Cuba. But you might not have known that properties is a whole new ball game. Gone is Mafia Mike’s place; now we have plantations, factories, and fields.

The Zynga team has this to say:

Each Cuban business can be purchased once and produces crates of a particular product every 3 hours. Once the crates are produced, they will be stored in your warehouse, ready to be sold for a profit.

Also, this bit of information as well:

Your Cuban businesses can be upgraded in the following ways:

Quality (5 levels) – your business will produce a higher quality product every three hours, allowing you to sell each crate for more pesos; quality upgrades cost twice as much as quantity and capacity upgrades.
Capacity (10 levels) – your business can store a larger quantity of crates in the warehouse.
Output (10 levels) – your business will produce more crates every 3 hours.
Remember to come back often to sell off your crates and maximize your profit!

It’s going to be fun and it’s becoming more about resource management, ala Civ and Sim City, than just about knocking over jewelry stores. There are still missions though and some of them are an interesting take on Cuban crime, such as ransacking a local plantation.

I’m pumped about the new features and will keep you posted.

Please share any goodies, tips, and tricks here or on Facebook.

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Zynga opens up Cuba and the hunt is on. Cuba is open for beta today. It’s only available to a portion of the regular players, but now you can turn your muscle South and enjoy a hand rolled cigar along the way.

Cuba opens today with a new set of jobs, and a new set of rules. Who knew but that corruption is everywhere in Cuba, especially if you’re on the wrong side of the law. Each job has a corruption tax or bribe amount required. It’s based on what items are required for the job

Speaking of items, there’s a whole new set in Cuba. New armor, weapons and vehicles will be found and available for purchase. Interestingly though, combat includes the best of both worlds by allow the items from New York and Cuba.

You don’t get stuck in Cuba either.

The plane ride is even free. So jump back and forth to play. One small problem…. you only have one energy pool to share between the both.

An important note, your cash doesn’t transfer between the two locales. Another note is the minimum level here in Cuba is 35. Sadly the first job you can do is robbing a cab driver.

I’d love to hear about your Cuban Mafia Wars experiences.
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     Nope, I’m not talking about knitting!  Twine is a new social aggregation site and now there’s a twine for St. Louis.

     So what’s a twine exactly?  A twine is a collection of items about something.  Vague? Yeah. Once a twine is started on a subject, say St. Louis, Twine users can add things such as bookmarks, documents, notes, images and video under it.  As time goes, the collection will grow.

     Users become members of individual twines.  Members can add more items to that subject’s twine as well as commenting on already added content.  Members can also share items, such as bookmarks, with their contacts, or other twines.

     Diversity in what can be shared on a subject sets this apart from a wiki.  Instead of just links, actual descriptions and previews of those links are available, as well as member comments about those links.  And it’s not just links. The ability to add documents and video contributes to that diversity.

     Beyond diversity though is the ease of contribution.  Members can contribute by adding a Twine bookmarklet, posting on the twine page, or sending an email in.

     Twine content is enjoys another benefit.  It’s able to be searched for the instant it’s entered. That’d be pretty interesting on its own, but Twine take it up a notch.  They find key words in the content.

     A great example is on the St. Louis Twine page.  I added the Missouri Botanical Garden website to the twine.  It not only picked up the tags from the entry, but also recognized that Henry Shaw is a relevant person.  The Botanical Garden was actually founded by Henry Shaw. Amazing.

     Will people really find this useful? I’m imagining that the more people have access and get involved, the better a twine will be.  There are already twines with hundreds of members and even more links and items.

     So now you’re ready to get involved but you need an invite.  I can help you there.  Just drop me line with your email address and mention Twine and I’ll send you one.  Once you’re in, invite your friends.  You receive plenty of invites to pass on.

     See you on Twine!

Dan Farber, CNET News,  brings us the scoop here. He’s found out that Flickr Video Beta should debut next month.

Will Flickr Video replace Yahoo Video?

“Flickr Video will not replace Yahoo Video, unlike Yahoo Photos, which was folded into Flickr. The audience for Flickr is different, Kakul Srivastava, director of product management at Flickr, told me. She used the term “authenticity” to convey the esprit de corps of the Flickr photo community, which numbers more than 23 million contributors.”

I’m excited about the Flickr Video Beta even if it replaced Yahoo Video and/or competed with YouTube.  If Yahoo can bring the same ease of use and community that Flickr Photo has, then they’ll be on the right track.

Let’s keep our eyes open on this one folks, and if you snag an invite before me, be sure to share.

I’m tojosan on Flickr.