Peon's Place

The Madden Curse. We’re familiar. We’re aware.

Congratulations Saints, but I hope you have a backup quarterback ready to go.

If I was Drew, perhaps I would have said “Uhm, yeah, thanks guys.. I appreciate it. But I’ll pass. Go hit up Jared Allen, we don’t want to play the Vikings anyhow.”

Take a look at the past Madden NFL cover athletes, and their fate that year.

Troy Polamalu injured his posterior cruciate ligament

Brett Favre admitted to suffering a torn biceps injury

Vince Young sustained a knee injury which put him out of the game; he didn’t start again for the rest of the year

Shaun Alexander sustained a foot injury that caused him to miss six starts

Donovan Mcnabb tore the ACL and meniscus in his right knee

Ray Lewis had his season cut short in week 15 with a wrist injury

Michael Vick broke his leg in pre-season and missed the first 12 games

Marshall Faulk underwent reconstructive knee surgery and retired

I’m sure you’ve noticed the past few days, fellow Facebookers. I pointed it out several days ago when “become a fan of” turned into “Like”, and now many other things are shifting as well. It’s not just social networking anymore; it’s social domination.

Soon, everything you do on the Web may integrate with the “social graph” Facebook has created. Facebook is integrating user experiences on external sites with Facebook’s news feed, effectively transforming what used to be a solitary browsing experience into a sprawling network of connectivity. It’s big, it’s ambitious, and it may very well change the way we use the Internet.

Facebook is evolving, something that was made clear at this week’s f8 conference. Here are three developments that were highlighted there:

• Social plug-ins: essentially the Facebook’s “like” button splashed all over the Internet.
• Open Graph: the evolution of yesteryear’s Facebook Connect, a feature that simplified sharing the joys of the Internet on your news feed.
• Open Graph API (application programming interface): designed to allow Facebook and participating sites to blend their respective user “social graphs” to customize their site experience for each individual visitor.

Congrats Drew, I knew you could do it. Ever since I had you as my Quarterback two fantasy football seasons ago, and then picked half of your offensive players last season to take me to an 11-2 season.

Congrats on the Superbowl ring too, champ!

Brees won out over Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen and Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne in EA Sports’ first fan voting campaign to choose the cover athlete.

The game is due Aug. 10 for PlayStation 3, XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, PS2 and PSP, as well as the iPhone and other mobile phones.