Photo credit: James Franco/WhoSay

A little over a week ago we noticed that James Franco--currently starring in Oz: The Great and Powerful, an autobiographical look at the actor's life as a con man who lies about his accomplishments and convinces a lot of other people to do work for him so he can take credit for it--had started reading Teddy Wayne's tremendous book about a tween celebrity, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine. Of course, being James Franco (note to James Franco: please title your next movie that), he couldn't just post a picture of himself reading the book, so he added a little puppet friend to help him out.

Now, half a month later, Mr. Franco may have finished the book, but his little buddy hasn't. And now his buddy has his own buddy ... a doll that looks like it came off the set of his other documentary, Kink.

Photo credit: James Franco/WhoSay

It must be great to have all that free time to play dress up with dolls and arrange them in interesting ménages while still somehow managing to support the entire American art industry simply by existing.

Only a few days after Sandy terrorized the Eastern Coast and before droves of generous volunteers began their efforts to rebuild the seaboard, the damage done by the hurricane was visible against the landscapes of the region.

Coney Island, in particular, was littered with refuse from the Atlantic: the remnants of people's homes, lives and everything else that was ripped away from them.

The residents of the community painfully packed their drenched belongings on the sidewalks, mattresses, toys and memories, while the boardwalk with its shuttered storefronts was left largely abandoned.

On Friday, business owners and photographic tourists pounced on the historic beachfront to assess the damage.

Nathan's Famous workers swabbed the sidewalk and packed up dozens of bags of rotten food while intrepid shutterbugs mulled over the broken and beaten objects that lined the shore.

Families traversed the beach, stopping at children's cribs, upturned rowboats and even marooned Jet Skis, to take portraits and document their own experience with the storm.

The New York Observer captured this strange moment before the cleaning truly commenced and long after Sandy had passed to find Coney Island perfectly preserved in a moment of chaos and calm.

The most heavily damaged neighborhood in the city may very well be Breezy Point in Queens, but other parts of the city were underwater too. Click on the image to start a slideshow of photographs of the destruction in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

While The Observer shot a number of photos of the flooding in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn in the height of the storm, other parts of the city were heavily affected as well. In the gallery on the left, you can find a selection of what a few photographers were able to capture during and after the storm.

David Duke and his dog, in happier times. (Photo: YouTube)

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke may hate the Jews, but he sure loved his dog, Torri. When the seventeen-year-old, all-white (naturally!) Maltese died a few months back, Mr. Duke did what any of us would do after the loss of a beloved pet--he filmed a nearly fifteen minute video tribute to the dog and uploaded it to YouTube complete with an emotional folk soundtrack, photos of Torri exploring the great outdoors and musings on the nature of life, death and grief.

Mr. Duke initially made his "Tribute to Torri" private, but he has since relaxed the clip's privacy settings at "the urging of those who met Torri over the last 17 years." We're so glad Mr. Duke chose to share his video, because it's all kinds of incredible. Despite how amazing this video it is, it somehow seems to have escaped the attention of the internet, so we present it to you now. 

"It's been two weeks since Torri died....It still hurts," Mr. Duke explains as the video begins. "Grief actually can be quite wonderful. It heals the soul and it's such a tribute to the spirit that has passed on....I want to express my heart while these feelings flood over me like warm waves. We all, once upon a time long ago, came from the water and the tears that fill our blurry eyes, even against our will, wash us and heal us."

According to Mr. Duke, Torri was an invaluable companion in his crusade against "Zionist-driven Globalism."

"The eternal struggle for our peoples' heritage and our freedom is so hard sometimes. There are so many difficulties on this high, rough road," said Mr. Duke. "Torri would sit by me the countless hours as I wrote books and articles. And it seemed she was always telling me, 'Keep doing your job, I'm doing mine staying by your side.'"

The small dog didn't simply help Mr. Duke by sitting near him. He also credits Torri with being a sounding board as he created his 1998 "masterpiece," My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding, in which he purports to provide "compelling evidence that belief in racial equality is the modern scientific equivalent of believing that the earth is flat."

"She truly helped me write my seven hundred page book My Awakening. She was there to listen to me read aloud what I had just written to make sure it had the rhythm and eloquence that I sought. And Torri always looked at me intently when I spoke to her," Mr. Duke said.

Though Torri clearly spent a great deal of time with Mr. Duke in front of a keyboard, she also traveled the globe with him. In his video, Mr. Duke claims he and the dog "explored ancient European ruins" and "climbed at least 500 mountains and hills" together.

"She even secretly made her way in her shoulder bag into places like the Sistine Chapel, and the Louvre and a number of places that her kind were banned," explained Mr. Duke.

Torri's portability was a key part of her appeal to Mr. Duke. In his video he said he chose to get a Maltese, a toy dog breed, because he needed an animal that was "small enough to easily go wherever I went." This apparently raised eyebrows with his friends as carrying a small, toy dog in a man-purse was incongruous with his image as a white nationalist firebrand.

"A few times my friends told me, 'How can you carry around that little, quote, 'fag' dog?' I told them that I was a man secure enough in my heterosexuality that I sure was not going to worry about what people might think," Mr. Duke said.

Indeed, Mr. Duke's life isn't all angry racist rhetoric. His love for animals is just one aspect of his softer side. Mr. Duke also moonlights in "PhotoArt," a discipline he seemingly created himself that involves taking pictures of landscapes and then  using a computer to add "artistic flourish in color, brightness, contrast, composition, line and form to make a truly beautiful photo-artwork that will captivate and inspire you." According to Mr. Duke's website, some of his "PhotoArt" has even "been quietly displayed in European showings and galleries under a nom de plume."

Apparently, in this internet-dominated age, the White Nationalist world, much like the rest of society, is being taken over by Instagram-style digitally-manipulated nature photos and cute animal videos.

Watch Mr. Duke's "Tribute to Torri" video below.

According to founder Dennis Crowley, users are already uploading close to one photo every second, and that's not even counting the Android users who will start taking photos today.

As Mark Zuckerberg has discussed, and as the success of apps like Instagram and PicPlz have demonstrated, photos are really the killer app when it comes to social on the web. 

The big question is how Foursquare will deal with this surge in data intensive activity by its users. The site had an major outage back in October, which Crowley attributed to "too many check ins". 

For the next year at least, Foursquare plans to stay focused on growth, not profit. These new features should supercharge user adoption, and hopefully the site can stay one step ahead of this growth and avoid lengthy downtime. 

UPDATE: Dens replies to our concerns about the traffic spike from photos and comments - 

Check Out The Brooklyn Super Nerds Who Accidently Invited All Of Foursquare To Their NYE Party >>

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

By adding comments and photos to check ins and archiving all of this activity on a history page, Foursquare has created a real "social diary" for users. A night out that was once remembered with a Facebook photo might now be remembered through a Foursquare check in, complete with images and opinions from friends.

"The trick for us," says Alex Rainert, Foursquare's head of product, "Is how do you add richness that will improve the experience without making the service overwhelming for new users."

Foursquare, which is adding around 25,000 users a day, has been promising photos to its long-term power users for a while. Rainert says photos will drive conversations among friends and enhance the way venues are presented on Foursquare. "Now when you leave a tip about the best table at your favorite pub, you can add a photo to show just what you mean." 

Another indication of how these new features add more social networking to Foursquare is the focus on privacy right out of the gate. Comments are only shared with friends, even if a photo or tip is broadcast to Twitter or Facebook. "Everyone needs to take the conversation about privacy very seriously," says Rainert, "But especially for an app like ours that is tracking users location in the background."

Coming down the pipe for Foursquare in 2011, persistent location. "Right now the biggest obstacles are battery life and GPS," says Rainert. Ironically, Foursquare works better in less dense areas, where venues aren't so tightly spaced. "In New York, the way GPS is right now, you could be at any of ten different venues on a single block." 

As these technical hurdles are overcome, Foursquare will begin to experiment with modes that check users in automatically. "You want to surface interesting, relevant information," says Rainert. "But you have to make sure that the disruption is worth it. There is nothing users hate more than trying to make a phone call, and finding out an app just killed their battery."

Check Out The Ultimate Nerd New Year's Eve Party, VIP Access By Foursquare Only >>

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

IPhone users will have photos and comments added to their Foursquare app today, with these features scheduled to roll out to Android next week and Blackberry next month. 

Comments will serve as a kind of in-app messaging system. "For instance, meeting up with friends becomes easier when you can comment on the check-ins of nearby friend and tell them to swing by," Foursquare told The Observer by email.

Photos are increasingly becoming the killer feature on smartphones and social networks. Foursquare is smart to add this function, and plans on bringing integration with hot photo apps like Instagram and PicPlz in the near future. 

Overall it creates a much richer atmosphere on Foursquare, more akin to a full social network, except that the guiding theme is still the experience of going out. 

"Photos and comments also help memories come to life by creating a sort of 'digital scrapbook,'" writes Foursquare. "From your foursquare history page, you can now see the places you’ve been and who you’ve been there with along with photos and comments from these outings."

This raises larger questions of privacy, something which Foursquare is hoping to nip in the bud. Photos on check-ins are only visible to your friends (and the networks you share to, like Facebook and Twitter). Tip and venue photos are open to the community. Comments are only viewable by your foursquare friends (and their foursquare friends).  

Overall it seems like a great refresh to the Foursquare experience that adds a lot of depth. Whether the features will catch on, or impede the clarity of the old check-in experience, remains to be seen. Tech Observer will be checking in later today with Alex Rainert, Foursquare's Head of Product, so be sure to tune in for additional details.  

Check Out The Ultimate Nerd New Year's Eve Party, VIP Access By Foursquare Only >>

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

The first time, back in 2008,  Zuck seemed every bit the akward nerd, stumbling on questions. Last night he came across as a confident business leader, while his Harvard nemeses, the Winklevoss Twins, seemed like creeps.

Further evidence of Zuck's growing business savvy: He used last night to launch Facebook's new look for the profile page, choosing a forum sure to put older users at ease.

The new profile places heavy emphasis on photos, which have emerged as Facebook's killer app.

Right now, users' profile pages feature one photo, and then a wealth of text about all their interests.

The new profile puts the basic text up top -- name, age, job, relationship status, birthplace. Below that is a running stream of photos featuring the user and his or her "favorite friends."

That means instead of one photo for each profile, users will now display five or six. With photos taken from friends' accounts, Facebook will also automatically target and zoom in on users' faces (yikes!).

Overall, the new Facebook is decidely more visual and less literate. Even interests like music, movies and books are going to be represented by images, not words.

Humans are hard-wired to respond to faces, and Zuckerberg, who ironically is often depicted in the media with a mild case of Asperger's, is refocusing his site to capitalize on that inherent tendency.

TBD's Ryan Kearney, a friend of Jusko's stepsister, Christina Rumpf, speculates that Gawker cruelly used because of its "unapologetic commitment to sensationalism" and pageviews. 

When she saw the picture, Rumpf sent an email to Kearney and her other friends with the subject line, "Boycott Gawker." 

"Gawker (as many of you saw) posted a pretty horrific picture of my brother, lying dead on the street in a pool of his own blood … If you would like to do something to help our family, please write to them and ask them to take it down," she wrote.

Some of Jusko's acquaintances also wrote comments on Gawker's post about the stabbing.

"I am begging you to take this horrible picture down. I know you are likely receiving plenty of shocked e-mails about this image. I know it both bleeds and leads, but please, as someone who knows his family, do not let this be an image that his mother cannot escape from," wrote one commenter who identified themself as Jusko's brothers roommate. 

Hamilton Nolan, the author of the post about the stabbing, told Kearney why he chose to run the photo.

"The fact is that the photo was newsworthy, and that's why we ran it. The fact that it was unpleasant and graphic does not mean it was not newsworthy," Nolan said.  

Gawker eventually removed the photo and posted the following update: 

"Friends and family of Jusko have been in touch and asked that we remove the photo. We have decided to honor that request."

That editor's note seems to be the last we will hear about the incident from Gawker's downtown HQ.

"I've been asked not to comment," Nolan told The Observer.

Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton and Gawker editor Remy Stern have both not responded to requests for comment on this story. In the past, Denton his staff have been unrepentant about criticism of the content on the Gawker sites.  

As of this writing, Nolan's post about the stabbing has received a little over 43,000 pageviews, a relatively modest sum by Gawker standards. 

Full Disclosure: Hunter Walker has written for the Gawker Media sites Gawker.com, Deadspin, and Gridskipper.