msnbc.com

msnbc.com is resizing its video player to make it compatible with Facebook, and the Website will introduce a scheme to arrange thumbnail images of in-stream advertisement around the player, president and publisher Charles Tillinghast told Beet.TV executive producer Andy Plesser.

Tillinghast said the ads appear for a short time, and then get moved to a thumbnail gallery around the player, allowing users to find them without having to watch the video again.

NBC News and msnbc.com want to bring viewers to the Tip of the Spear in Afghanistan's deadly Korengal Valley.

Tip of the Spear offers the Emmy Award-winning special reports by NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his team, who followed the soldiers of Viper Company through the most dangerous region of Afghanistan, witnessing the death of a soldier felled by friendly fire and giving viewers a detailed look at life inside a war zone.

The new site offers all Tip of the Spear reports, as well as exclusive Web-only video and analysis by Engel. It also links to NBC News' blog from Kabul and the latest headlines from South and Central Asia.

Call it confrontational, call it rude, call it an act of journalism, but MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan was all over U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donahue on Wednesday morning's show, at one point accusing him of talking "nonsense."

Donahue was on the program to hype the Chamber's "American Free Enterprise" campaign, which he says would create 20 million new jobs over the next decade.

But as HuffPost's Arthur Delaney writes, "Ratigan seemed to be more interested in taking Donohue to the woodshed."

Festivities below:

If only the powers that be at msnbc.com understood that Adolph Hitler actually was a man of peace, they wouldn't have acted so rashly in removing their site's link to a Pat Buchanan column essentially blaming England for World War II.

But like the appeasers they are, they crumbled under the slightest pressure, in this case the understandable outrage of the National Jewish Democratic Council, whose president David Harris, condemned the right-wing commentator's piece on Thursday as "deplorable" historical revisionism.

Buchanan's latest column should be removed immediately from MSNBC.com, and no worthy news organization should employ a commentator who engages in such vile fiction.

The link to the column appears to have been removed by msnbc.com late Thursday night. Politico's Michael Calderone has more:

Harris, in a second statement, said that "MSNBC took the responsible action and removed Pat Buchanan's column," while adding that "no worthy news organization should employ and promote a commentator who engages in such vile fiction."

An MSNBC spokesperson issued a statement to POLITICO: "An editorial decision was made to remove the column from msnbc.com. Pat is a contributor to MSNBC, his syndicated column does not speak for the network or represent the views of MSNBC."

Well, that's comforting. By the way, if you want to read Buchanan's column ("Did Hitler Want War?"), written to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Germany's invasion of Poland, it's here (screen shot below). Be ready, though: It truly is a litany of lunacy.

Vowing to separate fact from fiction in the acrimonious debate over health care reform, msnbc.com today launched an online guide to healthcare reform.

Called "Dose of Reality," the guide offers news, video, analysis, community forums and interactive tools on health care.

"Health care reform has the potential to touch the lives of every single American," msnbc.com Health Editor Julia Sommerfeld said in a prepared statement. "Our readers don't want to just sit back and read the headlines on this most personal of politics stories. They want to join the discussion, frame the debate and have their specific issues addressed."

Indeed, msnbc.com is counting on this impulse to drive coverage. The most prominent feature on the guide's site is "Your Daily Dose," in which readers are asked to submit health care claims they'd like investigated to msnbc.com politics reporter Tom Curry, who will post his findings.

For readers who can't wait for Curry to look into your question, the site features a section near the bottom of the home page called "Tools and explainers" (sample headline: 5 biggest myths of health care reform).

And if you tire of "facts" and "reality," there's always the Twitter argue-fest immediately above.

msnbc.com announced Monday that it acquired Chicago-based Website EveryBlock, which provides news and information "down to the neighborhood level" in 15 cities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

msnbc.com said EveryBlock will continue as an independent brand, adding that the sites allow users to enter their addresses, neighborhood names or ZIP codes to view local news coverage, blog entries, civic data, photos and other types of information, updated continuously.

Along with its hometown of Chicago, EveryBlock also runs sites focused on Atlanta; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Detroit; Houston; Los Angeles; Miami; New York; Philadelphia; San Francisco; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

msnbc.com president Charlie Tillinghast said:

EveryBlock's talented team has a track record of innovation in the industry, and we're excited to add them to the msnbc.com brand family. They've broken new ground with their unique approach to collecting, organizing and presenting news down to the block level. Their impact and importance in the community space is extremely valuable and carries promise for journalism and new business models.

EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty, who said the company's staff of five will continue to be based in Chicago, added:

Joining with msnbc.com gives us the resources to turn EveryBlock from a cool, useful service into something much bigger.

MSNBC.com is finding more and more viewing of its shared videos off-site, at locations such as The Huffington Post, so president and publisher Charles Tillinghast told Beet.TV managing editor Andy Plesser the company will use Redwood City, Calif.-based video-ad network YuMe to insert advertising into its embeddable player and monetize the increased off-site consumption.

MSNBC.com began hosting an exclusive live stream of President Barack Obama's visit to Elkhart, Ind., at 11:55 a.m. ET Wednesday.

NBC News chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd will ask Obama questions from MSNBC.com users and Elkhart residents, and MSNBC.com and NBC News will feature special coverage, including on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and MSNBC.

MSNBC.com's live feed includes a live Twitter stream alongside, and users can tweet at #ObamaElkhart.

FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler caused a bit of a frenzy by uttering the words "blow job" on MSNBC Monday, according to the Huffington Post.

In response to Townhall's Matt Lewis' assertion that "investigating policies and activities that happened in a previous administration" would set a bad precedent, she said:

Your idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blow job for like five years, we shouldn't investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration, only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it while he was still in office. That's ridiculous.

MSNBC's Tamron Hall and David Shuster apologized after the segment aired, with Hall saying, "I'm sure she apologizes for that choice of words, she's very passionate about it," and Shuster following, "We all say things sometimes when we're passionate that we don't intend, and especially on a dayside family-oriented cable television news network." Hall then wrapped things up with, "I'm sure she apologizes, and we do, too."

MSNBC.com launched a live video and Twitter stream page to accompany its coverage of the memorial service for the late Michael Jackson Tuesday.

The network said viewers who watch its live video stream of the memorial service will also see a collapsible widget displaying select Michael Jackson-related tweets that contain the hashtags #MJ, #msnbc or #nbc. Users can then post their own tweets to the Twitter stream directly from the page itself and see related tweets from NBC and MSNBC personalities reporting on-site, including MSNBC.com pop-culture and entertainment columnist Courtney Hazlett.