Yahoo Mash, a beta-only social network designed to take on the likes of MySpace and Facebook, is soon to be no more. While it is unclear as to why Yahoo has decided to shut down the service, some analysts say it is due to a combination of poor advertising and a general lack of interest in the project. Others believe it is simply due to the fact that Mash didn’t really do anything all that original or innovative. At press time, Yahoo Mash’s last day will be September 28th.

In election news, it seems as if modern politics and modern technology are crossing paths yet again. Republican candidate John McCain just launched a brand new social network called, appropriately enough, McCain Space. Powered by social networking platform KickApps, McCain Space is everything a McCain supporter would want in a social network and more. On the Democratic side, there’s my.BarackObama.com. MyBarackObama has many of the same features as McCain Space, only skewed to a more “Obama-leaning” crowd. It has yet to be seen how much, if any, impact strategies such this will have on the actual election.

Glen Stansberry has written a great article on how design can affect your online business. According to Stansberry, the key is create a simple web design high on relevant content, but relatively low on unneeded extras. Sites full extraneous information, he writes, tend to bother or frustrate the average user. By keeping things simple, you can effectively directly feature your product or service without the potential buyer becoming confused or distracted. Keep it simple … truly great words to live by no matter where you choose to do your business.

YouTube added a closed captioning option to their videos, allowing content creators to provide text for the hearing impaired. The closed captions are very easy to upload, and you can add as many languages as you want. If you’re watching a video and want to use the closed captioning, just press the closed captioning button on the corner of the video. Simple and easy, YouTube close captioning makes it easy for everyone to enjoy your videos.

While Craigslist is a great resource, it isn’t one of the easiest sites to navigate. Thankfully, the Indiana-based Motion Technologies is out to change all of that. With the aptly named Craigslist Reader, you can search through multiple locations and categories at once, allowing you to cross reference information in a way that you can’t currently do on the traditional Craigslist site. You can also set up notifications, alerting you to when Craigslist is updated. With Craigslist Reader, looking through the want ads has never been easier.