Posted by jerry on March 25th, 2012 — Posted in New media, Photography, Technology, Writing
I have added a Pinterest blocker on this blog and here is why: Any images that are scraped from your site and put onto Pinterest become the property of Pinterest. While Pinterest asks people to ensure that they own the copyright or that the images are free of copyright, the site’s software removes all metadata from the image thus potentially absolving Pinterest on the basis that they had no way of knowing that the image was copyrighted by someone other than the poster.
Anyone who derives income from the internet – especially from the images they produce would and should be upset if their images being sold in one domain turn up being given away by another site entirely. While Pinterest has (yesterday) changed its terms of service to indicate that they no longer reserve the right to sell your images it is disturbing to say the least that it was in there in the first place.
I use a WordPress plug-in to achieve this end. Flickr has settings in the privacy component of your profile to block other sites from sharing without your permission – at least Flickr ‘gets it’ and allows users to set the copyright and share settings as befits the user’s wishes.
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Pinterest – great site – pity about the copyright
Posted by jerry on March 9th, 2009 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology
Ben Parr of Mashable wrote this post on “5 social media blunders and what to learn from them“. The five seem to be divided between where the social media themselves have blundered and where users have blundered in using social media with examples from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – but they are applicable across the board.
It seems to me that they come down to a couple of basic principles to avoid making these blunders:
Firstly it’s about communication – with the audience – and this further breaks down into two strategies
- If you make a blunder, be up front, apologise and set about communicating with your audience to fix the problem. Both Facebook and a campaign on YouTube could have learned from that. Sony didn’t, to their cost, and Facebook did, to their gain. Basically, people do make mistakes, and most people will forgive if you’re up front about it. Don’t try to stonewall or cover it up, because that will just dig (not Digg) you in deeper.
- The second aspect of communication here is that you can avoid a lot of social blunders by knowing your audience – and you do that by communicating with them, being part of the community and testing the market or at least preparing the way with good announcements up front, then a test version which people can visit and comment on, before you launch that new feature or product.
Secondly, (which is really third, since I broke the communication bit down into two) it’s about people – the example about the Twitter user who became emotionally charged and did a public meltdown showed poor nettiquette and a poor appreciation for the fact that they were actually talking to people. The trouble with rapid response social software, like Twitter, is that there is little time for reflection before hitting the button – and the response can be over-the-top before you’ve had a chance to reconsider some ill-chosen words or actions.
So clearly, the appropriate way to respond is to write drafts, then do something else for a couple of minutes, and then return to the draft – if you still want to send it, go ahead, but that pause can take the heat out of an immediate response.
Thanks to Alja for passing on the link via Facebook
Cheers
Jerry
3 Comments »
Posted by jerry on March 8th, 2009 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology
The iPhone has about the sexiest interface I’ve seen on a mobile device, but for my money it’s not there yet. Here are the reasons I will wait before shelling out cold hard cash on an iPhone. Bearing in mind that I’ve been a mac user since 1989 that’s saying something.
1. Bluetooth – Why did Apple cripple the bluetooth functionality to prevent data transfer other than to a bluetooth earpiece for the phone? Some of us want to sync with a PDA or computer. I’ve been using a bluetooth keyboard with an iPaq PDA since 2005 – at the risk of sounding like a Grumpy Old Man (GOM) I’m sorry but I just don’t get the thumb thing – gimme a keyboard!
2. Landscape keyboard – At the moment the only way to get the iPhone keyboard in landscape (eg for google docs email or sms messages) is to get a jailbroken iPhone, install a third-party app – and that’s just so the keyboard will flip around to something that might just be usable. Frankly my Psion 5mx has a better keyboard – and they stopped making those in 2000. With my cludgey fingers the portrait mode is simply not going to do the biz.
3. Mobile Office suite – on my 5 year old PDA I can create, edit and write fully formatted MS Word docs or excel expense sheets (great when traveling) – is it too much to ask that iPhone might just include – at least via third party apps a means to create, edit and save word and excel docs on the move? Not everywhere has wifi (yet) so a means to work off-line would be useful.
4. Removable storage – at some point you might just want to save space and store lesser used apps or bigger files on a micro SD card – it would also mean that with a microSD-SD adapter you could take photos with the digital SLR and then transfer them on the road without having to resort to pulling out the macbook or going back to a desktop machine.
5. Photo editing – on my 5 year old PDA running ppc2003 I have a great little third party app for basic photo editing – resizing, cropping, brightness, contrast, colour balance, file conversion – I have yet to see such an app for the iPhone.
6. Onboard digital video – most other high end phones these days can handle basic video as well as still images from their on-board camera – why not make the coolest phone a genuine video phone – with skype?
7. Skype – Yeah I know Apple has signed deals with 3G networks around the world – but many high end phones these days can also do skype calls when connected to a wifi link. This would save the traveler a LOT of money in international phone calls where that function is available.
8. Sketch application – one for the third party developers – sometimes a diagram can do wonders, but I don’t see any means of doing that with an iPhone. Again my 5 year old PDA can do it.
9. A means of communicating with printers – ok, what about that bluetooth again? Or irda? Or the removable SD card – all of which would mean I could use print on the go without having to go back to a desktop or laptop – why not get rid of the middleware and go direct? That would make life much easier for the traveler who wants to do some quick adjustments to presentation notes, or print out some directions.
10. ABC music reader – that way I can carry my sheet music database and use it as a resource when traveling to folk festivals – and compose on the go. Barfly is great – how about a version for iPhone?
Ok maybe that last is a bit specialised. But you get the idea – Apple could make traveling a WHOLE LOT easier if I could take some basic (nothing an old PDA couldn’t handle) functions on the road and leave the laptop behind – or safely stored at the hotel – so over to you Apple, the competition is incorporating most of these functions already. For now, I’ll stick with a simple phone (sagem) and the old PDA with a bluetooth keyboard and wifi and irda plus removable CF and SD cards.
Cheers
Jerry
1 Comment »
Posted by jerry on December 29th, 2008 — Posted in Journal, New media, Writing
Dictionaries are great, but they are linear in layout, and sometimes you just want words to collide with each other visually in interesting ways. Visuwords ™ uses the Princeton University online dictionary to display terms in graphical relationship with other words forming neural nets. It is a great tool for visualising where words fit in the context of syntactic structures.
You can pull the terms around and follow syntactic links with other words by double clicking on the other words to expand the net – if nothing else, it’s a good procrastination device while you are trying to think of a word while writing!
1 Comment »
Posted by jerry on August 12th, 2008 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology
I finally plucked up the courage to go into an Apple shop – I picked a day when I had left my credit card at home – to check out the new iPhone. I’m still looking for the ideal mobile blogging platform, and thought perhaps sensible convergence had been developed by the wonderful designers at Apple.
I thought about how I would use such a device. I want internet connection, phone, basic PDA applications – including a reasonable word processor, a camera and a neat little application to resize and and do some basics – light and dark and contrast, perhaps hue and saturation – nothing much really. Interestingly, Problogger shares many of my views.
The phone bit was there, as was the camera, some applications, and really delightful interface design – I love the overshoot bounce on the scrollbar – really cute and I love it.
Now for the awkward questions. I came prepared with my bluetooth keyboard. Um… it does have bluetooth doesn’t it? The salesman shifted uncomfortably. “Sort of”, he said. It seems the iPhone has bluetooth insofar as it can send the phone call to a bluetooth earpiece. But that’s it. No peripheral connectivity. Sorry Apple, you are losing me. I then venture the next no brainer for something with PDA functionality. Storage media – any chance of an SD card so I can take photos with my digital camera or transfer them from the phone to my macbook etc? Ummm… no.
So Apple has made a wonderful telephone, but what they have made is not going to let me lose the PDA and macbook combination on the road. I have traveled with just the PDA and keyboard and have blogged successfully – including camera and image preparation – without the laptop, using the bluetooth connection to the keyboard and wifi to the internet. Maybe next model eh?
Cheers
Jerry
New Media Technology
Comments Off on iPhone – are we there yet?
