Archive for web
Flickr: The Commons
January 16th, 2008 web
Flickr launches The Commons, a collaboration with the Library of Congress. They have posted 1500+ pictures from the FSA Archives, and the Bain News Service, which features news photos from the 1910’s.
The goal of the project is to crowdsource metadata about the individual images, but beyond that nobel effort, the pictures are just great. Enjoy!
Thomas Hawk back on Flickr
December 31st, 2007 web
It was a pleasant surprise to see Thomas Hawk uploading his fine images on Flickr after a long absence
I wonder if that has anything to do with the release of FlickrFan, which uses the Flickr API as it’s primary way of sharing photos.
Regardless, it’s nice to be seeing more of his photos again, this time via a screen-saver updated FlickrFan’s feed of photos. Good stuff!
How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook
November 28th, 2007 web
How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook:
Cory Doctorow writes on Facebook’s “built-in self-destruct” : They make it easy for you to be found by the people you’re looking to avoid.
Recipe Sharing Protocol Specification
November 27th, 2007 web
Hmm… Recipes will have their own markup language soon?
canceling facebook
November 23rd, 2007 web
Because of this, I’m tempted.
“What asshole bizdev person at Facebook thought it’d be a good idea to let third party sites implant your purchase history on Facebook? Tracking user behaviour across third party sites is wrong. Ignoring an opt-out popup for 20 seconds is not evidence of informed consent. We used to brainstorm ideas like that at Google but the basic ‘Don’t be evil’ ethos always squished the discussions I was in. Facebook apparently lacks a moral compass.”
Weird thing is that through Facbook, I’ve actually caught up with people who I’d like to stay in touch with, and piping this blog into everyone’s news feeds helps me do it. Maybe it’s not worth it, though.
How about you?
Flickr’s second billion took three months
November 20th, 2007 web
wow. That’s a lot of photos! I’ll be helping their way along to 3B, as I just sprung for a flickr pro acct.
Miro video player
November 13th, 2007 web
I’ve been tracking Miro for a while, since it was called ‘Democracy’. It has some really nice integration with Youtube and other web video services.
You can use it as your ‘vodcast’ download app to watch your Crave or Mahalo feeds. (Hey VBS.tv, get on the RSS boat, already!)
It also has integration with BitTorrent, something I’m sure the TV studios are just thrilled about.
i got a tweet on the way to lunch
November 7th, 2007 web
I don’t often write about workstuff on this little blog, but since this story has roots in ’social media’, I think it’s worth continuing here.
Yesterday, as I was leaving the office for lunch, a tweet comes through from Scott Beale/Laughingsquid. I follow Scott on Twitter (sent to my phone via SMS), have his blog in my ‘Daily reads’ category in google reader, and enjoy his shared items from Google reader.
I normally enjoy all of these streams of communication, but this time my heart sank as I looked at my phone:
“CNET uses @maidelba photos without attribution [via @lanehartwell]”
“Uh oh.”
The tweet linked to a flickr page titled posted to Lane Hartwell’s Flickr account titled ‘Another day, another photo stolen‘ (title since revised).
I immediately turned around and went to the newsroom to let folks know there was a problem.
(I’ll take this opportunity to say that the people in the CNET News.com newsroom are some of the most highly dedicated, professional folks I’ve had the opportunity to work with. I’ve seen them work under some serious circumstances. Top-notch. Every one.)
Apparently, a photo by Mitchell Aidelbaum which we had permission to use in a photo gallery earlier in the year, was reposted in one of the prominent featured stories slots on our home page.
The editors quickly went to work to correct the problem, and jumped into the discussion at the thread on Flickr to help explain and clarify to the community what happened, and to reiterate that we take copyright issues very seriously.
Lane later went to “make an apology of sorts” and changed the title of the thread at Flickr to read “CNET uses photo without giving attribution”.
So, the system worked! Right?
Well…
For me, the upside was the first meaningful use of twitter beyond trying to call ‘first’ after an earthquake, or learning about Merlin Mann’s love for the song ‘Ceremony’, of course.
More on the upside: The thread produced some really good discussion about issues regarding the Creative Commons license, and showed that we’re responsive and thoughtful where it comes to copyright concerns.
The downside?
It’s hard to get around the fact the the early discussion branded my co-workers as being wanton copyright tramplers. And there is is no opportunity to go back and revise the title of the related item on Digg (1700+ diggs strong at this writing): CNET Caught Stealing A Photo Without Permission.
Even the discussion thread and image posted to Flickr continues to sport the tag ‘image theft‘.
Anyone following along to the last gasps of the Flickr thread will come to a fuller picture, I think. But how many of those 1700 Digg users, or 45,000+ Flickr thread viewers have done so?
From what I’ve seen, photographers are routinely burned and are right to be sensitive and protective of their works and copyrights. But it’s unfortunate in this case that we were not afforded any benefit of the doubt. Even more unfortunate that some people appear to take such enjoyment from our unintentional missteps, regardless of our efforts to make quick and transparent steps to correct the situation.
The Right-Wing Facebook
October 22nd, 2007 web
The Right-Wing Facebook is a parody site of fake Facebook profiles from Republican presidential candidates.
and, (surprise) leftwingfacebook.com is registered but (currently) empty.
