OK, I realize I don’t post up silly stuff very often (some would say not often enough), but when I read tonight’s xkcd comic, I burst out laughing. I have a bit of a hate on for Windows ME, and when I read this… well lets just say that could have been me sitting in the audience. ((pun fully intended))
Credit: xkcd.com — The Ballmer Peak
’nuff said.
The issue of copyright law has never been a simple one. This week a family from Texas has launched a lawsuit against Virgin Mobile for the use of their daughter’s picture in an advertising campaign. 
The catch? The mobile carrier got the photo from Flickr where the photo (at the time) was listed under a Creative Commons Attibution-only license. The photo was used without notifying the photographer, or the 16-year-old girl in the picture, whose face is now associated with Virgin Mobile’s campaign; though it should be noted that the advertisement did contain the required attribution.
This story has garnered lots of media attention since CNN ran this clip late last week and I don’t want to get into too much detail on it. What I wanted to go over is the dicsussion of what exactly the Creative Commons license means to content owners and content providers alike.
It’s no secret that if you’re a content provider (blogger, podcaster, journalist etc.) it’s not only good form to cite your sources it’s most likely illegal not to. Not to mention that improper attribution is one of Miss604′s Net Peeves… But where does the line get drawn when it comes to material which is publicly displayed on the Internet?
The intent of the Creative Commons license is to provide a quick and simple way for content owners to place their content in a public place, and clearly identify how it may be used or consumed by others. In the case mentioned above the photographer claims to have misunderstood the CC license. This according to a post made yesterday on the CC blog has the Creative Commons organization “very unhappy”.
The license in and of itself can be understood fairly easily by reading the Creative Commons “get a license” page from the CreativeCommons.org website. There are often other websites for other countries. It’s a good practise to make a start in the website for the jurisdiction you belong to.
T
he license builder page allows you to select what rights you want to allow/disallow, then creates an icon for a website, with a link back to the full legalese of your chosen license. The icon contains graphics which represent the different rights/restrictions you’ve chosen which provides a language-neutral way of quickly assessing what the particular CC license means to the person looking at your content.
It should also be noted that CC has a series of Creative-Commonized editions of licenses like the BSD, GPL and LGPL. Though I haven’t looked at these specifically, one would assume that the organization has tried to bring an easy method of understanding one’s basic rights with respect to these other licenses.
In doing the prep reading for this article I poured over some sources in the blogosphere, mainly ones linked from local blogs here in the lower mainland. One posting on Darren Barefoot’s blog contained a very insightful comment thread and is worth a read to get a few different perspectives on the issue. The main issue discussed in the post is a case where Flickr would by default show a “Blog This!” button on all photos, includng those marked “All Rights Reserved” which would preclude them from being used by any content provider without prior (written) authorization by the copyright holder. Thankfully it appears to have been resolved by Flickr (the post is a bit over 2 months old) but the logic of the post is well thought out, and the discussion is worth a read. I say “appears” to be fixed because I was unable to find an example of this setup on flickr after having looked through photos from about 30 different members with “All Rights Reserved” for their photos.
At the end of the day, every content owner should be at least aware of their basic rights to their own material. Sharing sites like Flickr must continue to default their settings to the “most protective” mode to ensure that content owners can’t be unwittingly “fleeced” by those looking to steal their content. And those of us who consume content from those who share willingly must continue to ensure we attribute the material back to its original owner. Failing to do so will put at risk the integrity that bloggers have worked so hard to develop over the past 4-5 years is not lost.
WordPress 2.3 was released today. I’ve been looking through the specs, and the upgrade sheets to see what the major new features are. I expect to apply the new update in the next week or so. I’m working on a new upgrade script that will use the wordpress subversion repository for the source, instead of pulling the zip file.
Stay tuned for that, as well as updates to the two wordpress plugins [image, admin] due in the coming weeks once they’ve been verified and known to work with WordPress 2.3.
Exactly 2 months ago, I released my Random Image Selector plugin for wordpress. Every now and again I take a look and see how many people are downloading the random image plugin.
On average, in the exactly 2 months since it’s release about 15 people are downloading the plugin. And on September 22nd, it hit the 1000 download mark!
Thank you to all who have provided feedback on the plugin, and suggestions for the next version. I am working on it now and expect to have something released by mid-October once all the WordPress 2.3 testing is completed.
Thanks again, and happy downloading!
This week marked my first appearance on the GGP as a full-fledged guest host. We had a great time recording the show despite Tim’s headset being all fubar. Here’s the notes from this week’s edition, it’s a short one, so don’t blink or you’ll miss it. 
The first app up this week is an iPhoto plugin that will allow you to send photos via your Gmail account directly from iPhoto. iPhoto2Gmail is a simple plugin which will allow you to send email messages from your iPhoto application and attach up to a 20 MB image to the image. It’s pretty straight forward and offers other features like encrypted storage of your Gmail credentials. If you like to send photos by email, and want to avoid firing up a browser or Thunderbird to do so, give iPhoto2Gmail a shot.
Download the plugin from author Juan Leon’s website.
The second application for review this week has become, for many, the industry standard for backup and data replication on the Macintosh platform. Carbon Copy Cloner will allow you to backup data to and from almost any media including disk drives and disk image files.
It’s a simple to use application which will allow you to schedule your backups and make them completely mindless. Now you don’t have any excuse for not getting those backups done.
On this week’s Global Geek Podcast I’m going to be recording the show “live” with Dave and Tim. I’m really looking forward to it, hopefully I won’t stumble all over myself when I lose the opportunity to edit out all my blunders. 
It’ll be an early morning for me and a late night for the guys as we try to mesh our schedules and disparate time zones. Wish me luck!
Another week, another edition of the Global Geek Podcast. Here’s the detailed notes from this week’s GGP Mac Lab Update.
The first application up this week is MacTracker by Canadian developer Ian Page. This is an application that contains historical data on virtualy every model of Apple computer and their peripherals released since 1983. The current release (v. 4.3.1) also includes the updated iMac models from August 2007.
MacTracker provides detailed hardware specifications for each model, including:
There’s also a MyMacs section for you to track specific details on the devices you own, this is particularly useful in case you ever need to call Apple Support. Much quicker than trying to remember where your serial number is stored (or read the microscopic printing from the bottom of the case).
Finally, there’s also an iPod edition which allows you to look up much of this same information directly from your iPod. If you’re in a job where you need to have this type of information at your fingertips, (or like me are just a total geek), this option is a great way to eat up a few more Megs on that 160GB iPod Classic you just bought.
MacTracker is a free download, but it is offered as donationware. If you get some good use out of it, consider making a donation to support the project.
The second application up this week is targeted at those of you, who like me, would rather put tacks through your fingers than rely on the mouse or trackpad for basic tasks on your computer. I give you ABFL “A Better Finder Launcher”. This application lets you bring up on a hotkey a dialogue box that you can use to find and launch applications. For those of you who are Mac Switchers and have just come over from windows, this will work very much like the Windows “Run” menu, only smarter.
As you type characters in, ABFL will search your computer for files which match your search string, applications are prioritized and pushed to the top of the list. Once you’ve typed enough for the program or file you want to appear at the top of the list, hit the enter/return key to launch it.
ABFL will also search for documents on your system. The initial indexing process happened very quickly, so quickly in fact that I didn’t realize it had its own index until I was searching through the preferences dialogues. I thought it must have tapped into the Spotlight index instead. The preferences can be set to allow the application to index on a set interval, or manually. When scanning the default locations, the indexing took approximately 12 seconds on my Macbook.
The only downside to this application is that there’s no way to terminate it and remove it from the Dock & Fast-switch menus) when an application is launched. Other than that, it really does deliver as promised and has become another one of my favourite OS X tools.
Download ABFL from the developer’s website. Last up this week is a bit of Apple-related tech news. SixApart announced this week that it will be providing an iPhone (and iPod Touch) interface option for users of TypePad and MovableType. This interface will detect the new Apple mobile browsers and reformat the screen to best advantage on the small display. This will allow anyone with the supporting blogs to not only view their blog, but edit & create posts, manage comments and more from their spanky new Apple handheld.
It’s not enough to make me want an iPhone, or switch away from wordpress, but it definitely shows that SixApart is still capable of playing a leadership role in the CMS Space. Of course it won’t be long until support exists for WordPress as well.
Source: TechCrunch
On September 5th, Apple announced a new fleet of portable devices to go along with the iPhone. These devices included revised versions of the iPod (now the iPod Classic), iPod Nano and iPod shuffle. In addition to the revised devices, Apple has released two new devices. The first is the one we’ve all heard so much about, and that of course is the much-hyped and highly anticipated iPhone. The second is the brand new iPod touch.
I’m going to quickly touch on a few of the “revised” models first before getting into the new devices. The new shuffle is essentially unchanged, aside from capacity. There’s now only a single size, a 1GB model. The shuffle is a simple interface, with no screen and provides a bare-bones set of features.
Next up, the newly revised iPod Nano. This is a fairly major revision for the third generation of the Nano, finally incorporating the ability to do video. The only major concern I can see with the Nano’s new capability is that trying to watch video on a 2-inch screen is akin to watching Lord of the Rings on the back-panel of my DSLR. Not exactly an inviting experience. That said the new rounded aesthetic is nice, reminiscent of the MacBook, and at just over half a cm in thickness it maintains the Nano’s slim profile.
Third on the block is the “new old iPod”: the iPod has become the iPod Classic. This new edition of the full-size iPod also sports the new rounded MacBook-like styling, just as with the Nano. Apple has also upped the hard drive size on the new iPod Classic to 160GB. That’s right, 160GB. That’s twice the size of the hard drive in the base model MacBook! I could load my entire iTunes Library on this iPod 4 times and still have a bit of space left over… sigh. Still, it will allow you to store about 200 hours of video, so if you wanted to have an iPod will all 7 seasons of Star Trek TNG and all 10 movies then this is the one for you.
Now for the new kid on the block, the iPod Touch. This is basically the iPhone without the Phone bit… (call it an “i”?) It’s main features are the full-size touch screen, built-in wifi and solid-state storage. These come in 8 and 16GB versions and are basically a the missing link between the PDA and the MP3 player. It’ll be interesting to see how the iPod touch will interfere with sales of Apple’s other new flagship device: the iPhone.
Apple’s iPhone is the flagship device. With 8GB of storage, wifi, web browsers, full-featured iPod and other features it’s definitely a slick device. Unfortunately, unless you live in the US, and sign up for a contract with AT&T, it’s nothing more than an iPod Touch.
Overall the new line looks pretty impressive at first glance. Though most of the new models have something that makes you say “hmm…”. Below is my one line synopsis of all five devices.
In short, I’m not running out the door to pick up any of these devices (though I did enter a draw for an iPod Touch in support of the Terry Fox foundation).
It’s that time again, time for this week’s edition of the Global Geek Podcast.
Before I get into the week’s review of Mac Apps, I wanted to mention that Knightwise has produced his first Video Podcast KW-tv. This inaugural episode is a review of the new stack of Apple portable devices. Definitely worth a look. Well done KW!
On this week’s Mac Lab Update we start with a Dashboard Widget from developer Paulo Avila called WallSaver. This widget allows you to take one of your screensavers and use it as your desktop background. The widget is quick and easy to implement, and activates with the click of a single button on the dashboard. If you wish to deactivate it, simply click the button again and it will restore your previous static picture.
The widget will however limit your selection to the currently selected screen saver, so to change it you’ll need to change the screen saver in the System Preferences dialog then re-activate WallSaver. The motion of the screen saver that looks so good with photos for slideshows (the so-called Ken Burns effect) tends to make me a bit queasy when it’s used as a background.
Download Wallsaver from Paulo Avila’s website.
Second on the docket this week is an OS X port of the network utility MacDaddy. This application, MacDaddyX, serves two basic purposes:
MacDaddyX has a couple of very handy features, the first being it’s ability to generate a Random MAC address. It also keeps a list of address prefix codes by vendor which can be used to generate MAC’s that will appear to have originated with a specific company. Finally the all-important “Restore” button to put all the features back the way they were. Though a bit on the technical side MacDaddyX can prove to be a very useful application.
You can download MacDaddyX from their website.
Our final application this week is a tool for interfacing with your IM & microblogging world. Moodblast will allow you to update your “mood” or taglines for IM services like Adium, iChat and Skype as well as online services like Twitter and Jaiku though they recently had to discontinue their support for the Facebook platform citing “legal reasons”. This is a menu-bar application can be brought up using a system-wide hotkey and lets you type in a single message to push out to all your favourite IM and microblogging services simultaneously.
MoodBlast also provides “parameters” that you can input into your message to insert things like iTunes Tracks, weather or date/time. Once the message has been posted to the selected sites the MoodBlast window will hide itself.
I’ve hardly used my twitter account since I set it up, but can see myself actually using it by way of MoodBlast.
I can’t really find any downsides to this one, it’s a simple app that does what it advertises… and it’s free!
I just caught this over on Rebecca’s blog at Miss604.com, and it made me smile. Yesterday was Free Hug Day in Vancouver. Apparently I should have worked from the downtown office yesterday. Here’s hoping that some of this goodwill will carry forward.