YouTube has launched a Canadian focused version today.
The Canadian portal will focus on Canadian content, and content uploaded from Canadian YouTube members.
[youtube:http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=_y5MfzSnFLM]
Tag Archives: Tech News
Leopard Breaks Flickr Uploader
Caught this story over on DownloadSquad tonight. OS X Leopard causes a problem with the Adobe Flash plugin for all browsers on OS X (Firefox, Safari and Opera were tested). The problem has been acknowledged by Adobe but no release date of a fix has been determined.
As I found out last night it makes the uploader very broken. You can select files to upload, but once that’s done the uploader simply does nothing. Sits there like a bumpkin on a log. One wonders why Adobe didn’t take the time to test this with one or two of the Leopard Betas / Release candidates…
The DS article does mention a partial workaround, but it’s a HACK. I would caution against even attempting it. If you need to upload in the meantime, just use the client application and ignore the issue until Adobe get their act together.
IMAP Coming to Gmail
Just saw a post from DownloadSquad about the advent of IMAP in GMail. It’s only a few hours old, and by the sounds of things this is a really fresh feature… which probably explains why it hasn’t shown up in my account yet… But the new help docs are there so it’s just a matter of time.
For those who may not know, IMAP is the bi-directional email protocol which makes Outlook so successful in the corporate environment. With this feature enabled, I think it won’t be long until we see an even tighter outlook-like integration of Gmail and Google Calendar.
Microsoft Agrees to EU’s Anti-Monopoly Legislation… *sigh*
Since 1998, Microsoft has been in a battle with EU regulators over allegations that they have engaged in monopolistic business practices. These allegations are similar to the anti-trust suit brought against the Redmond giant in the US Microsoft has now agreed to give up its battle against the antitrust legislation in an effort to stop the fines accruing against them at €3 million per day.
At the heart of the 1998 complaint: the bundling of Media Player with Windows, and the high licensing cost of information required for applications to work more efficiently with the Windows Operating System.
Under the deal brokered with the EU, Microsoft has agreed to license it’s intellectual property, with the exception of patents, for a one-time €10,000 fee. This is in place of the nearly 3% in royalty payments Microsoft had previously demanded. Patented material will be licensed for just under half a percent of the royalties. This fee was previously priced at 5.95%.
As much as I want to applaud an action like this, the sentiments at the core of the action taken by the EU smack of government interference. From what I can tell, aside from a very pricey operating system, Microsoft has done nothing to harm the consumer. They have a company that has invested money to either buy or develop software technologies, and are now being forced to license that technology to competitors for a specific price.
In some ways, this is similar to regulations put in place by the CRTC in Canada which have fixed the price of telephone service that can be offered to customers by the large carriers. The prices have been fixed in such a way that the carriers are not permitted to lower the price for fears that they will resort to pricing tactics that will eliminate any competitors. This was done without any evidence that any of the major carriers like Bell or Telus were resorting to such tactics.
Will this type of legislation help software developers create new and improved technologies and programs? Yes. For Windows. Will it help them to develop programs for other systems? Not likely. Will it help Microsoft sell more copies of Windows to people who want to use the new software? Probably. So tell me, EU: How does selling more copies of the most expensive server operating system in the world help consumers?
Next month, the review of the Google acquisition of DoubleClick is slated to complete. We’ll see what they have in store for another technology giant.
Sources
Leopard Launch Date Announced: October 26, 2007
Apple announced on Tuesday that the long-awaited upgrade to its operating system, OS X version 10.5 code-named “Leopard”, will ship on October 26th, 2007.
For Mac addicts this is great news. This new release has been delayed several times (a la Microsoft) with the most recent delay blamed on a transfer of resources to the iPhone project.
Will I buy it on release day? We’ll see. If I do, you’ll be sure to get an early review here… and on the GGP. 
Microsoft to Release .NET Framework Source Code
I’ve covered a few stories on this blog [1], [2], [3] where Microsoft is making some positive strides toward opening up to the concept of open source, particularly in relation to it’s software development arm.
On October 3rd Scott Guthrie, manager of the teams who build the development and platform tools at Microsoft, announced that the source code for the .NET Framework would be released with the next release of Visual Studio (VS 2008). This announcement is the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft over the past couple of years.
Though the source code will be available for download and reference by software developers, it will be licensed under the Microsoft Reference License, meaning that the source will not be freely distributable.
Still, this is a major step forward for the software giant, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next step will be on the journey toward peaceful coexistence with the open source community.
Bacn – SPAM: The Next Generation
A new term has started to emerge over the last several months to describe the SPAM you get that’s your own doing. The Term is BACN (note the Web 2.0-esque missing “o”). All of those mailing lists, Facebook notifications, Friendster blog-update alerts and Microsoft VS Developer notices were things that you thought you wanted to get in your inbox, but every time one comes in you just decide to turf it.
Image: jted on Flickr
This image really does illustrate the point nicely (though the Spam cut is probably a bit too small…). I have to admit, that despite the amount of junk email I get, and lots of it is Bacn, I still continue to sign up for notifications of things. I think it’s just the innate fear of missing something. This way I get all the information I might want to read someday, but most likely I’ll just ignore it.
According to the Wikipedia article, and a couple of other sources, the term Bacn was coined at PodCamp Pittsburgh in August 2007. Apparently this is what you get when you cross over-zealous twiterers with Canadian bacon and a boring stint at the registration table.
I’ve noticed that I take a similar approach to some of the podcasts and other feeds I have subscribed. Even though I never actually read that feed from TechCrunch, I’m reticent to delete it because someday there might be a good story in there for a blog entry or some other purpose.
At the end of the day Bacn is self-inflicted, so I guess I’d better shut up and start fryin’.
Creative Complicated?
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 Released — Changes Iminent
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.
Mac Lab Rat #8 – Global Geek Podcast
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:
- Detailed CPU information
- Hard disk and Optical Drive options for that model
- Maximum & Shipped RAM configurations
- Graphics card & Display details
- Expansion ports and more…
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