Comments for Simon Scullion

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by The Mooresie › Hey, ScribeFire,

The Mooresie › Hey, ScribeFire, — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:06:35 +0000

[...] your tracking pixel and shove it. This was written by mooresie. Posted on Monday, October 5, 2009, at 20:36. Filed [...]

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by HKG_David

HKG_David — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:00:42 +0000

Yes.. I just realized that some unwanted code was inserted after I published!! I almost uninstall Scribefire function from my firefox!!!

Thanks for the posting…

So BAD~~~~!!!! Scribefire and Zemanta!!!

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by Sam

Sam — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:07:33 +0000

andraz,

You SUCK!

Never will I use crap that adds BS like that.

Sam

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by danklife

danklife — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:08:48 +0000

Thanks for posting this. I have been seeing this as well. It really turns me off considering that if they are loading a grapic there is nothing stopping them from replacing that with banner adds in the future after having a zillions blogs at their disposal.

Replace zemanta-pixie-img with whatever image they want. BAM. Spam.

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by Roger S.

Roger S. — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:38:22 +0000

Thanks for posting this note to explain this curious setting in Scribefire. We had this problem come up a few times where it broke our custom blog's RSS output. I assumed the tracking bug was spy ware or something untoward / undesired on the person's computer. By finding your blog post, I quickly discovered that this is a software feature, not a bug (though it's a tracking bug, so maybe it's both!).

We've turned this off. It's nobody's business what we're posting on our little blog.

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by Benny

Benny — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:55:19 +0000

Thanks! You saved my life!

Comment on Launching Sametime 7.5.1 kicks off the Outlook 2007 Startup by STuser

STuser — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:57:17 +0000

#2 by itself did it for me

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by andraz

andraz — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:57:49 +0000

Hmmm, it's in release notes, labeled as “Important”:
http://blog.scribefire.com/whats-new/3-2/
Probably more could be done about this, I'll suggest this to our Scribefire friends.

About stats. There are some obvious standard statistics candidates. And then there are stats that might or might not be feasible – reporting how many times article was suggested to other Zemanta users, how many times it was included, where that was etc. Maybe even who snapped your content verbatim? These are mainly things that need infrastructural work on our part. It's more complicated that it seems and we have to see what's feasible to implement (within the resources available).

The idea is to provide more value to the authors (and some stats about product use to us). We are two tiny startups and we want to do all these things, but this takes some time.

You are right, we should be doing more in both implementation and informing the authors, and we'll try hard! In the mean time, I'd like to ask you to bear with us while we attend to this.

P.S.: we'd also be interested in ideas about what kind of stats you might want to see from this.

bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by Simon Scullion

Simon Scullion — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:13:20 +0000

Hi Andraz, thanks for taking the time to stop by!

I didn't see it mentioned anywhere in the ScribeFire release notes where the new Zemanta features were explained: http://blog.scribefire.com/2009/02/09/scribefir...

The off switch is fine if its “off” by default, and you clearly tell people its there!

I'm rather surprised you are saying you haven't thought out ahead of time what you aim to be capturing with these stats. It comes across as pretty unethical if you're capturing data from site readers, without even the owner's knowledge, and no clear reason for wanting the data. At least provide clear disclosure, T&C's, or method to opt-out, no?

Comment on ScribeFire, Zemanta, and a hidden tracking image by andraz

andraz — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:09:46 +0000

Well I think we were very open, it is in every release notes. Also, that's why there is an off switch…

We're currently analyzing the data to figure out what statistics can be extracted that are interesting to users and how to report them back. Give us a month or two and there will be something to show.

Andraz Tori, Zemanta