The thing that bothers me most about this isn’t that Microsoft appear to be copying Google to improve Bing’s search results. It’s how Microsoft have been getting the data, if Google are right. And in fact, this has opened my eyes to how much of our data Microsoft collect (if you’re interested, read their privacy policies – they have many).

Google believe that Microsoft are using some combination of Internet Explorer 8′s Suggested Sites feature and the Bing toolbar’s Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Having read through Internet Explorer’s privacy policy, the following jumps out at me:

You can choose to pause or stop the Suggested Sites feature from sending your web browsing history to Microsoft at any time. You can also delete individual entries from your history at any time. Deleted entries will not be used to provide you suggestions for other websites, although they will be retained by Microsoft for a period of time to help improve our products and services, including this feature. Any websites you visit while InPrivate Browsing is active will not be sent to Microsoft.

The information we collect from you will be used by Microsoft and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates to enable the features you are using and provide the service(s) or carry out the transaction(s) you have requested or authorized. It may also be used to analyze and improve Microsoft products and services.

So to be fair, Microsoft do state in the privacy policy that information gathered by one of their tools/features can be stored and used to improve any of their services or software. However, this is buried right near the end of the privacy policy. It is my opinion these statements should be right near the top, as I for one find this more relevant information than that preceding it.

While in legal terms Microsoft are, from a customer’s point of view, doing nothing wrong as far as I can see (whether or not Google have any legal grounds here if they are right is another matter), I think it is unethical and more than a bit underhanded to store data in relation to one tool then use that data for something else.

Perhaps this is just me being anti-Microsoft. I like their products, because they are good, but as an entity Microsoft seems to have no care for their customers or being ethical. In fact, having read through some of their other privacy policies now too, I’m quite horrified by the amount of data they store, even if it isn’t personally identifiable (and even that’s not guaranteed, but they do, apparently, at least try to filter out such information).

I’m going to stick in Google’s boat for now. I don’t think they are vindictive enough to do click-fraud as Microsoft are claiming. Unless, perhaps, they have an employee with a grudge against Microsoft who subsequently came up with an elaborate scheme to frame Bing. Keeping a job at Google vs. sticking it to Microsoft could actually be a tough choice!

This evening I was in the process of ordering Chinese takeaway with my boyfriend and a friend. This, as you may know, can take some time. But that’s beside the point.

The menu contained crispy spring rolls and crispy Peking spring rolls. Faced with not knowing the difference between said rolls, we hit Google.

Alas, Google let us down! Perhaps it was that we weren’t really putting all that much effort into refining the wording of our search term, but we couldn’t find an answer. So, we decided to order both so we could find out for ourselves what the difference is.

Well, having eaten both, I still couldn’t fully describe to you the difference. That’s probably down to the fact it’s nearly impossible to tell what spring rolls contain. It’s also due to the fact the bags weren’t labelled, so we didn’t know which roll was which. We were fully prepared to hit up Google again to translate any Kanji that might have been labeling the bags.

I will tell you though, one was bigger and contained lots of bean sprouts, while the other was a neater cylinder and contained prawns (according to my boyfriend. The half I had contained no sea life of any kind. And I’d have been pretty horrified if it had been alive anyway).

I don’t want to put this down to a failure of Google-Foo, so I will say instead that Google can’t magic up content. Perhaps no one has yet managed to discover the difference, or explain what they have seen.

Alternatively I could have just looked it up on Wikipedia…

“Evergreen – Beautiful music video“

Just stunning.

“Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie“

This is already insanely popular, but I included it because *everyone* needs to see it.

“Lost Things“

I love this. It’s got a lot of little awesome bits.

“In Search of the Wind“

Not the best quality art, but very cute none the less!

“Fight Like Apes – Knucklehead“

The actual song starts at 0:57. I think this is a fantastic lego stop-motion.

“Draw with Me“

Isn’t this just so adorable?! But also really sad.

“Chameleon Circuit – An Awful Lot of Running“

I’ll admit, this one got in because I absolutely love the song! But it’s a great video too.

“Metronomy – On The Motorway by JUL & MAT “

Ok, so this one’s not technically an animation, but I wouldn’t call it a normal video either. I thought it was pretty awesome anyway!

Bonus: “paper horse stop motion animation test“

Not a music video, but I found it while searching today. I wish it were longer.

My intention was to create a blog that was useful to people, a place that I could post up information to help people.

And I have helped people. I received a few requests for aid via the contact form and most of those problems I managed to solve.

But writing in a more formal way doesn’t suit me so much, I have discovered. I’m too crazy for that. I need more freedom.

And so Arteki will be slipping back towards a more personal blog. I will still try to write in an interesting way. It won’t be “Had eggs for breakfast. Work was ok. Tired now.”, there’s Twitter for that.

My posts will now most likely be shorter, about fun or interesting things I have seen/watched/done, e.g. my thoughts or opinions on a game I’ve just played for the first time, or my first time watching a particular movie.

But, no more!

Over the next week, Google will be making the transition back to @gmail addresses in the UK. I am very happy with this news and I will stop having to find a proxy when signing up for a new Gmail account.

Greg Bullock, who posted the announcement, has calculated this change will save 20 bonbons (yum!) worth of energy a day in keystrokes.

I am curious how the situation was resolved to allow them to reclaim the “Gmail” trademark in the UK. Nothing was posted in the announcement about this.

For those that don’t know, Google were forced to stop using “Gmail” in the UK because a company based in London had already been using the trademark for 2 years. I found the whole dispute quite laughable at the time, but at least it showed smaller companies could still stand up to the Google giant.

No one in this advert is shown to cover their PIN while entering it. To me, this is a poorly thought out video. ATMs tell us to cover the keypad while entering our PINs and yet Barclays, who have won awards for security, have produced an advert that teaches the complete opposite. It doesn’t just fail to show the keypad being covered, you can actually see the PIN that’s entered.

Users are the weak point in security and should be encouraged to keep their PINs safe. Yes, you need more than a PIN to access someone’s funds, but cards are still easy to clone due to the magnetic strip for backwards compatibility.

Not only is the PIN shown in this advert, entering PINs is the theme of the advert. Had it not been, I wouldn’t be so concerned.

Can people be easily influenced by such a short clip? I would say yes, especially on a subconscious level. It wasn’t until the advert ended (albeit a shorter version) that I realised the blatant disregard for security. People may not think they are paying attention to the advert, but the catchy beeps are there to draw attention. Adverts are designed to get stuck in your head, so the behaviour presented may well stick too.

Any thoughts or opinions on this?

As an aside, as a (student) programmer I find it frustrating that improvements are always being made to the computer aspect of banking security, yet a bank as high profile as Barclays can’t be bothered to show secure behaviour in an advert.

The above video is my first attempt at both a game review and videoing myself. So please be nice. If you can’t see the video, please ensure you are viewing this article on Arteki.com and are using a Flash-capable browser with the latest version of Flash installed.

Please find a transcript below. I have slightly edited bits to make it read a little clearer than it would have otherwise.

The following are corrections to what I have said in the video:

• There is a quest-log in the game. You can press the tab key to display it.
• You can press R to display the heads-up-display.
• The information section is indeed called the “Pandorapedia”.

Transcript

Hi there, I’m Gaby, aka eldris. Some of you may know me as the author of Arteki.com. I’m going to talk today about James Cameron’s Avatar The Game.

First impressions of [the game]: very bad – not because of the game itself, but because of the initial problems the game had.

The first problem I encountered was after installation, when I went to run the game I couldn’t get the shortcut I had made to work. I tried running the game and it crashed. Luckily, searching through some forums I came across the fact that it was the shortcut it wouldn’t run with, so I went into the installation folder. If you are having this problem, go into the folder you installed the game in and then go into the “bin” folder and load Avatar.exe. I would recommend first you listen to my next point though.

My next point is that (and I have to say that this is being played under Vista – I don’t actually have it installed on XP or Windows 7 to test it, so this is all Vista-based) when I eventually got it to launch, there was no sound in the game and nobody wants to play a game with no sound. The subtitles weren’t appearing either. So, again, I looked at the forums and read that there was a patch, so I hunted around a bit but I couldn’t find a patcher tool – when you click Avatar.exe it just goes straight into the game. But there is another file in there; I think it’s called AvatarLauncher. If you run that it should go through and check for patches first. So, before you go playing the game, run [AvatarLauncher]. The sound should work.

I will say that [the game] is still quite glitchy even with the patch. There are some bits of dialogue in the game were it just skips, so then you have absolutely no idea why you’re doing a quest. You just pretty much get the arrow on the map that tells you where you are going.

As far as I’ve seen there’s no actual quest-log, so you can’t see what you’re currently assigned to do. You just have to follow the arrow and if you’ve got any extra tasks then it’s quite hard to tell. I’ve only been playing the game for a few hours so far, so I suppose I’ve missed something there. I really hope I have because if there is no log or such for active missions, that is a bit ridiculous really in my opinion, because if you go away for a bit and haven’t played the game in a while, then you’re going to come back and you’re just going to completely forget what you’re doing.

And again, when that dialogue skips, you don’t want to just go off and do the mission it’s telling you to, you want to know why your character’s doing it.

I’ve just got to the point where it splits off into the two stories (I’m a little bit past that). Without [spoiling] it too much, there’s a point in the game where you get to pick whether you’re going to play for the humans or the Na’avi.

I picked the Na’avi because I see them as the good-guys. Having watched Avatar twice, I absolutely love their culture, so I wanted to play through as them.

It’s really very fun. I think the Avatars look very good. The colours are good; not as bright as in the movie, which is a bit unfortunate. Everything looks a bit… I don’t want to say flat, because obviously I’ve seen the film in 3D, but it’s got that appearance that games do where there’s just not enough contrast.

The weapons are quite good. I’ve found [that I’m] not very good at the kind of combat that this game has; I’m more of a “give commands and let them get on with it” player. For example, with Dragon Age [I played through] on easy, because I don’t like combat.

The Na’avi weapon set is incredibly cool. There are dual-wielded swords, which do quite high damage. At the stage I’m at they can pretty much one-hit kill a human. The only thing is, actually getting to the humans. I think it might be slightly unbalanced. Although, yes, you can one-hit kill them, getting to them requires that you don’t die while they’re shooting you and that is quite difficult because if there’s even just two or three people shooting at you, your health can drop really quickly. I haven’t got very far through the game yet [and] this is the first time I’ve played it, so I should expect it to be difficult.

There is a nice part where you can get life recovery. It’s not clear how you get them – I think it’s by collecting cell samples, but I’m not 100% sure. Again, they’re not very clear on these kinds of things. I could probably find it in the “Pandorapedia” (I think [that’s what] they call it – a bit of a rubbish name in my opinion, if that is [the correct name]). Even that is quite hard to navigate, because you have lots and lots of sub-menus – you have to pick a category, then a sub-category, etc. I think there are easier ways of displaying it than what they have.

Another thing where I think they haven’t displayed the information very well is with the heads-up-display. That only comes up when you’re in combat. I haven’t worked out a key combination to just bring it up so I can what skills I’ve got on without having to go into the other menu.

They’ve numbered [the skills] in a diamond shape. [I indicate a diamond shape with a hand gesture.] The diamond shows you the skills your character has. They’re numbered from the top, [I point to the top of the diamond] 1, [I point to the right] 2, [I point to the bottom] 3 and [I point to the left] 4, which means that 4 is [on the left], but on your keyboard it’s the right-most key [of the four skill shortcuts]. This is something where they haven’t helped people make a link between the visual display of the icons telling you which skill it is and the key you have to press on the keyboard.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find it hard to see [the 4th skill] on the screen on the left and then think “Press 4”, which is on the right. It’s just a bit unintuitive, I think. I don’t see why they couldn’t have just displayed them in a row across the top – I think it may have even looked better.

It’s the same with the weapons, although at least with the weapons you can use the [mouse wheel] to change between them, which is quite good, except I do tend to forget which way I want to scroll it.

It’s quite a good game all in all. I’m not sure it’s worth the price. I paid around £27 for it. I know it is a new game, considering which it is a good price (which was from Tesco), but were I to have the knowledge I do now I probably wouldn’t purchase it. It’s not a good enough game for that price, in my opinion.

I don’t know how far through I am, I suspect that I’m probably not that far through at all. I’m hoping that it will end up being a very in-depth and worthwhile game, but other than giving you skill upgrades and new weapons there’s not really much to it so far in the way of giving you new things. There will be new mounts; I should get an Ikran soon – I think I’m just about to start the quest for that.

The vehicles aren’t that great, I don’t think. They control very well, but there’s just something about them that doesn’t feel quite right. It would be nice if you could use your weapon [while] on them. That’s one thing – if you have a fight you have to keep getting out of the vehicle or off the mount and then fight. It’s just a bit tedious.

There is one thing I will say for [the game]. I have not got annoyed at any voice actors yet. That is one thing I do tend to get annoyed at in games if they’re bad, so the voice acting is quite good. It’s not as good as [in Dragon Age] , but considering it is a movie spin-off game where they haven’t actually got any of the actors from the film, except for one bit at the start, [they are] good voice actors. If you are a regular game player [where the game] has voices in it, you will know how annoying it can be when people have just got rubbish accents, or like in Oblivion where it’s the same person doing the voice for “all” the characters in the game.

That’s my opinion of Avatar The Game. I’ll be interested to know what you’ve found about it or if you’re having any problems running it let me know.

I honestly don’t think threatening these pirates will work. The Internet has created a generation of people who believe they deserve to get things for free. In fact, as an artist I come across a lot of people who just do not know about copyright and assume everything on the Internet is up for grabs.

Rather than creating a “3 strikes and your out” policy for Internet use, I believe there are far better ways to satisfy everyone. But copyright holders need to be willing to compromise.

Educate

If people do not know what copyright is, how can they be expected to follow copyright laws?

When I first used the Internet, way back at the start of this millennium, I was completely ignorant about copyright and would use copyright images in my art. I too believed anything on the Internet was free for me to use as I wished.

As soon as I learnt about copyright I stopped using images I found online unless I obtained permission. And I’m pretty stubborn, so if I can be convinced to change my ways, surely others can too.

Provide it for free, legally

When we watch TV we do not pay to watch each show. Channels pay for showing programs by advertisements. We do pay a TV licence in the UK, but then again we pay a subscription fee for broadband.

So why shouldn’t content be provided free on the Internet and paid for by advertisements?

Last.FM and Spotify are just 2 examples of companies providing free music streaming that is legal. They can afford to pay the licence fees by adverts and premium services.

Many TV channels and companies now allow people to catch up with shows by streaming them online. Most that I have seen contain adverts for revenue, although in my opinion they go the wrong way about doing it.

However, I believe that despite this free access to music and television people are still pirating because they do not want to stream; they want to download. This is especially true with music because of the desire to load them onto portable devices.

So what can be done to monetize free legal downloads? I would say that the same as for streaming can be applied. Adverts could be placed next to download links or shown for a time before the download becomes available. Adverts could even be inserted into videos (and although they could be removed, most people would not know how to do this).

Stop picking on the little guy

Many people do not look to make profit from file sharing. While I agree that companies do lose out on profit even if the sharers aren’t making money, I do not see the point in trying to bankrupt an individual making no profit when there are people making a lot of money from illegal file sharing, including sites enabling it such as RapidShare.

For example, fining someone $1.9m for sharing 24 songs ($80k each) is pretty insane when there is no way they could afford to pay that. I do not believe the music company could have lost anywhere near that much per song.

The likelihood is they were trying to send a message, but the reactions I saw to the case lead me to conclude the exact opposite happened. Cases such as that seem to make people more determined to take profits away from companies because they continue to make themselves look greedy.

Address the “something for nothing” view

If we could define why people believe they should get something for nothing, perhaps we could alter that viewpoint. I do not believe people deserve something for nothing. We get things for free either because the owner is generous or by unscrupulous means.

It is not just things such as music and video many people think they should get free. I have seen interviews in regard to the recession with people who complain that they cannot get loans! Many seemed outraged that their bank would not give them money.

Perhaps my view on this is old fashioned, but I do not like spending money I do not have. But many people seem to have no issues with getting into debt and spending money they don’t have.

Yes, I know I have drifted from the point, but now I shall get back to it!

When people buy things using loans or a buy-now-pay-later option, I believe many see it as getting something for free, or at least free temporarily. It is this frame of mind, along with the easy-access the Internet provides, that has likely caused some people to think many things should be free.

I will not exclude myself from that group. I do not buy music and I often find myself questioning why some things aren’t free (such as Spotify’s mobile version). Looking back on my own Internet use, I can say with some certainty that I want things for free because I used to take them for free online before I understood and cared about copyright. Please note the emphasis on caring about copyright. There are those who understand it and chose to ignore it. But I won’t lecture people on morals today.

There is no registration, so you can quickly set up a room for you and your friends to use, with a unique URL for your room. There is also a chat area so you can discuss the video while watching it.

Something I think a lot of people may take for granted is the ability to load a new video without having to create a new room. That feature could have been easily overlooked.

However, I think there is only a limited use for synchtube. It will not take long for the novelty to wear out on an idea like this.

The name is not the only bad thing about this change.

Appearance

The first major difference I noticed was the skin, which a comment left by Sarah (who seems to have signed up just to leave the comment) on Echofon’s page on the Mozilla add-on site:

Twitterfox used to be a beautiful, simple add-on that easily would have gotten 5 stars out of me. This morning it updated itself to “Echofon”. Despite the name change being awful in itself, their new default skin is just HORRIBLE. It looks rushed, harsh on the eyes, and overall looks utterly rushed, sloppy, and non-user friendly. It’s like they don’t WANT you to look at it.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with that comment.

The new default skin looks to be based on Apple’s skin designs, which makes it look completely out of place in a Windows environment. I like the alternate skin even less.

Unlike Twitterfox, Echofon groups tweets by a user if they have multiple tweets in a row on your timeline. The name and avatar of the user only appears next to their first tweet in the group. This makes it incredibly difficult to scan through tweets quickly, as you have to slow down on groups so you know who wrote all the now nameless tweets.

As for the blank white box next to the “Messages” tab, when you start typing it shows you the number of characters left. It’s a necessary part of the interface, but when in its blank state it looks hugely out of place. Although the bottom of it is lined up with the bottom of the tabs, it doesn’t look that way due to the darker border the tabs have.

Short timeline

A major problem I have noticed with Echofon is that it only displays around 20 tweets in your timeline.

When I logged on today, Echofon informed me that I had 200 new tweets in my timeline, but it only displayed 21 of them (there was a 22nd one, but it was cut off after a few pixels). I’m hoping this will be a side effect of the changeover, but it happening at all shows Echofon is a poor product.

Users don’t seem happy

Aside from the bad reviews Echofon is getting on it’s add-on page, there is a fair amount of tweeting going on about the change. Quite a few don’t like the update.

I’ve also seen tweets from people who are confused about the change, which isn’t surprising as there was no notification given about the change.

Inevitably, some people do like the change, although less than don’t like it. Personally, I would like to knock some sense into them and show them why Twitterfox was better.

Did you use Twitterfox?

If you used Twitterfox, what do you think of the change? Please leave a comment below, I’d really like to hear from you.

Even if you don’t use Twitterfox, do you like the look of Echofon?