Today I mostly use Flickr as an archive—as the place where I store all my photos as a backup and to link them up to blog articles that I write. The site that once had the best social tools, the most vibrant userbase, and toppest-notch storage is rapidly passing into the irrelevance of abandonment. But why? Cause Yahoo chose to focus on all their services, instead of picking the services they were best at. That has led to the founders and most of the originale developers of Flickr have left Yahoo, that there almost have not been added new functionality the last 4-5 years and even worse that functionality has not been maintained. Yes, I have already blogged about Flickr not getting new maps and satelite photos for geotagging photos back in 2009 and later that I hoped Flickr would soon start using Live Maps.

Well, back to the article in Gizmodo you should especially read the parts “When Startups Become Successes” and “Integration Is The Enemy of Innovation” and how it clearly shows how Yahoo screwed Flickr’s user base. How Flickr didn’t understand the value of free data contributed and maintained by the users. Yahoo only saw value in the images and tags, rather than the users who had uploaded them. And as Flickr suddently wasn’t as profitable as some of the other bigger properties, like Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Sports, it wasn’t given the resources that were dedicated to other products. That meant it had to spend its resources on integration, rather than innovation. Which made it harder to attract new users, which meant it couldn’t make as much money, which meant (full circle) it didn’t get more resources. Yahoo simply didn’t have a vision and a roadmap for Flickr. Or they didn’t stick with it!

Is it all downwards from here? I hope not and I still plan to be a Pro member. Flickr is currently undergoing the first bigger redesign in years and I really like what I see:

• big, BIG, BIGGER photos on the photo page!
• Attributed sharing from Flickr to Pinterest
• Say hello to the new Flickr Uploadr
• Announcing a new and faster photo editor from Aviary

There is still a lot of activity around my pictures, with a still very active community, but Flickr has a long way to go. I am sure that the competition from Facebook and Flickr will do it good. I hope to see lots of improvements and new functionality in the time to come.

Long live the king!

Glenn A. Britt, the company’s chief executive, said in a group interview on Friday that the challenge for digital video was that there was no simple way to get Internet-based video onto the television screen. He wasn’t familiar with AirPlay.

“I’m not sure I know what AirPlay is,” he said, though he noted that he was an enthusiastic Apple customer. “Today we want to be on every screen. Today it’s a little bit clunky to get programming from the Internet onto the TV — not so hard to get it on your iPad. What’s hard is the plumbing, what wires do you connect, what device do you use. So the current Apple TV, the little thing, the hockey puck, really doesn’t do anything to help enable you to get Internet material on your TV.”

He must be living in denial, as AirPlay is widely viewed as being potentially disruptive to the cable industry, because it makes it easy for people to view a broad variety of Internet content on a television. Not to mention other options like the Boxee Box, Roku or Google TV, which in some cases offer even more web-based video options than Apple TV does!

Priceless

Delivered-To: frankps@gmail.com
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Received: from unknown (HELO gambell.apple.com) ([17.128.113.99])
  by badger-txnvip.apple.com with ESMTP; 14 May 2012 02:42:10 -0700
Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 09:42:09 +0000 (GMT)
From: iTunes Store <do_not_reply@apple.com>
Reply-To: Clarissasvay40334@yahoo.com
To: frankps@gmail.com

This simplistic view on the email almost had me. It looked a lot like it could have been from Apple, but as so often Reply-To: Clarissasvay40334@yahoo.com says it all…

$ nslookup gambell.apple.com
Server: 10.0.1.1
Address: 10.0.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can’t find gambell.apple.com: No answer

and…

$ ping 17.128.113.99
PING 17.128.113.99 (17.128.113.99): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5

The 170 pages book has been turned in to a 563,1 MB download that includes 9 high definition video clips and 200 photos, and it is one of the first interactive photography books available in the iBooks Store.

The book is the culmination of 10 years photographing birds and other animals from hideouts in Brazil, Costa Rica and Hungary, from hours of lying camouflaged in the photo hides that he constructs himself, waiting for that poignant moment. It mostly comprises bird photos, but also a chapter on small mammals and birds’ encounters with snakes and other creatures. In twelve chapters Bence tells you how good planning and lots of patience are important to succeed … along with a great dose of luck. And yes, Bence has crouched for hours, days, weeks and even months waiting to be able to take his breathtaking photos.

The interactive iBooks version has been published by GoodBook Hungary. They have done a fantastic job, using lots of the functionality that the iBook format provides in great ways. The readability is great and in gallery view the photos are absolutely stunning on my iPads Retina display!

If you are interested in learning about bird photography and own an iPad, “The Invisible Wildlife Photographer” is a book you should definitely buy. It is available for € 9,99 (US $ 14,99 / 95 NOK). I am so looking forward to visiting his photo hides again, but until then I will enjoy his book.

The iBook format is very similar to the ePUB 3 standard, not only can you add images to your pages, the reader can zoom in or out of them. You can insert Keynote slides, 3D objects, interactive diagrams or movies that can either be viewed embedded inside a page or full-screen. There’s even the possibility of creating short quizzes to test your reader’s knowledge retention. These books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could and truly lives up to the “i” in iBooks!

Read the fine print!

Whith iBooks Author you’re diving into Apple’s platform. I don’t want to scare you away from it, but rather to give you the facts up front so that you can decide if iBooks Author is right for your book project. Note that you will only be able to sell your .ibooks file in the iBookstore. If you use iBooks Author to create your book, you cannot export the file and sell it in any channel other than the iBookstore. You can’t sell it on your website. You can’t sell it on Amazon. You can’t sell it anywhere else. This restriction is included in the iBooks Author EULA (End User License Agreement) and specifically applies to the ebook format (.ibooks) and not the content of the book.

Technical limitation

The .ibooks format can only be read on iPads, no other iOS device. The enormous iPhone user base will not be able to read your digital textbook. iPhone users can only read the ePUB format (can be created with Pages).

Using iBooks Author

The true beauty of iBooks Author is that it is incredibly simple to use, and if you’re familiar with Apple’s iWork suite, you’ll feel right at home within its interface. It’s something between the iWork apps Pages and Keynote.

Honestly, I started using the tool within minutes. Just like other iWork programs, you start with a choice of template. There are six templates that comes included, but you can of course create your own.

Writing Text

You can write straight into iBooks Author, but I guess most of us will use a text processor for the writing process and then import the content to iBooks Author. Text is brought in seamlessly from Pages and Word, but remember that more complex formatting and embedded images can cause problems with the layout. The best way is to bring in the text and then add the multimedia content in iBooks Author.

Using Widgets

Inserting media is done in the same easy way as with the iWork programs, through the Media window. With the Media window you locate photos, movies and music stored on your Mac. Applying the multi-touch interactivity is done with seven widgets, including being able to insert HTML dashcode applets, like those used to create Dashboard widgets on your Mac.

Preview Your Work

iBooks Author is an WYSIWYG editor, but you still want to preview your work as you design it. Simply connect your iPad to the Mac with the USB cable, click the Toolbar’s Preview icon and your book will be transferred for you to check. A purple ‘Proof’ banner appears on the cover of your ebook and you’ll be able to browse through it and interact with your widgets to make sure they all work as expected.

Finale Words

iBooks Author is a 1.0 product, which means it’s a little rough around the edges at times. The tool will only run on OS X 10.7.2 or newer version of the operating system. As it runs on OS X 10.7 (Lion), it comes with the operating systems inbuilt autosave feature.

ArsTechnica recently published a great review of iBooks Author that I recommend you to read.

Do you need further assistance? Please have a look at the free eBook Publishing with iBooks Author, available at O’REILLY (ePUB, mobi and PDF).

I’m sure it will be back online in a few minutes…

I guess many apps will be available for free, but I just have some nagging thoughts: Why would I have to pay to be able to share my information on the timeline? Why would I pay for Facebook to be able give me more accurate adds? This reminds me of Winnie the Pooh: “Honey or condensed milk with your bread?”. He was so excited that he said “Both”.

My take is that Facebook doesn’t need to make money selling apps. It knows how to make money from users and their activity within the apps. What the App Center is or should be, is a great set of pointers to free Web apps that use Connect. Facebook will then be encouraging the growth of Facebook-connected services on the Web that use its login platform, like Pinterest and Spotify. Again, Facebook wins when users login in via Facebook.

A trusted certificate has been added to this part of the profile (AddTrust External CA Root) and the same goes for the following Trusted Server Certificate Names: AddTrust External CA Root, TERENA SSL CA and UTN-USERFirst-Hardware.

I am not sure that Directory Authentication should be enabled. In fact, I first tried using a payload variable (%short_name%) also for configuring Wi-Fi. Problem is then that the profile is not accepted cause of lacking password. Directory Authentication is on the other hand not pulling the needed information from Open Directory / Active Directory and username and password is later not accepted on the device when trying to connect to Wi-Fi.

I’ve been searching forums and support pages, but not found any good information on how to solve the problem. Any suggestions out there?

Update: 10.7.4 is now released with lots of bug fixes for Profile Manager, among them “using profiles to join 802.1x networks”. I was fast to update the server, but seem to have the same problems still.

The Metro app is the equivalent of the Kindle Cloud Reader and it doesn’t bring many new features. Once you open a book you can navigate to different parts of the text (cover, table of contents or a specific page). Placing bookmarks is also available, just like the synchronization option (Whispersync).

Some Windows 8 specific options are pinning the books to the Start screen, as a tile, just like in the case of web pages. Offline access to items is also available, as books are downloaded as soon as you open them.

Enjoy what is left of the weekend!