Now I am not one to get all upset about these things like a lot of people on Twitter/Facebook/Forums etc, but as soon as it came up on the big screen I just LOL’d (yes, it really WAS out loud!). This thing looks like it was designed by an (underachieving) school kid. The first “web 2.0″ tutorial I saw on the web did a better job of making a logo look good.

I can see why they wanted a new logo. The old one has a picture of a CD, and let’s face it, when was the last time we consumed music via CD (yes, I know there’s always one!)?

I could understand if they replaced the CD with an iPod or something. I can even understand the use of a musical note, but this is your bog standard “gel button” with a flat note dumped on it with a bit of glow added for good measure.

I saw a tweet where someone recommended a replacement icon, and immediately you can see it took more than 5 minutes to design:

http://dribbble.com/shots/51446-iTunes-10-Replacement-Icon

At first glance you can see straight away it is a lot more modern (dare I say it, “funky”!) and also encompasses the social media angle of the new Ping service. This icon would not look out of place on any Mac Dock.

I was trying to think how on earth this gel icon go the thumbs up and the only thing I can think of is Steve designed it. I have seen it time and time again where a client thinks they know best. I am sure a lot of you have too. You know the conversation…. “can you make my logo BIGGER?!”.

This has to be a similar situation, and we all know that at Apple nobody argues with Steve Jobs (not for long anyway).

I’d love to hear peoples views on this issue, as I am sure there are many, but looking at the amount of blog posts that have popped up discussing this it is quite clear what people think of it.

I just find it bizarre that a company founded on (and obsessed with) the fit and finish of their products can produce something as laughable as this.

I sense an iTunes 10.1 around the corner, with a slightly more polished logo

Secondly there is the issue of copyright theft, people using your images without permission, often giving the impression they own, or even created them, themselves. Again, depending on the site/person doing the stealing it may or may not be an issue.

There are a few ways of dealing with this, I will go into just a few of them in this post.

Firstly, you really want to establish whether or not the person linking you image is doing it deliberately and whether they know it is wrong. The first move is usually to simply ask them to remove it.

If you establish this is a deliberate act there are some options open to you:

• Legal (mostly over the top and expensive)
• Pass on the responsibility (i.e. ask their ISP to remove the site for copyright infringement)
• Revenge (will go into this later)
• Prevention (Instructions below)

I will explain the above points one by one:

Legal

I am not a fan of premature legal action, I think it is often over the top and unnecessary. It is nice to have the option to hand but I would personally keep it as a last resort.

Pass on the responsibility

This is often a good low-effort way of dealing with things. ISP’s don’t like lawyers and they also don’t “usually” know if you are one. If you drop them an email asking them to remove the offending site due to copyright infringement (or even better drop them a letter) then they will often act pretty quickly. This really does depend on the ISP though, so there are mixed results for this method.

Revenge

If you are SURE they are doing it deliberately stealing your images then follow these steps to make their eyes water (or just give them bad press)

1. Rename your image
2. Change the link in your HTML to match the new name (so it looks the same on your site)
3. Change the image (e.g. boat.jpg) to an image of something “different” (you know what I mean)

As long as the linked image has the same filename then people going to the offending site will no longer see the picture of a “boat” but will either see a jpg with your own message or an image of your choice

Prevention

This way is usually the best way of preventing people linking your images (it won’t prevent them stealing them though, but that is another issue)

As long as you have an Apache server (most are) then put a file called “.htaccess” (don’t forget the dot!) into your images folder.

Add the following lines to it, and save it:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourwebsite.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

With this in place, any gif or jpg images linked from anywhere other than your site will fail to display.

Like doctors often say, prevention is best. I do agree with this, but I also believe “revenge is sweet”

For those who don’t already know, Facebook has made changes to the settings (defaults) that mean not only do you get to share (or not share) your information with the world, unless you actively go in and change the default settings your friends can share your information on your behalf.

It is all part of Facebooks plan to know everything about everyone, based on a persons friends and their taste in music, clothes etc..etc.. The problem is it is impossible to develop such a model without some form of invasion of privacy and Facebook seems to have battered down the privacy door in order to move forward.

It is one thing having the ability to share your information with the world, but to default it to on (and add default on settings to previously secured accounts) is not good.

Facebook has been criticised for having an over complicated security model, such that you have to dig deep into menus in order to find the settings you need to turn off. It has improved a little over the past year, but not nearly enough.

The funny thing is I read “The Accidental Billionaires” (the story of Facebook) a few months back and the way Mark Zuckerburg is portrayed (rightly or wrongly) it is absolutely not surprising that Facebook act this way.

I wonder if there was a viable alternative to Facebook if their numbers would take a hit? I know a lot of key figures who are cancelling their Facebook accounts, but I guess the general public are just not aware that their privacy is being given away. It is no wonder that Zuckerburg defends Facebook by stating that they are loved by the public, it is just the bloggers and the media that are on their back.

Anyway…

If you want to secure your account you need to do the following:

Go into :

account > privacy settings > Apps and settings > What your friends can share about you

untick all the boxes (if you dont want your friends sharing your info)

Then go back to privacy settings and into Instant personalisation pilot programme

Untick the box

Now, to be completely secure you must visit each of these pages and select “block” (on the left)

Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora, Yelp

That should do it for now. If Facebook sneak in any more defaults I will post what you need to do to turn them off.

Deliveries halted last week and seeing my Macbook Pro was sitting air-side in Shanghai I had resigned myself to not getting my new machine until next week. However, UPS seem to have come up trumps and my MBP is now sitting at home, just over 24 hours after it was the other side of the world.

It took quite a route to get here though, and I am astounded how it managed to get here so quickly.

I am quick to bash companies for bad service, but on this occasion “well done UPS”

Well another Tuesday came and went without Apple releasing the new version of its flagship laptop. As I write this the Forum is currently on page 214 of the 5th thread of people waiting for the release.

The problem is nobody really has any idea when the new laptops will be out. All we can be sure of is every day that goes by brings us one day closer to the inevitable release. The problem is there are lots of people who need to make the decision to either buy the current model or wait for the new one.

Without any indication of when the release will happen, all people can do is wait and join the forum discussion  support group.

Apple is really starting to disappoint me as a company. I am a self-confessed fan-boy, but only of their products, not of their company ethos.

I will purchase one of the new Macbook Pros eventually, but I steadfastly refuse to part with significant amounts of money for year old hardware.

However, recently (over the past year) Firefox has also started to give me some other things… headaches and  high blood pressure to name just two! I have loved using Firefox for so long I am tempted to blame Windows for the constant freezes, crashes and general slowness. Unfortunately I can’t. I use a PC at work and a Mac at home, and Firefox behaves the same on both of them.

Today I found out that Firebug is now available on Google Chrome, which prompted me to take a look at what else is available. To my surprise I found a Twitter client, XMarks, a great page screen-grab utility and an SEO tool. Wow, things have moved on since I first tried out Chrome.

In fact, all my deal-clinch extensions are now available on Chrome!

So, as of 2 hours ago I made the jump to Chrome. So far I am loving it. Despite having my extensions active the browsing experience is still very slick and it has not frozen up once. I still have an open mind, but for now I think I have closed Firefox for the last time.

I will keep trying Firefox from time to time, but I think until they release v4.0 their back-end core is just too flaky for my liking.

I am glad Chrome now has extensions. I know it is a matter of debate as to whether it should be kept as a “clean browser” but I kind of figure if you want it clean then don’t install the extensions. Completely bare of extensions Chrome is still faster than Firefox!

I hope Firefox does get it’s act together. It has done wonders for the web community, helping topple IE off its perch (or at least getting them to play ball, not sit on their market share). If Chrome does compete with Firefox I think it could be a game changer for the web. With the Google Apps behind them I think they have a better chance of reaching the general public and hopefully will eventually push IE below the magic 50% market share mark!

What are your thoughts on Google Chrome?

First of all, the message to these people is:

“please stop spamming me with your offers. I have not, nor will ever require, your services and I certainly did not ask you to contact me”

I am sure some of these companies work well to produce good quality products, but that is not the issue. The issue is we have been fighting for years against spam, cold calling and other unrequested communication and these companies are setting us back several years by sending out obviously un-researched copy/paste emails to every web company they can find.

This sort of thing is lazy marketing, and I can only presume if you do lazy marketing you also perform lazy coding and lazy project management… so in the words of Dragon’s Den… for that reason, “I’m Out!!”

I have planned on getting the new 17″ Macbook Pro for a long time now, but the existing models are using the Core2Duo processors and the rest of the Apple line (and the rest of the world!) has moved on since then. I decided to wait for the Macbook Pro product line to be refreshed before getting the new one, but each time the rumor mill says it will be updated, it doesn’t happen.

Once again rumor has it that tomorrow will be the big day and I will be able to get my new MBP, but alas I am getting used to it not happening and will have to make do with the 15″ for now. This is not a problem, but it has recently been slowing down and is in need of a good blatting, but I don’t want to do that with all my data on it, I would prefer to get the new one up and running before formatting the existing one.

Why am I blogging about this? I am not sure really, I am just anxious to get to grips with the new 17″ as it will be a LOT easier for Lightroom work as it has a lot more scream real estate available.

So, will tomorrow be the day? I will just have to wait and see… watch this space…

Anyway, it turns out the easiest (or only, I don’t know) way of deleting this stupid file (why Windows SERVER would need to hibernate anyway is beyond me!) is to drop into command prompt and run the following command:

powercfg -h off

Easy when you know how, but annoying if you don’t!

In the address bar, type about:config

You may get a warning message, this is fine.

From the list produced, find the following 3 properties:

network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris

network.negotiate-auth.delegation-uris

network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris

You need to add the server you wish to authenticate to the end of the value associated with the property, so it should read something like “localhost, myserver.com”.

You need to set that for each of the 3 properties and you should be good to go, no restart needed.

Like I said, you are unlikely to need this in an Internet environment, but it is necessary to authenticate with Windows authentication in an Intranet environment.