Tris' Shared Items on NewsGator Online

Avoid Mediocre Portraits with These Tricks [Photography]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

You have a camera and a willing subject, but you're not sure how to break your portraits out of the flat blandness that plagues many snapshots. Avoid boring compositions with these tips.

Photo by Kevin N. Murphy.

Over at the photography site Digital Photography School, they've put together a list of best practices for avoiding the boring portrait blues. They all focus on breaking out of your default camera-pointed-right-at-subject's-face/subject-starring-down-camera-like-hungry-wolf setup. The photograph I grabbed from Flickr here is an example of tip #7, introducing a prop into the photo. Another way to go about injecting interest into your photos is to take a well-established rule of composition and break it:

The Rule of Thirds is one that can be effective to break - placing your subject either dead center can sometimes create a powerful image - or even creative placement with your subject right on the edge of a shot can sometimes create interesting images.

While the tips they offer are all about composition, don't neglect the hardware side of things. Check out previously reviewed list of photography hacks from David Pogue to increase your photographic arsenal cheaply. If you have a favorite portrait to share, link it and explain its craft in the comments. Photo by Gianmaria.

Word of mouth can’t be manufactured

Mathew — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:57:25 GMT

Update:

Belkin has released a statement saying it was unaware such activities were taking place and that it is “extremely sorry.” The company said that Belkin “does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction.” The full note is at CrunchGear.

Original post:

A couple of days ago, an astute blogger poking around Amazon’s Mechanical Turk “crowd-sourcing” engine discovered that someone from Belkin — a company that makes computer and electronic peripherals like mice, USB hubs and so on — was paying people through Mechanical Turk to submit fake reviews to Amazon of Belkin products. The wording of the ad (which offered to pay the princely sum of 65 cents for each review) was very specific. It said:

“– Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)
– Write as if you own the product and are using it
– Mark any other negative reviews as ‘not helpful’”

I have no doubt that whoever came up with this idea — I don’t know if it was Michael Bayard, the Belkin employee whose name was on the ad, or someone else in the organization — thought they were pretty smart. After all, what better way to harness the Web’s “conversational” marketing than by paying people to spread the good word about Belkin’s stuff? Simple as pie. I’m sure the same thoughts went through the minds of whoever came up with a similar Nvidia campaign a couple of years ago. Pay a few people to pretend they like your gear, and Bob’s your uncle. Web 2.0 FTW!

As I’ve often said when I talk to groups of marketing people about social media, this kind of strategy — or even Wal-Mart’s disastrous motor-home adventure — seem like a great idea, right up until someone finds out about it and blows the whistle (and surely by now everyone knows that’s going to happen eventually, the Internet being what it is). And when that happens, you will not only lose whatever goodwill you thought you were buying with your 65-cent reviews, but you will lose a bunch more besides. You will wind up in a hole, since people will now believe that even things you didn’t pay for were either paid for or fraudulent in some way.

It’s easy to understand why someone would come up with that kind of strategy. It must be frustrating to see word of mouth becoming such a powerful force, and your company not getting what you feel is your fair share of it. So why not goose things a little? Because it inevitably fails, that’s why. The best marketing, they say, is having a product and service that doesn’t suck. If you don’t have that, then paying people to say you do isn’t going to help, and in fact is going to put you even further behind the eight ball. To all of you in the marketing biz, please remember: Friends don’t let friends use manufactured word of mouth campaigns.

A Firefox Add-On for App Addicts: App Discover

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:20:00 GMT

When you visit a web site how do you know you're getting the best experience for you? That's the question the new Firefox add-on App Discover aims to solve. Once installed, the app could alert you if there were any enhancements (Greasemonkey, Firefox add-ons) or applications (Adobe AIR, Appcelerator Titanium, Fluid, Mozilla Prism) that work with the web site you're visiting.

Sponsor

Today, finding the latest and greatest apps involves a lot searching around, but with the App Discover add-on, you could potentially discover new apps just by visiting the web pages you use every day. The site would actually tell you if there is an enhancement application available through a notification that appears at the top of the page.

For example, visiting the site Twitter.com could alert you to the availability of the TweetDeck AIR application.

Before you get too excited, understand that App Discover does not quite work just yet - it's only a proof of concept. In order for it to work, the add-on created by Dion Almaer (who blogged about on Ajaxian) requires the developer to enter a link tag to their web page in order for the it to find the available apps. Because of its newness, no developers have done so just yet.

If App Discover became popular, it could be further customized to include user preferences so you could let the app know what sorts of apps you want to be alerted about - e.g. yes to Greasemonkey, no to Titanium apps. It could also include a social feature which would let you know how many of your friends had also installed the app being suggested.

We love the idea of this Firefox add-on, so we put the question to you developers out there - would you support this add-on? Please?

Discuss

Neal Stephenson interview

andrewducker — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:36:17 GMT

on the A.V. Club

Bookmark this on Delicious - Saved by andrewducker to writing scifi interview books nealstephenson - More about this bookmark

Making Gmail Your Gateway to the Web

Steve Rubel — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:14:41 GMT

Photo Credit: Adapted from Gateway Arch by docdevore

For the past five years my browser home page has been set to either Google.com or iGoogle. (I briefly flirted with the New York Times as my default but have integrated their feeds everywhere else.) This week I switched it to Gmail. With all of the features they have been adding lately, particularly through their Labs, Gmail is unquestionably my virtual Swiss Army Knife. It is not only my communications hub. It is my knowledge base and to some degree my feed reader. Some say it is becoming an enterprise dashboard - it is. It is my gateway to the web. (Note they added themes today!)

In this post I outline some recent ways I have tweaked my Gmail Personal Nerve Center by connecting Gmail with other web services. (Other posts on Gmail are here.)

Search the Web from Gmail

Gmail's search capabilities are top-notch. It's a big reason why I store tons of articles, factoids and even documents there. However, it's easy to miss the little button that says "Search the Web." These days I begin most of my web queries from Gmail. I even get a head start using their advanced keywords. (For example I type in new york weather when I want to know what the temperature is.) This will become even more useful once Gmail adds its SMS features later this month. Once that's back up you should be able to use it with Google SMS and get back search results via IM.

Update and Track Your Social Networks via IM

I am slowly in the process of trying to shift more of my communications out of email towards social software and IM. (More on this topic soon.) Still, I want an easily accessible record of all of these streams. So I am using Gmail much of the time to post to these services and also receive updates.

If you set up Ping.fm you can update all the major social networks via Gmail Chat. I post to Twitter via Ping.fm. I receive back replies by subscribing to a Twitter search feed for @steverubel via IM via notify.me. In addition, I receive Facebook alerts also by running my feed through notify.me. You can find your Facebook feed here. (You can also IM Friendfeed and Yammer directly and receive updates back from them too, which I do.)

Subscribe to High Priority Feeds and Alerts

I love Google Reader but I also like to be able to subscribe to some of my feeds via Gmail so that they are archived in a single place online and offline (via IMAP). However, I want to make this easily managed. So, I put all of my high priority feeds in Google Reader into a folder, make this folder public and then subscribe to the feed in Newsgator Online. Newsgator offers POP delivery so I have Gmail automatically fetch this account, scoop up the feeds, filter/archive them and tag them with the label "Feeds."

Track the Day's News with Gmail Clips

I am a news junkie and like to stay in the know. Gmail makes this a snap with Gmail Web Clips. I have pretty much standardized on the New York Times as my source of choice. In addition, I like to be able to track Techmeme too as well as all the news on the Presidential transition. So I have added a bunch of feeds to Clips including one from the awesome Times Topics site that stream into Gmail via a nice handy little news ticker.

Use Gmail as a Writing Tool

Sometimes writing can be intimidating, but it doesn't need to be. I like to start my writing in Gmail and then move it into other services where I can do more. For example, I wrote this blog post in Gmail and then sent it directly to TypePad. I also start documents here and then email them into Google Docs for additional tweaking (eg word counts, etc.). Finally I have a huge swipe file of articles and ideas stored in Gmail for inspiration and reference (for more on this concept see this great post from Write to Done). LifeClever offers some more thoughts here on using email for writing. See my other Gmail posts for how to use the service for storing ideas.

Build Links in Gmail to All Your Other Services

Finally, last but not least, when I do need to access other services they are all a click away in Gmail. I have added the Google Calendar and Google Docs gadgets to my sidebar. I store my To Do List in Google Docs so it's usually the top item in the gadget. In addition, I store my bookmarks in Gmail by exporting them to HTML and sending the page to myself using Ubiquity, which I pull up using Gmail Quick Links. Also, the links at the top of the page put me a click away to secure https versions of some of Google's other big services.

I keep adding to my system as Google rolls out features, but to me Gmail is my gateway to the web and the one web site I could never be without. Gmail turns five in the spring and I amazed how they continue to make it even more awesome once you start to really tweak it to your needs.

F1070010 [Flickr]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:09:00 GMT

kk+ posted a photo:

Motrin’s Twitter Moment

Laura Fitton — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:21:10 GMT

Congratulations (sort of) Motrin:

You

Congratulations Motrin…

I’m going to take a wild guess that McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a Division of McNEIL-PPC, and their agency of record (Taxi NYC, from what we can tell at the moment) are not carefully monitoring Twitter right now. I’m also going to guess that you’re going to hear a thing or two more about this in the business press before it subsides.

The Fuss.

Many moms who blog and tweet and are fans of “babywearing” are finding this Motrin ad (currently it’s right on the Motrin.com home page) patronizing and disrespectful of the practice of babywearing. It’s kicked up some relatively strong feelings among the community, and a resulting loud racket on Twitter and blogs. (I’ll disclose: I agree the ad is a bit dumb, and that I was a babywearer, and that frankly, carrying those g-dmn “bucket style” infant carseats into and out of places we went wrecked my back way more than any of my slings and backpacks ever did. But that’s not the point.) UPDATE: Follow the Twittering here. Some blog responses: Jet With Kids, Skimbaco

The Reponse.

On Twitter right now, nothing has appeared from Johnson & Johnson, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Motrin or Taxi.

Huh.

The Lesson.

Even if your brand or agency isn’t ready to engage formally and integrate the business applications of Twitter throughout your campaigns, community building and other market engagement efforts, you need to get clued in — fast — to the reasons, times and ways that you can listen. Maybe you’re not even ready for full-time social media monitoring. That’s your call. But not tuning in while you launch a new tactic borders on gross negligence, in this day and age.

Rolling out a new tactic is THE most important time to lend an ear. Smart SuperBowl advertisers could have gained instant consumer feedback on their efforts during the game last year. After every ad Twitter lit up with opinions. Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang prepared this formal analysis based on responses sent to his experimental account @superbowlads. His colleague (who co-authored Groundswell) Josh Bernoff shared his assessment here. Searching or watching Twitter’s search tools for your brand at the moment your ad aired would have yielded even more results.

I’ll update this post as I hear more, and when the companies involved begin to respond. Meanwhile, if your company doesn’t have a good understanding of how your full range of market engagement needs to be informed by sensitive consumer sentiment engines like Twitter, you might want to give your agency a call.

30 Different Uses for RSS

noreply@blogger.com (Mike F) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:14 GMT

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)

I'm making an effort to become less reliant on visiting websites for the data I need. Spending a majority of my time in Google Reader, I decided RSS could help me accomplish this task. I no longer have to visit Yahoo to read my horoscopes or sports scores. I now track my Ebay auctions from Google Reader. These are some of the ways I started to recently use and rediscover RSS.

This post touches on 30 different ways RSS can be used.

1) Tabbloid is a "hatchling" project that comes to us from Hewlett-Packard. It's a very simple and useful utility that turns your RSS feeds into a personal magazine via PDF format. You can generate your PDF files on the website, or have them emailed to you.

2) Track deals for hotel and airline fares at Expedia,Travelocity,Orbitz and Kayak.

3) iTunes music store RSS generator allows you to set up notifications based on your genre for new releases, top songs, top albums, featured albums and exclusives.

4) Track your favorite sports team news and game scores at Yahoo Sports. Basketball | Baseball | NFL | Hockey

5) Simpletracking.com lets you view the latest tracking information from all the major US shipping carriers. No need to go directly to the carrier's website anymore. Get notified when your package tracking information has changed directly from your feed reader.

6) Create customized news feeds and track specific keywords. You can get a feed for any search you do on Google News. First do any search on Google News, then simply use the Atom or RSS link on the left-hand side of your search results page to generate the feed. Here is what my FriendFeed Google news feed looks like.

7) Track your favorite online comics strips. Tapestry Comics maintains an RSS directory of comic strip feeds. Dilbert, xkcd and several hundred more feeds can be found here.

8) Create customized Ebay auction search feeds. Keep track of Ebay auctions with ease.

9) Set up custom feeds for job searches using the Indeed job search engine. As with Google News, the process is the same. RSS job feeds are automatically generated on the search results pages.

10) Get real time reports about current traffic incidents in your area. Traffic.com delivers RSS feeds of traffic information for most major U.S. cities.

11) Be notified of severe weather warnings and advisories for the United States, issued by the National Weather Service.

12) Get notified of the latest movie and dvd releases courtesy of Movies.com.

13) Get notified of current airport delay courtesy of Flightstats.com.

14) Listen to the President of the United States radio addresses.

15) Get the latest NASA news articles and press releases.

16) Read your Daily Horoscopes.

17) Send RSS feeds to Twitter using TwitterFeed.TwitterFeed is a simple utility that will check an RSS feed for updates and send them to Twitter accordingly.

18) Get notified of RSS feed updates via SMS messages sent to your phone.

19) Convert RSS feeds to audio recordings. You can also subscribe to them as podcasts via iTunes, and download your recordings as an mp3 file.

20) View the latest public pictures being uploaded to Flickr. You can also generate custom RSS feeds based on a multitude of parameters detailed here.

21) Generate custom Picasa RSS feeds for your family pictures. You can also generate feeds from public pictures. All search result pages will generate an RSS feed for that keyword. Here is one I set up for "Dogs."

22) View the real time public Twitter time line. You can also get your Twitter account time line by going to your Twitter profile page. Scroll to the bottom right of your profile page and you will see an RSS link located there.

23) Keep track of your recently played Last.fm tracks. Replace mfruchter with your Last.fm user name. ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/mfruchter/recenttracks.rss

24) Keep track of what you and your friends are bookmarking. If you wanted to find out what Louis Gray has bookmarked recently, you could go to his FriendFeed or Delicious url. Better yet you could check your Google Reader. To find yours or a specific Delicious user's RSS feed, simply goto their Delicious profile page and scroll to the bottom right of the page where you will see an RSS icon. You can also generate custom RSS for specific keywords/tags. All tag search result pages will have a corresponding RSS feed option. Here is one I set up to track of all recent public bookmarks tagged "twitter."

25) Watch the most viewed YouTube videos of the day. You can also customize this to your liking based on this criteria.

26) Keep track of new products on Amazon.com. Never miss when new items become available. You can generate an RSS feed for just about any product category Amazon has to offer.

27) Try an RSS feed matching service to find new feeds based on your interests. One that comes to mind is Toluu. Toluu allows you to upload your existing OPML file to their service, they in-turn will match you to new feeds and members who share similar preferences in feeds.

28) View all of your publicly shared RSS items on one web page. This is a great built in feature of Google Reader. Any item you star or share is automatically saved on a public html page that Google generates for you. Here is what my shared page looks like. To see the public page containing your shared items, click the "Shared items" link in your Google Reader. You'll see a list of everything you've chosen to share, along with a link to the page where they are displayed.

29) Use Google Reader as a new tool for microblogging. With the ability to “share” or “share with note" option in Google Reader, you can leave comments and invite conversation on posts you publicly share. Aggregate Google Shared items into a site like FriendFriend, so others can voice their thoughts as well.

30) Get the best of FriendFeed without ever going to the actual site. FriendFeed generates RSS feeds for almost every user function of the site. You can view your mainfeed as well as your, comments and like feeds in Google Reader. Have you created any topical lists? You can get RSS feeds for your lists too. I have found this function particularly useful as I can now track my "social media whales" list in RSS. Often I spend more time in Google Reader then I do on FriendFeed. RSS gives me a backup and safety net, so nothing goes under the radar.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Tieleman: Gregor Robertson is the best choice for mayor of Vancouver

mtippett — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:59:04 GMT

Non-Partisan Association mayoralty candidate Peter Ladner is a good man who has dedicated much to public service.

I have known and liked Peter for many years, before he became a city councillor.

But I believe Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson is the best choice for mayor of the city.

I have also known and liked Gregor for a long time - and I encouraged him to run for mayor because he is the right person at a very challenging time.

NowPublic

Straight to the point: the Miniskirt theory of writing

Amy Gahran — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:38:44 GMT

If you want to make a point in writing, make sure you nail the “so what” in your first 62 words. Readers won’t give you much time, especially online. It’s much easier and more effective to work with that reality than whine about it.

(See? That was just 44 words.)

Why am I telling you this? At this weekend’s Thin Air Summit, a great new media event in Denver, I gave a session on writing called Blogging: Every Word Counts. (Video should be online soon.)

Apparently, keynoter Jeremiah Owyang was intrigued by one point I made, which he tweeted:

“@agahran suggests that you have to make your point on online content within the first 62 words. Are you that disciplined?”

Thanks, Jeremiah. Yes, it’s true, I did say that. I know it sounds draconian, but here’s my rationale…

Typical reading speed: 250 words per minute
Amount of time a reader will grant you to demonstrate value (that is, after your headline has proved interesting, and if you’re lucky): 15 seconds (0.25 min)
Number of words in which you need to make your most important point:
250 x 0.25 = 62.5

…So call it 62 words.

You don’t have to stop there, of course. After you quickly convey your main “so what,” you can go on to elaborate and support your point. Just don’t go overboard. People may read further. But even if they don’t, they will have gotten some demonstrable value even from that brief encounter with you — maybe enough to recommend or link to your writing, or to keep checking you out, or to bookmark it and read it when they have more time.

Brevity -- and attitude -- can work for you. (Source: Tu Foto, via Flickr, CC license)

As Metzger Associates president Doyle Albee quipped at my session:

“Good writing should be like a skirt: Long enough to cover subject, but short enough to stay interesting.”

(Needless to say, Albee’s remark was immediately tweeted and launched a salacious conference meme, during which I may have promised I’d wear a miniskirt and fishnet stockings to the next Thin Air Summit. Be forewarned.)

As always, some smart folks disagree with me. My friend, mentor, and occasional verbal sparring partner Dave Taylor was at the session and appeared to disagree with my advice. He said that more educated, intelligent readers prefer longer, more thoughtful and eloquent content. He may be right. Reader preferences vary. If you think longer-form content might work better with your readers, experiment.

However, I still firmly believe that even educated, intelligent people who enjoy longer-form content also are caught in the attention crash and tend to do a fair amount of media snacking — phenomena that Owyang discussed in his Thin Air Summit presentation, The Future of Media in the Social Era:

The Future of Media in the Social Era

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia media)

What do you think? Is 62 words too tight or just right to really make a point? Please comment below.

What Reporters Can Learn from Product Pages

Amy Gahran — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:34:26 GMT

Journalists typically recoil at the thought of writing anything that resembles marketing copy — or even from thinking of news as a product. But we’re already long past the age when an established news brand was all you needed to determine the relevance and quality of news. If journalists truly believe the quality of their coverage is so great, and if their product is news, then why not market it directly?

What if you could read the label on news stories, to gauge quality and relevance? (Source: Keetsa, via Flickr, CC license)

I’m not talking about marketing news brands. I’m talking about marketing the merits of each story, right in the story.

Erin Kissane offers sage advice for writing product pages that I suspect could, with a twist, also make it easier for people (and search engines, and the semantic web) to grasp the value of quality news:

“Most product pages need to answer these questions:

Who is the product for?

What is the product?

What does the product do for its target user?

Why is the product better than the available alternatives?

“Stupidly simple, right? But the lack of answers to these questions is what leads to thousands upon thousands of wasted hours (and more money than I want to think about) spent writing, serving, and reading meaningless dreck that doesn’t inform users, promote products, or help anyone.”

Now: What if news stories included similar context? At least through some sort of categorization or tagging on the back-end. That could enhance relevance in search results, semantic web applications, or site features like optional pop-up boxes or an iGoogle-like personalized news interface.

That revised list might look like this…

Who is this news for? Communities or demographics most likely to be interested or involved.
What kind of coverage is this? Breaking news, update, alert, feature, interview, event report, data, analysis, backgrounder, info graphic, timeline, fact box, photo, commentary, how-to, topic introduction, etc. Most news venues already address this to some extent by section heads, but that’s usually more about topic than type of content.
How might this news help its target audiences? I’m not exactly sure how to best handle this, but example benefits might include civic empowerment and government oversight, personal financial stability, understanding the local economy, personal and public safety, knowing your neighbors, etc. (Help me think this through, what are your ideas on this one?)
Why is this news better than available alternatives? Here’s where being transparent about journalistic processes and expertise can really shine as a selling point — crucial in an age where most people have easy access to multiple news sources for coverage of virtually anything. What about “Reporter has 15 years covering education issues, including three years in this city.” Or: “All facts verified and/or corroborated.” Or: “This reporter is not affiliated with this issue or any related organizations.” Or: “Highlights Native American community impacts and perspective.” Or: “Eighth report on this unfolding story.”

These kinds of things often get discussed in a newsroom when planning coverage and writing/editing a story — but communities also would find this context useful, I think. It strikes me that news stories often assume either that people are able and willing to read between the lines to figure out this stuff out, or that they don’t really care about it. But in fact, these criteria help define relevance. Spelling them out could save people time and uncertainty. And: In an era of information overload, obvious relevance (not content) rules.

Clarifying relevance and quality context for each story (at least on the back end, but possibly also directly presenting it to communities) might help demonstrate the value of quality coverage. That’s not something that news orgs, communities, or individuals can afford to keep taking for granted.

Right now, I’m unclear how exactly search engines might use this information. I’ll investigate that further. So I’m thinking in the near term it might actually make sense for news providers or aggregators to either provide direct access to this information, where available, from stories. Or they could create personalizable interfaces (highlight stories related to local schools), or integrate it into site search (so you could, say, easily find backgrounders on a particular topic).

But in the long run, I suspect that adding this kind of context, in the form of metadata, might be very useful indeed to semantic web applications that relate concepts and context. Once we get beyond facile keywords and categories, there are many layers to what makes news useful. The semantic web might be the key to everyone — including journalists — getting more value out of quality news.

Coming Soon To Chrome: Google Bookmarks?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:27:00 GMT

Is Google finally going to do something with their bookmarking tool, Google Bookmarks? It's possible. In the latest builds of the Chromium project, the open source implementation of the Google Chrome web browser which is the testing ground for new features, a new and improved bookmark manager has been spotted which allows you to import your bookmarks from the Google Bookmarks service.

Sponsor

The new bookmark manager in the Chromium builds looks a lot more like what you would expect to see in a web browser today. Instead of the simplified interface currently found in Chrome, the Chromium bookmark manager lets you search for bookmarks, drag-and-drop them into folders, and even import and export them to and from HTML files.

However, the most interesting feature of the upcoming bookmarks manager is the new option to import bookmarks from Google Bookmarks. Although at the present time the browser presents this as an option to import from "Google Toolbar," that's somewhat misleading because the Google Toolbar doesn't even need to be installed in order to import your saved bookmarks from the service. Unfortunately, the new bookmark manager in Chromium doesn't sync up with the Google Bookmarks service automatically.

Google Bookmarks' Potential

It seems to us that Google is sitting on a untapped goldmine with their Google Bookmarks service. This half-hearted attempt at organizing your favorites sites looks like a project that was stopped mid-way through its implementation. In order to save bookmarks using the service today, you can star items from the Google Toolbar (if installed), you can use a browser bookmarklet, you can manually add a link from the bookmarks homepage or through the iGoogle Gadget, or you can click the star next to items in your Web History. What you can't do, however, is import bookmarks from an HTML file or browser, tag them, or share them with others.

But now that Google has a browser of their own, it only makes sense to tie together browser bookmarks and their bookmarking service. And surely they must realize that in order to get people to use Google Bookmarks instead of their current preferred service, Google must offer some compelling reasons to do so. By integrating Google Bookmarks deep within their browser itself and making them searchable through the familiar Google interface, they could offer a great reason to switch over to both their bookmarking service and their browser. If Google went the extra step and made their bookmarks sync between all the implementations of the Chrome browser, including the one they are preparing for Android, they could knock out competition from Opera, too, whose bookmark sync option is one of the browser's killer features for mobile users.

Even better would be an option to sign in to the Chrome browser using a Google profile in order to access the bookmarks along with other the services from Google like Gmail, Reader, or their personalized homepage.

Perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves since nothing of the sort has been announced or implemented yet, but we hope that we're not the only ones thinking of all the possibilities that Chrome presents here.

Images courtesy of Google Operating System

Discuss

Lesbian Couple Violently Assaulted In Front Of Children

Mark — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:00:06 GMT

A court date has been set for a violent attacker who assaulted a lesbian couple as they were picking up their children from elementary school in Oshawa. The attack, which bloodied one of the mothers, was witnessed by numerous children, including the assailant’s own son.

Jane Currie and Anji Dimitriou, the victims, described the attack to Capital Xtra and the Durham Region:

[The attacker] said to Anji, “Which of you two men spoke to my kid? Fucking dyke lesbians.” I jumped out and just as I came around he spit right in her face. She wiped the spit off and he punched her in the face and hit her again in the back of the head.

I said to him, “you asshole what are you doing? You just beat a woman” then bang I got it.

Mark Scott’s violent assault left both parents with black eyes, and one with four stitches. Eyewitnesses confirmed that the attack was unprovoked, and likely a hate crime. Currie now says her three children are terrified:

We went to Zellers and they didn’t want to get out of the truck. “What if he’s in Zellers?” they asked. “What if he comes back to the school and comes after us?”

What a disgusting assault. The brazenness of it—in front of multiple children—is very hard for me to understand, but I take it as strong evidence for how deep homophobia continues to run.

These assaults aren’t common, but the behaviour the attacker learned comes from multiple, definite sources. There are lobby groups, legislators, editorialists, churches, and individuals that continue to portray gay people, through unfounded misinformation, phony research, and scaremongering, as some sort of threat to the very foundations of society. It’s in this extreme atmosphere that homophobia, including violent homophobia, can thrive.

This has to be stopped. Challenge verbal homophobia wherever it is encountered. Challenge it. Only when it is unchallenged can it escalate to this madness.

Lesbian couple attacked outside Oshawa school [Durham Region]
Brazen attack alleged in Oshawa [Capital Xtra]

Tony Stark Was In My Graduating Class at MIT

brad@feld.com — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:19:23 GMT

I was reading through Technology Review in the bathroom this morning and came across a quick piece on Iron Man that I missed during the movie. Apparently Tony Stark was MIT Class of '87. Note the Brass Rat (not the same as the one I never wear.)

The article on the web goes on to mention my good friend John Underkoffler, who was the science and technology advisor for the movie (along with a number of other movies including Minority Report, The Hulk, and Aeon Flux.) John is the founder / CTO of Oblong Industries, one of our Foundry Group investments. Oblong will be unveiling itself later this month.

That's me and John at my parents farm in Bells, Texas over 20 years ago. He's the real Tony Stark in my book.

A Real Life Version of Photoshop

Scott Beale — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:46:12 GMT

The Jakarta office of Asian ad agency Bates 141 created an amazing real life version of Photoshop for their client Software Asli. Here’s how they made it.

via Swissmiss

photo by Wanda Kamarga

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A Real Life Version of Photoshop

Why Paid P2P Might Be Dead

Paul Glazowski — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:10:45 GMT

Before the current economic crisis landed with a thwack on our plate and ensured that few would escape the beast unscathed, I was really long on peer-to-peer. Totally bullish. And paid P2P - selling content on those peer-to-peer systems that content owners tried to sue out of existence - made sense. I thought, “eventually those Big Media dolts will come around and see the light.” I’m not so sure anymore.

At least not in the short term.

Layoffs

This week we saw half of the staff at BitTorrent Inc getting some serious pink slippage along with the planned termination of the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, an online storefront for copyrighted media. Which tells me that the legit, utopian vision of paid-for P2P downloads is headed for a depression.

Of course, the invention of P2P itself will live on, and mightily so. There’s no reason it wouldn’t, apart from any sudden disconnect of users that might result from a collective credit collapse. (Knock on wood.)

Bearish Content Creators

What’s more, content creators aren’t necessarily so adventurous when crises hit. At least not when they’re trying to secure the most money per viewer possible. That simply can’t be guaranteed through P2P delivery, as opposed to the closed systems of iTunes and Amazon and so forth.

The same goes for the consumer side of the equation. It’s true that BitTorrent rival Vuze recently upgraded its software to version 4.0, and if I’m honest, it’s none too shabby. But consumers tend to flock toward abundance. And I doubt much abundance will greet Vuze anytime soon.

Lack of Content

Just look at iTunes today. It’s full of content from the major television networks. And if you’re to take a similar glance at the top 10-20 unofficial peer-to-peer-based television downloads, you’ll see plenty of names that populate the networks’ prime time schedule. That’s not business friendly to the studios, but you can imagine what Vuze users might want to see in the company’s catalogue, but aren’t available.

2009: Bleak Outlook?

I’ll maintain that P2P as a platform is helpful in many ways and worthwhile for media companies to pursue. But given the current climate in the web media space, it’s hard to imagine a collection like Vuze, or the expired BitTorrent Entertainment Network, making great inroads into the mainstream in 2009 and beyond.

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Red Poppies, White Poppies, No Poppies

Miss604 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:38:30 GMT

Copyright © 2008 Miss604 - Rebecca Bollwitt. If you are not viewing this post through the Miss604.com feed then this content has been republished WITHOUT permission. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2008/11/red-poppies-white-poppies-no-poppies.html.

Photo credit: david on Flickr

Last year I included a note about the great poppy debate in a blog post. I first heard about white poppies through a BBC article in 2006, and also from DaveO, who does an amazing White Poppies series on his podcast year-round.

Both red and white are the colour of the poppy, and if you’ve read the poem In Flanders Fields, you know they grew, between the crosses row on row (however I would bet even the white ones were red during those WWI years).

Some say the this traditional red symbol that we pin to our lapel for the month of November glorifies war and sacrifice and we should change the colour to white - in support of peace.

The White Poppy symbolises the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts than killing strangers. Our work, primarily educational, draws attention to many of our social values and habits which make continuing violence a likely outcome. [White Poppies for Peace]

On the flip side, there are groups that are so outraged they would like to see the white poppy banned.

The Legion is claiming the white poppy campaign is illegal because it infringes on their trademark symbol. The veterans’ organization says it turns their symbol of sacrifice into a political position. [Edmonton - 2006]

Photo credit: amortize on Flickr

With an overall general sentiment of remembrance, organizations argue that it should be entirely acceptable to wear alternate symbols and even have alternative ceremonies on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month (ie. placing wreaths of white poppies at cenotaphs across the nation).

“For many people the red poppy has become a symbol that is being used to justify and promote war,” explains Claire Hurtig, a local activist and union organizer in Montreal. “The white poppy is an alternative way to remember war, but also to protest war as an institution in our society, [especially] as the Conservative government is putting more and more money into the military and not into social programs, leading to hugely detrimental impacts on our society.” [Hour.ca]

I think everyone has their own way in which they commemorate historic, tragic, and heroic events.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The Onion pits OS X Snow Leopard against Windows 7

MG Siegler — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:14:12 GMT

The satirical website The Onion often has hilarious takes on current events. This week, it turned its sights on what will undoubtedly be a big debate next year: OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) versus Windows 7. The new operating systems from both Apple and Microsoft are expected to come out next year; The Onion mocks their “differences” in the image below.

My favorite part: “Preinstalled image of a snow leopard?”…

[via FriendFeed]

New Nikon Video: 154 Minutes of CLS Goodness

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

EDITOR'S NOTE: With all apologies to the Canon shooters who frequent this site: You really shouldn't even read this post. Seriously. Move it along. Nothing to see here...
_________

I have just finished watching an advance copy of Nikon's new DVD, Nikon School: A Hands-On Guide to Creative Lighting.

Short version: It is far and away the best resource available for those of you who want to better learn how to use your Nikon system strobes (SB-900, SB-800, SB-600, etc.) and Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS).

I am told they will be hitting the shelves shortly. Nikon Mall is up, but showing out of stock right now. I will post another note when they pop up everywhere. But I wanted to give the CLS-shooting readers an early heads-up that this is exactly the video they have been waiting for.

More info, and a brief trailer, after the jump.

(Uploaded with permission from Nikon.)

The 2 1/2-hour DVD starts off with photographer Bob Krist taking you step-by-step through both basic lighting principles and showing you how to work the CLS settings on the various Nikon flash system components.

Even CLS beginners will feel right at home starting with this portion of the DVD. He shows you how to set up the various flashes and gets you comfortable with the way the system works.

Bob then walks you through a couple of straightforward shoots in the studio to show you how easy it is to get rolling. He does a progressively lit portrait session and a quick, two-flash macro close-up of a pocket watch. This is basic stuff that will be remedial to some of you CLS studs. But is important to include the basics so as not to leave anyone behind.

As expected, it is pretty much a continuous Nikongasm. The gear is explained thoroughly, and they are here to show you how to use the specific components. But they go above and beyond the corporate video/commercial genre, especially when they get to the second part of the video.

A Grande-Sized Cuppa Joe

In Part Two, Bob assumes the role of color man to Joe McNally's lead as they work together to produce a series of increasingly complex location shoots. They progress from simple, one-light potraits to a classic, McNally-esque speedlight orgy.

They shoot dancers at a ballet school, a home bridal portrait series and a sequence of photos at a harbor. Each of these locations include a series of different setups -- they work a lot of different looks from each scene, too. Joe is thinking out loud, explaining what he is doing and keeping a steady stream of BS rapport going with his subjects.

Bob becomes your stand-in, making sure nothing gets glossed over. They shoot, see the problems, work through them and get to the look that they want. Plenty of time is spent on the process, and no "magic black boxes" obscure the path from start to finish.

They do edit down the final shoot on the boat (13 speedlights, fer chrissakes) for what I can only assume to be time limitations on the single DVD. Or maybe that is where the fight scene happened. (Was that a butterfly Band-Aid on McNally's forehead afterwards?)

I cannot stress enough how pleased I am to see such attention to detail for the lighting processes in the video. It is not just a gear tease -- they are showing you exactly how to use the flashes to get beautiful results. This is everything the Speed of Light video (watch it here) left you wanting. That video felt more like an extended commercial. This one is a legitimate course in small-flash lighting.

If you are a Nikon CLS shooter (or hope to be) this DVD is an absolute no-brainer at $39.95. Grab it as soon as it becomes available. I'll post on that as soon as it starts popping up in stock, too.

Congrats to Bob, Joe and the powers that be at Nikon for looking past the obvious extended commercial to create something of value that will be helpful to so many people.

And Canon, if you are reading this I am calling you out right here and now. Make a DVD like this for the Canon flash system. No point in building in all those bells and whistles and not showing people how to use them. And this site will be happy to help spread the word if you do.

I happen to shoot Nikon, but I would love to see every photo manufacturer doing this kind of thing. Eventually, I would love to see manufacturers skipping the DVD process altogether and streaming this stuff online for free.

When they amortize the production costs over the extra gear that would sell, they would come out ahead. And so would their customers.

Twittering while Vancouver burns…

mtippett — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:37:10 GMT

As Vancouver’s chattering class discusses the trivialities of our mayoral candidate’s twitter profiles and transit tickets, City Hall has stuck us with a $100 million bill. Talk about a hefty fine. To make matters worse it is apparently off limits to even discuss the details of this developer bail out. How does that happen in a democracy?

The City of Vancouver has authorized lending up to $100-million to rescue the financially troubled Olympic athletes village project, The Globe and Mail has learned.

Council gave the city manager the mandate to advance the project’s developer the money to help cover cost overruns and other shortfalls at an in camera meeting held Oct. 14. It has already advanced nearly $30-million. At that meeting, council approved spending up to $450,000 to bring in a third party to oversee management of the project being built by Millennium Development Corp.

Details of the city’s involvement in bailing out the project’s cash-strapped developer have until now been kept secret. Councillors are under a publication ban and have been told they face serious repercussions if they discuss publicly the decisions taken at the in camera meeting.

NowPublic