- Google killed the hyperlink by introducing PageRank. The idea behind PageRank (the more links point to a site, the higher the site’s relevance) makes some of us be suspicious before clicking a link. Why is this link there? Does it provide further information for me or is it just a backlink to increase the target site’s PageRank? Am I’m going to be cheated? Before Google came, hyperlinks provided information and content, not backlinks. Yes, once upon a time, content was the scale for relevance.
- Internet is fun. Social software is even more fun and questioning male ranking concepts is allowed. People, don’t take it too serious!
- The last word on blog-usability isn’t spoken yet. The constantly changing chronological site structure is irritating. And that’s only the beginning.
- In Austrian rural areas you can do solid business while enjoying a relaxing life.
- None of the BarCamp alpha geeks today had an iPhone. The iPhone is an illusion.
- Currently there is no way to make easy money with blogs.
- I support the Free Burma Action because I felt the need to do something. I’m a lucky person, I was born into a world where previous generations already had fought for my rights. I’m deeply impressed by the people in Burma, who stand peacefully up in front of armed soldiers, demanding nothing more than democracy. Something I experienced my entire life as given. Nobody can tell if this action will help, but it’s still better than do nothing and wait what happens next. Thanks to all the valuable input at the Free Burma Session!
- Who’s a blogger, who’s not. Or, does anybody really care about that term?
- Metablogs are out, real life stories are in. Even in the german speaking blogoshpere.
- Note to myself: adjust Facebook application’s privacy settings immediately and change email address annually!
a personal website slash blog
Monthly Archive for September, 2007
Congrats to BeeTagg! Their mobile tagging technology is now supported by One, the Austrian mobile carrier recently acquired by Orange.
It was at the BarCamp Vienna in June when I attended a presentation, given by Martin, of BeeTagg. Mobile tagging is somehow the link between the real world and the virtual internet world. By taking a picture of a special graphical code, the BeeTagg in our case, with a cell phone, users are able to retrieve information about a product, location, etc. from the internet. It’s an easy and straight forward solution to provide information online and place a link pointing there at any place in the real world.
E.g. I can add a BeeTagg to my business card which links to this site. It allows users to access my site directly by just taking a picture and without typing in the entire website address.
However, one question remains: what about iPhone support?
[via Mobile Zeitgeist]
It’s quite some time ago since I developed my last Flash application and as I noticed ActionScript changed a lot since then. Adobe even packed some political aspects into it…
Geograffiti has a hilarious set of photos taken at this year’s INTERGEO in Leipzig, featuring his 2 little friends and some INTERGEO celebrities. Well done coverage! At least more amusing than the usual marketing blahh…
Never heard of that term before. Apparently it’s the agreement between photographer (or publisher) and human subject about picture rights and further picture use [Wikipedia explains it better].
How come?
I was reading a post about the issue were Virgin Mobile took a photo from Flickr and used it in an ad campaign. The photo was licensed under Creative Commons (CC). As you can see on the picture of the ad, Virgin Mobile fulfilled the attribution condition by properly indicating the author. What happened was that the girl showing up on the picture felt insulted (and well, her family smelt the money I suppose) and filed a lawsuit against Virgin Mobile and others.
As far as I understood, and I’m no lawyer, the one violating the girl’s rights was the Flickr user and not Virgin Mobile. It was the Flickr user who published the taken picture online under a CC license without holding the model release in his hands. Virgin Mobile made use of the picture by respecting the underlying license. But that’s just my theory.
The outcome of this lawsuit will be interesting though. Especially the piont what’s a Creative Commons license worth in a court. Supposedly the same as any other license agreement, but you never can tell.
I have a Flickr account too, meaning I publish pictures online. All of my photos are licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA and on some of them you can identify random persons, and I do not own a single model release.
Should I be concerned?
I’m not quite sure. According to the rather simple CC license text, anybody who wants to use my pictures commercially must ask for my permission first. So Virgin Mobile couldn’t just use my picture in a campaign without letting me know. On the other hand my license does allow non-commercial sharing, under certain conditions, but basically it gives me no control where my photos are going to show up.
Google Analytics is free (well, there is a limit for free use but I think it’s about a 7 digit page view number) and is certainly one of the most comprehensive tools in terms of web site traffic analysis. It’s powerful and provides excellent reporting tools.
I have used Google Analytics and I’m still using it on some sites, however, after testing Clicky for the last couple of weeks I ordered a Premium account today. Clicky isn’t nearly as complete as Google Analytics, but it provides a very slick functional user interface, easy blog integration and an API. Perfect for tracking a low traffic blog.
I’m a curious person, I want to know who are my visitors, what are they doing here, where they came from and where they’ll go. Clicky gives me easy overviews and quick answers to all of those points.
Depending on what site you’re running and how much traffic is generated, Clicky currently doesn’t accept sites with more than 10.000 page views per day, but for low traffic blogs, the long tail of the blogosphere, I definitely can recommend Clicky.
Facebook is telling me I’m online while viewing my profile. Hmm, that’s interesting, why is it saying I’m online? Are there actually people not knowing they are online when they access a website?
The situation reminded me of Steve Krug’s web usability bible “Don’t Make Me Think!”: because of telling me I’m online I started thinking if I could view my profile without being online. It won’t be possible, right? So why does Facebook then say I’m online when there is no other option to view my profile. Note: users must log-in to see anything more than Facebook’s welcome screen. So there really is no other option like being logged-off and going through profiles.
TabletBlog covers a well done comparison between Apple’s iPod touch and Nokia’s N800. While reading and watching the video, one thing became clear to me: if I get such a web enabled mobile device, it has to be location aware. I don’t want to enter address strings and zoom and pan on maps until I find my position. I want the mobile web browser knowing my position automatically. I want instantly see content relevant to my current position whenever I open Google maps app or any site offering location aware content and services.
Gizmodo reports about a hack, actually it’s just about loading the Navizon app onto the iPhone, which adds GPS-like functionality (as they call it) to the iPhone. Apparently it’s nothing else then positioning based on cell towers and WiFi access points.
Basically it’s a feature most carriers could easily offer. But at the same time it’s a feature with serious privacy concerns. The question who is in control of and who gains access to people’s location information is a very sensitive one. Sooner or later there has to be a solution, as this will turn out as one of the most important features on mobile devices (yeah, I know, location based services are said to be the killer feature since 1998).
The mentioned Navizon solution still is a hack and not supported by Apple. The Apple iPhone is a closed platform, meaning none other than Apple is allowed to add functionality. In my opinion it’s the main reason for having a closer look at alternatives like the Nokia web tablets. Unlike Apple, Nokia still gives you control over the device you bought.
Mapping and copyrights are two topics traditionally connected very strongly together. At least here in good old Europe people act very sensitive when re-publishing third party maps. Reading a couple of posts about Yahoo!’s new MapMixer, I started wondering how they would deal with that issue. On O’Reilly Radar I found an embedded MapMixer map containing a third party overlay clearly indicating “All rights reserved”. So maybe Brady Forrest actually holds the copyright, has the permission to redistribute or just missed the line
… Don’t upload any map or image that you don’t have the right to distribute …
when he uploaded the map below to Yahoo!’s MapMixer (assuming that it was him who added the map).
MapMixer is indeed an interesting service, but it’s really hard to find a copyright-free map. Except the ones available on Wikipedia. At least I couldn’t find any, neither do I own as person the copyrights of a map laying around here.
However, in many cases copyright holders won’t bother. And in many cases the service does make sense, like publishing a detailed campus map embedded in the Yahoo! street map to guide visitors.
But I doubt that most mapping agencies and map publishers will be very happy to see their maps popping up at Yahoo!. For instance, if I’d like to make a thousand black&white paper copies of the Austrian topographic map, I’d have to ask permission to do so. For publishing the same base map as image online, what MapMixer basically offers, one has to license the map for redistribution.
Regarding maps, I’d consider the potential user base for this service as rather low. But luckily MapMixer isn’t limited to maps only, users can upload any possible image and put it on the map. So it’ll be interesting to see what finally comes out.