Are you using Flickr differently now?
I can tell I was really wrapped up lately in prepping for my trade show, since I somehow missed this earlier on. I mean how I missed the fact that every picture on Flickr was offered up for sale from July 3rd – 5th is simply amazing to me. It wasn’t until I spotted it on the This Week in Photography Blog that I really took notice.
What has upset me more though is Flickr‘s response, or more correctly their lack of response. After all, this wasn’t a common, grab a picture and use it sort of thing (which, btw it amazes me how many big corporation have been caught doing this). This was a company using Flickr’s own API, to download images and sell them. I expected some sort of response, even if they didn’t plan to make changes to the API, at least to clarify that this company did things wrong and didn’t use the API correctly. Instead… silence.
Now, I love Flickr. I have a pro account, I have bought pro accoutns for other people as gifts. But I am uncomfortable with them right now. I am certainly not, until they do or say something, going to upload any high res. photos to their site, and I am debating on what I should do with the photos that are already there. Do, I pull them down? Take the time to make low res. versions of all of them and replace what is there? What about you? Have you changed how you have used Flickr?
iTunes should just be considered malware
It wasn’t all that long ago that Apple decided to try and sneak Safari on to Windows users computers through an iTunes update. But apparently they didn’t learn their lesson last time, because they are at it again.
For those of you running Windows, if you have updated your iTunes virus to version 7.7 then go take a look in your Control Panel. You will find a new icon for MobileMe Preferences has be snuck onto your computer. If you click on it, you will be directed on how to sign up for the service you did not ask for from an applet that was snuck onto your computer via an update. If that isn’t virus like activity, I don’t know what is.
If Microsoft (or just about any other company for that matter) played the same games Apple does (do you remember when they snuck a “beacon” into iTunes that calls home without notifying the user that it was in there?), then the company would be publicly flogged (A similar “game” essentially squashed RealAudio back when their player was popular). But Apple some how gets away with it.
No doubt, I will get e-mails from Apple apologist trying to justify this, but I am sorry there is no excuse for the games they play and it is time they get called on it.
Call for Bloggers in Baltimore
Well, just as life is starting to get back to normal around here, I am being shipped off to a trade-show down in Baltimore for the weekend. (Yeah, I know…. poor me). But seriously, trade shows leave me busy during the day, and bored (other than finally getting back to blogging) at night.
I depart early tomorrow morning, for a show that starts… tomorrow. No pressure though.
So… any bloggers in the Baltimore, MD area want to meet up for a drink and tell me all the good things in the Inner Harbor area?
At this rate – my Xmas card list will be small
Things have been a bit slow around here as you may have noticed. It has been a bit tough as I said good-bye to a second uncle in just over 2 weeks. It also gave me a lesson in introspection as well as contrast.
When uncle #1 (mom’s brother-in law for those keeping score) passed away, I was sad. He was a wonderful guy, a good father, friendly, happy go lucky, and all the good things you say about an all around nice guy that most people will miss.
When uncle #2 passed away, the only reason I was sad, was in taking the time to realize that he was the last of the siblings from my father’s side of the family. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are people that will miss him. I just won’t be among them. And it was this fact that gave me cause for my self analysis.
Until my grandmother passed away when I was almost 9 years old… I didn’t even know that uncle #2 existed. His wife did not like my mother for some reason, and she continuously found fault with my mom. She called her a gold-digger, this despite the fact that my mother worked as my father completed his college degree. She had issues that my mom and dad had to adopt (something I am of course quite appreciative of them doing), and because of this neither, she nor uncle #2 never did anything to recognize either me or my sister. Not once (even after she passed away), did we ever receive a birthday card, or Xmas card or anything else. We just didn’t exist.
After uncle #2′s wife passed away, my mother and father both buried the hatchet with him to some degree, they invited him over the house on holiday’s so he wouldn’t be alone (his kids has long since moved out west), and my mother forced me to invite him to my wedding (which, honestly at this point, I can’t even tell you if he came or not. Though I CAN tell you, if he did come… he didn’t give me a card! Yes, the card is a big issue with me).
I however never quite got over it. And that, to some degree I feel bad about. I guess I am not as big a person as I like to think I am, because even though I feel bad about not getting over it, I still don’t have any desire to so. And even though his passing marks the end of that part of the family tree, (since I apparently don’t according to him or his wife I don’t even belong looking at that family tree) will not shed a tear at his passing. I did what was “proper” and expected of me, out of respect for my mother, and the rest of the family. But, I just can’t bury the hatchet.
And this is (supposedly) a Blue State
For the most part, falling only perhaps to Liz, I am as pro-New Jersey person as you will find. Despite what a lot of people and comedians may lead you to believe there is a lot to like. I am not going to go into a long list here (your welcome). But one of those things that I am typically happy about is that (perhaps thanks to northern logistics), it is a place that race does not usually play a big part in the way people thing.
Perhaps that is why then I am utterly shocked and amazed when something like this comes along. It seems that Pemberton Republican Club in New Jersey thought it would be cute to try and link Barack Obama and OJ Simpson with the slogan, “Obama loves America like O.J. loved Nicole.”
The club’s Web master, Ed Kuck, didn’t respond to a message left at his home but told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he saw the slogan on an Internet site and copied it onto the club’s Web page as a joke.
“I just want to apologize to anybody who was offended, because that wasn’t our intention at all,” Kuck told the newspaper.
Racism, is apparently still “funny” to some people. While this fact does not shock me, and I fully expect to see more pathetic attempts to inject racism into the race, I never expected it to come from here. Just goes to show, narrow minded people live everywhere.
-
Sponsors
