iPhone is Coming To Canada and WPMU 1.5

First off, I would like to say thanks to Andy for letting me know about the Rogers annoucement for the iPhone coming to Canada. Just like every other announcement from Rogers it seems a little vague:

TORONTO, April 29 /CNW/ - Ted Rogers, President and Chief Executive
Officer of Rogers Communications Inc. today issued the following statement:
We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the
iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right
now, but stay tuned.

It is nice to see that Apple is finally letting us eager technology people into the world of apple communications. While I seriously doubt I will signup for an iPhone on a Rogers account, it opens the door.

In other news, I am happy to say that I finally have a working version of the new WPMU on my service. I am keeping up with TRAC until the new release is finally out, but I am pleasantly surprised how nice it is to have all the extra features working. User feedback is all positive and no bugs or errors to report. I guess working out all the problems on the testbed was the way to go as there were plenty of plugins that didn’t want to play well with this release that needed updating.

The biggest significant change that I made from Ben with the newer development release of the Admin-SSL plugin (zip file link). This is working way better as he has changed it to allow the site-admin to specify what gets encrypted with ssl instead of forcing the entire admin area to use it. While you can’t beat the security of using ssl, using it on the entire admin area is overkill and it slows down the loading of every admin page significantly. I can’t quantify it, but on my connection I would bet the pages load at least 4 times faster without the ssl on every page.

This doesn’t mean that I have downgraded the security. In fact, I am now only securing the pages that really matter with logins, cookies, profiles and any other page that I feel needs the protection. This is so much better and I can’t thank Ben enough for not only taking on this wonderful plugin in future development, but also listening to users like myself without hesitation. It is refreshing and if Ben happens to read this, make sure you point me in the direction of your donation button

Flickr Over YouTube For Video

I just decided that even though I wrote about this already in a previous post, I had to vent a bit more as I find myself sitting here almost 2 months later and Flickr has finally released their video service.

It is really frustrating to me that Google has yet to follow through with an improvement on their private video groups. When you can define the friends in a group and even have another group such as family, why is it that you have to constantly choose who you share a video with if it is private? What is wrong with choosing an entire group in one step?

Could it be the 25 person limit on a private video? If that is the case, why not implement a group called private on youtube and just add all the people that are allowed to watch your private videos and put a cap on that group for 25 users? Without group privacy settings, it is a nightmare. Let me explain why.

I have a video that I uploaded 2 years ago and I currently have most family members as YouTube members to share the video. Disappointing though, I couldn’t convince my father to join YouTube to watch the video in that 2 year period. Now, he wants to view that video and all my other private videos I have on the service. Right now, I can’t add my father to a “group” and grant him access on all my private videos. Oh no.

Instead, I have to go through the 150 private videos one at a time and add him to the list of the 25 people that can view the video. That means that he is also going to get 150 emails saying that I have a video to share. On top of that, the other members who can view that video also get 150 emails as the system doesn’t seem to remember who could watch it previously. That is completely unacceptable.

Let me say that again. It is completely unacceptable.

If Google has a grand scheme to limit the private videos on their service and not make it the service of choice for said videos, then they finally have convinced me. I will not get rid of the private videos that I have on the service, but I will no longer be adding any new videos that are private. I have moved my videos over to Flickr where it seems they are happy that you have private content.

YouTube will still be a place where I will be uploading videos. The problem with the Flickr video service is that they stop you cold at 90 seconds and that doesn’t work for all videos. That means, I have to either put longer videos on my own service or continue to upload them to YouTube. I choose the latter for now.

I am not saying that if YouTube ever changes their privacy settings to make it easier that I won’t use them, but I am not really that happy. I have been a member for almost 3 years and the ability to add private videos and administer them is getting worse, not better. In the beginning it worked better with the groups. Now it sucks. I am sticking with Flickr.

Farming Is Dangerous!

Who says farming is easy! These photos were emailed to me, so I am not sure where they came from. If they are your photos and you want credit, let me know. If they are your photos and you don’t want them online, let me know as well!

Quit Stealing Content!

I decided that it was in my best interest to take down my music off this site, all 40+ cover songs I recorded.   It is one thing when I was getting my friends, family and readers coming to my site and deciding to listen to my covers of some of my favorite songs, but it was completely something else when I was going through my web logs and finding a bunch of sites stealing my work.   What a shock to find my content loaded on an external page with ridiculous amounts of advertising.   It was the last straw.

It just pisses me off when you find people that steal your work and try to get revenue through their sites with all their little advertising garbage.    Right now, all our blogs have a copyright at the top of our RSS feeds so that they show up on every entry and the best part is that if an RSS magpie steals your post, it shows up with a copyright and then several line breaks.    At least credit is served where credit is due even though it isn’t right.

When it comes to videos and photos, I guess a guy should try and put up some copyright notice, but when using services like flickr and youtube, this is impossible.    At least when they reference the photos they are linking to your pages on the respected services.    It would be nice if flickr would put up some sort of watermarking system, but it really isn’t a dealbreaker for me.

When it comes to audio though, even though I put my files through a flash player, my content still seemed to float into these other sites anyways.    Not only were the files on pages with advertising, but they were even trying to sell my audio files as fucking ringtones!   You can imagine my surprise coming across that.   Included as well was a nice little download link to get the audio file for anyone that wanted to download it.    Linked off my site, of course, since these thieves wouldn’t want to waste their own bandwidth…..

Where are the ethics on the internet anymore?    Were there ever any?    It is not their content and they shouldn’t be stealing it.    We all know the game is to do it and try and profit from the advertising if it can generate traffic.    Even the “legit” sites that are in it for more should ask before using such content.    They just use it and beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.    This is also a strategy I use with my wife, but really that doesn’t sit well when it happens to me.

So, the audio and music is gone for now.    The directory is back with authentication and will hang up in every single player out there that is stealing the content.    I guess I have to find a better mousetrap.   If anyone has some clues, please let me know.

Social Networking Cost Benefit Relationship

My generation is really in an interesting position to comment on the rise of the internet and the technologies available to date. Since the internet really started to become commercial and wide open in the early 1990’s we have seen some dramatic changes. We went from static to dynamic content and now to interactive and real-time data. It was the cool thing to have a website in the late 90’s and it was even cooler to have a blog in the early 00’s. Now, it is all about social networking and an ever increasing way to lose our personal privacy and increase our personal identity.

I have been playing with websites since the mid 90’s and really have seen the dramatic changes. I have seen first hand how statements and comments made on the internet are around forever. I have seen how simple things that can be misunderstood can cause pain and anguish for many people. I have seen most of the mistakes and made many myself. It really has been a steep learning curve.

The move from static to interactive content has given way to the “social networking” era of the internet and the costs and benefits are now at their highest level. The biggest surge for the mainstream has really been Facebook and even people that I know are computer beginners are now online and updating their personal thoughts and photos in an ever increasing pace. The really interesting thing to me is that most of these people haven’t learned the risks yet and may pay a great price. The world still can be a scary place.

You might be thinking that this is the “pot calling the kettle black” as I am one of the worse offenders. I am an early adapter for most technology and really have ground roots in many of the social networking sites. It ranges from Twitter to Facebook to FriendFeed to many ever increasing blogging activities. I am also big into support and helping people online. I am not saying that we should avoid these activities, but we all should be made of the costs that are also associated with the benefits.

It is a common conversation with myself and my friends and family about my online activities. I have paid dearly for some of my mistakes and still offer my apologies to anyone that I offended. At one point I kept all my blogs and galleries online for the world to see. That was in my foolish days and now I am extremely guarded with personal data. While I keep photos and videos on Flickr, most are private to friends and family and not for public consumption. Who cares about me anyways? That is what I used to think and now I realize it might not be who cares about me now, but in the future. It isn’t worth it.

In terms of my social networking experiences, I am still learning lessons. I keep most of it public and that might come back to bite me in the ass one day. I watch what I say and that is the best that I can do since the amazing people that I get to communicate with and relationships that I have opened up from my past have been substantial. The benefits of keeping in touch with others and in the “know” are great. My problem going forward is finding the balance between personal and public life. There are checks and balances that need to be in place to help protect our identities.

David Boles once wrote an article about our online identities and no matter how hard we try, we can never be safe. Short of turning off our internet and our computers. I have never hid behind an online persona and always use my real name. That is my way. If I used a persona, it would take the smart people about an hour or less to find me anyways. It isn’t about hiding our identities and thoughts, it is about the responsibility to ourselves and our families to protect ourselves. No one else is going to do it.

Don’t get me wrong, this post is not bashing social networking and exposure on the internet. It is more of a cautionary tale to those that haven’t taken the time to think about their own ideas on their privacy. When you click the “public” button on these sites, you are open to the billions of people in the world. Find out what you can live with and secure your data accordingly. I have friends who quit facebook now for these reason as deleting their account was their out. Others are limited to just close friends and family. Others are still plowing ahead publically. It is a personal decision.

Summing up, the internet is no different than anything else. You have to take care of yourself and blog and social network responsively!

So Many Things On Go

The title really says it all for me of late.    I am extremely busy at work and that is something that will continue for quite some time.    The problem is that I really have so many “extra” things outside of the realm of work that I pursue that I barely have time for anything.    Work, family and then other things :)    That being said, here are a quick list of things on the go for me:

1. Preparing for the new version of WPMU once Donncha can have it released.
2. Flickr released their video service and frankly after bitching about “private videos” on youtube and what a pain in the ass it is, I am excited about this new Flickr video service.   While I do have videos over 90 seconds, 95% of my videos are quick shots and fit well into idea of Flickr anyways.
3. Bombarded with “social networking” and really wondering what services to continue with.   Personally the most excited about Twitter and Facebook regardless of all the other things out there.   I guess with the future release of buddypress, I might be able to have the best of these services on my own website.   Something to think about anyways
4. Been busy getting my “work mac” back on track since I had some trouble with one of the keys falling off (thanks Maguire)!   I finally got the key fixed and just going through the motions of getting it back into working order.
5. Crazy busy keeping my Flickr gallery and other multimedia services up to date.   I have been taking stupid amounts of photos and videos later and working on keeping them from falling behind
6. Wondering about twitter and Google Reader.   It is great to “follow” so many people and subscribe to “so many” different feeds, but I am wondering if maybe I am missing out on things important to me by sifting through the excess.    The verdict is still out on that discussion.
7. Trying to organize my 8,000 song music gallery.   I really like iTunes, but it does choke me how it displays older content.    There is also no way that I am going to change so many songs to display the way that looks good in iTunes.   Doesn’t anything show like the way Winamp used to?    If it wasn’t for all the content that I purchase through iTunes I might use something else, but…….
8. Spring cleaning is another one on the agenda.   This includes our house and our ranches.    With this year being so dry, we are already dusting off all the equipment for water….
9. Working on organizing things.   Included are CD’s, games, office(s), movies, etc.
10. Keep blogging!   One of the things that I love to do has been lacking.   I hope it goes higher on the priority list once things slow down!

Some of you might have also noticed my “almost” complete absence in the forums.    This includes both wordpress.com and the bbPress forums.   It is nothing to do with anything but needing a bit of a break to work on other things and the fact that I don’t have any time right now.    I am hoping that this will be something I can get back into with more time later this month.    I am not gone, just crazy busy.   So many things on the go I guess…..

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