Posted in tech vents on August 21st, 2008 by cyndy| | 0 Comments.
Tune in tonight at 11 PM Eastern, 8 PM Pacific, and I’m too lazy to look it up everywhere else for your weekly dose of Things You Can’t Say About the Internet. Tonight, Steven Hodson promises to show up, and Duncan Riley is too busy partying before Gnomedex (which the iPhone hilariously auto-corrects to Gnomesex) to bother showing up, so Allen Stern of CenterNetworks will be staying up past his bedtime to fill in.
Tonight’s topics include:
- Chinese propaganda is thwarted by the Intarwebs
- SEC regs and Social Median: does anyone REALLY care?
- Mormons, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and voodoo are too stories
Needless to say, I’m in a mood. I hope we don’t scare Allen off.
Posted in tech vents on August 20th, 2008 by cyndy| | 0 Comments.
Why do I hate the RIAA so much? It’s simple. They think I’m a criminal.
However, this morning, as I realized I was missing a CD that will no longer play (I think it’s just plain worn out, and I can’t even rip it to my iPhone), I went to Amazon and downloaded it, paying for it again, even though I own the physical copy. I didn’t even think twice about buying it again.
Yet, as far as the RIAA is concerned, I’m a thief until proven innocent, and deserving of an assigned Internet tax paid to my ISP and then to their coffers for assumed copyright infringements.
Remind me please why I just bought that album again?
A comment by Akiva Moskovitz on FriendFeed set off yet another weekend bitchmeme in almost no time flat. His wife, a fairly recent addition to FriendFeed, discovered that someone “Internet famous” was subscribed to her.
My response was with my usual cynicism. You see, you are all my minions.
To combat the automatic response to check every subscription notice that came in from FriendFeed or Twitter or other social networking site, I created a filter in Gmail that I jokingly called “Minions.” Some days if I’m bored and have time, I check out some of the people who’ve subscribed to me. For the most part, however, I discover and subscribe to people organically, when I stumble over someone interesting.
Eric Burke finds my use of the term Javawhore hilarious, but I’ve watched this quest for Internet fame for far too long to not find it amusing. It happens in every subsection of every industry, and for whatever reason, I simply don’t care about who knows my name enough to bother subscribing to me. I hope it’s because I actually have something interesting to say.
Maybe I just learned the lesson about “fame” early on, when I saw an actor (and not a world-recognized actor either) act like the biggest S.O.B. ever to a young fan. There’s not a lot of great things that come with fame, and far too many people abuse even the slightest bit that they get their hands on. Fame doesn’t always come to those with the most talent or those actually doing the great things. It’s a relative concept that isn’t a true indicator of anything other than popularity. And I’d rather be good than be popular.
Posted in tech vents on August 14th, 2008 by cyndy| | 0 Comments.
So tonight’s Things You Can’t Say About the Internet had the agenda decided days in advance, a first for us. At the request of my cohorts Steven Hodson and Duncan Riley, we are revisiting The Story That Just Won’t Die with the SF MOMA incident taking up most of the agenda. I invited my husband Jason as the special guest as a photographer and long-time Flickr user (and moral support).
If we quit shouting at each other long enough, we’ll also be discussing the Olympics, including the IOC DMCA notice filed with YouTube over a Tibet protest video, the ridiculous amount of censorship that has NBC hiding content from the West Coast until they hit primetime ad rates, and BitTorrenting the games.
If you are brave, come listen live and join us in the chat room.
Posted in tech vents on August 10th, 2008 by cyndy| | 24 Comments.
There are days when I miss having a higher profile blog from which to air my viewpoints, because right now I’m absolutely sick about the “community” and its actions.
Thomas Hawk, Zooomr CEO and photographer, had an altercation with security at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He took to his blog, and FriendFeed, to rant about the security person he encountered, used an expletive to describe him, and encouraged others to spread the story, which, at least check, had over 1900 upvotes on Digg, a story on Boing Boing, and annoyed several people on FriendFeed when people “liked” all the Diggs.
What no one seems willing to admit is that only one person has been able to tell his side of the story, and a mob mentality has broken out in promoting that version of the story. Anyone trying to interject anything other than the party line was buried on Digg. Anyone trying to interject anything other than the party line on FriendFeed is ignored.
Here is what I do know:
a) I find it beyond unprofessional for a CEO of anything, even on a personal blog, to call someone an “asshole.”
b) Reading the actual statement about photography, it says “handheld cameras,” a kludgy term that I’m assuming someone wrote to mean “point and shoots or little DSLRs.” Thomas Hawk, from his Flickr profile, seems to shoot with a Canon EOS 5D. He claims he was using a 14mm lens, shown here:
Now, imagine someone who knows very little about photography, like just about everyone. Would a camera with that type of lens look like your definition of a “handheld” camera or something a pro uses?
c) Thomas Hawk seems to cause his share of controversy. As one of the Boing Boing commenters pointed out, two years ago he’d called for the arrest of a photographer over a photo series of crying children. The children were given lollipops, then had the lollipops taken away. According to Hawk, that’s abuse. Apparently, I too should be abused, since I’ve had people give my kids lollipops at the bank or the barber shop and I’ve taken them away too. Silly parent that I am, I told them they had to wait until they had lunch. They even cried.
d) With the mob mentality, all these things have gone live without anyone actually talking to the SF MOMA, the employee in question, or anyone who may have seen what happened.
There is a complete breakdown of basic fact-checking when only one side is touted as “news.” And I’m disappointed that the “community” was so quick to jump on the story without hearing both sides. Regardless what happened, the SF MOMA employee’s name is all over the tubes this weekend with no chance to defend himself. Now this morning, his purported Facebook profile has been posted to FriendFeed. And no one sees a problem with this?
More and more, the cult of Internet fame has given rise to the most abhorrent face of microcelebrity: the “Do You Know Who I Am?” people. I don’t care if you are a blogger with an audience of 1 or a blogger with millions of hits a day. The rules of engagement in a civilized society are universal. And they don’t include using whatever iota of Internet fame you may have achieved to create the mob with torches and pitchforks.
Boo hoo.
The Washington Post features an article today about two students who were expelled from the University of Virginia’s Summer at Sea program for violating the academic code of honor. The focus of the article is skewed toward “the dangers of online research” but all Wikipedia did was make it easier to spot.
One section included a student whining that there were limited research materials available. Another that “there’s only so many ways to summarize the plot of a movie.” Actually, there are lots of ways to summarize the plot of a movie. Take a look at how Gregory Maguire’s takes on The Wizard of Oz and Cinderella and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
I’ve debated the focus on a four-year degree in American culture with friends many times. Some are in academia, and I am starting to wonder if maybe we are wrong by pushing so many people into college. I really find it hard to believe that anyone who plans on getting at least a Bachelor’s can’t figure out how to research, or what should be cited in a paper. Blaming Wikipedia or online research or confusion over how paraphrasing is still plagiarism is pathetic excuse-making for sheer laziness.
I’m hating life right now. Why? Because an amazing opportunity that any other day of the week I’d kill someone to have dropped right into my lap. So what’s my problem?
Said opportunity would have me out of town for not only my youngest’s birthday, but also her first day of preschool.
I queried every single working mother than I know. Not one of them has ever missed a child’s birthday. Not one. Sure, plenty of dads apparently have, but not a single mother. When I even mentioned it in passing to my mom, I got a “too bad about the timing, but that was an easy decision for you to make” from her.
No, it’s really not.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids, and I don’t regret leaving development at all to stay home with them. But at the same time, I’m tired of having to choose between them and a career. I did it once. And it just plain sucks to have to do it again.
Since it appears to be the story that WILL NOT DIE, let’s be sure that I state the actual facts no one seems to care about:
I resigned from Profy on Thursday, with a resignation letter. Yes, it was confirmed somewhat on my podcast on Thursday after an off-the-cuff question from Duncan. It was sloppy. But at that point, I was the only Profy writer who had resigned.
I did not resign from Profy over pay. I resigned because I did not feel that the future direction of the blog was a good fit for me.
I did not at any point incite, coerce, lead, or otherwise stage a coup with anyone else. My resignation was based on my personal decision, and communicated to the other writers after the fact.
I am not angry about an article on Mashable existing. I’m angry that at no point has anyone once asked me what happened from my perspective or my reasons for leaving. I don’t think that I’m a difficult person to find, and I thought I seemed like a pretty open person if it came down to contacting me.
I do want to thank every single person who has emailed, IM’d, or Tweeted me. This whole brouhaha has just plain sucked sideways. I don’t like how I’ve been portrayed. I don’t like how Svetlana has been portrayed. And I’m tired of seeing my name in post tags when not one person has bothered to ask me for a comment.
No matter how jaded I get, and how often I think I’ve seen it all in the tech blogosphere, something always happens that shocks me.
I’m a paid hack, and I know it. I love tech. I have a degree in English. And somehow I’ve been able to parlay that into a job that keeps the wolves from the door and my kids in clothing. I consider myself very, very lucky.
In the year and a half I was with Profy, I considered that I had one of the best gigs in the world. I worked with people I liked and respected. I got to write about tech and meet great people and go to Web 2.0 Expo. Svetlana gave me a chance when a lot of other tech blogs I applied to wouldn’t. And trust me, I applied.
When the positioned opened at The Industry Standard, I jumped at it. The Standard was one of the most respected tech journals in the sector back in the day, and anyone in their right mind would kill to be a part of bringing that brand back. I also welcomed the chance to write about some of the things I didn’t get a chance to on Profy: things like hardware and gaming that fascinate me but aren’t part of Profy’s niche.
When Svetlana told me the plan that she has for Profy, I realized that it was no longer a good fit for me, and I had to make a choice. I could not continue putting in the effort at Profy as well as at the Standard and do either one justice. I’d be lying if I said that some small part of that decision wasn’t based on economics, but again, I’m raising four kids, and that’s always going to be a factor. However, I respect Svetlana a great deal, and I certainly want to see Profy succeed. I’ve spent a year and a half trying to accomplish that.
I thought I would have the time to compose my thoughts and what I wanted to say, but I forget that the tech blogosphere is so much like high school and that there are many who believe it’s more important to be first than it is to get the story right. I cannot and will not speak for either of the other authors at Profy as to their reasons for leaving. I do wish the very best for Svetlana and Profy and while I may no longer be writing there, I will continue to read and watch what they do.
I had offers to make my formal response to the Mashable “article” elsewhere, but for once, I’m going to stand on my own platform to state my case. I never thought it was important to establish a brand for myself, since my goal has been to make wherever I’m working a respected and professional organization. I realize now that I was wrong, and that no matter how hard I try, I still have some degree of individual visibility. I just never expected that visibility to undermine the credibility of a company I was working for, and for that, I’m beyond sorry.
A year and a half ago, I made the stupid mistake of trying out a cut-rate domain registar/hosting provider: Host Department. For the low price of something like $80, I got my domain registered plus hosting, and it was far less expensive than the host I’ve been with for years. What did I learn? You get what you pay for.
After a couple of unexplained outages and a slower-than-molasses-in-January server, I decided my experiment had failed, and that’s when the fun began. First, I wanted to simply continue with my domains registered there, but hosted at my regular host. Oops; they cancelled my whole account, and I lost my business domain (fourlittlebees.com). It was being held for $30, during which time I could pay $200 to get it back. Who’s squatting on it and has been since the second they “deleted” my account? ENOM.
Once I saw that mess, I started the process to transfer my remaining three domains out of there. Six months later, I got one domain, but the .com domain? The one I’ve PAID to transfer TWICE because Host Department has failed to release it each time? Now squatted on. By ENOM.
At what point is ICANN going to grow a pair and force registrars to abide by the terms they agree to as registrars? If I look on the control panel for my “new” registrar, you can see the transfer, still active. Still waiting for the EPP key that never comes. ICANN is nothing but a toothless figurehead setting out policies that never seem to be followed with no repercussions. Complain to them? They send you back to the registrar who tells you they can’t “fix” it since the domain was sold. TO THEMSELVES.
As long as Google continues to allow squatters to run Adsense (and why shouldn’t they… they make money on them, right?) and ICANN continues to turn a blind eye to predatory squatting by registrars, the practice will continue. But I’d avoid Host Department like the plague. The money I thought I would save didn’t even come close to paying for my time and aggravation.
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