Category: Internet

Over The Top

While death threats against bloggers aren’t to be condoned and the people who did it should be found and punished by law in the same way that I could be if I made death threats in person in the real world, the call for a Bloggers Code of Conduct is a real over reaction. Tim O’Reilly has put together a draft set of rules with friends that he hopes will be adopted by the blogging community. Blog’s are all about freedom of speech, and with freedom of speech you do get people with extreme and sometimes controversial/unpalatable views. I’m fine with that and if something I saw posted here was against what I wanted then it would be removed. However I don’t need someone else defining rules nor do I feel the need to wear a badge that reassures people I follow a certain code. I’m sure the graphics for the badges are temporary but the fact one is a sheriff’s badge just sets the wrong impression…as if the blogging world has lost control and it needs to be policed.

Hopefully this will all die down and turn into some guidelines that bloggers are free to copy to their own site if they wish. I personally don’t see the need.

*Update* – This blog has now been upgraded with the Airbag Department of Security Blog Advisory System – see bottom right of sidebar. The blogging world is now a safer place.

OpenDNS…finally

OpenDNS has garnered a lot of positive press over the last year. Frustratingly NTL’s use of proxies meant that no matter what I tried, OpenDNS could not be configured on it’s network which meant I couldn’t move to the service.

While I was cleaning up my bookmarks I stumbled again on OpenDNS and now that NTL & Telewest have merged into Virgin Media I thought it was worth trying one last time. Success. So what does OpenDNS do?

DNS requests are made every day from your home connection. E-mails, web surfing, online gaming etc all make use of DNS. DNS turns real addresses (www.apple.com) into an IP address for the physical computer you want to connect to. It makes it easier to surf and also means an address can stay fixed while the computer changes in the background (to a different IP address). Usually you make use of your own ISP’s DNS server which in general works OK but from time to time can have issues. Speed, lack of redundancy and update issues are ones I’ve seen over the years.

OpenDNS provides a free DNS service that promises to resolve addresses quickly and also a few unique services that I certainly don’t get from my current ISP. Firstly there are anti-phisihing features in place so that you will be warned and the phishing site intercepted should you be lead to one. There’s also spelling correction where OpenDNS will look at the URL you’ve typed and if it detects a typo it will redirect you to the correct site. Finally if you look up a site that cannot be resolved OpenDNS will display a page with aletrnatives.

OpenDNSYou can turn off these features if you find they get in the way and you can also see stats on domains visited, IP’s requested etc but that isn’t the killer feature for me. It’s the speed.

Since moving to OpenDNS web surfing has taken on an extra zip. Click on a link now and the page is served far quicker than it was using Virgin’s DNS servers. I’m taking 2-4 seconds quicker for me but your mileage may vary. I’m also convinced that I’m using a more redundant service than my ISP’s servers but time will really tell with regards reliability. The added security features are a bonus but I really do recommend swapping to OpenDNS and at least giving it a shot (that for any ISP you use, not just Virgin). There are great guides on the site for most common routers and operating systems that take you through the small changes that you need to make. Have a go and enjoy a faster and more secure web.

Flickr Disaster?

Flickr announced some changes to terms and conditions today.

1) All users must now use a Yahoo account to login to Flickr.

2) A limit in the amount of tags has been added – 75 per photo

3) The maximum amount of contacts a user can have is 3000

When I saw the hysterical headlines about Flickr today I thought some hard hitting changes had been implemented. It even made the BBC tech news pages. However dig a little deeper and it’s some changes blown well out of proportion.

1) Yahoo integration with Flickr started a long time ago. I eventually merged my Flickr and Yahoo accounts last year with no problem. The Flickr page stills looks the same and I don’t need to do the ‘Yahoo dance’ when logging in. Is Yahoo a big horrible company – aren’t they all? If I had an issue with privacy at all I’d probably not be using many accounts on the net or indeed sharing my photo’s. I can understand there maybe some kudos with having an old Flickr ID instead of a Yahoo account but does that really matter? Did my photo’s or contacts disappear when I moved – no. In fact my user experience didn’t change at all – it’s something I don’t even think about now.

2) 75 tags is a limit? Who the hell wants 75 tags on one photo. Why? Who’s got the time to put 75 tags on a photo? How does that help to identify and manage photo’s. Some people have too much time on their hands.

3) 3000 contacts also seems a massive amount of contacts to have. Does anyone know 3000 people and want to share private photo’s with them? OK there is one guy on the Flickr forums that has 19000 contacts who he loves and respects. I’m sure they also love the private porn pictures he regularly posts. Not really the target audience for Flickr. I can’t see anyone realistically browsing 3000 users photo’s regularly. Is that not what Flickr groups are for?

Probably most annoying is the vocal minority that this affects and the influence of sites like Digg (I do love Digg but you’ve got to question some of it’s user base and their reporting). Firstly Flickr has around six million users. Don’t know how many are active but the Flickr group Flick Off which is against the forced usage of Yahoo accounts has 1447 members. Not much in the grand scheme of things. The mail that old school folk received today said 95% used a Yahoo account. Yet people in the main forum post that has all the complaints are making comments like 1 million pro folk may leave because they don’t want a Yahoo account. How bizarre. Seeing the Flickr staff respond frequently in these posts impresses me and reassures me all is well.

The Digg post with the most comments was submitted by Thomas Hawk. He didn’t point to the Flickr news page on these changes but to his own blog post. I guess there’s nothing wrong with self publicity or having an opinion as he has posted a lot of content on Flickr…but he is CEO for Zooomr, one of Flickr’s competitors. I’ve posted about Zooomr before and even have a pro account which I got via a give-away last year. The site however is so slow as to be unusable. It’s allegedly down to increased traffic today but I tried it last week to see if there were any improvements and I was disappointedly with it’s speed then. No fear – there’s an upgrade on the way sometime in March. Yeah, right.

I’ll be sticking with Flickr which offers a great service and since the Yahoo merger offers unlimited uploads. It’s also fast and they’ve now added an API which allows export of photo’s and tags if you so wish. Maybe long term there will be other changes which degrade the service as the doom bringers are predicting but something I’ve always felt hasn’t changed for me. Flickr isn’t Yahoo. Thankfully it isn’t Zooomr either.

Disable Snap Previews

It’s like a plague – the number of sites that have the Snap Preview plugin installed showing previews of links seems to be growing. i thought I was the only one that thought they were annoying, distracting and a total pain in the arse. Like blink all over again.

However a solution comes from Daring Fireball. The second question on the Snap FAQ page shows you how to disable the plugin via cookies. It works! Bliss.

NTL Trials

So NTL are trialling a new way of shaping. Well, I think it’s new as I haven’t heard of any broadband provider working like this. If you are a heavy downloader, even during the day or at other off peak times then your connection will be limited during peak times. According to Cable Forum the trial affects 10Meg users who are limited to 5Meg during peak times.

Issues so far seem to be users who are out all day are still being downgraded during peak times. There is also ambiguity with the terms and conditions. This trial will only affect users who break the user policy…yet the user policy now states there is unlimited downloading on NTL. When will we get companies to spell out in black and white what exactly a broadband user can and cannot do. I’m on 10 Meg but to be honest there is so much contention on the network at the moment that in peak times I see around 3-4Meg. If this trial does free up bandwidth I’m all for it. Will be interesting to see what happens if NTL do keep their promise of everyone on at least 10Meg by the end of Q1 07 with 10Meg moving to 20Meg. I’ll be downgrading soon methinks.

Old Faithful

Over the last few months I’ve been loving Flock due to it’s integration with Flickr, RSS feeds and del.icio.us while delivering Mozilla rock solid browsing. However a wee bit of instability meant I returned to Firefox. That return is now permanent as I’ve not had one Firefox issue, browsing feels snappier and it’s quicker to launch. Also, I’ve found some better replacements for Flock’s built in features.

Google Reader has been out for a while and recently had some updates. I didn’t pay much attention as I used Flocks built in RSS manager. However using Google Reader for the past couple of weeks has been great. Far easier to manage multiple RSS feeds, quicker and no checking locally of every RSS feed has meant this is now my RSS manager. RSS feeds now available on the move as Google Reader has a mobile version for use on phones.

Sharing of bookmarks has always been a bit of an issue for me. I’ve tried different services over the years and never got one I liked. Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer for Firefox looks to be the answer. Once installed it allows you to sync your bookmarks between multiple machines with the sync happening silently in the background. You can also visit their website and see your bookmarks meaning your bookmarks should no longer be out of reach or sync.

Web Development Evolved is the bold claim for the Firebug extension. The length of features it offers is vast – inspection/edit of HTML, CSS editing, CSS metrics, debug, logging and editing for Javascript and the one I’ve used so far – Network Activity.

Firebug - Slow site load

This site is fairly sluggish and using Firebug I’ve found three Javascript files that the theme loaded but never used. So that’s trimmed some time out of the load. I’ll be visiting some of the other pages round this site to see if I can trim any more fat away. A great tool, especially for having a nose at other people’s sites to see how they were constructed.

As for Flickr uploading, I’ve went back to the Flcikr uploader which is a universal binary and works a treat. So goodbye Flock – a nice browser that’s been too slow to develop with too many superior competitors.

Flickr Christmas Gifts

My first Christmas present – Flickr have upgraded Pro users accounts so that we now have unlimited uploads – no more 2 Gig monthly limits. Free accounts have been upgraded to a not too shabby 100Meg per month limit.

There’s also a Christmas Easter Egg – add notes with ho ho ho hat or ho ho ho beard to add a festive theme to your pics.

Flickr Christmas

One more goodie I didn’t know about – calendar view. Add date-taken-calendar/ to your photostream URL to get a calendar view of your photo’s i.e. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_d/date-taken-calendar/. Another great feature which is also available via the archives link once logged into Flickr.

Flickr Love

Flickr MobileFlickr added some new features over the last day or so, one of which combines my love of stats and technology. Firstly the two mundane updates. They’ve updated their Flickr mobile site (http://m.flickr.com) making it easier to type and use while adding some new options. This feature hasn’t changed in ages so it’s nice to see it getting some attention.

Also new is ‘Guest Pass’. Invite up to 50 other guests to view your friends and family pictures. A great way to invite non Flickr members to see your photo’s. The nice part of this feature is that you are in control of who gets the pass, what they can see and how long they have access for. Finally onto the geek feature.

Camera Charts

Using Camera Finder you can see the most popular camera’s in use at Flickr and also find photo’s from actual users of the camera your thinking of buying. What better way of confirming a good review than seeing other people’s results for yourself. Whats nice is that browsing through each camera (my DSC-P200 for example) you can filter not only interesting shots but also from a range including macro, night and landscape. Great to see what each camera can be capable off in the right hands.

Flickr’s use of photo metadata is really smart – it will be interesting to see how new camera’s affect the charts over time and also what other stats and search options can be added to Flickr. Can it get better? Yes! Subsets please! While I’m alkinh photo’s, interesting post on The Truth about Digital Camera’s – comments also worth a read.

Oh no….ReviewMe

The following is not a paid review

Time to get used to that (without the not) or the words sponsored review appearing on blog posts from now on. ReviewMe is a new pay per post venture for bloggers and advertisers. Bloggers register at the ReviewMe site and once they have added their blog to their account the site works out the price your site is worth depending on Technorati, Alexa ranks and subscriber numbers. Advertisers can then ask you to review a product on your site – review it (good or bad) and you’ll be paid half your site value. I registered and my site price is $40. So if asked to review a product and if I did so I would be paid $20 into my paypal account. Indeed I could be paid $20 from ReviewMe by linking this review to my account. I won’t.

The whole thing just stinks. For me paid reviews will always be devalued. For each blogger that reviews honestly there will be another ten that will review positively so that advertisers use them in the future. How many blogs will be set-up just to do paid reviews? For me it’s another form of viral marketing that will only devalue the usefulness of bloggers and their tech reviews. Ventures like ReviewMe only increase the value of forum sites – AVForums, Apple Discussions for example, where most people are reporting honestly about products and issues and helping other users. Would you trust a blog post that someone’s been paid to write?