john bollwitt blog

CityTV in Toronto had a great story. Burglar gets caught in the act by home owner, attempts to get away by leaping off balcony, busts his leg, and someone snaps pictures of the poor sap while he lays on the ground as cops are called and arrive to the scene. What avid Flickr user Joel Charlebois did with the photos afterward is the real story.

When CityTV heard him mention that he was going to post the photos to Flickr, they not only checked them out but used them in a news story. Problem is, there was no mention of the person who took the images. This is also known as a violation of copyright. As any good Flickr user and avid photographer will tell you (like Duane did on his blog post on this same topic), you protect the things you love. Yes, you can protect your photos on Flickr with a copyright, and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council agreed with the complaint brought against CityTV.

Charlebois, displeased, took his case to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), and today, nine months after the complaint was filed, a majority of the National Specialty Services Panel found that City’s broadcast did indeed violate the Association of Electronic Journalists of Canada’s RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics, which states that “Plagiarism is unacceptable. Broadcast journalists will strive to honour the intellectual property of others, including video and audio materials.” (The full decision is here.) The panel took particular issue with the lack of credit to Charlebois, stating that “the broadcaster knew full well the identity of the photographer whose still shots were used in the news report,” an omission that they deemed unfair, for news reporting or otherwise. (They note that the American RTNDA states that “professional electronic journalists should…clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders.”)

As a result, City must issue a rare on-air statement at least twice, during prime time, over the next ten days. That statement will follow a script set by the CBSC, stating that, in part, the news organization breached the aforementioned Code of Ethics and “included three still photographs of the injured burglar without providing any credit to the photographer, whose identity was known to the broadcaster. By failing to provide that accreditation, the broadcaster has failed to honour the intellectual property rights of the photographer.” [torontoist]

What is important to me on this story is that intellectual property was protected as it should be, no matter how it is being utilized. On top of that, it gives comfort to know that mainstream media will be held accountable for violations of copyrighted material. It’s not a full safety net, but that means that even the little guy stands a chance against big media companies when it comes to protecting your content.

Even Charlebois admits in the story that all he was really concerned about was the proper accreditation, not the punishment handed down to CityTV. I think it’s interesting to note that there is very little discussion of fines or compensation.

Some time ago, I had a request to supply a separate feed to my blog for those who would be interested in subscribing to a “posts only version” of my site. I finally got around to getting this done, so here is how it breaks down.

• Posts + Flickr + Del.icio.us Feed: This is currently how the feed has been operating for a while now. If you put this RSS feed into your aggregator, you would see not only my latest blog posts, but you would also get the various pictures I would post to Flickr as well as bookmarks that I would save on Del.icio.us. This is the true, social gambit of stuff that I like to loft into the blogosphere.
• Posts Only Feed: This should speak for itself, but allow me to clarify. If you would prefer to not get all the pictures and bookmarks or whatever I decide to put in that “life feed”, then subscribe to this one. You’ll only get the posts from my blog in this feed, so it’s really a matter of preference because you’ll never miss anything that I am posting to my blog.
• Comments Feed: Curious to see what people are posting for comments on my posts? Then this is the feed for you. You’ll see how horrible I am at replying to comments as well as getting the latest and greatest spam bombs that happen from time to time. Crucial if you are keeping tabs on the viagra and cialis markets on the internet.

Pick and choose what you want to follow. You have the power. And if you are not using RSS feed reader, try Google Reader. It’s my tool of preference.

Duane has been cooking up some interesting plugins for WordPress lately. I thought I would install them on my blog and try them out.

WordTwit is the first one, and this is a good one for you Twitter users out there with a WordPress website. Basically, it makes twitter updates for every blog post you make. That way tweets are sent out automatically to alert your followers on Twitter about new blog posts. This post will be my first trial, but I think this is much better than doing it manually.

The other plugin is Crossroads. If you like the Flickr and WordPress like I do, then you should really check this out. It allows you to post an entire set within a blog post as you see below.

This is an old photo set of mine, but it helps demonstrate the function of this plugin. Really useful instead of pointing people to Flickr to see the rest of your pictures for something that you have a bunch of pics about. And let’s be honest, people love looking at pictures just like many folks read the newspaper for the funny pages.

Visit both of the links for those plugins to find out more.

I am not a huge contributor to JPG Magazine but have been a big fan of what they’ve been doing with overall concept of what JPG has been. In fact, I signed up for an account to vote on submission of friends so they will get published in their magazine. Kris Krug[flickr], John Goldsmith[flickr], and Mr. Jacob Stewart[flickr], better known as “Cosmo” from the Clubside Breakfast Time podcast, were the handful of people who got me to sign up, vote for their submissions to make it into the next edition of the magazine, and also check out some of the other stuff there.

I might not be the greatest photographer in the world, but time could be well wasted digging through submissions. At least I am able to recognize worthwhile work and understand the art that is presented.

Then today, Goldsmith posted this image to his flickr, which led me to this post, written by the man who co-founded JPG Mag. To the heart of the matter:

Unfortunately, issue 10 will be the last one that Heather and I will have a hand in. We are no longer working for JPG Magazine or 8020 Publishing.

Why? The reasons are complicated, and the purpose of this post is not to air dirty laundry - it’s just to let the community know why the founders of JPG are no longer there. We owe you that much.

In one evening, Paul removed issues 1-6 from the JPG website, removed Heather from the About page, and deleted the “Letter from the Editors” that had lived on the site since day one. Paul informed me that we were inventing a new story about how JPG came to be that was all about 8020. He told me not to speak of that walk in Buena Vista, my wife, or anything that came before 8020.

Here’s where the whole “not lying” thing comes in. I just could not agree to this new story. It didn’t, and still doesn’t, make any business sense to me. Good publishing companies embrace their founding editors and community, not erase them. Besides, we’d published six issues with participation from thousands of people. There’s no good reason to be anything but proud of that. [powazek]

After reading this, and you should read the entire post for the complete story, I’ve deleted my account as well. Granted that I have done very little with JPG Magazine, there’s very little making me want to increase my interaction, not to mention that all those people I listed above have done the same thing. Call it a revolt, protest, or what have you, but the reputation that once existed is quickly falling apart.

If you want to kill off a community, then this is a good example of how to do that.

It might sound crazy, but I have not been using Flickr Uploader for the Mac since I first joined into the Flickr fun. Being a long time supporter of the widget way of doing things, I liked the one I was able to find for Yahoo! Widget Engine, formally known as Konfabulator. It worked well, and was, overall, fairly effective in its use.

The other day, I downloaded Flickr Uploader again to find how much better of an application it has become. My first time around with it was shortly after its inception, and I read a lot about it, hearing mostly that it was lacking in functionality and stability. Basically, I was picky and wanted something “better”, not to mention at my fingertips.

That’s hardly the issue anymore, and if you ain’t using it, then you’re missing out. I have to say that I loved having the little widget directly on my desktop, but that frame of mind is easy to change once you try this sucker out. It’s like one stop shopping, no needing to visit the actual website after you’ve uploaded everything. Stupidly, that’s what I had to do before, and now I hang my head down in shame.

So long I have resisted, but now I see the light.

Amazing what tickles your pickle when you’ve had a long day, not drank enough water, and had only one beer with fish and chips. 1,000 pictures, right on the money. Even after uploading everything I have today, what’s the chances of that happening? Neat.

I’ve been cramming a lot into my brain over the past few days. For one thing, I’ve been exploring the lovely world of Drupal. After all the things I’ve seen and heard about it, I’ve been impressed. It’s everything that it’s said to be. Content management system, and they ain’t kidding.

I set it up locally and played quite a bit yesterday. Every time I tried to do something that would be complicated by doing it stupidly, Drupal had some sort of built-in way to do what I wanted. Very interesting. Not sure that I like it from a blogging aspect, but it has that too. It can be oh so much more.

I’m experimenting with WordPress more and more. I’ve been a long time user of the visual rich editor. However, not anymore. It’s come to be such a pain, and the WYSIWYG interface gets so annoying after a while. Being a user of only version 2.0 and on, this is what previous versions did. I’ve gotta say that I like this, non-rich editor, much more. Loads faster in FireFox and has no lag. I’ll stick with this for now.

I did find a really great Flickr plugin for WordPress. Flickr Photo Album adds a nice interface for dropping images from your Flickr account straight into a post, all from within the editor. You can already do this with Flock, but I am still not impressed with its performance. This plugin makes things simple and quick, but the setup takes a little to sort out.

I also got into some Unix[wiki] junk last night. Seems that my external hard drive has the occasional ability of renaming itself at random times and confusing some of my peer to peer programs. How else are we to have our cheap nights in with some ghetto Tivo, aka BitTorrent? This could also cause problems with some of my podcast projects. If I spent enough time with it, Unix could become another language I could start to really understand. I’ve got way too many other things on the list right now. I should get some tape for the middle of my glasses.

I recall hearing about this story a while ago, but it appears that this guy lost the battle to keep the vanity plates on his Corvair.

Iowa man loses battle over F NADER plate

John Miller of Boone has lost his battle to keep the letters “F NADER” on the license plates of his 1966 Chevrolet Corvair.

A state administrative law judge has sided with the Iowa Department of Transportation, which contended the “F” was shorthand for a crude, four-letter word aimed at consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

Nader wrote a 1965 book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” that criticized the safety features of many American automobiles, citing General Motors’ sporty Corvair as an example and damaging its reputation.

Miller said Wednesday he didn’t agree with the ruling, but he had no plans to appeal the decision to revoke his license plates. [desmoinesregister]

It gets better. I have nothing against the guy, but you have to love the beauty of Flickr(photo credit: beeseason).

Everyone and their cat is blogging away about it, but snow is rare in Vancouver. Compared to growing up in Iowa, whiteness is something that you learn to live with, but this “falling white death from the sky”, as my high school physics teacher from Florida liked to call it, has completely caught me by surprise.

I’m actually surprised to not hear more about accidents on the roads, but folks on the lower mainland might have opted to stay off them as much as possible. That hasn’t stopped me from spotting a few horrible drivers in the downtown area. One should understand that when snow falls, the roads get slick. When the roads are slick, you can’t drive like you usually do. You can’t do quick acceleration and stop quickly when coming to an intersection. The laws of common sense tell you that you’re stupid if you try. And just because you own a Jeep or Hummer, that does not make you invincible.

I did witness a pretty bad fender bender on Saturday night. I was walking along Georgia and caught a minivan-taxi run into the back of a fellow car-taxi. It all happened in my peripheral vision, but I caught all the plastic pieces falling to the ground after the initial crunch. This is what happens when the light turns red and you don’t give yourself enough space for the car ahead of you to stop. I was in a hurry to meet Rebecca at the SkyTrain station but made sure everyone was alright before I went on my way.

The lack of snow removal really shows how unusual this weather is to this area. Earlier today, I watched one of the maintenance guys from our building clear the sidewalk. He was using a dust pan that was duct taped to a pole. It didn’t look pretty, but all that matters is that it worked.

Running an errand today, I wandered around the west end and Robson with my camera for a bit[flickr]. Snow removal on the sidewalks was spotty. That’s a little unheard of back in my home state, and Rebecca noted that during her time in Boston, sidewalks were cleared of snow on a constant basis. Like I said, snow is unusual here, especially in the downtown core. However, this stuff is going to stick around for a few days. It’s only going to get colder before it warms up enough to melt it all away.

Truthfully, I’m not complaining. I love snow. I love to throw snowballs and go sledding. Sadly, there’s not too many places to do that nearby. It’s only been in the last hour that the snow has really stopped. My hope is to do a bit of running tomorrow. Jogging through the snow is tricky. It is more of a workout and requires a little more concentration. It’s fun, too.

It’s such a touristy thing to do, but Rebecca took me down to the Peace Arch[wiki] with her dad a little over a week ago. We were actually hiking in Redwood Park and ventured over there since we were so close.

Our little walk through that park turned into quite the down and back up affair, totally not wearing the right shoes for the occasion. From what I’ve been told, this is what to expect from my father-in-law. I’m always down for wandering through the bush and getting a little dirty, but my shoes were less than perfect for the soft ground. I’m more impressed that Rebecca did it all in two inch heels.

You can see a bunch of pictures that I took of Redwood Park on Flickr.

I always have a hard time grasping that fact that there isn’t a fence that separates Canada from the states. Driving along 0 Avenue, you could spit out the window from Canada and have it land in the U.S. A ditch, a little more than a foot deep, is all that stops a car from crossing the 49th. A three step start and you could easily jump over it.

This was the closest I had been to the U.S. in just over a year. And technically, I did cross the border for a few minutes. Even better, I used the washroom by the road heading north. I was very straight forward that when the urge to relieve myself hit me, I was going to do it in my native country. And in true fashion, that little rest stop was creepy. No power and no hand soap. Smelled alright, though.

It’s a nice park and completely worth checking out. While we were running around, people would hop out of their cars to snap a picture of themselves in this symbol of friendliness. We’re two countries that, deep down, like each other. Our political ideologies get in the way of the feelings Americans have about Canadians and vice versa. It’s nice to forget that and just be a tourist some times.

Of course, I have all my pics of our adventures at the Peace Arch on Flickr.

Jason Vanderhill[flickr] is a guy I met at the Vandigicam event that Rebecca and I attened a few weeks ago to do a podcast[rz#110] during. A short time ago, Jason contacted me to aid him in a project he is working on with members of the Vancouver Historical Society. I wasn’t completely sure I was volunteering for, but the idea of lending my knowledge of recording in the field sounded like fun.

Turns out, the oldest film of Vancouver is the same piece of footage that I heard about from Dave Olson when we hung out during the Celebration of Light.

Last week, I was helped Jason capture some audio that is to go into a project about this film that was discovered in the basement of a house down in Australia. Nine minutes of a movie where William Harbeck[vancouverhistory.ca] put a camera at the front of a cable car as it goes through Vancouver in 1907. Very cool stuff, and it made me overly happy to have ventured over the Granville Bridge by foot on such a gorgeous day.

The film has been shown publicly, but I have yet to see it. I’m not sure what the whole plan is for the final project, but this is something I am very lucky to have a hand in. I’ll be sure to update here when I know more. If you can get a chance to see this piece of history, I’m betting that the images of Vancouver from one hundred years ago is a trip.

At BarCampVancouver, Ryan Cousineau[wiredcola] led a session called “Sturgeon’s Revelation”[wiki]. The idea that “ninety percent of everything is crud” was the center piece of this session, applying it to pretty much everything that exists in the world of Web 2.0[wiki]. The main topic of focus, however, was podcasting[wiki].

Darren Barefoot made a recent post regarding social networks and podcasting, citing that the resources are not there for the medium as there is for photo, video, or link sharing. This idea speaks a lot to what Cousineau was getting at with his session, and much of his thoughts on the topic is posted on his blog.

When it comes down to it, there is not an easy way to share content within a podcast unless you listen to it. You can’t Google search for information that can be found in a podcast. There are such things as show notes and tags that people apply to the material that they publish, but not everyone does it, nor does everyone do it the same way.

The only solution to this problem is to transcribe podcasts in their entirty so that anyone searching for a topic can locate it in your podcast as well as anywhere else on the web. Quite often, this is where people with low opinions about podcasting derive their argument, and I’ve heard this thought propelled by a lot of bloggers. Yes, blogging is a very quick way of publishing information for the world to read in nearly real time. It is instantly indexed, searchable, and archived.

Generating audio for a podcast can be done in the same way, but often is delayed and ineffective with being timely. The podcast itself, in its raw form, is a bunch of ones and zeros, and no one has developed a way to index the contents of a podcast so that it is searchable across the internet. No matter how great of material that you have in a podcast, some one finding that gem of information inside forty minutes of a mp3 won’t happen unless they download it and listen.

This is where I start to agree with the point that Cousineau is saying and the thoughts presented in Barefoot’s post. The conversation that you can get from podcasting is vastly different for the ones that happen through blogging, Flickr, or YouTube. “Feedback” is the better word for what goes on with a podcast. (more…)