"It uses the same chassis, has the same specification, but it costs just £279.99 -- at least £40 less than some online vendors are selling the Wind for. How? It's quite simple: MSI is an ODM (original design manufacturer), which means it makes barebones chassis for its own use and to sell to other companies, known as SIs (system integrators).
Advent, the SI responsible for the 4211, has bought a bunch of Wind chassis in black and silver, installed its own software bundle and is flogging them on the cheap. Inside, you get a 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Windows XP -- no Linux option is available." - Alan Cheslow via Bookmarklet
Hehehe. Good ol' bobbies on the beat, eh? I think I'm buying a megaphone soon, can't trust them bobbies you see. Thanks for passing it on Thomas. - Roberto Bonini
Agree with the message but hate the transmission over bullhorn. I was sort of hoping they were gonna give him a beat-down. - Andrew Smith
Stand up for your rights, fellow photographers! - Daniel
I'm glad the photographer did this. We need these "rebels" to keep society regulated. I strongly believe that. - jonn
That's great! That needs to happen more often, in more places. As it becomes more and more common for the police/security to harass photographers, I am seriously considering adding a cheap video recorder to my bag. - Jeremy Brooks
I demand a photographers' rights flashmob.. right next to a secured area with lots of police. Imagine... hundreds of photographers jumping a secured area shooting thousands of pictures and then disbanding quickly... - Daniel
Awesome. I guess the policemen didn't see this one coming. Good job! - Holger Eilhard
Very Berkeley-like way to express oneself. Was pleased at first, then after the first 30 seconds, started to feel uncomfortable that the "bullhorn bloke" was still going. - Randy Hall
In times like these you need to be brave or a nutter to stand up like that. It's a shame that it's even necessary. - Victor
Keep a Megaphone in the Gear bag now ,,, protect your rights . - fotographic
people thought they were normal, but were insane, in 1930's germany, any similarity to here and now? - gregory lent
Fantastic! We need more people like him to stand up to these goon squads. - Stuart Forsyth
I like the sound of that club. Where do I sign up? - Jeff P. Henderson
Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal. - Andrew Smith
I like the one that says "Red Meat, Because the West Wasn't Won on salad" - Andrew Leyden
I work for Cabela's and that's a very typical saying for our corp. headquaters - Garrett
spotted a shirt in wisconson- "vegetarians= bad hunters" made me smile ... mmm....bacon - Nice Fish Films
on the other side of the car is the mean people suck sticker, correct? - Pete Delucchi
I soooooooooo want one of those stickers! lol awesome - JohnBfromMemphis
Brian: Humans contribute just as much, if you skin and cook them right... - Ian Betteridge
very telling presentation of chav lifestyle - Ralf G.
One of my all-time favorite bumper stickers! - Craig Eddy
I've been banging on for ages about this, and how it's the ultimate destination for Google. Location awareness is a crucial piece of contextual information that's missing from their ability to target you with ads. Soon, they'll have that too. Is that a bad thing? Depends... - Ian Betteridge via Bookmarklet
sweet, I was hoping everything expected wouldn't show up on friday, so there'd be more toys to play with over a few days :) - Jason Kaneshiro
mobileme is definitely a go for wed, app store and 2.0 software is looking more and more like it could come early as well - MG Siegler
If mobileme is launching, won't it need the 2.0 firmware? Won't that mean app store is launching as well? - gregory
I'm hoping for an early 2.0 release. I leave for a weekend trip on Thursday and would love to have it with me. - RyanEs
Well there wouldn't be much point in launching MobileMe without the iPhone 2.0 software, at least. - Ian Betteridge
This did not seem like any big deal when I first heard about it last month. Now, however, I am really looking forward to it. Hats off to Apple for creating full blown web 2.0 apps and supporing the 3 main browsers right from the start! - Johnny Software
Ralph, Twitter has 20.6M in funding. They are also rebuilding Twitter in parallel to the public facing site. Summize would be a quick "rebuild" of the Replies tab. All they'd have to do is integrate it. - Aaron Brazell
Would tie in nicely with what we wrote about last week when we found out that Summize have almost-exclusive access to XMPP from Twitter (and hence a full copy of all data): http://www.techcrunchit.com/20... - Nik Cubrilovic
I agree, this SHOULD happen. I recently reviewed the search functionality of Summize against many of its competitors, as well as commented on how Summize can effectively create AdHoc social networks for Twitter based on search parameters: http://linkbun.ch/jmv - Jake Fudge
Ralph, "for users" doesn't make too much sense. I would bet that 95%+ of summize users use it to augment twitter's search. It makes sense though because they have search nailed. Also, saying that "it doesn't crash" isn't a very good argument either... it has relatively no load and doesn't need to dispatch (push, or pull at run-time) the tweets to different people.. only pull when someone searches. - Eric Kerr
maybe buying Summize will end up being the solution to Twitter downtime. - Marshall Sponder
Seems odd they would increase Summizes worth directly by telling users to use it when the replies were diaabled shortly before looking to buy it. - Michael W. May via twhirl
Summize rocks, and it would make total sense. - Ian Betteridge
Is there somebody at summarize worth buying? - Brian Sullivan
twitter acquiring summize is a short-term goodwill play - here's my full take - basically it would kill summize's ambitions of tracking the real-time conversational web - http://www.centernetworks.com/... - Allen Stern
Prices for the iPhone in New Zealand... everyone online seems pretty pissed off at them. - Ian Betteridge via Bookmarklet
Looking at stories like this and the news from Canada, it certainly seems like the competition in the UK Market has resulted in a comparitively good deal. - Richard Peat
I would be flattered if someone liked my images enough to download for their personal use. However, I'd be irate if some company took my images and sold them for their own profit.. - Becca
But the question is ought it be Flickr's job to try to design their system and police those who use their API? Should flickr be required to monitor every single API key for copyright enforcement? Some use the API for personal tools, others use it for commercial purposes. My own feeling is that Flickr should not have to play the role of copyright police -- that misuse of imagery ought to be between a photographer and the offending party. - Thomas Hawk
I'm not familiar with Flickr's API, but I imagine it's pretty easy to retrieve the license data for each image. If so, the responsibility rests solely on the API consumer to make sure what they're doing with the images is legit. I suppose if Flickr really wanted to be proactive about it, they could provide a "Don't expose my images through the API" option. No one would ever see those pictures again, but at least the copyright would be slightly more secure. - James Williams (willia4)
James, Flickr already has a way for users to opt out of the API if they want. If people are that concerned about misuse then I think it is their responsibility to opt out, not Flickr's responsibility to play copyright police. You can opt in/out of the API on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/account/... - Thomas Hawk
Ok. Then I don't understand the problem. Flickr's already giving their users the the tools to keep their photos from showing up in random API places. There's nothing to see here. Move along. - James Williams (willia4)
Becca, this is the whole point of this discussion. If you tag your images with a specific copyright, legally that should be honored by all who want to use that image. - Jeff P. Henderson
I'd be interested to know if policing the use of the API changes Flickr's liability in regard to safe harbor? Do they move from being not responsible for how people may misuse copyright of photos that happen to be hosted on Flickr, to being liable for that misuse? If they do, I can see why they would not get involved with policing the API - Mike McBride
Right, flickr gives you both the option to block your images from external search and API, and the option to allow the programs *you want* to access your files through your API key, I don't see a big issue aside from the fact that those options aren't made more clear to new users and/or asking users to set them as part of the setup process. On top of that, you can choose who can/cannot see certain sized files of yours. All the tools are in place, it's whether/how you use them or not. - cmiper
I don't think that Flickr should have to play copyright police and monitor all usage for their API for violation, and the courts would most likely uphold this as they have with ISP's liability for people distributing copyrighted music over their networks. But it seems that they might be able to rewrite the API to plug the holes or make it easier for programmers to abide by the rules. This might fall under the category of being a good citizen on the net. - Jeff P. Henderson
Flickr is just horrific with its users and very cavalier with their photos. Completely disrespectful imho. - Vinny
@cmiper That is good information. I will look into how this all works. It is definitely not clear to most users that they have an option to control how their images are seen/used and by whom. If this is the case then Jim's original issue is really a non issue, and he just need to configure Flicker to function to meet his copyright needs. - Jeff P. Henderson
Part of the problem Jeff might be that Jim doesn't want to totally opt out of the API. For instance. He might enjoy that people can see his photos in PicLens or Flickrleech or other apps (or maybe not), but wants to restrict it to other companies. Much of the API use is not dependent on individual permission given to approved apps. Still, I think if it matters that much to someone that they should just opt out entirely. - Thomas Hawk
An API white-list doesn't seem like it'd be worth implementing. I'm sure the VAST majority of Flickr's users wouldn't ever use it, if only because most of us (myself included) just don't take very good or interesting pictures. I'm not really worried about someone stealing the snapshot I made of my mom's dog, after all. If I really cared, I'd get my pics off flickr and on to my own server and do white-listing with .htaccess files. Not that anyone would go to the trouble of accessing my site then. - James Williams (willia4)
I just don't understand why those who have their photos marked All Rights Reserved don't get their photos removed from any API apps by default. Seems like common sense to me. I don't think it's asking them to be copyright police by simply telling them "Hey, if that photo has this license, keep it to yourself." If they aren't going to honor the licenses in the first place, why give people the ability to set them at all? - Vinny
Thomas, I think you left out some key information. Flickr allows you to mark your photos as to whether you're willing to share them or not, but the API disregards that information. While you may be perfectly willing to let someone else profit from your photos, others may not. My view follows what Becca wrote. If Flickr's API followed the same rules as it sets for a person viewing photos on their site, this would not be an issue. That's the key issue as I see it. - William Beem
@James - Why should I have to deactivate a useful feature just because one vendor broke the rules? Perhaps I want to use BigHugeLabs.com or Moo.com to access my Flickr photos and provide a service, but I don't want them sold without providing me any notice or income. I don't like being used. - William Beem
William, see my comment above, you have to OPT IN to use those services, which you do through YOUR API key. Blocking unauthorized access through API/search does not affect this. - cmiper
@William - Why should Flickr have to spend development, QA, localization, maintenance, and documentation resources implementing an API white-list feature because one vendor broke the rules? And why would anyone put their pictures on the Internet if they really cared about people copying them? Once it's on the Internet, that's it. Game over. It's going to be copied and shared and ripped-off if it's any good. Period. I just don't see how this is Flickr's responsibility. - James Williams (willia4)
It is flickr's responsibility because they allow you to set a license on your photos and then they just choose to ignore them in the API. That's 100% on them. - Vinny
So...you would be perfectly happy if they just removed the license information? ::shrugs:: I'd rather they didn't, personally. - James Williams (willia4)
Well, really, what good is it if they don't do anything with it? It would be trivial for them to not pass photos with certain licenses out through the API. Why not just do it? - Vinny
Unbelievable! Why should Flickr make it's own API follow its own rules? I'm stunned that you would even ask that question. This isn't so much about Flickr being a copyright cop as it is about Flickr being consistent between its presentation and its API. - William Beem
If you folks would click on "Show XX more comments" above, you would see that you can OPT OUT of access to your photos through the API except for third party apps that you authorize to have access to them. The tools are there, if you don't use them then they are useless. - cmiper
Why should people not have the benefit of the Flickr API just because someone abuses it? That's just punishing the people who don't abuse it because of the actions of a handful who do. - Ian Betteridge via twhirl
What if I don't want to block ALL my photos? Again, this is why they give you granularity with licensing; so you can license photos as you see fit. They have the mechanism in place to do this already and just choose not to use it. Truth is, they don't care, never have, and never will, about their users. - Vinny
The API is just a data layer. It's not supposed to follow the rules of the presentation layer. That's why the API lets people do so many cool things: by not having the restrictions of the web page. This is just another one of those things; it seems to be the only one anyone's up in arms about. And I can't see a good solution that wouldn't also remove the desired functionality of sites like moo.com. So...what's the better idea? - James Williams (willia4)
If they can allow you to opt out of the API entirely, they can allow certain licenses to not appear in the API. It really is that simple. - Vinny
The "better idea" is to improve the API. - William Beem
So just because I don't mark my picture as CC, I'm not allowed to make a Moo card with it? See, if they did THAT, I'd agree that they obviously don't care about their users. - James Williams (willia4)
I think it would be handy if Flickr would provide me the ability to see who accesses my photos through the API and how the photos are used. That way policing my copyrights is in my hands and not in the hands of some programming logic. Don't forget that Flickr was designed to share and distribute images widely. Don't be surprised when they get out. If you that concerned with protecting you work, use PhotoShelter or similar service that is designed for controlled distribution instead of Flickr. - Aaron Schaub via fftogo
If Flickr API allows others to sell your photos when you dont want them to, Flickr should stop it. - CJPhoto
For people saying that you should not post pictures if you do not want them stolen, replace photos as a medium with a different medium say text or video. The same problem applies and with those mediums, there seems to be far more outcry when content is stolen rather than the cavalier attitude towards stolen photos. I would hate to see DRM become the norm for pictures but there needs to be respect for copyright along with proper attribution. - Jauder Ho
Flickr needs to do the right thing here and enforce licenses as part of fetching images via RSS and the API. - Jauder Ho
I find your view surprising Tom. It's NOT OK for someone to infringe your right to take photos but IT IS OK for someone to infringe your rights to use your work with out consent. If the later doesn't matter why would the former? I am not asking Flickr to police copyrights I am asking Flickr to abide by their end of our agreement. I have not given them blanket permission to distribute my photography. I have been... see the remainder of my reply here http://thomashawk.com/2008/07/... - Jim Goldstein
I am also torn by this article. I am in the midst of researching if it is worth attempting to sell some of my photos to be able to invest and feed my hobby. I don't think this is a bad thing, and if I were selling my photos I definitely would want to make sure they were protected in fairness to those who paid for it. This is assuming I can get people to pay for my bad photos of course. =) - Alex Almeida
Great conversation. In terms of good business practice it seems that Flickr should take action if their terms of service are being violated and if the wishes of their customers is being ignored. In terms of copyright infringement, intellectual property of any type should be respected. I equally admire those who choose to give their photos away for free and those who require compensation, and in either case the wishes of the image owner should be respected. Like i-tunes - free and paid music side by side - Krista Neher
I think people need to start looking at traffic and subscribers. Granted, my blog is still fairly small, but I get more traffic and subscribers because of FriendFeed. - Rob Diana
If bloggers write less powerful titles, it will force people to click the link to see what the article is about ;) - Nick O'Neill
I'm amused by the terminology of "hurt" here, like FriendFeed is poking blogs with a sharp stick. Yes, there may be a short-term impact on ad revenue. There's also more commentary and discussion about blog posts, which may increase ad revenue long-term. The existence of active discussions outside of your blog is a *good* thing. - Brent Newhall
@Rob - that's the point I wanted to make. You have to buy off on the massive number of page reloads by commenters to believe that FriendFeed comments undermine bloggers' revenue. - Hutch Carpenter
Hutch, I love it! The thing is, even if Allen's highly inflated (10x!) figure was right that means $10 million dollar+ revenue sites (large blogs) would be hit by 1%, but the medium sized blog (say $350,000K) would be hit by $3500 and the small blog (say $3,500 and less in revenue) would be hit by $35 dollars...or less. - Robert Seidman
@Nick - now there's a different take. Less powerful headlines = more reason to click. - Hutch Carpenter
@Brent - I really wanted to avoid the "killing" meme. Hurt is better. And I agree that discussions outside the blog are a good thing. If you were to be commercial about it, discussions = marketing for a blog. You don't just market on your own site. You market out to where people are. - Hutch Carpenter
Who cares if FF affects blogger's revenue? Any blogger that cares is not a blogger but just a startup MSM clone anyway - Brian Sullivan
Hmmm... well, if bloggers can't make money and quit blogging, what content would be shared in FF? Since so much stuff shared on here is from pro bloggers, I find that question pretty hilarious. I'm SURE TechCrunch doesn't care about revenue at ALL. - Cyndy
Like we keep saying to the music industry; "adapt or die!" - Chris Nixon
@Robert - You're right. The logic on ad revenue applies regardless of blog size. Conceptually, there's a relationship between blog subscribers and the number of comments the blog receives. So anything affecting that ratio should move up and down the blog size scale. - Hutch Carpenter
@Brian - that's a good philosophical debate there. Once you get paid for writing, have you left the philosophical origins of blogging? I tend to look at blogging as more a user-centered activity, not a corporate-driven activity. If you happen to get paid, good on ya mate. But at some point, these big time blogs (e.g. TechCrunch) look more like corporate media companies. - Hutch Carpenter
Cyndy -- I never said bloggers can't make money -- but if they are dependent on page views and advertising they are in the same boat as MSM media that they have been criticizing and showing no sympathy for, saying that MSM must adapt to live. If you make your bed you must lie in it. Adapt or die would be my advice. - Brian Sullivan
There are give and takes to everything, but at the end of the day I think there is a lot more "give." If a dozen people read and comment on an article of mine on FF it's worth orders of magnitude more to me than the pennies I would have earned if they clicked through. - Steve Spalding
Once again, a great demonstration of the rule that any headline which ends in a question mark can be safely answered with the word "No" :) - Ian Betteridge via twhirl
It will get really sweet when FriendFeed connects to other commenting systems. There is already some of that with Disqus. If comments are pushed back to the source article, they add value to the content published at that URL. Perhaps the killer upgrade from Friendfeed would be to have a widget that does in-place comments on any blog post. Actually that has already been accomplished with a Yahoo Pipes trick. - µnauta
Its chucking it down with rain outside. I want one, but im going on Friday. I'm not going to queue for 4 days for it, think of all the other stuff i could be doing. - Simon
Yeah, I'm pondering taking the day off. Mind you, my local o2 store will probably have them in stock for ages - they seemed to be the only ones in London with stock last time (and no, I'm not telling you where it is :) ) - Ian Betteridge
I have no idea how busy the one closest to my work will be . I have to come to work, i've been yapping on to much about getting one for no one not to know why i'm not in on the day if i do. I'm aiming to get up early, and get in the queue with plently of time to get one and get to the office at a pretty resonable time still. Slightly hindered by the fact i live an hour on the tube away from my office and the O2 store im aiming for. - Simon
I got as far as getting upgrade codes - five of them - but O2's system for upgrades basically caved in. - Ian Betteridge via Bookmarklet
So, 200.000 in the first half a day? Thought i read somewhere that they had taken that many pre-order's by people registering their interest... - Simon
their system didn't work - it was down after the first 15 mins of launch. and how long have they had to prepare? now is someone going to get fired over this? - h1ro
There was actually nothing to stop people who hadn't registered an interest getting phones before people who had - you just had to go to the upgrades site to order. - Ian Betteridge
I have a couple of friends who didn't even get the e-mails, despite having registered. Incidentally, just got a similar e-mail from Carphone Warehouse about pre-orders, they seem to be able to reserve one at a store in addition to delivery. - Richard Peat
Hmmm... there's a Carphone Whorehouse... erm I mean Warehouse... just down the road from here... :) - Ian Betteridge
That's a really fascinating article. As an aside, does anyone know if any of Google's competitors have a "chief economist"? - Ian Betteridge
Few years ago I was consulting for ENI, one of the biggest energy group in the world and they used to have economists and of course a chief economist. I know in Fiat group they have economists roles too. Banks and financial services are also common employers for economists roles. - Marcello Del Bono
A very interesting article. I think Google will be much bigger than Microsoft in a very small amount of time. - Toby Graham
Alot of large companies have legions of economists on the payroll. Generally speaking the job is to estimate the state of the home market and pinpoint the best foreign markets. The job is brilliant because it involves sorting through data, but awful because it involves attending lots of meetings and powerpoint presentations..sorry, got a little sidetracked - Cains
Toby, Google has a LONG way to go to overtake MSFT. In FY2007, Microsoft had revenues of $51 billion, compared to Google's $16 billion, with operating income of $18 billion compared to $5 billion. The only measure by which you can put the two in the same league is column inches on blogs :) - Ian Betteridge
In other words: Microsoft makes more in profits than Google makes in revenues. - Ian Betteridge
Another place Google excels over MS: a far more adept Corp Comm group. - Sprague D
Ian: Yeah, but Microsoft's been around for much longer than Google, and Google's caught up that far in this relatively short period. - Brent Newhall
Brent: Quick growth like that isn't actually as unusual as you might think. For example, Apple grew from a $1 billion business to a $10bn one in the ten years John Sculley was CEO. Google has grown to $18bn in 12 years. Google is riding a fast-growing market - but how far will online advertising expand? Will it continue to dominate that market, when there's no "lock in" (as there is in the software market)? There's too many questions to say that Microsoft will be beaten by Google any time soon. - Ian Betteridge
Ian: Oh, certainly agreed; I don't think Google's going to beat MS's market share or earnings any time soon. Just saying that Google has grown quite far, quite fast, and if the trend continues, things will be interesting. Of course, trends rarely continue. - Brent Newhall
I didn't see anything new in the NYT article but it confirms what I already thought - "winner takes all" on the Internet Front. I suppose the only thing, now, that can stop Google, is, perhaps, the Internet, itself, collapsing - something that's not that likely. - Marshall Sponder
To me the key point of the article--and the most meaningful difference between MS and Google--is the former coerces to achieve its network effects while the latter co-opts. This reveals a more fundamental difference in world view: negative versus positive sum. - lang davison
“You have to be big and bad, not just big.” time will tell if Google goes past MS profits. But the article raises an interesting question about the behavior of big companies. Hard to tell which direction Google will go, especially if the global economy darkens. Morals hold pretty well in good times; not so sure during the bad. Temptation is perennial. - phil baumann
@ paul: I agree. The thing is that in these perilous ecomomic times we now live in, Google cannot easily consolidate like outher industries would to help them get over the worse.Google may well arrive at the point that it cannot continue as it is. - Roberto Bonini
In all those emails subpoenaed from Microsoft, are there several stating "say, let's all apply the network effect today!"? I just have trouble believing that either company was premeditated about this network effect during their first 5 or 10 years. Its just economists analyzing it long after the fact. Microsoft is arrogance, bluster, and jumping up and down on stage. Google instead has something called "execution". Versus the 5 years Microsoft spent on Vista, for which the word is "train wreck". - Steve Follmer
Seems like a puff piece. The author has clearly not read "Linked" by Albert-László Barabási (one of the world's leading experts on network effects). On page 103 (you can read the preview on Amazon), Barabási compares Google and Microsoft. He says Google exhibits the behavior of a "fit get rich" network, in which the fittest node becomes the biggest hub. "The winner's lead is never significant, however." - Karim
Barabási then describes a second type of network, "winner takes all," in which the fittest node grabs ALL the links (star topology), and behaves like a Bose-Einstein condensate. "And there is a network in which we cannot fail to notice one node that carries the signature of a Bose-Einstein condensate. The node is called Microsoft." - Karim
@Karim, Steve Lohr, the writer, specializes in Google puff pieces. - Sprague D
So, basically, you have a NYT hack job authored by a guy with a history of writing pro-Google propaganda :-) saying "Google is teh new Microsoft" on the one hand, and one of the most important scientists of the 21st Century telling you that Google and Microsoft aren't even in the same league on the other. Hmmm. Hmmm... - Karim
