The Latest from Flickr: Montager

You know those photos-made-of-photos? Now, you can visit Flickr to create those yourself. The Flickr Montager lets you put a search term into the tool, and it will search Flickr’s database for a photo with that tag. That photo is displayed, and then it is recreated using 1,000 tiny tiles, all of which are Flickr photos with the same tag. Even cooler is that each of the tiles is clickable and can become the subject of its own montage. The main page warns you that this process is CPU-intensive and could crash your browser, but I had no problems. I’m not sure what I would use it for, but it sure is fun!

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Monday’s Supreme Court ruling states that music and movie industries could file piracy lawsuits against software companies that encourage customers to steal copyrighted works. Does this signal the end of an era? The end of P2P as we know it? Even
though Napster went legal ages ago, other P2P programs quickly filled
the void, as any savvy computer user knows. Involved in the lawsuit was Grokster, a well-know peer-to-peer (P2P) software program (whose website homepage is now filled with legalese, not to mention the slogan "support the artist, buy the record").

However, the wording of the Court’s ruling still leaves a grey area: "companies that develop file-sharing technology can be sued if they deliberately encourage customers to download copyrighted files illegally. But a company can find a ’safe harbor’ and avoid being sued if it doesn’t encourage customers to use its products for illegal purposes."

So, wouldn’t that mean the companies just have to pretend that they are offering a service for users to share legal, un-copyrighted files in order to be in the clear? But who is that fooling? What kind of files would you really want to trade with your 10,000 friends? Recipes? Homemade wallpapers?  C’mon! At least the new lawsuits will focus on companies instead of kids and grandmas.

VS
Apparently, if Bill isn’t dominating 100% of the world, he’s just not happy. When Internet Explorer’s market share dropped below 90%, Microsoft became concerned. Next thing you know, Internet Explorer Version 7 was on the horizon. IE7 is supposed to be more secure and will be introducing … drumroll … tabbed browsing. These leaves some to believe the Firefox rebellion will be over. Hmmm… I doubt that. Firefox has a lot more to offer besides tabs - like Live Bookmarks, easy downloads, and not to mention about a zillion extensions. There was an official preview of the browser at Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex, but thanks to the net, there are some unofficial screenshots since I couldn’t afford the airfare.

I’m beginning to think Google is going to take over the world…From The Wall Street Journal Online: "Google Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may put it in competition with eBay Inc.’s PayPal unit, according to people familiar with the matter." The question in my mind is: is there any internet-related activity that Google is not into these days?

When I hear "PubSub," I get hungry. I call sub sandwichs from our local grocery store, Publix, "Pub Subs." In a way, that is fitting because PubSub is a new service that can feed my hunger…for information. PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Its custom Matching Engine matches millions of search queries against thousands of new pieces of information every second. PubSub currently reads 12 million+ weblogs, more than 50,000 internet newsgroups and all SEC (EDGAR) filings, and they will be adding more in the upcoming months. You can even install a PubSub sidebar right into your Firefox browser….and, oh yeah, Intenet Explorer, too.

As impressive as that all sounds, I’m not yet highly thrilled with the service just yet. I put in some very common queries like "Harry Potter," for example, and it brought back results that have nothing to do with "Harry Potter" at all. You can use Boolean expressions and quotes, but it didn’t seem to help. I had to edit the queries to be very specific, like "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," in order to get results that worked, and even then, I got a lot of garbage. I’m willing to wait and give the service a chance to work out the kinks though, because if it works, it would be great. PubSub, get it together.

Update: Since I’ve posted this, I’ve received not one, but two emails from the PubSub people trying to find out specifically what queries I’ve had problems with and attempting to help me resolve them. Now that’s proactive customer service!

A new study states that America Online hosts more denial-of-service (DoS) spewing zombie PCs than any other ISP in the world. AOL users’ PCs topped both the U.S. and worldwide lists, accounting for 5.3% of DoS attacks worldwide, and 11.7% of attacks in the U.S. Of course, AOL spins this - "We’re the largest ISP on the planet," Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for AOL, says. "You’d expect us to have the most zombies." I would also expect that AOL has the majority of non-technical users, wouldn’t you?

My friend, Jenny, just emailed me this:

Openings in Online Media      
Company: Microsoft
Position:  Bloggers Wanted
Location: Redmond, Telecommute

Description:

Blog for MSN! MSN is hiring freelance contributing editors to moderate, write and produce blogs in five topic areas: television, music, technology, sports and fashion/food/style. Contributing editors will be responsible for:

* Writing and producing five-10 daily posts for their blog, drawing material from user submissions, the MSN network and the wider Web
*Reviewing user e-mail submissions and turning the best of them into posts on the blog
*Monitoring blog comments and feedback

You must be passionate about your subject area; familiar with the tools and trends in blogging; a natural writer with an inviting, engaging style; and attuned to the broad interests of MSN’s huge audience. Send us five sample posts written over the course of a single day. In addition to the posts (which should reflect a variety of source links), in a paragraph or so, explain why you selected those items and how they reflect your vision for this project. Please include a list of sites you scanned to find your material and other favorite sites and blogs. Attach a résumé or short note to tell us what you’re doing now and what you’ve done in the recent past. And finally, in the subject heading of the mail specify which blog you’re applying for.

If only I was that prolific, I’d be all over this!

As much as I use Google, I was excited to see Google Labs developing a personalized Google homepage. As they delve into other areas, like the desktop and email, the one thing missing is a centralized portal-type homepage like Yahoo! and MSN have. The personalized homepage looks very new, because there is not much you can add to it right now. However, you can add Gmail to it, and it will show you a preview of your email messages right there on the homepage. You can also add news, weather, movie listings, and even a "quote of the day." Not bad.

Technorati has been working on a major overhaul of their website for several months, and now you can take a sneak preview of it. The new beta site was designed to make Technorati easier to use, especially for blogging newbies. They really want to show how they are different from other search engines. One of the new improvements is the searches themselves. If your search matches a tag, they will bring in photos and links from flickr, furl, delicious, buzznet. Also, they’ve made watchlists easier…you don’t need an RSS reader to have a watchlist. Now you can see all of your favorite searches on one page. Of course, you can still use RSS, but you don’t have to. Overall, I’m liking the improvements. Check it out and send them feedback!

One thing I’ve always hated about iTunes is the DRM. If I want to use Windows Media Player or WinAmp to listen to my iTunes downloads, the only thing I could do was burn a CD in iTunes, then copy that music back to my computer (or just play the CD on the computer). It’s an annoyance to say the least. My thinking is that, if I bought the music, I should be able to play it using any media player I want. So imagine how ecstatic I was when I found the Hymn Project website. Their thinking is the same as mine: DRM overrides your “fair use” rights to your purchased music. Hence, they’ve provided a DRM-removal program called JHymn. The software removes the DRM from your iTunes files and converts them to mp3s…with no loss of sound quality (not to mention not having wasted a CD-R)! However, this isn’t exactly legal…yet. According to their FAQ question regarding legality: “Using JHymn certainly runs afoul of your End User License Agreement with Apple — the license where you have to click on the “Agree” button before you can use the iTunes Music Store. The legitimacy of such non-negotiable “click-through” licenses is questionable, however, in many countries and local jurisdictions…Even in the US, there’s reason for hope that using JHymn, or any other DRM-breaking tool for
reasons of traditional “fair use”, will, when the dust settles, be proven to be perfectly legal.”

UPDATE!! READ THE HOW-TO ARTICLE ON THIS TOPIC! CLICK HERE!

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