But, no more!

Over the next week, Google will be making the transition back to @gmail addresses in the UK. I am very happy with this news and I will stop having to find a proxy when signing up for a new Gmail account.

Greg Bullock, who posted the announcement, has calculated this change will save 20 bonbons (yum!) worth of energy a day in keystrokes.

I am curious how the situation was resolved to allow them to reclaim the “Gmail” trademark in the UK. Nothing was posted in the announcement about this.

For those that don’t know, Google were forced to stop using “Gmail” in the UK because a company based in London had already been using the trademark for 2 years. I found the whole dispute quite laughable at the time, but at least it showed smaller companies could still stand up to the Google giant.

I honestly don’t think threatening these pirates will work. The Internet has created a generation of people who believe they deserve to get things for free. In fact, as an artist I come across a lot of people who just do not know about copyright and assume everything on the Internet is up for grabs.

Rather than creating a “3 strikes and your out” policy for Internet use, I believe there are far better ways to satisfy everyone. But copyright holders need to be willing to compromise.

Educate

If people do not know what copyright is, how can they be expected to follow copyright laws?

When I first used the Internet, way back at the start of this millennium, I was completely ignorant about copyright and would use copyright images in my art. I too believed anything on the Internet was free for me to use as I wished.

As soon as I learnt about copyright I stopped using images I found online unless I obtained permission. And I’m pretty stubborn, so if I can be convinced to change my ways, surely others can too.

Provide it for free, legally

When we watch TV we do not pay to watch each show. Channels pay for showing programs by advertisements. We do pay a TV licence in the UK, but then again we pay a subscription fee for broadband.

So why shouldn’t content be provided free on the Internet and paid for by advertisements?

Last.FM and Spotify are just 2 examples of companies providing free music streaming that is legal. They can afford to pay the licence fees by adverts and premium services.

Many TV channels and companies now allow people to catch up with shows by streaming them online. Most that I have seen contain adverts for revenue, although in my opinion they go the wrong way about doing it.

However, I believe that despite this free access to music and television people are still pirating because they do not want to stream; they want to download. This is especially true with music because of the desire to load them onto portable devices.

So what can be done to monetize free legal downloads? I would say that the same as for streaming can be applied. Adverts could be placed next to download links or shown for a time before the download becomes available. Adverts could even be inserted into videos (and although they could be removed, most people would not know how to do this).

Stop picking on the little guy

Many people do not look to make profit from file sharing. While I agree that companies do lose out on profit even if the sharers aren’t making money, I do not see the point in trying to bankrupt an individual making no profit when there are people making a lot of money from illegal file sharing, including sites enabling it such as RapidShare.

For example, fining someone $1.9m for sharing 24 songs ($80k each) is pretty insane when there is no way they could afford to pay that. I do not believe the music company could have lost anywhere near that much per song.

The likelihood is they were trying to send a message, but the reactions I saw to the case lead me to conclude the exact opposite happened. Cases such as that seem to make people more determined to take profits away from companies because they continue to make themselves look greedy.

Address the “something for nothing” view

If we could define why people believe they should get something for nothing, perhaps we could alter that viewpoint. I do not believe people deserve something for nothing. We get things for free either because the owner is generous or by unscrupulous means.

It is not just things such as music and video many people think they should get free. I have seen interviews in regard to the recession with people who complain that they cannot get loans! Many seemed outraged that their bank would not give them money.

Perhaps my view on this is old fashioned, but I do not like spending money I do not have. But many people seem to have no issues with getting into debt and spending money they don’t have.

Yes, I know I have drifted from the point, but now I shall get back to it!

When people buy things using loans or a buy-now-pay-later option, I believe many see it as getting something for free, or at least free temporarily. It is this frame of mind, along with the easy-access the Internet provides, that has likely caused some people to think many things should be free.

I will not exclude myself from that group. I do not buy music and I often find myself questioning why some things aren’t free (such as Spotify’s mobile version). Looking back on my own Internet use, I can say with some certainty that I want things for free because I used to take them for free online before I understood and cared about copyright. Please note the emphasis on caring about copyright. There are those who understand it and chose to ignore it. But I won’t lecture people on morals today.

There is no registration, so you can quickly set up a room for you and your friends to use, with a unique URL for your room. There is also a chat area so you can discuss the video while watching it.

Something I think a lot of people may take for granted is the ability to load a new video without having to create a new room. That feature could have been easily overlooked.

However, I think there is only a limited use for synchtube. It will not take long for the novelty to wear out on an idea like this.

The name is not the only bad thing about this change.

Appearance

The first major difference I noticed was the skin, which a comment left by Sarah (who seems to have signed up just to leave the comment) on Echofon’s page on the Mozilla add-on site:

Twitterfox used to be a beautiful, simple add-on that easily would have gotten 5 stars out of me. This morning it updated itself to “Echofon”. Despite the name change being awful in itself, their new default skin is just HORRIBLE. It looks rushed, harsh on the eyes, and overall looks utterly rushed, sloppy, and non-user friendly. It’s like they don’t WANT you to look at it.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with that comment.

The new default skin looks to be based on Apple’s skin designs, which makes it look completely out of place in a Windows environment. I like the alternate skin even less.

Unlike Twitterfox, Echofon groups tweets by a user if they have multiple tweets in a row on your timeline. The name and avatar of the user only appears next to their first tweet in the group. This makes it incredibly difficult to scan through tweets quickly, as you have to slow down on groups so you know who wrote all the now nameless tweets.

As for the blank white box next to the “Messages” tab, when you start typing it shows you the number of characters left. It’s a necessary part of the interface, but when in its blank state it looks hugely out of place. Although the bottom of it is lined up with the bottom of the tabs, it doesn’t look that way due to the darker border the tabs have.

Short timeline

A major problem I have noticed with Echofon is that it only displays around 20 tweets in your timeline.

When I logged on today, Echofon informed me that I had 200 new tweets in my timeline, but it only displayed 21 of them (there was a 22nd one, but it was cut off after a few pixels). I’m hoping this will be a side effect of the changeover, but it happening at all shows Echofon is a poor product.

Users don’t seem happy

Aside from the bad reviews Echofon is getting on it’s add-on page, there is a fair amount of tweeting going on about the change. Quite a few don’t like the update.

I’ve also seen tweets from people who are confused about the change, which isn’t surprising as there was no notification given about the change.

Inevitably, some people do like the change, although less than don’t like it. Personally, I would like to knock some sense into them and show them why Twitterfox was better.

Did you use Twitterfox?

If you used Twitterfox, what do you think of the change? Please leave a comment below, I’d really like to hear from you.

Even if you don’t use Twitterfox, do you like the look of Echofon?

I don’t usually post about current news, but this has riled me up.

An employee at Rocky Mountain Bank messed up big time when they sent an email containing details of over 1000 customers to the wrong email address. They tried emailing the person again to get them to delete the offending email but when they got no response they contacted Google requesting they disclose the email owner’s identity.

Being the sensible company that Google are, they rejected the request and told the bank they must get a court order before such information could be disclosed to them.

That’s when things start to get crazy.

The bank followed Google’s “suggestion” to get a court order. Not only did they request the court order Google to disclose the Gmail user’s identity, they also requested that Google deactivate the account in question.

Surprisingly, or rather disturbingly, the judge ruled in favour of the bank. Google were forced to deactivate an innocent person’s account and pass on their name and contact details to the bank all because one employee screwed up.

I believe the ruling to be completely over the top and unnecessary. A fair middle ground would have been Google ensuring the email in question was removed from the email account. This would have solved the problem while not invading someone’s privacy and, as some lawyers are saying, affect the user’s right to communicate online.

Serious implications

I feel that this ruling could have a serious negative impact on the rights of people using the Internet. Judges seem to be like sheep and use rulings made previously as a guideline for their own cases. How many judges will now decide to shut down email accounts rather than put in some effort and come up with a fairer solution? Not only that, but this could easily extend to other accounts where information may be shared by accident, such as Facebook.

It is horrifying to think anyone could have their email account disabled even if they have done nothing wrong. Email accounts are the centre of online activity. It is the thing we link all of our other accounts to. If our email account is deactivated we could not only lose all our previous mails but also access to other accounts online if you happen to forget your password.

This is a sad day for Internet users everywhere. Apparently our accounts and the data they hold are insignificant and disposable.

Update September 29th, 2009 at 17:58 BST

According to CNET, Google and Rocky Mountain bank have agreed to dismiss the case and Google have been able to re-activate the gmail account. This is great news for the Google user, however I feel the damage done by this case can’t be undone so easily.

Google account disabled screenshot courtesy of gabrielsaldana

Twitter seems to be a site that people are divided over. I’ve met people who love it and I’ve met people who hate it. But whatever your feelings about it you should consider the enormous benefits it could have for your website.

Why make an account for your site?

If a Twitter user notices a problem on your site but can’t contact you there for some reason they may attempt to find you on Twitter. If they succeed they can alert you to the problem and hopefully you will learn of the issue faster than you may have otherwise.

However, if they can’t find you by your site’s name they may look no further. Even if someone wants to be helpful, not many people will want to waste time searching for your Twitter account.

Choosing the username

The best thing to go with is your domain minus the top level domain (e.g. for “arteki.com” I have “arteki” on Twitter)

If ever I want to contact someone about their site Twitter is now usually the first place I try if I can’t do so through the site. Of course, Twitter isn’t always an appropriate means of communication, for example I wouldn’t use Twitter to send someone a DMCA notice, but it should do well for most issues.

How does all this help with downtime?

There are many reasons your site could go down. Some problems can be resolved quickly, but you have to know about them first. These could include:

• Bandwidth exceeded
• Site has been hacked
• Any bad configurations you made but didn’t notice (e.g. due to caching)

You can’t be expected to be watching your site for errors 24/7, so you may well check Twitter more often than your site (especially if you have Twitter hard-wired to your brain). If someone alerted you to any of the above issues you could most likely resolve them before you would have next checked your site.

Unfortunately, if the problem is that your host is down, you knowing about it isn’t likely to help, unless your host hasn’t noticed the server has gone down (in which case you may well want to think about changing hosts).

As for bad server configurations, you knowing sooner means you can contact your hosts to find out what they changed, if anything, and you may be able to get them to resolve it quicker than it otherwise would have been. That does, however, entirely depend on what they changed and how it has affected your site.

Other reasons to grab your site’s name

There are plenty of reasons, but here are my top 5 other reasons to secure your site’s name on Twitter:

• Alert people about new content
• Networking
• Protect your brand
• Encourage others to retweet your links
• You never know what you might be able to use it for in the future

Your experiences

Have you already set up an account for your site on Twitter? Is your site’s name taken? Has anyone used it to contact you about site issues?

Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this.

Those who have seen my deviantART account may have noticed I can get pretty obsessed with copyright infringements. If I think something is stolen I will track down the original as best I can.

But I can’t succeed without help.

TinEye.com is one of the most useful tools I have ever come across online. In a nutshell, you give it an image and it will show you where else that image appears on the Internet. It has been around for over a year now and yet it seems people have still not heard of it.

What is it useful for?

I think TinEye can be used for many things, including:

1. Looking for use of your own images. I use TinEye to regularly search for any sites that are using my artwork without permission.

2. Checking an image source is the original. There are a lot of people on the Internet who will take other people’s images and offer them as stock or some other resource. A TinEye search could save you trouble, because generally if an image is stolen once it will be stolen a lot and so get a lot of hits onTinEye . Even if it gets only a few hits, you can check those websites to get a feel for where they got the image or you may even find the original if it was stolen.

3. Helping other people. If I think someone is using an image they don’t have permission to, or worse they are claiming it’s theirs, I will often useTinEye to try to confirm my suspicions and hopefully find the original artist so I can contact them. One site I tend to do this on is photobucket, or, as I like to call it, ripbucket . If you do manage to contact the copyright holder, they are usually incredibly grateful. If you are an artist this can really help with networking.

4. Research. If you are looking for sites with information about a certain image, using traditional text search engines can be tricky, especially if the image has a title that is a common phrase. Doing aTinEye search could help you find sites that contain the image and hopefully some information about it.

How it is used

Using TinEye is simple. You can either upload an image from your hard drive or provide it with the URL of an image on the Internet.

Its flaws

Everything has flaws when it starts out. I’ve been using TinEye since back in May 2008 and I have seen it improve greatly. The one flaw I can think of is something they continuously work on, and that is the number of sites they have indexed. I would love for them to have a bigger database so search results are closer to how many times the image really appears online.

Of course, indexing every single site online would be insane. You can in fact submit a site for them to consider for indexing, which is a great move on their part.

I would also like to see more options for ordering search results. One way I would like to order them is by date where a date is available on the site. I don’t think that’s likely to happen though, especially as many sites indexed do not post dates. But I can dream.

Bonus for Firefox and IE users

There is a plugin that Firefox and Internet Explorer users can install to their browser. It allows you to perform a search without needing to open the TinEye site first. It adds a search option to the right click menu when you right click either an image or an element with a background image. I find this incredibly useful and it saves a lot of time.

Register

If you do plan on trying TinEye, I recommend that you create a free account with them. If you do not register your searches expire after 72 hours so they can’t be shared somewhere people may click after that time frame. Another reason is thatTinEye say they are planning on adding features that are only for registers users. All the benefits are listed on the registration page.

In the past I would avoid many of Google’s extra services, using only the basic search engine. Examining my reasons, I realised that I didn’t want to feed the beast the Google was becoming. As I became aware of the vastness of the Internet (please bear in mind I was only 12 when I started using the Internet in 2000), I realised that as one person I could not make a difference. Eventually I decided “If you can’t beat them, join them”.

The first non-search service I used from Google was Gmail , to which I received an invite from the wonderful artist Sarah Ellerton back in September 2004. Previously, I had only used Hotmail for my emails (back then I didn’t realise Microsoft owned Hotmail). I instantly realised Gmail was a league above the rest, and that perhaps Google’s other services weren’t such a bad thing.

I still find some of Google’s “extra” services are quite hidden within Google’s menus, so here is a list of the services I find useful and encourage you to try:

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Google Bookmarks
• Google Groups
• Google Reader
• YouTube
• iGoogle
• FeedBurner

One of the things I’ve really learned to love about Google is that so many different services are available with only one set of log in details. I believe that this is what attracts many people to Google’s products; it certainly paved the way for my interest in using more of their services than I may have otherwise.

Another useful feature Google provides is storage of various data online. I use different computers a fair amount and lately I’ve found Google an invaluable tool for accessing data regardless of which machine I’m working on. Google services such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Bookmarks and Google Calendar allow for the storage of important data online, accessible 24/7 worldwide. I did in fact write the draft of this article directly to Google Docs, in case I wanted to work on it while using a different computer.

However, we have to also consider that these services provided by Google do have some downsides.

From a business perspective, Google looks to become a new monopoly, perhaps even rivaling Microsoft for some things. Google Docs provides an easy to use free word processor which doesn’t even require a download. These points mean Google Docs could rival Microsoft Word for the more casual users. That will of course depend on how Microsoft further develop Microsoft Office Live. So far you can store and share your Office documents, but you require Office to be installed to edit your files. However, it appears you do not need to download your files to edit them, you just need to be rich enough to have MS Office installed on every computer you use. Perhaps they will develop this further and provide an online version of MS Office using Microsoft Azure as a platform, offering an online licence for use of the service. I would certainly be tempted by that.

But let’s be honest, nobody really cares if Google take business from Microsoft. I certainly trust Google far more than I trust Microsoft, especially when it comes to the storage of my data, but that’s another article in itself.

From an individual’s point of view, or perhaps even a business point of view, using Google to store data online may not be as wonderful as it seems at first glance.

Although Google provide a reliable and secure service, your documents are protected only by the fact people do not know your password. A password is only as secure as the person who created it. One thing that has stuck in my mind from university is that most computer errors and security risks come from the users. If you have a weak password or write your password down somewhere, all that information you have stored online will be easily available to anyone who finds their way into your Google account. What’s more, because Google’s tools are useful when using different computers, the chances are people will use these services while on a public computer and forget to sign out.

For now, I have to conclude that Google’s services are a good thing, a very good thing in fact. Google provide useful and at times invaluable services, and what’s more those services are mostly free. What the future holds for Google no one can know for sure (although some people try to speculate). One thing is for sure, Google aren’t going anywhere any time soon, and they will only get bigger.

While talking with my dad last week about various technologies, the subject of internet maps came up. It got me thinking about the satellite imagery used and even the newer street views that google provide. Are these images an invasion of privacy and do they help criminals?

I’m sure there have been many blog posts about this topic around. Indeed, a quick search on google shows several. However, I still want to give my opinion on this matter.

Satellite View

When the satellite views first began appearing on sites like Google Maps the image quality and resolution was poor, with only cities having clear images. Back then there wasn’t really an issue of privacy, as the images were too poor quality to make out most residential areas.

Now, however, the image quality is far better even in rural areas. I live in a fairly small town but even so I can go onto a map site with satellite imagery and view my garden, my neighbour’s garden, or even the garden of someone I don’t know. Here is where the issue begins. Where I to be walking around my town, I would not be able to see into most people’s garden, thus I would not know what is in their gardens and the locations. But with satellite images you can see these things, so what is to stop a criminal using satellite images to pick which houses to rob? The images are kept fairly up to date, enough to know where to enter a garden and how to get to things in it like the shed.

This problem has been made even worse with the newer Bird’s Eye View images that Live Search Maps provide, as with these you can even see the entrances to buildings and whether or not the building has visible external burglar alarms.

I know it is unlikely that people would use the maps in such a way, but it is possible. Even without the crime aspect, I still find myself feeling creeped out by the fact anyone could look at my house in detail online. But what can we do now it’s only online?

Street view

Google’s new street view adds a whole new bundle of issues. Personal property, such as cars and bicycles, can be seen on this view, which again criminals could use to target an area for thievery.

I am, however, impressed with the lengths google go to to protect identities in the street views. In their 19th March press release google do mention briefly that they blur out faces and number plates. Doing that in one photo doesn’t take much effort, but when you consider how many photos go into making a 360 degree view and then multiply that by how many “stops” there are on street view, it starts to look like a lot of work.

Conclusion

Online maps are incredibly useful, and satellite imagery certainly goes a long way to improving the experience and adds more things the maps can be used for.

But do high-resolution images of people’s gardens really add any value to the maps? Are there legitimate reasons people would want to look at someone else’s garden online? It would be a lot of work, but perhaps the companies running these map services should consider blurring out gardens and other private property like they do with faces and number plates.