Archive for Blogging about blogging

Pixish gets a new more palettable coat of paint

February 21, 2008 at 4:43 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Blogging about blogging

At least now Derek is being clear about the purpose and mission of Pixish. He has come out to say that it is basically a contest site. In which case, it’s not a whole lot different than the design contest sites DesignOutpost and 99designs.

Some people feel that design/photo/etc. contests are just spec work in a friendly disguise; however, I’m not as opposed to them because they are at least up front about it. For the same reason, I feel less of a need to “spin my gragger” about Pixish.

I still disagree with commenters such as GregM who argue that “designers are empowered by Pixish: they get to pick and choose what they work on in a marketplace.”

If the Pixish interface is good and easy to use then yes it will allow them flexibility to pick and choose assignments, but this is offset by the fact that they are submitting to a contest. Pixish does a whole lot more empowerment for the clients who get to compare a bunch of submissions. Granted if people are just submitting whatever they have laying around it ain’t too bad of a thing.

This latter point is why Derek makes the distinction between designers and art content creators (i.e. photographers, illustrators), and I agree with him here. Designers don’t have spare logos or collateral designs laying around for any old company — everything is usually made to order. Art content creators on the other hand often have a bunch of flotsam and jetsam that they can use for submissions to Pixish.

Derek has also stated more clearly that people who submit their work retain ownership until a client actually chooses to use that work; at which point the rights are subject to the deal set for the project. Thus, art content creators can submit their flotsam and jetsam to anything again and again until it get’s chosen.

All that being said, I may be less inclined to shout “BOYCOTT,” but I’m still not in love with the idea of Pixish — or any generic contest site. As it is, Derek has basically just reframed his business model without actually changing the underlying business model. Granted just slapping on a new coat of paint is much easier since this way he doesn’t need to change actual functionality or recode the site.

It would be better if Pixish were to do something that truly interesting. Something more in line with the suggestion that I made in an earlier post. Something that truly empowered the designers and art content creators.

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Ow the resemblance it hurts

February 20, 2008 at 6:16 pm · Filed under Life, Meaning, & Selfhood + Blogging about blogging

I do this way too often.

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Wake up and smell your lost anonymity

December 27, 2007 at 12:57 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Blogging about blogging

I for one don’t understand all the uproar about the new Google Shared feature. I posted my shared items as a list on my public blog from day one of using Google Reader, and I have enjoyed followed the shared items of others like Scott Beale of Laughing Squid. I was really happy to see the shared feature expand as suddenly new interesting articles popped up from friend’s shared items. And when I first saw mention of the uproar on Daring Fireball, I was confused.

I mean what did these people think the word “Share” meant? Sure your shared items were very slightly obfuscated behind a unique url, but come on folks! It says right there “Your shared items are publicly accessible.” How can one ever assume from that statement that it was private? Without password protection (even then it’s suspect) your actions are there to find like anything else you do online — get used to it.

It amazes me that a lot of people still assume that they are anonymous online. Well as a certain terrible ad campaign might say, “welcome to the social.” It’s web 2.0 baby! We are now in the era of kids getting expelled for posing as gangbanger wannabes on myspace, cyber-bullying on facebook, and copywrite battles on flickr. You may be home in your underwear surfing on your laptop posting as jackalope1, but for all intents and purposes you might as well be in town square wearing a paper bag on your head while shouting at a security camera with a megaphone.

There are ways to be private online, but you gotta work for anonymity these days — always start with the assumption that nothing you do online is private.

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Google adds IMAP to gmail

October 23, 2007 at 10:44 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Blogging about blogging

Looks like Google has finally added IMAP support to gmail. Found out today via Gruber’s twitter and then noticed that Slashdot just noted it today.

This sorta makes my whole gmail/IMAP/iPhone instructions obsolete except for the whole using gmail as an archive thing. If you use gmail’s IMAP directly (rather then a routed approach like mine) you still have the problem of it downloading all your messages.

As such, I’m not currently planning on switching over to this from my own system. Another issue is that I wouldn’t be able just read/respond/delete as I have been doing, since I’d be deleting off of what is now my main archive. Actually reading this it looks like delete just acts like archive unless a mail is spam or in trash. Also you’d still need to send out through your other account if you wanted to use a different header email, since Exchange doesn’t like emails sent through gmai with a different header.

However, this does open up the possibility of using a different gmail account as the iphone IMAP pool for people who were hunting for an IMAP account but still like my system.

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Caps-Lock is FULL OF AWESOME!!1!

October 4, 2007 at 12:52 pm · Filed under Blogging about blogging

IF U DON’T GET TEH JOKE, YOUR A TARD WHO DON’T READ TEH AWESOME COMMENTS ON YOUTUBE OR DIGG!!!!

…actually if you don’t get the joke, consider yourself lucky.

Photographed and photoshopped by Colin Fahrion for your meming pleasure — feel free to use and abuse. Attribution is only required if used for commercial purposes.

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Dusty Tweets

August 24, 2007 at 12:46 pm · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Blogging about blogging

SFSlim has been sending tweets (aka twitter posts) from Black Rock City. Proving that the playa isn’t as remote as it once was. As more people and their wifi devices start arriving, there will probably be more tweets coming from the people’s dusty tents.

As Laughing Squid recently reported, there is now a Twitter Burner group. In order to post to the group you need to first follow the group and then just write a tweet like normal but add BURN to the start of your tweet. It will then automatically be added as a Burner Twitter (be patient it might take a couple minutes to appear).

Now what makes this kinda cool is that Twitter doesn’t have group functionality. This is all done with php/sql wizardry thanks to Kosso and Raines. Kosso worked out this TwitterGroups hack for Gnomedex and wrote up how he did it in a post on his blog: How I created a TwitterGroup for Gnomedex.

The only flaw I see in this technique is the potential for a massive flood of Burner tweets completely drowning my friend’s tweets. It would be better if Twitter had built in group functionality that you could keep separate from your friend’s posts. However, this hack works and is pretty cool. My thanks and geek respect go out to Kosso and Raines for whipping this up.

On Edit: I’m less liking the twitter group in practice. Whenever your friends post to it you see their post twice (once normal and once reposted to Burner twitter). It just adds clutter and kinda ruins the simplicity that makes twitter great. Real Twitter groups would be great but this hack is not it.

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