Thursday, March 29

Flickr and Yahoo bullshit

I may be forced to cancel my Flickr account. Today I went to flickr and could not login. All I got was this message.
As of March 20, 2007, we're requiring that all Flickr accounts be associated with a Yahoo! ID.
Further information from: Flickr: News
On March 20th, 2007 we'll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We're making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in -- like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at http://go.yahoo.com.

If you still sign in using the email-based Flickr system (here), you can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you'll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page: http://flickr.com/account/associate/

Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here: http://flickr.com/help/signin/

If you have questions or comments about signing in with a Yahoo! ID, speak up!

Ahem, bullshit. Of course I knew this was coming for some time. Which is why I let my flickr pro account lapse. I've had these discussions about federated ID systems before... bottom line at least they give you a choice whether to use them or not. They don't force you to tie your IM to you flickr account to your web mail to your e-commerce sites and all your clients data... or rather the credit card info of your clients clients running on yahoo's e-commerce services.

Yahoo's version of Microsoft's Passport is a great solution... buy users by buying up all the latest greatest web services, tie things like e-commerce sites to frivolous and completely insecure things like IM and photo sharing sites... so that a compromise any one place can compromise not just just your data, not just your credit cards... but those of your clients... clients. That's brilliant, that's Yahoo.

Make it so if I walk into a lab somewhere and login into flickr my e-commerce sites are compromised. Make it so ever time completely insecure IM clients are bouncing login requests of the server dozens of times a day my username and password for ALL my yahoo services are floating through the ether for any enterprising young cracker to use.

Make sure you tell people you're doing it to "simplify the sign in process" like it's simply a matter of triviality for their convenience. Use bullshit excuses that really don't mean anything at all like "in advance of several large projects launching this year". Blaa. blaa. blaa. Between using the loo and my desk I thought I'd stop off and grab a pop... you want one?

And btw we've already rolled out new services that require you merge your yahoo and flickr accounts in an effort to twist your arm into tieing your flickr services to yahoo... but you didn't notice... silly you... so now we're cutting off ALL access to flickr until you do what we want.

Make sure you use buzzwords like *mobile*... "we got MOBILE!" like that has anything to do with compromising my security.

I'll tell you what I'm going to do.

Before I use my flickr account as a tool to trash flickr for all the time I invested in them before they got bought by Yahoo and sold me out for the transparent b.s. that this is... there ability to track me better by consolidating their demographic information despite the fact that it compromises my security... to tie my address and credit cards... with what I buy... and what web services I use... so they can offer me... oh this is the stuff I love to hear... "better purchasing opportunities"... that's the stuff I love... yahoo didn't say it... because they think their smart... and a lie about "simplifying the sign in process" will do... but that's what it is... and that's the way the telemarketers put it when they tried to stop congress from "depriving you of purchasing opportunities" by creating the national Do Not Call Registry.

Well... say hello to the future... the future in the coming years is clearing houses like Yahoo helping you by sharing your information with "business partners" of yahoo to help you discover "purchasing opportunities"... or hell maybe they'll just provide all your "anonymous" search results to the federal government to look at... ALREADY BEEN DONE... but heh.. that's why we have checks and balances... the CIA has to get a court order to demand Yahoo release all your email... IM logs... address... credit cards... purchases... and... oh wait, that's right, the CIA doesn't need that under the Patriot act... but they wouldn't abuse the patriot act... OH yeah.. they DID.. shocker there.

And just remember... if your in China, all the government needs to do is ask and Yahoo is pleased to help... like say if your a journalist using a yahoo account to post things critical of the government.

But still even though ALL of the above are true, purty little facts that have already happened... still I'm just being paranoid right?

I have nothing to fear unless I'm a criminal. So... who's the last criminal you know that was a victim of identity theft? When is the last time you heard a story about someone who couldn't fly or flagged by airport security just because they had the wrong name. When is the last time you yourself DIDN'T receive at least 10 "purchasing opportunities" via snail mail each day... are you less than 30 spam mail a day? Has the national Do Not Call Registry worked for you?

All these things are do a crisis in security of personal information. Even if you don't think the consolidation of your personal and credit information by information brokers has played a part in it... do you REALLY thing someone like yahoo is going to SOLVE it for you?

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that yahoo is the next credit information clearing house selling demographic information to the highest bidder or simply providing another level of convenience for abusive intelligence services.

I don't believe it's wrong for yahoo to OFFER you this "opportunity" I believe it's wrong when you don't have a CHOICE. More specifically... fuck you... I only care about MY right to choose. If you care about your right to choose that's cool... if not fuck off, don't speak to me... why are you reading this?



So, what I'm going to do is sign up for yet another yahoo account and tie my flickr account to it... and then when yahoo kicks my ass over and over, making me login and logout over and over every time I go from flickr to another yahoo service that requires a different yahoo username and password... which is the exact OPPOSITE of "simplifying the sign in process"... I'm not going to call yahoo and bitch... not when they told a client of mine in order to disassociate their compromised yahoo mail account from her e-commerce site... they'd have to cancel and wipe it out start a whole new e-commerce site. If that's the response they give someone paying them thousands of dollars a year... infection in the toe... lop off the head and get a new body... then what the hell kind of respect are they going to give me.

I'm not going to "speak up!" to them by filling out a web form. I'm not even going to post another blog post. This is it. I'm simply going to say adios by posting a "good by flickr you betrayed my trust" picture as the last picture you'll ever see on my flickr account like so many others. Maybe I'll start a flickr group called "goodbye flickr" and invite the half dozen flickr expats I already know to let flickr know why they've ditched their accounts.

Flickr is so last year anyway, twitter's the new flickr. Flickr is dead to me now, twitter lives. :P

Peace.

P.S. Here's a funny little security error... the news suggests you go to http://flickr.com/help/signin/ to get help with the new sign in or go to http://www.flickr.com/forums/help/32687/ to "speak up!". Ironically, you can't view either without signing in. Awesome.licio.us err0rs. Point taken. Flickr and I have a very very limited future.

-Mike

Saturday, March 10

The future of spam = virtual world spam

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Thursday, March 8

Tell Steve Jobs to set the music free

Defective by Design has followed through on Steve Job's "thoughts on music" with a petition to ask Steve Jobs to put his money where his mouth is.

Point number one is that Steve Jobs allow independent artists to sell non-DRM music in the iTunes store.

The petition has already far surpassed it's goal of 1000 signers with over 2100 signatures as of this writing. The message is dead on. Help us all call Steve Job's bluff. Either he's genuine or he's simply a hypocrite. Let it be known by adding a punctuation mark and signing the petition!
1) Drop DRM on iTunes for independent artists

Many independent artists and labels distribute their music through iTunes and many wish to do so without DRM, but you won't let them. You could show good faith immediately by dropping DRM for those artists and labels.

This will make it clear which artists are actually locked to one of the four big labels, allowing your customers to avoid those labels and the burden of DRM. Independent artists, who respect the desire of the fan to be free from DRM restrictions, will receive more support.

You can set the ethical example and be the first "major" to drop DRM, by freeing independent artists. You have the direct power to do this.

From: An Open Letter to Steve Jobs | DefectiveByDesign.org

Related Post: Mr. Jobs tear down this wall!

Major new Mefeedia release this week

There's a major new release of mefeedia out today. Lots of bug fixes, usability enhancements, and all around improvements like mefeedia playlists and guides!

One of my favorite new toys is the "What I'm watching" widget. It shows all the latest videos from your favorite vloggers and provides great link love to their blogs. It's the sweetest blogroll widget around.

You'll see mine on the right hand sidebar of my video blog at mmeiser.com/blog and on the left hand sidebar of my mefeedia channel. You can create yours by subscribing to you favorite video blogs and podcasts on mefeedia and copying the code from your own mefeedia channel and pasting it into your own blog or web page. Let us know what you think! We're always looking for ideas for making mefeedia better.

I'm really exited about mefeedia's renewed direction and vitality. This is just the start of some great things to come. A special thanks to Frank Sinton the new owner and Devlon who's been helping make Mefeedia great for almost two years now. Great job Frank and Devlon!

Below are the details Frank posted to the mefeedia mailing list. Be sure to join up and tell us what you'd like to see.
We are very happy today - a new version of Mefeedia has been released! :-) Lots of improvements, bug fixes, and a nicer user interface. This was the work of a lot of people, mainly ideas from videobloggers and brainstorming sessions within the Mefeedia team.

Three main areas of focus for this release were:

Reliability / Bug Fixes - this was our#1 focus. Mefeedia has been very strong on creating great tools for videobloggers. We want to make those even better - not by adding more bells and whistles, but instead by making sure the current features work GREAT. Here is a list of some of the fixes (not comprehensive, but a good sampling):

  • RSS - tons of fixes to account for special characters and others special cases. Your Queue, Guides, Favs, Tags, and other RSS feeds coming out of Mefeedia are now working very reliably. :)
  • When adding a video to a playlist, the playlist uses the thumb from the playlist post.
  • Each folder in a Playlist can now be exported via RSS and JSON formats directly from the playlist start/"Home" page.
  • "Add to Queue" from a Playlist is working again.
  • Adding individual videos to your Queue is woking again! This broke back when the new database schema was implemented. It is fixed now - add any video on Mefeedia.com to your queue now without having to subscribe to the entire feed.
  • Your feed page - removed a number of broken links and overall, a bunch of clean-up.
Usability / UI Update - really, making it easier for users to use Mefeedia!
  • Home page - "latest/last 24 hours" theme
  • Header change
  • Navigation change (Guides and Playlists now get prominent placement in the nav).
  • Sign-up on home page is now only shown on clicking the "yea baby."
  • Full registration validation (with AJAX unique username and email lookup)
  • Visibility and Rollover effect (rollover effect only on Firefox for now) when cruising through entries (favs, feeds page, etc.)
  • Centering of "Entry" / Watch your video page - just nicer in general.
  • Site-wide style sheet changes (non-underlined, nice blue for non-visited links, grey underlined for visited links, among others).
New Features
  • "What I'm Watching" widget - put your Queue on your website or blog. :) Mine is on this blog in the right sidebar. To use your "What I'm Watching" widget, just login and click on the "My Channel" navigation link, and copy and paste the code from the left column textarea box. Looking for inputs on this… lots of cool widgets are possible with the use of great thumbs, so let us know what you would like to see with this widget and other possible widgets (maybe a "Who's vlogging" widget?).
  • "Latest from [feed name here]" widget - see an example here: http://www.mefeedia.com/feed_promote.php?id=6988 - lots of linky love. All thumbs link directly to your vlog post!
  • Videos, feeds, and websites count on the home page.
  • Latest Tags (24 hours) on Home Page and Tags page
So, check out Mefeedia and let us know what you think! Enjoy. As always, use this forum to post suggestions, ideas, issues, and thoughts. :)
http://www.mefeedia.com

Thanks,
-Frank

Sunday, March 4

Co-working in Vancouver

This comes by way of Duncan Rawlinson. A good follow up to my previous post on the co-working space Hat Factory in Dogpatch San Francisco. All I can say is this video makes me want to move to Vancouver tomorrow. It's not just the most beautiful co-working space ever it's bloody amazing. Wide open views overlooking the bay and mountains in Vancourver. Amazing.

Watch movie

Original post on February 13, 2007 from The Last Minute Blog: (RSS feed)

Workspace was on Canada AM (a national TV morning show in Canada) a while back. I ripped the video of the Canada AM website for your viewing pleasure: Video

(Via Mefeedia)