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

The future of spam = virtual world spam

Cool, I just recieved the following comment spam. What a pleasant change. No more drugs or porn. It's for World of Warcraft gold! Economics completely based in the virtual world. I love it! At least I love it now, while it's still a novelty. :)

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Nice.

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

Atlas from Battles - a music video

Band: Battles
Song: Atlas
Director: Timothy Saccenti
Label: Warp Records

Watch movie

Original post on March 02, 2007 from del.icio.us/popular/system:media:video: (RSS feed)

(Via Mefeedia)

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)

Co-working has jumped the shark

Heh, that looks farmiliar. The Hat Factory is on boingboing, now we know coworking has jumped the shark. Let's declare this fad done and stick a fork in it.

(Those san-franciscans are so incestuous. :)

From: Boing Boing: Co-working facilities for social-hungry solo freelancers

Cool piece in Businessweek about the rising popularity of "co-working" spaces for independent, internet-age freelancers who are burnt out on working from their homes (cons: too isolating, makes you crazy, no work/life boundaries) and don't want to just work out of Starbucks (cons: too public, not networking-conducive, laptop theft, rising price of lattes). Image above, hatfactory in dogpatch, San Francisco.

I said that all in jest of course.

In all honesty... co-working is the future, if only for the simple reason that in a future where we can work and live anywhere we want we all need to get out of the house sometime.

Other interesting trends are community bike shops and tool lending libraries. You might also notice trends with car co-ops and not that these things are are as here to stay as hostels and regular libraries and that they all serve the purpose of stimulating social capital (the base of all economics) by providing providing greater social and economic mobility.

Furthermore another trend is that these things can be done increasingly for profit debunking neo-con remarks about socialism. These newer trends are in infact the finest form of democracy and the free market in action to date as many sharp economists will tell you. Do not be fooled just because money doesn't change hands as in the case of wikipedia does not mean that it's not capitalism.

It reminds me of something Brewster Kale of Archive.org said of his idea of a great libarary of all the world's knowlege. To paraphrase poorly, "Who will fund this alexandria? The free market fund it, it's in businesses best intrest." ... or something like that... what he really said was way better you'll just have to google it.

The truth is there is a parrellel between a culture's economic wealth and providing many of the most basic needs... ie. it's social health. This does not mean people sitting on welfare checks as some idiots might misconstrue. This means...

1) "competing with free" is not only a fundamental prerequisite of modern business, not just intellectual property businesses like Music, but also necesities like water, food, shelter, clothing, education and an increasing array of services. In the U.S. somehow pretty much everyone has access to the necesities like water. Water is in fact free, and yet the water industry is so lucrative even a screw up like Coca-cola with Dasani can make money.

and

2) On some level providing free or cheap open unencumbered access to the tools that make society work is not just good business sense but maybe also a moral imperative. It's not socialist any more than wikipedia is socialist... it's just solid free market economics... give something away for free and hold something in reserve to sell for profit is a fundamental principal of doing business on the internet and the future of all business models. The trick is nowing how much to give away for free vs. how much to hold for sale and profit?

Ramble. Ramble. Ramble.

Washington Post on new media

From: Apple - profiles - washington post

Video: apple_pro-washington_post_720x416.mov (video/quicktime Object)

Today's theme is snarky-ness. I'm blogging this just for reference. I despise it but it is interesting. So let's kick the tires.

It's a slickly edited piece from apple. It has no authenticity. It's only interesting because it give a fakey insight into the Washington Post's video journalism group. They have 50 people on staff roaming with camera's... that's interesting. But it's low on real information and insight.

I'm sure the people involved are very interesting people but apple does a nice job of making them seem like passionless boring people without original ideas... because heh, it's not about the people, it's about selling Final Cut and apple computers, and if the people are boring it makes the technology look more interesting.

"I like it when the technology just goes away and you can focus on the aesthetic." Are we on message? Yack. Fluff. Apple needs to rethink their marketing strategy. But then Apple boycott's the blogging world, and doesn't get authentic and real people. Rather ironic.

The most interesting point was what Jim brady, the Exec VP, called "appointment viewing". Apparently "appointment viewing" is the misguided idea that people will come back once a week to re-visit a story to see a new five minute video clip.

Here the opportunities for internet based distibution for media are wide open and Jim is taking the worst thing about television, that it's not space or time shiftable and recreating it on the internet in a vain homage to obsolescence. The only thing he's missing is to make their video pieces disappear after being online for an hour, which is why there content isn't a complete failure because shows stick around long enough that enough people stumble on them. And stumble is the word.

Here's a hint washington post. Throw out the interactive flash storytelling crap put the story in a nicely packaged downloadable video format like MP4 and throw it in a good subscribeable RSS/Media RSS feed with some permalinks to some supporting web page based information. It's called "subscribership"... and you should know what that is because you've been delivering newspapers to people's doors for a century. So why do you make people work so hard to follow up on stories online? Why don't you just work on a virtual baseball bat that can beat them over the head. You're version of delivery is akin to leaving the newspaper laying half way to the front porch in a puddle in the rain.

I don't know why mainstream press people are so resistant to getting a clue. I guess they've just started grasped the web1.0 idea of the "web page" and can't see anything beyond it. They think they have... but they haven't realized "flying type" is not real interactivity. RSS, metadata, microformats... beyond the web page... beyond the desktop even. Clue into it.

Tags: brand interactive-brand nprness washingtonpostness storytelling video-editing tom-kennedy apple final-cut washington-post laptop-editing video-on-the-net distribution jen-crandall journalism creative-class rob-curley appointment-viewing=bs

Weird America - World of Art Cars

This is what vlogging was made for. Getting well off the well beaten mainstream path. Weird America is my new favorite vlog as of today. I just discovered it. My only suggestion is they bring the narrator out from behind the camera... we need someone to take us on their great journeys into weird america.

Watch movie

Original post on February 02, 2007 from Weird America: (RSS feed)

Enter the world of Art Cars. This video is the first of many because we have so many Art Car friends! Weird America has been shooting these automotive extravaganzas for lotsa years - and we hope to for many many more. If you’d like to explore the Art Car world go here.

(Via Mefeedia)

Music video remix of "Rendez-vous"

A london based agency has remixed the legendary 1976 Claude LeLouch film short "Pour un Rendez-vous" into a music video for the band Snow Patrol.

Band: Snow Patrol, "Open Your Eyes"
Dir: Robert Hales/Claude LeLouch

SnowPatrol-open.mov (approx 8.5min)

From the wikipedia article:

"The band Low vs Diamond chose to use the film as the video for their song 'Life After Love' which first appeared mid 2006. Six months later, the band Snow Patrol also used the film as the video for their single "Open Your Eyes" from their fourth album Eyes Open."

While I like the music video I much prefer the original soundtrack which was just the ambient noise of a revving engine, tire squealing and shifting. Oddly though the soundtrack was recreated with a Ferrari even though the film was supposedly shot using LeLouche's Mercedes. (see picture above right). Rocketboom also did their own remix of the film in June 2005 with the original soundtrack.

It is a rare thing when the story behind the videos is as impressive as the video itself. Here are some of the details I've gathered about the original.

length: approx 8.5 minutes
director & driver: Claude LeLouche
shot: 1976, 5am, Paris
genre: cinéma vérité
equipment: gyro-stabilised camera
car: Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (owned by LeLouch)
speed: 80+mph
landmarks: Arc de Triomphe, Opéra Garnier, Place de la Concorde, Champs-Elysées
later inspired: Getaway in Stockholm, Ghost Rider, Nissan's 350Z commercial "The Run"

Other interesting tidbits:

• Lelouch was arrested after the film's first showing, but later released with no charges. His arrest caused the film to only be shown and shared underground for over 20 years.


• The film was rumored (by LeLouche himself, probably to protect himself) to to be driven by a Formula One race car driver, but in 2006 it was revealed by LeLouche that he himself was the driver.


• The car was rumored to be a Ferrari 275 GTB which indeed LeLouche did own, but it was actually shot with a giro mounted camera on his four speed automatic Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (see picture top right) and the soundtrack came from the five speed manual Ferrari.


• The camera only had a 10 minute film clip, so the race wasn't just for the girl, it was to finish filming before the camera ran out of film.


• A few years ago an enthusiast Richard Symons acquired the film, remastered it and released the DVD which you can now buy at rendezvousdvd.com

The original film is a must see, but good luck finding it online. It keeps popping up and disappearing, most recently on Google video. I suggest just buying the original from the website, (where there is a short teaser trailer). Besides I'm sure the DVD will look absolutely brilliant on a high def TV.

My previous post: mmeiser blog: The quick tour of Paris - An early morning 8 minute long race through the streets of Paris

Original post on February 21, 2007 from del.icio.us/popular/system:media:video: (RSS feed)

(Via Mefeedia)

This American Life the show, a trailer

They're turning famed WBEZ Chicago public radio show This American Life into a TV show. It's coming to Showtime March 22nd. Showtime!? Blarg... I hope it's on the torrents so I can steal it. I wish they'd just dump that B.S. cable stuff and video podcast it so the people who want to see it can. They could reach a LOT more people and make a lot more money if they simply video podcast it and put ads in it. It would be so much more profitable in fact they could put FAR less ads in it... but then heh, I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million bizzilian times. Just shut up and watch the trailer.

Watch movie

Original post on February 23, 2007 from del.icio.us/popular/system:media:video: (RSS feed)

(Via Mefeedia)

Julie Amaro

This was one of the most dugg items on digg.com today and there's over 52,000 blog posts on technorati. The outrage continues to grow as it should.

From: Police, school get failing grade in sad case of Julie Amaro - USATODAY.com

Which of these scenarios makes more sense to you?

Scenario A: In the middle of class, a substitute teacher decided to surf for thumbnail-size porn images (an analysis of the hard drive showed that's all that ever appeared on the screen — tiny pictures).

Scenario B: A classroom computer running Windows 98 with outdated anti-virus software, no Internet filter, and no anti-spy ware software began displaying pop ups after some kids visited the wrong site.

[...]

Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it.

I've heard plenty of people try to defend this "miscarriage of justice" saying that all the responsibility was on the teacher... that she could have "thrown a coat over the computer" or turned off the monitor but this is pure B.S.

According to all the testimony the kids had already seen the porn before she even had a chance to react. If getting help from another teacher immediately or next to immediately isn't protocol I'd like to know what is.

Sadly I smell a HUGE lawsuit against the school for negligence. Unfortunately this won't help the situation at all. This whole lawsuit is a lose, lose situation.

At the center of it are the public defender and the judge, both of whom must have been completely technically inept if not completely incompetent. In fact out of every single person involved in this case the most competent people sound like the students, whom it's more than likely got a good laugh out of the event as it's probably nothing most of them hadn't seen before. Hypocrisy and incompetence all around.... with a dash of techno-phobia for good measure.

Wallstrip Chat - Rocketboom

Interesting interview with Andrew baron and Joanne Colan of Rocketboom. Probably the best interview I've seen with them. Short sweet and to the point. Most interesting moment: Andrew shorts ZeFrank. Still I don't think there's any real anomosity there. It's just showbiz. A little rivalry is good for business.

Watch movie

Original post on February 23, 2007 from YouTube :: Videos by wallstrip: (RSS feed)

(2-23-07) The most successful webshow in the history of our world finally sits down with Rocketboom.com Author: wallstrip Keywords: howardlindzon lindsaycampbell joannecolan joanne andrewbaron rocketboom wallstrip wallstreet money finance cash Added: February 23, 2007

(Via Mefeedia)

Customer relations podcasting

Looks like I'm going to re-blog my friend Jan twice today. She's oh so on topic.

Re: The Faux Press :: Politics, Law, Media & Marketing: Bill Marriott's Got a Podcast :: Why Smoke-Free Hotels

In a recent podcast, Marriott defends the decision to eliminate smoking rooms in all his hotels.

In another (one of his first, the podcast enclosed herewith), he addresses new Federal regulations requiring U.S. citizens to show a passport when re-entering the country from Canada, Mexico and a bunch of other places.

The big guys continue to buy into the blog / vlog / podcast fray. Hey, even the President and the Department of Homeland Security have RSS feeds.

Excellent.

The show notes for the smoking piece are:

"We really received a lot of comments on the blog about Marriott's decision last year to take all our hotels in North America 100 percent smoke free. That includes Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Marriott Hotels, Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, SpringHill Suites, our Fairfield Inns, and even our TownePlace Suites.

"One of our very best customers who smokes blogged back to me and said, "I'll never come back to a Marriott." Well, that's a tough pill for us to swallow. But we made this decision because we knew it's what our customers wanted. And it certainly is what our associates deserved."

This is precisely the kind of issue that is best addressed by the head honcho.

Well done, Mr. Marriott, though a more conversational tone might lend more credibility and warmth to your show.

Thanks to Joho Blog for the heads' up.

What I love about Jan is she always speaks straight to you. In this case she's speaking straight to Bill Marriott. Bill could learn a few things from Jan.

I don't really have much to add except that I agree with Jan. The biggest issue I have is staying "on topic". While smoking in hotels is absolutely a great topic for a podcast I really question wether the discussion of homeland security passport policy is an appropriate topic when representing a hotel in a podcast. Although, I must say, in this case I really love that Bill has the grit to discuss such an issue, and I have to acknolege that he is not any employee, he's Bill Mariott and it's his hotel he's representing so it's his right if he wants to potentially alienate customers over issues outside of the scope of his hotel chain.

Jet Blue - videoblogging for apologists

My good friend Jan over at FauxPress blogged the following about the Jet Blue's CEO posting a public apology on Youtube regarding their holding passengers hostage on a plane for some nine hours.

Thanks to Steve Bryant at NewTeeVee for pointing out another interesting executive video.

To Steve I say that Jet Blue's David Neeleman gets lots and lots of points for not reading from a script. So many folks these days are reading from scripts whose performances have left me cold. Hillary Clinton and Mr. Marriott come to mind. Not to worry, there's a learning curve to mastering authenticity, but you need a dedicated director on board to help you find and learn it.

[Note: Senator Clinton's YouTube announcement video linked from VoteHillary.org has been taken down for TOS violation. Oops.]

Furthermore, I don't need to hear, "I'm sorry." No-sir-ee. The only really meaningful response to a big-time screwup is action. Free flights, hotels, lots of free stuff for that kinda snafu. Let's see if Neeleman's words translate into motion, then re-evaluate.

Checking the JetBlue website, I found this text apology. Also found their new Bill of Rights, though the amounts of compensation do not seem high enough.

I just wanted to add two things.

1. Welcome to the new face of the corporate to customer relations.
   
   Video blogging has natural advantages over regular blogging and PR channels like the press releases or VNRs (video news releases).
   
   It's particularly enticing as a tool for corporate apologists because it's much more direct then a VNR and much more personable (therefore more empathetic) then a written apology. I personally believe this may be the start of a change in the way companies interact with their customers.


2. Welcome to the digital dark ages.
   
   Consider this emphasis. As Jan points out Senator Hillary Clinton's youtube announcement video for votehillary.org has been taken down for violating Youtube's terms of service.
   
   Normally this means a violation of copyright (the video came from CNN News), but regardless of why youtube removed it I just have one thing to say....
   
   It doesn't matter wether it was deliberate or accidental youtube's removal of such a video is censorship plain and simple.
   
   I would even argue that its being arbitrary or accidental is even worse then it's being a deliberate act. At least if it was deliberate it would inform us of youtube's policy on censorship thereby informing our choice as to whether youtube is an appropriate choice for us as individuals.
   
   On the other hand if youtube is going to randomly and arbitrarily remove videos then it ceases to have any value as a platform for free speech at all and should be considered merely a platform for trash we don't care about.... which... is generally how I currently regard it.
   
   Please, if you're going to post stuff to youtube post a public backup somewhere.
   
   This is what we all deserve for depending on a third party. Expect to see a lot more important reference material disappear from youtube in the future. The future of youtube is the proverbial 404. If you you really want something to stick around (if it's important to you at all) I suggest using a tool like vixy.net to grab it off youtube and save a copy on your own server.
   
   For example, here's the Jet Blue video in MP4: JetBlue-our-promise-to-you.mp4
   
   I've included it for the sake of archiving it, because without it this post doesn't make much sense.
   
   Not only is it on my server in case it disappears from youtube in six months time, but as an MP4 it's also podcast compatible and download able.