St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for December, 2008

Here’s a message to our President elect. When Britain comes around asking for America’s help in further censorship of the internet. Just say NO.

It seems the UK’s government has taken it upon itself (no, the people don’t want it), to censor the internet, yup, the whole thing.

• They are pushing a plan to set up a government mandated movie style rating for web sites.
• Force ISP’s to display material appropriate for children only after a certain time of day.
• OR just not display any material not suited for children, ever.
• Changing laws to make it easier for someone to sue for Libel if it occurs online.

Does anyone remember when the last time we changed the rating system for movies in America? They made it easier to get the new “X” rating for a movie, calling it NC17 for movies that weren’t porn but were for adults. Theaters all across the country embraced these movies at first, (The cook and his wife were a big NC17 hit). Within one year the Christian “Conservatives” pressured all the major chains and then independent theaters into never showing a NC17 movie again. Now they just won’t make movies like that.

The same thing will happen with the internet if they do the same thing, duh.

Later I’ll add some links to sites that will probably get the new “X” (not “XXX”) rating, whatever they will call it and will probably thus be banned by every state in the union.
Sure, ever since the Civil War, we Americans have lost the ability to control our government, but we can’t fix that now (ever). Sure, our leaders say things like, “I don’t even know how to check my e-mail” (G.W. Bush and John McCain both have said this). But to maintain appearances of a Democracy, our government sometimes listens to large public outcries. It’s also true sometimes they make laws that sound like they are giving us what we want, but really actually giving the bad guys what they want (The CANN SPAM Act ring a bell with anyone?). Now is the time for one of those large public outcries.

link

A watch dog group asked Google to put up or shut on the whole personal data storage issue.

The nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog asked on Friday that Google give users of its search engine the ability to “opt out” of leaving personal data, such as IP addresses, on Google’s servers.

“Many people don’t understand that the kind of unnoticed conversations that are going on between them and [Google's servers],” said John Simpson, policy advocate at Consumer Watchdog. “Some of that can provide a useful, helpful service to the user, but people need to know what they’re providing and made informed judgments about whether they want to or not.”

news story

Finally the music industry has stopped suing people they suspect of sharing files over the internet with such programs as Kazaaa or BitTorrent.

News Story

Are you considering developing an application for the I Phone or Google’s “G-Phone” (Android). There is an obvious risk you may want to consider. They just may reject your software sraight away, or may approve it at first, let people install it on their phones and tyhen yank it off them and reject your program months or years later.

Sound far-fetched? It does, I know. But I have first hand knowledge that Apple especially, are quite fickle. They often deny apps and sometimes they approve apps, let you promote and distribute it ad then reject it later. this is especially true if you are improving or fixing something they have screwed up.

They seem quite republican in that they never admit they screw up and are very hostile towards anyone who implies their devices aren’t perfect in some way. There’s quite a lot of dysfunctional emotion in the process.

Here’s the latest story of someone getting ganked because their product “looks an awful lot like Apple’s Cover Flow feature”:
Link, Link 2

It looks like the backlash is building and developers are banning together and are rebelling:
iPhone: Big trouble in the App Store

Apple seems to be the worst offender. Any application that makes users work flow go faster, connect to I tunes less limit the personal info that Apple gets etc is denied. They are quite often dis-honest about the reasons why as well.

Free software can be a great thing, don’t get me wrong, you can make money by giving things away free. But it seems the trouble might not be worth it to most.

There’s HD Radio out there folks. It doesn’t have anything to do with the internet but it may have opened up the minds of some uber-conservative radio station corporations CEO’s. Now that the HD foray into technology paid off for them in a good way it seems that they are more interested into taking the jump into other technological adventures. I guess I can’t blame them, as many of “Radio’s”
past IT projects have failed.

They “don’t know nothing about that internet and computers stuff” and since the whole file sharing thing don’t have the best opinion of it. But they’ve seen the light and are coming around. Here’s some of the latest internet projects from the Radio Industry:

• Clear Channel, which own hundreds of radio stations each with their own website (which are made to look like they are independent when they are not), has recently moved to a centralized web application to create, edit, manage all the web sites for all the radio stations.
• No company increased its commitment to the digital space in 2008 more than CBS Radio, which announced a content and advertising partnership with AOL Music in March. Since then, 150 CBS Radio stations and 200 AOL Music Internet stations have become powered by a CBS Radio player. The company also launched Play.it, which enables listeners to create their own stations. They’re even joining forces with Yahoo. And not just joining, but they’ve made some products that Yahoo will use over they’re own. More on that soon

But why are they fighting so hard and putting so much resources into it?
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