Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
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I took Let Your Light Shine on October 29, 2012 at 01:06PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on July 29, 2018 at 06:57PM
((stupid IFTTT triple posted this photo. Doh!!))
Old Skooler
USA Today reports:
Flickr has been snapped up by Silicon Valley photo-sharing and storage company SmugMug, USA TODAY has learned.
SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told USA TODAY he’s committed to breathing new life into the faded social networking pioneer, which hosted photos and lively interactions long before it became trendy.
SmugMug, an independent, family-run company, will maintain Flickr as a standalone community of amateur and professional photographers and give the long neglected service the focus and resources it deserves, MacAskill said in an exclusive interview.
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The mostly free Flickr was founded in 2004 and played a central role in the cultural and social life of the Internet. Friendships were forged on Flickr as people shared photographs and others commented on them.
Overshadowed in the smartphone era by the rise of Facebook and Instagram, Flickr suffered defections to rival services but held onto a core loyal following of shutterbugs despite product and policy misses and the hacks of Yahoo, as well as encroaching competition from Google and other massive photo services.
Traffic has shrunk from its heyday, but Flickr says it has more than 75 million registered photographers and more than 100 million unique users who post tens of billions of photos. In March, Flickr had 13.1 million unique visitors, up from 10.8 million a year earlier, according to research firm comScore.
(click here to continue reading SmugMug snaps up Flickr photo service from Verizon’s Oath.)
Hmm, that’s potentially great news. I’ve used SmugMug for selling prints in the past,1 and of course, I’m a multiple-visits-daily user of Flickr ever since I was a beta-version Flickereeno.2
Yesterday as I drifted off to sleep I even had the germ of an blog post idea about Flickr’s long term future. I assume Flickr is profitable, and gets quite a lot of traffic, but nothing has been changed there for a long, long time. I’m not sure what Verizon’s plans were, or if they had decided upon them.
So I’m cautiously optimistic this will be good synergy.
And I especially liked this:
And, in an industry that dangles free services to suck up people’s personal information to target ads, SmugMug has catered to people who are willing to pay for privacy and storage, offering four levels of subscriptions to appeal to everyday shutterbugs and professional photographers alike.
MacAskill says the SmugMug model works for the business and his conscience because it aligns his incentives with his customers. “We don’t mine our customers’ photos for information to sell to the highest bidder, or to turn into targeted advertising campaigns,” he said.
After revelations that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information pilfered by Cambridge Analytica, a British political firm with ties to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, consumers are having second thoughts about trading their data for a free service.
(click here to continue reading SmugMug snaps up Flickr photo service from Verizon’s Oath.)
Footnotes:
Fulton Market somewhere…
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I took Hearing Voices With No One Around on October 10, 2013 at 11:38AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on April 04, 2018 at 02:01AM
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I took Wouldn’t Give Me The Time Of Day on October 13, 2013 at 09:46AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on April 04, 2018 at 02:11AM
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I took Become Someone Better on October 19, 2013 at 08:46AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on April 04, 2018 at 02:19AM
Thomas Jefferson Pumping Station (Lincoln Square, Chicago) – click to embiggen
A photo I took a while ago1, and processed a couple of weeks ago made it into Flickr Explore. Maybe because I made a Sally Hemmings “joke”?
As far as the image, I was not happy that my Photoshop skills are not proficient enough to straighten the door correctly. But, hey, explored!
This is a beautiful door for a pumping station, and it looks to be recently painted.
Nikon D7000
ƒ/6.3 35.0 mm 1/160 250 ISOFootnotes:
Facebook Sucks
In the middle of a mostly pointless article about how there is no worthy competitor to Facebook, so why bother leaving, Bryan X. Chen writes:
Remember Flickr? The Yahoo-owned site is the closest thing either [Instagram or Facebook] has to a competitor, and it’s like a graveyard of people’s digital memories before they abandoned it for Facebook and Instagram.
(click here to continue reading Want to #DeleteFacebook? You Can Try – The New York Times.)
Hmm. That is not my experience. Perhaps there are less selfies and photos of one’s meal on Flickr1 but I still spend more quality time on Flickr than either Facebook or Instagram. I haven’t uploaded many photos to Flickr recently (I’ve been updating my curated photo gallery instead – check it out) but for an example, my Flickr photos were viewed 1,760 times yesterday. Not exactly burning up the internet, but much more active than my Instagram account. My complaint about Instagram is that it is intentionally too limiting – you are encouraged to see what is newly uploaded in a constant stream, but keeping up with what people share is futile. With Flickr, one can create thematic albums, limited only by imagination. For instance, I have an album of photos that I’m considering printing for my next gallery show2; an album of bridges; and album called, “Our Crumbling Infrastructure”. Or my “Least Interesting Photos”. Not an Instagram option.
Instagram 8 logo
Instagram also looks horrible on an iPad, you’d think by now they would have made an iPad version. Flickr looks good on any device. Don’t get me wrong, I have complaints with Flickr, and worry that Verizon3 is going to cut Flickr loose, but compared to Facebook or Instagram, I much prefer Flickr.
Anyway, if you are looking to reduce the amount of personal information Facebook has of yours that they can sell or give away to Robert Mercer’s psych-ops organizations like Cambridge Analytica, here are two articles which do a better job explaining your Facebook options than the NYT does. There are other articles, so not only was the NYT instructions second rate, they also were about a week too late.
Buzzfeed’s Nicole Nguyen wrote on Tuesday:
But Facebook and its network of apps, including Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are important communication lines for a lot of people, so deleting your account might not be a realistic option. You can, however, dial back your use and reduce the amount of information you give the site. Here’s how.
Break your habit and limit your use of the platform.
Just by signing up for the service, you’ve agreed to let Facebook track your activity and constantly collect data about you. By reducing the time you spend on the site, interaction with posts, and content you upload, you are also reducing the amount of data Facebook is gathering from you. And remember, this data collection applies to Facebook — and everywhere you’ve signed in with Facebook, including Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as, to a lesser extent, third-party websites like Spotify.
Log out of Facebook before browsing the web.
Non-Facebook websites use what’s called the Facebook Pixel, a small piece of JavaScript code that tracks your browsing activity across the web and tells Facebook what you’re looking at when you’re not on Facebook’s site and apps.
Any page that has a Facebook Like button installed most likely uses a Facebook pixel. Even pages that don’t have a Like button can have a pixel. This means it’s possible that Facebook knows most of your web browsing history.
(click here to continue reading If You’re Not Ready To Delete Facebook, Here’s How To Limit The Data You Give It.)
And the EFF4 has good instructions for disabling the Facebook API:
You shouldn’t have to do this. You shouldn’t have to wade through complicated privacy settings in order to ensure that the companies with which you’ve entrusted your personal information are making reasonable, legal efforts to protect it. But Facebook has allowed third parties to violate user privacy on an unprecedented scale, and, while legislators and regulators scramble to understand the implications and put limits in place, users are left with the responsibility to make sure their profiles are properly configured.
…
Of course, you could choose to leave Facebook entirely, but for many that is not a viable solution. For now, if you’d like keep your data from going through Facebook’s API, you can take control of your privacy settings. Keep in mind that this disables ALL platform apps (like Farmville, Twitter, or Instagram) and you will not be able to log into sites using your Facebook login.
Log into Facebook and visit the App Settings page (or go there manually via the Settings Menu > Apps ).
…
From the same page, click “Edit” under “Apps Others Use.” Then uncheck the types of information that you don’t want others’ apps to be able to access. For most people reading this post, that will mean unchecking every category.
(click here to continue reading How To Change Your Facebook Settings To Opt Out of Platform API Sharing | Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
Facebook Apps Others Use – click everything off would be my advice
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I took Time Grows On the Cement Self Portrait on March 06, 2016 at 09:27AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on January 14, 2018 at 11:38AM
I debated whether to crop the upper right corner’s burst of sun, but decided to leave it in. Maybe I’ll crop it later…
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I took Fades To A Memory on October 20, 2017 at 04:43AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on October 20, 2017 at 02:43PM
And this photo was taken before Cheeto Hitler took office, before most people had even heard of the word, “Emolument”…
Google it yourself, but here’s a thumbnail version:
What, exactly, is the Emoluments Clause?
It is 49 words in Article I of the Constitution.
“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
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I took Emolument Man on August 06, 2011 at 02:07PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on August 17, 2017 at 07:48PM
Division and Damen.
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I took Three Dollars A Verse – Afternoon Stroll on July 30, 2017 at 12:17PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on August 01, 2017 at 08:18PM
New York prosecutors have demanded records relating to up to $16 million in loans that a bank run by a former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump made to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The subpoena by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to the Federal Savings Bank, a small Chicago bank run by Steve Calk, sought information on loans the bank issued in November and January to Mr. Manafort and his wife, the person said. The loans were secured by two properties in New York and a condominium in Virginia, real-estate records show.
More
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I took The Federal Savings Bank on May 18, 2017 at 10:03AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on July 17, 2017 at 10:39PM
Actually, entrance to the building where The Federal Savings Bank is located. A strange kind of bank, only on the third floor, with a building security employee that won’t let you go up unless you are a member of the bank, plus won’t allow photography in the lobby.
The FSB has been in the news lately for its Trump ties, and allegedly Russian money laundering schemes with Paul Manafort.
For instance:
Chicago-based Federal Savings Bank wouldn’t comment Tuesday on a report that New York prosecutors have subpoenaed records related to $16 million in loans the institution made to former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
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chief executive, Steve Calk, was an economic adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. Manafort is under scrutiny from a special prosecutor and members of Congress for his dealings with Russian interests, part of the wider investigation into ties between Russia and members of Trump’s campaign and administration.
…
Federal Savings Bank made about $6.5 million in loans in January to Manafort and his wife for a Brooklyn property, documents show. That came about a month after Federal Savings lent $9.5 million to Summerbreeze, a limited liability company connected to Manafort, according to 377 Union, a website run by two New York lawyers that is named for the address of the Manafort property in Brooklyn.
The combined $16 million in loans to one borrower represents nearly a quarter of the small bank’s loan portfolio and approaches the level at which regulators would start to think about imposing limits on lending to one customer.
more:
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I took Entrance to The Federal Savings Bank on May 18, 2017 at 10:02AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on July 21, 2017 at 10:06AM
Rent This Prestigious Art Space – WTF Reserve LLC For Rates
I got an email this morning, which read, in part:
I’ve just looked through your photostream and think your photos are awesome!
Is there any chance you’d be interested in licensing some of them to me for a couple of months?
I’d pay cash and the photo would remain in your account. You will still own it 100%. All you would need to do is add/change the attribution link in the description for the month or two.
The reason I am interested in this is to get some clicks and links back to my site. Please reply if this sounds ok to you or you’d like some more details.
Hmmm. That sounds a bit sketchy, no? How would this contract work, exactly? If I requested $100,000 in cash, how would this guy provide it to me? He would send me unmarked bills in the mail? or more likely, rubles? And while I have accumulated nearly nine million views of my photos on Flickr, I doubt much of that traffic would be redirected to this dude’s sketchy website.
Toronto’s City Hall
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I took Iron Cock Head on September 09, 2013 at 06:07AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on March 10, 2017 at 05:28PM