The fact that I have to explain and articulate this drives me insane. However, a lot of companies, agencies and people are completely ignorant to what social media actually does/is. Therefore I felt that I needed to clarify the differences between social media and magic.

Social Media Will Not:

• Walk your dog.
• Make your inferior product better.
• Turn lead into gold.

Social Media Will:

• Make your company more human and transparent.
• Lead to crowdsourcing, better communication and rapid adoption of new tech.
• Be the New PR. Although the term will end up being Social Relations or Relationship Management.

What inspired this? Companies using social media as a sales tool and not a solution/tool. Social Media gets us in the door is not the right way to approach a useful tool/platform.

The problem here is that people still view social media as the new tool, the gimmick or the shiny piece of tinfoil that they want to chase around the room. Not the factual, metric driven engagement experiences and community creating that produce tangible results.

To many people are obsessed with getting everyone to use social and then not having a fleshed out plan when they actually begin to do so. Guess what? Using the tools and understanding their purpose isn't enough if you aren't going to utilize them effectively.

If you can manage the expectations for the product effectively and articulate what social media is and isn't, you will save yourself lots of time and headaches.

Social isn't anything new. It's just something old wrapped in a new package with better technology to cut down on lead time. Keep this key concept in mind and try to maintain your sanity when working with recent adopters.

1. No Silos.

2. Listening.

3. Inbound Marketing.

*drops mic*

it seems to me that the way we think of RSS readers needs to fundamentally change. Presenting information as a news feed where the user isn't pressured to read every item or feel like a failure is one way to move the needle on the user experience here.

I couldn't agree more. The fact that FeedDemon's Panic Button is one of its most popular features is a clear sign that information overload resulting from RSS as email is a problem among my customers.

It's no secret that I regret designing the first version of FeedDemon to work like an email client, and every version since then has been an attempt to drag myself and my customers (some of them screaming and kicking) away from that model. It's been such a slow crawl out of that hole that I've often considered building something brand new instead of trying to morph FeedDemon into a tool that doesn't make information consumption a chore.

But then I come to my senses, realize that I love being able to focus on FeedDemon, and get back to making it into the application it should be :)

So what do I think it should be? I think an RSS reader should enable you to read individual feeds if that's what you're into, but at the same time it should sift through the noise and find the articles that interest you.

Many services attempt to do that by aggregating the most popular articles around the web, but I'm not a fan of that approach since it brings you too much stuff you don't care about (you might not, for example, care about Britney Spears regardless of whether everyone else does). Instead, my approach has been to have FeedDemon pay attention to the stuff you're paying attention to, and use that to locate the stuff that's most relevant.

You can see this most clearly in features like Popular Topics (which shows you the most popular articles across all your feeds), and the new dashboard-like start page in FeedDemon 3.0. If you're unfamiliar with FeedDemon, or you're not using the FeedDemon 3.0 Beta, here's what they look like (click to enlarge):

These are the kinds of features I want to focus much more on in FeedDemon. I want to eventually build a tool that automatically brings you the stuff that's important to both you and the people you follow with as little effort from you as possible and without violating your privacy in the process.

In my mind the RSS as email approach has been dead for quite some time, and it's been a while since I invested in email-like features. The real question is whether long-time users of RSS readers are ready to give up how they're used to consuming their feeds (?).

Through motorcycles and text messages, FrontlineSMS:Medic connects doctors and patients in rural Africa.

In the developing world, most communities don't have access to a hospital, let alone a doctor. Valiant community health workers sometimes serve rural villages, but they don't have the training or technology to assist with major medical problems. The distance between village and hospital, both in terms of travel and communication, often spells doom for residents. But FrontlineSMS:Medic is aiming to change that. It

Bessemer Venture Partners is incubating the startup and put in most of the original $900,000 in seed money. The company has raised a total of $1.4 million to date and works out of the Bessemer offices.

We first wrote about MashLogic in October 2008 when it went into private beta:

MashLogic is a more direct approach. Users must download a Firefox plugin to use it, but there's no toolbar. Instead, you simply change the settings to tell it what kind of information you'd like to have included on web pages. Links to Wikipedia is an easy one. But it also has company links to LinkedIn to show you people there you might know. And a currency converter. Etc. It's like a frickin Swiss Army Knife for hyperlinks.

One setting I like - the ability to remove all links on a page, and then only MashLogic links appear. For a lot of sites, the user experience is vastly superior. You can also create blacklists of domains that won't show up in links on the page, even if the original publisher put them there.

Once you've got the tool configured, smart links will start popping up all over the place. Professional Athletes get their playing stats, Politicians get a real time poll of their progress towards the White House. Currencies are *zap* converted. You can even see a map for any street address.

Their goal is to save you from having to go back to the search engine to find the next thing you're intersted in but isn't linked on the site.

The site has evolved since October. It's now available for Internet Explorer in addition to Firefox. Also, any topic trending up on Twitter is highlighted and linked (at the user option), with additional information on who's tweeting about that topic. And if a Twitter username appears in the text of a web page (as they do in our comments), clicking on it brings up a box with that Twitter users information. Users can also post to their Twitter accounts. Here's how it looks:

MashLogic works with publishers to create slightly customized versions of the product that pull information from that publisher first. Users can customize away from those changes, but most don't. We've been distributing a version of MashLogic since last October and it drives a fair amount of traffic to us from people seeing TechCrunch and CrunchBase content linked from around the web.

It's one of the few products I've tried that I've stuck with over these last months. It definitely makes browsing and research easier. Try it, I think you'll like it.

Here's an interview I did today with founder/VP Ranjit Padmanabhan. After I butcher his name we see how it all works:

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Sometime next week, the company is going to announce that in its first month of inclusion in comScore's measurement system, it has taken the lead over one-stop shop gaming destinations in traffic by a margin. Combined with the company's claim that the so-called extended network' is growing its delivered impressions by 5 to 10% month-over-month, Mochi Media should be attracting over 100 million visitors on a monthly basis right about now.

Looking at worldwide traffic, comScore pegs the Mochi Media network to have received a little over 91 million unique visitors last April, or roughly 8.2 per cent of the total traffic measured in the Online Gaming' category for that month. These are impressive numbers: the second ranked online gaming destination is Spil Games, and the total amount of traffic that network receives on a global scale per month is close to that of Mochi Media Action, a subset of Mochi's network made up of only one genre (adventure games). Familiar brands you'd expect to rank higher, such as Yahoo! Games, MSN Games, EA Online and Nickelodeon, all obtain less than half Mochi Media's reach worldwide.

It's worth noting, however, that most of this traffic is coming from countries outside the U.S.: from those 91+ million visitors per month worldwide, only about 16 million visitors or roughly 17% originates from the Unites States. The company tells me a lot of visitors come from other English speaking nations like Canada and the U.K. but also from China and a good number of European countries.

I also got some numbers regarding its current network size: Mochi Media currently includes more than 14,000 games played across 30,000 websites, which the company claims translates to 1 billion game plays a month worldwide. A company representative declined to share any details about its revenue - the company provides technology for game developers to integrate advertising units powered and distributed by Mochi Media - but did say sales of pre-roll video advertising units are going particularly well, with CPM rates in the low to mid-teens for the U.S. and the UK.

Mochi Media is backed by $14 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and Shasta Ventures. Its most recent financing round was a $10 million Series B round from both investors back in June 2008. Meanwhile, the startup has convinced both a former MySpace (Carol Werner) as a Yahoo exec (Eric Boyd) to join its ranks and spurred small startups like the recently seed-funded HeyZap to do similar things.

Keep your eyes on this one, folks.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

You've stuck it out through the lean times with the company even when they weren't funded and now you are on the outside looking in. What gives? It must be the evil venture capitalist (me). He must want one of his guys at the legal helm.

Not so fast. Even ex-lawyers like me who believe we can evaluate the best of legal talent don't take this action lightly. And I never like to have a heavy hand with my CEOs. It's their company to run and I work for them.

I, however, have seen some unbelievably stupid things that company counsel lawyers have pulled that has ruined their credibility with the VC (me) and thus found their way out the door, either by my strong urging, or by agreement of the entire company.

So, today is the list of quick ways to get fired. Before you laugh or go duh EACH of these are real events that I've dealt with personally. And all of these have happened in the last 3 or 4 years, so these are not back in the day events. Furthermore, there is no monopoly on stupidity. The mess ups below happened at small, medium and large firms all over the country.

I've divided them into three categories: 1. Screw ups that get you immediately fired. 2. Actions that get you fired sooner than later. 3. Things that probably get you fired over time. Without further delay (and in order of egregiousness)

Screw ups that get you fired immediately

1. Screw around with redlines. You and my counsel are negotiating the Series A financing. As normal, there are several revisions of the documents. My counsel notices that paragraphs are reverting back to previously rejected ones, but are NOT showing up as redlines. They assume it is a mistake, but when the junior associate is asked what's up he says that you told him to make the changes. You're fired (and you probably get reported to the state bar and the head of your law firm).

2. Endorse the chief competitor. We find a quote made by you on the primary competitor's website extolling the wonders of the competitor. First, it would have been nice to know that you represented our competitor. Secondly, you providing the quote shows amazingly poor judgment. You should never pick sides. (And in hindsight, we kicked the other company's butt, so you chose wrong). You're fired.

3. You provide little leadership and wait for someone else to come up with the answer. The company is in a sticky situation. It's unique and it's dire. There are many phone calls with lots of other partners and associates on the phone billing away. You and your team provide absolutely no thought leadership on how to fix the problem. Instead, the CEO, another executive or I come up with the solution, but you (probably in order to save face) tell us that we are idiots and that it will never work. We have to hire another law firm to vet our idea and they say great idea - it works. Company survives. You don't. You're fired.

4. You provide advice to the CEO adverse to the company's interest. Things aren't going well at the company. The board is mulling around thinking about replacing the CEO. In contentious discussions to remove the CEO, it becomes apparent that you and the CEO have been having side discussions. Specifically you have advised him regarding his leverage that he has against the company in order to either keep his job or extort a larger settlement agreement. Guess what? You're Fired. (But not by the CEO, the board makes it a two-fer and you and the CEO are out).

Actions that get you fired sooner than later

1. Be lax in your advice and get it wrong. Yeah, we all make mistakes, but being lazy and riffing off the cuff about legal issues and then being proved wrong is something that can doom your relationship. If you come to the board meetings, sit back and offer opinions that later turn out wrong, you will have a short stay as company counsel. Specifically what annoys me the most is when lawyers riff about subject areas that they aren't experts (e.g. corporate guy guessing about litigation issues) and don't bother to check their own advice with their own firm after the board meeting. Let's call this: You're fired over time

2. Being inefficient, getting lost in the woods, billing for small stuff that doesn't matter. You are the epitome of Why Startup Lawyers Frustrate Me. Despite how stupid it is to negotiate crap like registration rights, you waste your time, my time, my counsel's time and your client's bank account doing so. Again, you're fired (over time).

3. Bait and switch. You bring in the client, but you never show for board meetings, phone calls, etc. and send junior folks in your stead. Or worse yet, the company hires you to run an important litigation matter and you don't show for court, rather your less skilled colleague does. You're fired (over time).

4. Not knowing who your client is. You have trouble figuring out that you represent the company, not the CEO. Nothing as heinous as the above example, but you seem to have a what's good for the CEO filter on all of our advice. You're fired (over time).

5. Letting summer associates run wild on the account. You let a dozen different summer associates bill out (at first year rates, no less) to the client during a 3 month stint. You're fired (over time).

Things that probably get you fired over time

1. Being annoying. There are a ton of them, but some that come to immediate mind are talking too much at board meetings and trying to prove how smart you are, spending the entire board meeting on your blackberry or constantly complaining about my counsel choice during a financing. (Don't you understand that you are just insulting me and that I probably use these guys all the time?). Additionally, you make grand promises of VC intros or other introductions into your vast network and you never come through. You probably don't get fired for any of these, but if the CEO decides that they want to make a switch, I'm certainly not going to stick up for you.

All of these actions seem to suggest that you don't realize that as soon as the financing is done that you are representing me as a board member, or that you don't understand that I have many different investments and have a long memory.

Then again, if these aren't obvious to you, then you are probably one of the folks who committed one (or more) of these acts. To the rest of you, hopefully you got a sick chuckle out of these real-life events.

The pro se attorney plaintiff in Burcham v. Expedia brought suit against the travel site under Missouri consumer law, claiming that Expedia knowingly misrepresented the hotel amenities for a room that he booked on the site. He sought $5 million in damages and class certification.

It didn't help the court's view of the case that the room was booked for a hotel in Missouri in November, and one of the amenities that Burcham claimed was absent when he and his children arrived at the hotel was an outdoor swimming pool. Fair enough, Burcham also claimed that the hotel lacked an indoor swimming pool, conference room, restaurant and bar/lounge. But the court pointed out that Burcham's complaint did not allege that he or his children wished to use any of the absent amenities.

Burcham was off to a bad start.

Expedia moved to dismiss Burcham's complaint, relying on the forum selection provision that specified Kings County, Washington as the proper venue. Expedia submitted evidence showing multiple versions of its terms of use, including the current and past versions, which the court concluded contained the same material terms.

Expedia also established by affidavit that Burcham's booking had been made by a process under which the user was presented with a legend stating: "By continuing on you agree to the following terms and conditions." Beneath the legend, the full text of the terms and conditions was displayed. In order to book a room, the user was required to click on the "continue" button.

Confronted with this evidence, Burcham argued that he simply did not remember seeing the terms and conditions when he used the Expedia site. He suggested that he may have used the site from a shared computer at his law office without checking to see if the prior user of the computer was already logged onto the site. Thus, he argued, the prior user may have clicked past the terms and conditions, but they were never presented to him.

The court briefly reviewed the relevant case law (e.g., Specht v. Netscape, Register.com v. Verio, ProCD v. Zeidenberg) and the distinctions between clickwrap, shrinkwrap and browsewrap agreements, and quickly concluded that Expedia had an "enforceable online clickwrap agreement" with Burcham. Burcham's argument that he never saw the terms and conditions was dismissed both on the facts and the law.

On the facts, the court found, Burcham offered no evidence to support his "clever theory" that someone else clicked past the terms and conditions, and the undisputed facts showed that the user account created at the time the terms and conditions were assented to was associated with Burcham's own e-mail address. On the law, the court concluded that if Burcham in fact had accessed the Web site under someone else's account, he was still bound by the terms and conditions to which that user had assented, citing, e.g., Motise v. America Online, Inc., 346 F.Supp. 2d 563 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (individual using the online account of another user bound by the same terms and conditions as the account owner).

Burcham also tripped over the evidence he himself submitted to the court along with his brief. The court noted that the Expedia Web pages Burcham submitted as exhibits contained a hyperlink at the bottom to the full text of the Expedia terms and conditions. The court noted that the terms and conditions stated that users of the site consent to be bound by those terms and conditions by accessing and using the Web site. Thus, the court concluded, even if Burcham wasn't clickwrapped, he was browsewrapped.

Finally, the court quickly dismissed Burcham's arguments that the forum selection provision was unreasonable and in contravention of Missouri public policy and that the contract as a whole was one of adhesion.

The ruling in Burcham v. Expedia is a win for the enforceability of online agreements, and another loss for pro se attorney plaintiffs for whom courts seem to have little sympathy. See, e.g., Field v. Google, 412 F.Supp. 2d 1106 (D. Nev. 2006) (rejecting pro se attorney plaintiff's "manufactured" copyright infringement claim based on Google Web crawling and caching).

Burcham v. Expedia, Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17104 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 6, 2009)

Tonight, my dream came true.

I noticed (on Twitter, or FriendFeed, I don't remember) someone wondering how page turning should work on the iPhone Kindle app. Is that out? I asked myself. A quick Twitter search for iPhone and Kindle revealed that yes, in fact, it was available in the App Store. After one super excited tweet, I was off to download it.

I've taken screenshots of most of the interface, and tested logging in and downloading at least one of my books. Here are the screenshots, with descriptions. I'm sure I'll post more thoughts after I've used it for a while, but so far, it works perfectly, just like I hoped and thought it would. Major kudos and thanks to everyone at Amazon and Apple who made this happen! You've made me one happy bibliovoracious geek!
Kindle in the App Store:

Kindle App Splash Screen:

Archived Items, things in your Kindle account but not downloaded to your iPhone:

Downloaded books show on the home screen:

Reading a book - the main interface. Haven't used this much yet, but I was super impressed that it knew exactly what page I left off reading this book on my Kindle, and too me right there:

How to Get Books. Basically, you have to browse and buy on a Mac or PC (or a Kindle, of course), though that link will take you to

The desktop version of the Kindle Store web page in Mobile Safari. This works, but is obviously not optimized for the iPhone. Last time I tried, you couldn't browse or buy Kindle books in the iPhone version of Amazon.com, or using the Amazon iPhone app. Maybe that will change.

The Options Screen. Pretty basic, only real option is to deauthorize your iPhone from your Kindle account (important to remember, since you have a 5 device limit).

In conclusion? This is awesome, long awaited news, and I can't wait to play with it some more. Am I going to read less on my Kindle and more on my iPhone? Maybe, maybe not. I'll likely end up reading more in general, now that I can access my Kindle books (and my saved place!) on my iPhone, and I can't wait.

One interesting thing this opens up: now, people can download this free iPhone app, and spend money buying Kindle books from Amazon, without ever buying an actual Kindle.

What you do think about this news? Do you have a Kindle and an iPhone? Or no Kindle at all, but willing to try Kindle books on your iPhone? Post a comment and let me know!

The orange juice brand was in the midst of launching redesigned packaging when a loud bus of vocal fans who liked the old packaging, thank you very much, raised hell. They liked the iconic picture of a large orange with a straw, making the juice easy to find in the crowded OJ aisle. After their protests drew a flurry of unexpected calls, letters and email complaints, Tropicana announced it would revert to the original packaging.

In an apologia, Tropicana president Neil Campbell said the disconnect was research: What we didn't get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn't something that came out in the research.

When traditional marketing research doesn't include input from passionate fans who love the brand and tell others about it, it risks creating a Tropicana effect.

Tropicana's research may have expertly divided its customers into demographics and "heavy users" vs. "light users," but it probably did not account for vocal, connected and passionate customers who know how to create a Facebook protest group in less than a minute or spread buzz via Twitter hashtags. Had Tropicana had a way to reach out to evangelists, this might not have been a story.

So what does Tropicana have now? Actually, it's pretty good: a second chance. A gift to convert that passion into something tangible. But Tropicana has work to do. There's no blog on their website, which still touts the "fresh new package." There's no official Facebook page. There's no Twitter account. (No, a brief Twitter campaign shirt-tailed to the old presidential campaign doesn't count.) It's a great opportunity to start a network or community for that busload of fans.

Of course, customer evangelists needn't decide everything (that's always the straw-man argument), but you can't ask for their opinion and improve the odds of a $35 million bet if you don't know who they are.

In Williamson v. Delsener, NY Slip Op 01333 (1st Dept. 2009), the Appellate Division, First Department held, in a dispute over the terms of a settlement, that e-mails exhanged between counsel, which contained their printed names at the end, constitute signed writings (CPLR 2104) within the meaning of the statute of frauds (citations omitted) and entitle plaintiff to judgment (CPLR 5003-a[e]).

Therefore, if you, in a legal context, agree to something in an email which you send with your standard, printed signature at its end, courts will consider the agreement to have been reduced to writing, and it may well be viewed as part of an enforceable contract. So, add this to the myriad reasons why you must be careful before pressing your send button.

"Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"

Instead of posting "Tiedt is an associate," the site will write "Tiedt (http://www.jonesday.com/jtiedt/) is an associate."

It's really interesting to see what people choose to use to represent them online. The simplest thing is a headshot and I suspect that's what the majority of people use when they are asked to upload a profile picture. That's what Kara Swisher chose (she's the top profile, my most recent follow).

But even with the headshot, some people go for the funny picture, adding some character to their profile. Mike Doughty (second profile) has his head on the table and some sort of box between him and the camera. Stuart Ellman (fifth profile) is dressed as the court jester (probably a halloween pic). Both of those profiles tell us a bit more about those two.

Some choose to use a photo of something or someone else. Lauren (fourth profile) seems to have chosen a family photo of some kind. Howie (sixth profile) has a photo of his friend and Springsteen's guitarist Nils Lofgren. We don't get to see these people's faces, but they are telling us something about them nonetheless.

I've been online since the early 90s and I've gone back and forth on what kind of profile I like to use. But for the past couple years, I've settled on the image that I now try to use everywhere online. It's my online brand and I stumbled on to it accidentally. I thought it might be interesting to share with all of you how that came about and what I learned from it.

In the middle of 2006, Howard Lindzon approached me about getting involved in a web video show he was going to produce called Wallstrip. In the initial incarnation of Wallstrip, there was going to be a daily video talking about the stock of the day, and then there was going to be about a dozen bloggers who would do a short post on what they thought of the stock as an investment idea.

Howard asked me to be one of those dozen bloggers. I thought about it for a while and then agreed to do it. Then, unbekownst to me, he asked an artist friend of his in Phoenix to go on the web, find photos of each of the dozen bloggers, and draw up a sketch that he could use as their Wallstrip avatar. This was mine.

From the minute I saw it, I liked it. It uses my favorite color (green) as the backdrop and the eye color (my eyes are sometimes blue and sometimes green and sometimes something else). It looks like me, but not too much.

So I began to use it a bit here and there around the web as I set up new profiles. But by no means was it the only profile picture I used. For corporate oriented services like LinkedIn, I'd use my Union Square Ventures headshot. For social nets like Facebook, I'd use a regular headshot. I used a photo of me taking a photo on Flickr for a long time.

But then I started to realize that the Wallstrip avatar was becoming my online identity. People would comment about it all the time. Around the time we sold Wallstrip, Howard had his artist friend (her name escapes me, pls Howard leave her name and a link in the comments and I'll update this post) do a real painting of it which I now have in my office at Union Square Ventures. It's a real conversation starter.

So sometime last year, I just decided to go with it everywhere. It's at the top of this blog and everywhere else I have an online identity. And I think that decision is having some important effects.

As I said earlier in this post, it's become my online brand. It's simple, small, and very recognizable. By putting it everywhere that I am online, I've used frequency and reach to power home that the avatar is me. It's become my visual handle and it's also a signature and a sign of authenticity.

But there's also a risk in standardizing on an online identity. Someone could grab that image and use it to pretend to be me. That's a concern and probably one reason why many people choose to change their profile picture/avatar on a regular basis. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I am sure it will and then I don't know what I am going to do about it.

Online identity is a big issue and a big opportunity for entrepreneurs on the web. It seems like Facebook is quickly becoming a major provider of online identity authentication and that's a smart move for them and a good thing for the web as a whole. But there is still a ton of opportunity out there to provide services in and around what Facebook and others are doing. Because online identity is powerful and becoming more intertwined with offline identity every day. My avatar is a good representation of that.

So far, I have found the following

[visit site to read more]

Related posts:

1. Proporta Turns 12, but You Save 15
2. American Airlines Turns On the WiFi Access
3. Get Ready for Loot Ninja's Loot-a-Palooza!

Albeit simple, this app proves to be pretty handy. We really like the ability to see what's getting buzz in the past hour, day, week, or fortnight (2 weeks). Also pretty nifty is the ability to retweet retweets without giving away Twitter names and passwords. By clicking on the Retweet link, you are directed back to the Twitter web page where the original tweet automatically appears, and all you have to do is hit update.

We likey (especially since we seem to be pretty buzz worthy today), but check it out for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments.

More Twitter Resources From Mashable

-FOLLOW FAIL: The top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter
-HOW TO: Quiet the Twitter Noise
-HOW NOT TO: Build Your Twitter Community

Embed RSS Feeds in Web Pages

Go to this page, replace the feed URL with your own feed, use the default color scheme or change it to something else and then click Get Code. You'll get a JavaScript snippet that can be easily placed in the sidebar of your blog.

If you like to embed feeds from multiple sources, merge all of them into one using Yahoo Pipes and then pass the combined feed to the Google Gadget. You can also use RSS widgets like WidgetBox or YourMinis that are done in Flash and not JavaScript.

Embed MP3 music and other Audio

If you like to embed audio files like songs, podcasts or interviews in your web pages, use Yahoo! Media Player - its a free Flash music player that automatically detects all links to MP3 files in the current web page and turns them into a music player. Another alternative is the Google MP3 Player.

To embed other audio formats like 3GP, Midi, Real or Windows Media, it may be a good idea to convert these files into MP3 using Zamzar so that they play on almost any web browser.

Embed Flickr Photos and Slideshows

To embed an individual Flickr photograph in your blog, click the "Share This" link (available next to the photo title) and choose embed it. Flickr requires that the embedded image should link back to Flickr and this built-in embed option automatically takes care of that requirement. (see example)

To embed a Flickr photo slideshow in your web page, open any Slideshow in a new page (see example) and choose "Customize HTML" from the embed option (see example). Here you can specify a custom size for your Flash slideshow so that it fits just right into your web page.

Embed High Quality or HD YouTube Videos

To embed a high resolution version of YouTube clip in your web pages, first make sure that Watch in High Quality or Watch in HD link exists next to the YouTube player as most videos are only available in standard format.

Next copy the YouTube embed code and append &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 (for high quality) or &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 (for 720p High Definition) to the URL value of the movie parameter (both instances).

Embed Picasa Web Albums

When you open a photo album inside Picasa, click the link in the right sidebar that says "Link to this album" and choose "Embed Slideshow". You can use the same approach to embed individual photographs that are available inside Picasa.

Embed Events from Google Calendar

Click the drop-down arrow next to any Google Calendar and select Calendar settings. Open the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper program by clicking the customize button and choose elements that you want to display or hide in the calendar.

Embed Very Large Photographs

To embed really large images in your blog, you may either use Deep Zoom or the Google Maps viewer. These programs break your photographs in small tiles and you can even pan / zoom across these images very similar to the default interface of Google Maps.

Embed Charts and Graphs in Web Pages

My personal favorite is Zoho Sheet any chart created inside Zoho Sheet can be published as an external image without exposing the full spreadsheet. If you are interested in creating charts with low volume of data, use Google Charts.

Embed GIF Animations and Screencasts

GIF animations (see example) are a perfect way to embed short screencasts in web pages as they require no plugins and auto-play inside feed readers. You should upload GIF files to your Flickr account as it preserve all the frames while lot of other image hosting website will drop anything after the first frame.

Embed Word Documents

Upload your document to Scribd and they'll give you the embed code in Flash. Scribd supports both doc and the new Office 2007 docx format in addition to Open Office documents. Even Barack Obama is using Scribd to upload his public documents and upcoming plan.

Embed PowerPoint Presentations

While the popular choice is Slideshare, you should also consider using Issuu (best web application) for presentations that are either large or formatted in the form of magazines or catalogues (see example). The only downside is that Issuu accepts PDFs so you need to convert the presentation before uploading onto Issuu.

Embed Spreadsheet Data

Both Zoho Sheet and Google Docs allow you to publish a range of cells from a spreadsheet into a web page but the embedding process in Zoho is less complicated - select a range and choose "Publish" from the contextual menu to embed that range into your web page.

Embed Adobe PDF Files

To embed PDFs in a web page, you can either use Issuu (for magazine style PDFs) or Scribd for PDFs has either have lot of text or have a top-to-bottom reading layout similar to Word documents.

Embed Flash (SWF) or Flash Video (FLV)

The best option to embed Flash content is via swfobject. It improves the overall user experience by providing alternatives in case Flash is missing and your Flash content also becomes more searchable. This tutorial has all the files and other details to help you get started with SwfObject 2.

Embed LinkedIn Profile

If you wish to display your LinkedIn profile in the sidebar of your blog, try LinkInABox. People (site visitors) can read a summary of your LinkedIn profile without leaving the site.

Embed Google Maps in Web Pages

Embedding a Google Map in your website is now almost as easy as adding an image just open the Static Maps wizard, search for location that you want to embed and specify the dimensions of your map. They'll provide a simple URL that actually points to a static image of that map.

Embed Another Webpage in your Blog

If you like to embed another website into your web page, your best bet is an IFRAME tag also known as an Inline Frame. Just set the SRC value to the address of the web page that you want to embed into your current HTML document. You could try IFRAMEs for inserting live search results from Google into your web page without having to worry about APIs.

Embed Windows Media or QuickTime movies

While it is possible to embed mov or wmv videos in web pages directly using the OBJECT tag, I recommend that you put these videos onto blip.tv and then embed them in web pages as Flash video. That's because your visitors can then play the video without extra plugins and two, they always have the option to download the video in the original format from blip.tv servers.

Embed Other Fonts in Web Pages

Most web pages use universal fonts like Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana since they are installed on most computers and hence your web pages will render correctly. If you want to try something different and render pages in fonts like Microsoft Calibri or Adobe Garamond Pro that are only available on some machines, all you need is sIFR it lets you use almost any font for your web pages using JavaScript + Flash and is perfect for writing newspaper style headlines.

Embed your Lifestream in a Web Page

You have a presence on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, Facebook, Amazon and a dozen other online places. It can get really tough for friends to track you at so many places so what you should do is create an account at FriendFeed, import all the different services that you use and then use the FriendFeed Badge to embed your lifestream activity on your main site.

Related tutorial: How to Embed Video in PowerPoint

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website - Digital Inspiration

Picking five out of the sea of electronic discovery cases isn't as easy as it sounds. Sure, a few, like our Case of the Year will be no-brainers, but others aren't as clear cut. And, they're certainly open to debate. But, in my humble opinion here's THE list, counting down David Letterman style:

5) Mancia v. Mayflower Textile Servs. Co., 2008 WL 4595175 (D. Md. Oct. 15, 2008)

If there ever was an opinion written by a judge to make a larger societal point, Mancia was certainly it. Judge Paul Grimm, who'll appear on this list in another slot as well, has clearly taken the mantle from Judge Scheindlin as the leading electronic discovery jurist. He'd heretofore authored a number of significant opinions in this area, including Hobson and Thompson. Now, in Mancia he used a garden variety discovery dispute, which was typically rife with boilerplate objections and other obstreperous tactics, to highlight the Sedona Conference's Cooperation Proclamation.

The lasting takeaway from the opinion is the notion that [c]ourts repeatedly have noted the need for attorneys to work cooperatively to conduct electronic discovery, and sanctioned lawyers and parties for failing to do so. To support this notion he cites the Sedona Conference Proclamation and the little used FRCP 26(g). This opinion is noteworthy because it gives precedent to bolster the Sedona initiative and should provide a ready citation for all those counsel who aren't getting the level of cooperation they need from the opposition. It remains to be seen if other judges will follow suit, but this could be the beachhead for a more cooperative electronic discovery process in 2009 and beyond.

4) Flagg v. City of Detroit, 252 F.R.D. 346 (E.D. Mich. 2008)

Flagg highlights the growing need to reconcile the electronic discovery landscape, which typically focuses somewhat myopically on email, with the larger informational trends which are now categorized by the use of blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, and text messaging. Flagg was one of the first to determine text messages (e.g., messages exchanged among certain officials and employees of the City of Detroit via city-issued text messaging devices) were discoverable under the standards of FRCP 26(b)(1). The holding further demonstrated the challenges of conducting electronic discovery across information systems that mix personal information with business communications. This type of information commingling will continue to escalate, causing significant long term electronic discovery challenges due to thorny privacy, privilege and policy implications.

3) Rhoads Indus., Inc. v. Bldg. Materials Corp. of Am., 2008 WL 4916026 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 14, 2008)

Rhoads is one of the first cases post Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 502, which recently created a national standard (versus the previous split in jurisdictions) and now states a middle ground for the determining of inadvertent disclosure during electronic discovery. The key provision is (b)(2) which provides protection only if the holder of the privilege or protection took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure. So, Rhoads took that reasonableness question head on in a scenario where the plaintiff Rhoads admittedly (yet inadvertently) produced over eight hundred privileged, electronic documents. The decision is significant because it used the five-factor test stated in Fidelity, but put an undue weighting on the final test which was: whether the overriding interests of justice would be served by relieving the party of its errors. This approach potentially threatens the development of sound case law that will be necessary to help the deployment of FRE 502 into practice because it casts too much uncertainty with its weighting of fairness (a problematically vague notion) in the analysis. It will be interesting to see if/how this approach is subsequently adopted as we enter the New Year.

2) Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., 2008 WL 66932 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2008)

This for many was the case of the year given it's far reaching implications for the legal community. Some have argued that this isn't an e-discovery abuse case per se, but more of an example of discovery abuses that just so happened to be centered around ESI. In either case, the fraud, resulting cover-up, sanctions, ethical issues and privilege discussions made for insightful and thought provoking reading throughout 2008. The lasting takeaway from Qualcomm appears to be the implications of not just committing discovery abuses, but the failure of having a well thought out e-discovery plan that is actively executed/monitored by outside counsel. The resulting tension between outside counsel, inside counsel and the internal IT department may continue to escalate if more cases like this make the headlines in 2009.

1) E-Discovery Case of the Year: Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., 2008 WL 2221841 (D. Md. May 29, 2008)

Judge Grimm's hallmark opinion has had the legal community buzzing over the past several months and the reason appears pretty straight forward. In Victor Stanley Grimm builds on the holdings in Seroquel, O'Keefe and Equity Analytics, to boldly cast doubt on a practice so routine that it's literally shocked the legal community into reevaluation:

([D]etermining whether a particular search methodology, such as keywords, will or will not be effective certainly requires knowledge beyond the ken of a lay person (and a lay lawyer) . . . .

The notion that electronic discovery search is beyond the ability of most attorneys has caused tremors within the litigation support community who had a long history of blindly receiving keywords from counsel, running them and turning back over the results - often blissfully unaware of the extent to which those keyword searches actually located relevant information. Victor Stanley's analysis of the reasonableness of search protocols also has impact on the FRE 502 and therefore cements its place alongside other e-discovery must reads such as Zubulake and Morgan Stanley.

The cases above are my Top 5. What additional cases do you think were important? Please let me know by commenting on the cases you think shaped electronic discovery in 2008 and why.

Gallery: Nokia N97 hands-on part II: the reckoning

Continue reading Nokia N97 hands-on part II: the reckoning

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia N97 hands-on part II: the reckoning originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week we noted that Best Buy had reduced the price of the MSI Wind U100 to $349 and NewEgg did the same for the comparably equipped Acer Aspire One.

Now, Best Buy has cut the price of the Eee PC 900A to $279.99, meaning you can pick up a netbook with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 4GB SSD for under $300. OK, it runs Xandros Linux, but there's no reason you couldn't install Ubuntu.

[Engadget via Liliputing]

Posted from my Acer Aspire One, 4 GB SSD, 8 GB SD, 512 MB RAM, 9-Cell Extended Battery.

Vancouver businessmen Wayne Crookes, once an important federal Green Party of Canada official, sued Jon Newton, the operator of p2p.net, for linking to four articles that Crookes alleged were defamatory.

In Crookes v Wikimedia Foundation Inc., 2008 BCSC 1424, Justice Kelleher ruled that a simple link to a defamatory article this does not amount to republication. The defamation was contained in the article, not in the simple act of pointing to it.

Justice Kelleher's ruling drew a parellel between links and footnotes in printed articles.

Although a hyperlink provides immediate access to material published on another website, this does not amount to republication of the content on the originating site. This is especially so as a reader may or may not follow the hyperlinks provided.

Further, he recognized that link text could support defamation, but that simple linking does not.

It is not my decision that hyperlinking can never make a person liable for the contents of the remote site. For example, if Mr. Newton had written the truth about Wayne Crookes is found here and here is hyperlinked to the specific defamatory words, this might lead to a different conclusion.

Linking is a footnote; it is a signpost pointing to a viewable object. I'm glad to see it supported as part of Canadian free speech. I'm also glad to see that the few websites with policies asserting they can prevent other sites from referencing them through links receive ridicule for their attempts to govern references to them.

As Mr. Newton noted, They're links, the genius of the Net. Allowing the public to refer to publically posted materials with links affirms a rudimentary function of the web.

ShareThis

When you put this scan up on a website, search engines haven't been able to index any of the content of your documents because it didn't recognize the text as text until now.

Google has a new system that scans Acrobat PDFs on the web for words using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Similar to its process for using OCR to detect words in PDFs that have already been OCR processed, the new system will do the same for scanned documents posted online that haven't yet undergone OCR.

If you have scanned PDFs and are interested in having them converted into text, you can upload the images to your website and take advantage of this service.

Simply follow the instructions for how to use Google OCR from the Digital Inspiration website:

Create a folder in your website (say abc.com/pdf) and upload all the PDF images to that folder. Now create a public web page that links to all the PDF files. Wait for the Google bots to spider your stuff.

Once done, type the query site:abc.com/pdf filetype:pdf [into Google] to see the PDF documents as HTML.

Lifehacker recommends using Google's Webmaster Tools to reign in what gets scanned and indexed on your site, although you should assume anything you put online can be found by those looking for it.

This is a really terrific way to get rid of paper clutter in your work space and in your home since you can now see the words in your scanned documents.

On October 28, 2008, Google and the AAP announced a settlement of the litigation. The agreement, stretching to 141 pages, provides that Google pay $125 million, plus establish a new licensing system with publishers. The system will allow any copyright owner to opt-out of the project, will require Google to pay 63% of all revenues generated by users' access to the database to a collection society (the Book Rights Registry) for distribution to copyright owners, and will result in the implementation of a DRM/subscription model for full-text access, but not for search which will be limited to short snippets for in-copyright works.

Who won?

While the copyright owners will receive compensation for the use of their works, the settlement (if approved by the court) will definitely work in Google's favor going forward. First, the high settlement amount will discourage others from entering the field giving Google a virtual monopoly on every book, periodical and other copyrighted work coming within the settlement. Second, it will be more difficult for others to claim fair use if they decided to compete with Google. While there was no determination of whether Google's conduct was or is fair use, a judge in a subsequent case may look at this settlement as evidence that massive digitizing of copyrighted works is not a fair use otherwise, why would Google, which claimed fair use all along, have settled for such a large amount? A decision in this case that Google's use of copyrighted material was a fair use would have opened the door for many competitors who could have piggybacked on the court's decision and built competitive databases protected by fair use. So a lack of a ruling on this pivotal issue plays into Google's hands.

The settlement allows Google to charge for access to these millions of digitized works something that previously would have been difficult for Google to do and still claim fair use. So the settlement establishes a legal business model for Google to monetize this huge and growing database of copyrighted materials with the copyright owners' blessing. Google get 37% of all revenues generated, where previously it was getting nothing. (Much more than iTunes gets for their music downloads.)

The settlement agreement is, in essence, a compulsory license for Google to copy virtually any copyrighted work without having to negotiate individually with copyright owners. And it sets the market rate for any negotiations Google will have in the future with copyright owners who are not part of the settlement. While copyright owners are free to opt-out of the system, it would be foolish for most copyright owners to do so. They essentially have three choices go along with the system, opt-out and forego the revenues they would get under the system, or try to set up their own system to monetized digitized version of their works (which hasn't worked in the music industry and is unlikely to work here). A fourth choice do a deal with another database developer is unlikely, since this settlement sets up huge barriers to entry for any competitive service.

So, despite the price tag, I would say that Google is the big winner in this battle, and that the publishing industry may (no, I predict, WILL) live to regret the day they gave Google exclusive control over the online, worldwide distribution of their works.

McDonough, who proudly boasts he's not even registered to use Twitter, describes Twitter for Cal Law readers as the mutant stepchild of text messages and blogging.

You get the 140-character limit and cr8tv abbreviations of text messaging genetically spliced to the sheer inanity of most personal blogs, meaning that at any moment of the day, any of the dozen or hundreds of Twitter-ers (twits?) you follow will tell you things like, Leaving work to watch Series.' I'm sleepy.' Traffic sux.' I want a ham sandwich.' Puppies!'

From the likes of the responses from lawyers and legal professionals, this is a classic 'Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.'

From the Director of Media Relations at an AmLaw 200 law firm:

I do use Twitter in several ways. 1) listening. I listen or follow the coversations of others around subjects or topics relative to my attorneys' practice areas. Trademarks, Bio-pharma, lawsuits, etc. I then engage in online discussions through Twitter with those having those discussions. 2) I build relationships with key media people and outlets. Many of both are on Twitter. Our firm pays for a media relations service, which is one tool that keeps me up to date on reporters and media opportunities. Twitter is simply another tool that I use alongside the many other tools we have.

From a solo practitioner in the Midwest:

...I don't think... Twitter clogs my inbox with time-wasting clutter. In fact, I use and love Twitter, and it has helped me forge very important connections.

There is no inbox to clog, just a Twitter homepage to check on every now and then.

There are, however, a lot of people posting time-wasting clutter on Twitter. I do not subscribe to those people's feeds.

From a West Coast solo practitioner doing sophisticated IP work:

I was fairly skeptical, but I think it's a good place to be exposed to people and connect with people or ideas that you are drawn to. The majority of people are forward thinking in some respect. There are a ton of journalists, entrepreneurs, and CEOs, etc. I don't know that Quinn Emanuel is going to bag bet the company litigation solely by being on twitter, but lawyers from that firm (and any other firm) will be exposed to people and ideas on twitter and probably make connections. Those connections will likely lead to business down the road.

From an East Coast bankruptcy lawyer:

Absolutely agree with previous comments - Twitter expands your reach, and the people who hear your voice. Cut through the clutter and learn how to use social media effectively, and you will end up with a significantly larger circle of influence.

I've met a number of high-profile fellow consumer lawyers, interact with former and current clients, and have learned a fair amount from the people I follow.

Like any other tool, you need to learn how to use it wisely. Same goes for instant messaging, email, Facebook, blogging, and the like.

Remember when "they" said blogging was a waste of time and energy, and that blogs were useful only for the idle ramblings of teenage angst?

From a Midwest business lawyer:

Geographic search capability and the ability to witness local business development are two of the primary benefits of twitter. I completely disagree with the apparent (and very false) perception that twitter is full of teeny-boppers. Entrepreneurs and growing companies hopped on twitter to share and learn, not to gossip and fritter away time - Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin get it and they represent the more visible end of the spectrum? Twitter = one more tool for the attorney devoted to growing a modern firm through modern tools to help modern clients; to think otherwise is reminiscent of "the internet is a fad" thinking.

...[P]eople on twitter are looking for lawyers who "get them." As I said, many are professionals and business owners. It just makes sense to use twitter if folks of that stripe are your target market (which is the case for me).

Lots of lawyers thought email and websites were counter-productive. And before that most all lawyers agreed that phones would never be used by lawyers in productive ways.

You can practice without Twitter. We've done it for decades. The question is why would an innovative lawyer looking to enhance his or her reputation and grow their business want to practice without Twitter today?

Samsung's NC10 is the only product that provides comparableand even improvedfeatures for a lower price. Its comfortable, well-positioned keyboard, speedy and spacious hard drive, and more than 7 hours of endurance make the $499 Samsung NC10 the most well-rounded 10-inch netbook on the market.

Have a look at the review and see if you think the NC10 is the netbook of your dreams.

The RSS user help page has some good information on how and where to get feeds from guardian.co.uk, but two significant new features are worth noting.

First, every feed across the site includes the full content for each article. We've also embedded related links pointing people to more information on the web site. This way people can get the guardian.co.uk experience in whatever context is most useful to them.

We've applied the new full content feeds across the entire web site, but there are some exceptions:

1) We don't always include cartoons, images and some of the other in-article elements that appear with articles on guardian.co.uk
2) If we have any doubts about our rights to publish the full text of an article in this context, we just show a summary and a link to the main guardian.co.uk site where you can read the full version.

Second, advertising will soon appear within each full content feed item. Ads won't appear in the items which we display only as summaries.

To find the feeds you want simply look for the Webfeed icon on the page containing the content in question. Or you can simply add /rss to the end of the URL you see in the location bar in the browser. Here are some examples.

"Latest" feeds are available by...

Subject. For example, mobile phones: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/mobilephones/rss

Section. For example, film: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/rss; and UK News: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/rss

Blog. For example, the PDA blog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/rss

Type of content. For example,
Audio: http://www.guardian.co.uk/audio/rss
Gallery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/inpictures/rss
Cartoon: http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoon/rss
etc

Contributor name. For example, Charlie Brooker: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker/rss

Tone. For example,
Matchreports: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/matchreports/rss
Comment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/comment/rss
Obituaries: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/obituaries/rss
Blogposts: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/blog/rss
etc

Newspaper publication
The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/rss
The Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/rss

Newspaper section, such as G2, Sport, Main section, etc. For example,
G2 of The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/g2/rss
etc

Podcasts. For example,
Media Talk: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/series/mediatalk/rss
Sounds Jewish: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/series/soundsjewish/rss
etc

You can also combine dimensions by using a + sign:

Music album reviews: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/music+tone/albumreview/rss

Labour party and Climate Change: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/labour+environment/climatechange/rss

Marina Hyde's articles about politics: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marinahyde+politics/politics/rss

Now, we don't expect you to hack the URLs to get to these combination feeds -- but if you are interested there is a little more information here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2008/apr/11/lateeastereggs

Elsewhere - we also offer feeds of
Customised jobs searches: http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/searchjobsrss?keyword=designer
Jobs by sector, area: http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/searchjobs/?keyword=designer&industry=101&location=549

We also offer some feeds presented as an "ordered list" of items. For example,
Top stories, ordered by editorial priority: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rss
Most viewed across guardian.co.uk, ordered by most popular first: http://www.guardian.co.uk/mostviewed/rss
...and by section: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mostviewed/rss
Most clipped overall: http://www.guardian.co.uk/mostclipped/rss
Most clipped by section: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/mostclipped/rss

For those of you looking at source code, you will notice we include Dublin core metadata on:

Contributor (author name)
Page type (e.g. audio, video, article, image gallery cartoon etc)
Keywords for the content item, using the RSS 2.0 categories tag

Hopefully, you'll find this more portable access to The Guardian useful. As always, we're wide open to suggestions.

Of course, it is a compromise for those who expect it to replace a desktop PC or a high-end notebook. Performance-intensive applications like Photoshop will be painful; recent video games will be pathetic, should they even run at all.

Day-to-day work, however, ran smoothly. Multiple browser tabs with a handful of idle apps and iTunes chugging away didn't become a trudge. Its combination of a 1.6 GHz Atom CPU and a gig of RAM built up enough steam to handle the basics.

Other features include up to 16GB of flash storage, 3 USB ports, 100Mbit Ethernet, 802.11g and an 8.9" display set to 1024x600 pixels. It's about 10 inches long and 7 wide.

I've yet to use the MSI Wind, which I'm quite certain is the equal of this machine. But it's also a little larger, at least in the U.S., and it, like Asus' mainstays, lack something else the Dell has: style. It's come a long way from the dull design that used to characterize its output. While the Mini 9 is no better (or prettier) than the Mini-Note, HP's extras, like an ExpressCard slot and 802.11n, make it much more expensive. The Dell can be had for under $350, though you shouldn't get any computer with less than 1GB of RAM.

Moreover, the Mini-Note comes with Suse or Vista, both less appetizing than Dell's choice of Ubuntu or XP.

Hacking possibilities also abound with the Inspiron Mini 9. Getting OSX on it is reportedly not difficult, and it has an empty slot for a 3G Wireless adapter. Though it is disabled, it's easy to snap in a generic Novatel WWAN card and get your show on the road. Vodafone plans to offer Mini nines with cards (and 2-year service contracts) pre-installed.

Personally, I'd like it to be even smaller. Next to an EeePC900, which has the same-size screen and a dinkier keyboard, its swooping curves seem rather bulbous.On the other hand, it feels sturdier and somewhat better-made as a result.

One caveat is the keyboard layout: it doesn't have dedicated function keys, and the apostrophe/quote key is in an odd spot.

Later today, this machine gets mailed off, and I'm sad to see it go. Bought as a gift for my nephew and reviewed en passant, it almost stayed right where I wanted it: in my possession.

$429 as reviewed Mini Inspiron 9 [Dell]

As Nilay Patel aptly puts it, "yep, looks like a shoe."

2010 Prius Photos posted on PriusChat First! Confirmed real! [Prius Chat via Engadget]

Powell Peralta, Santa Cruz, etc.

Ah the 80s. The graphics of V. Courtlandt Johnson and Jim Phillips are iconic. Menacing, horrid, grimey. Punk Rock and Metal. I would spend endless hours drawing skeletons and dragons in my school notebooks. During this time, all graphics were influenced by this style. However, as the 80's came to a close that would change.

World Industries

The graphics for World Industries changed the industry. They were different than the usual skulls and gore that were popular at the time. Artists Marc McKee and Sean Cliver introduced an element of wit and pop-culture commentary that would take the entire industry in a different direction. World Industries gave birth to Big Brother magazine which in turn gave birth to Jackass.

Mark Gonzales and Neil Blender

I loved it when skaters did their own board graphics. I should have also included Ed Templeton in the presentation too. These guys weren't just great skaters but also incredible visual artists in their own right.

Chocolate

Chocolate is a company that broke away from World Industries. Their graphics continue to innovate. Artists like Evan Hecox take seemingly mundane images like guitars and soda bottles and elevate them to art by putting them on skateboards.

More

Obviously this is all just scratching the surface. There is so much more to explore with skate graphics and skate culture. Here's my presentation below. I'd love to hear your stories about skateboarding and how skate culture has influenced you.

Sponsor

Dynamic, Social Content

With the new SmartSpace service from GoDaddy, anyone can create a personal web site which aggregates your activity from across the social web, combine that with other sources of news and information, and then create a personalized start page containing everything of interest to them. The service can also be used as a blogging platform with social elements like chat already built in. The idea is that you can use the SmartSpace platform to create the kind of site that's right for you, whether that's a social network of sorts, a traditional web site with social elements, a place to host your podcasts, or whatever else you want.

SmartSpace is designed to be easy to use, even for non-technical users. With a click of a button, you can grab content from sites like flickr, YouTube, Google News, Facebook, MySpace, or any other web site that offers an RSS feed.

You can even customize this content to your own personal preferences. For example, if you only want to see Flickr photos of lolcats, you can just type in "lolcat" in the tag field provided. Alternatively, you could select the RSS feed of a particular person's photos.

In addition to this dynamic content form across the social web, GoDaddy also makes available various pre-selected news feeds which you can add if desired. This content is categorized by subject, and is similar to the types of selections that many of today's personalized homepages offer.

Chat & Email

The Chat application lets you have online text conversations right on the site. With the included administrative controls, you can launch a room, invite users, ban users, and participate in both public and private chat sessions. Again, there's nothing technical involved in adding this to your page - the app is already set up and ready to use. All you have to do is make a few choices about how it's displayed and whether it's loaded by default when you log in.

Also, because SocialSpace users have purchased a domain name via GoDaddy, there's an option to set up email addresses using that name. The interface for doing so is much easier to manage than GoDaddy's usual UI for creating email addresses (an ugly and geeky interface). Here, you're basically able to push a button and set up multiple email addresses associated with your domain. The inboxes for these can then be added as widgets to your homepage.

Photo Albums

If you don't keep your images online with a web service like Flickr, you also have the option to make your SmartSpace an online photo album using the SmartSpace photo application. With this, you can upload photos from your computer and then share those photos both publicly and privately in albums that are added to your page.

Web Site and Blogs

For text-based content, you can choose to either add a web site or blog to your homepage. With these options, you can select from a number of pre-built templates to configure the site. Although not as robust a platform as WordPress, the blog will probably work fine for casual users who want to take advantage of the other elements of the SmartSpace service.

Just Another Personalized Homepage Or A New Type Of Social Network?

SocialSpace could be linked to some patent filings the company filed earlier this year which describe a web portal that functions as a social network aggregator. According to those filings, the aggregation could be done using login systems like OpenID. Although there's no mention of OpenID integration in the SmartSpace support documents yet, we hope that integration is something they plan to add in the future.

Still, even without OpenID, what GoDaddy has launched today is a viable competitor to the other personalized homepages out there like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, etc. But GoDaddy's SocialSpace goes beyond what those sites offer in a number of ways. Although widgetized content like photos and RSS feeds can be added to nearly any start page today, GoDaddy actually lets you own a domain name, set up a blog or website and then easily, instantly turn it into a personalized social network that aggregates content from the social web and includes chat functionality for instant interactions with your friends.

Will SocialSpace kill MySpace and Facebook? That's highly doubtful, but it could be a nice aggregator for those looking to establish a web presence with minimal work. And because it's from GoDaddy, a household name thanks to their high profile TV commercials and ad campaigns, this move also represents what may be the final leap where "social media" fully crosses over to the mainstream use and acceptance.

More Info

Prices for SmartSpace start at $4.99/month for 2 months. From there, the prices are as follows: 12 mo: $4.74/month, 24 mo: $4.49/month, or 36 mo: $4.24/month. You can watch a short introductory video here. Discuss

Copyrights

* In the Harry Potter fair use case, the court declared that the Lexicon encyclopedia isn't fair use.

* The judge declared a mistrial in the Jammie Thomas case.

* Designer Skin v. S&L Vitamins has reached its denouement. Previous blog coverage of the case (1, 2). In the prior ruling, the judge denied the plaintiff damages for the copyright infringement. In the final ruling, the court enjoins cutting and pasting product shots but allows the defendant to recreate the product shots. Ronald Coleman has more here and here (noting that the court says that, per MercExchange, an injunction does not automatically follow from a finding of copyright infringement).

* Wired's 5 year retrospective on the RIAA's litigation campaign against file sharing.

Social Networking Sites, Blogs and Online Publishing

* J.S. ex rel. Snyder v. Blue Mountain School Dist., 2008 WL 4279517 (M.D. Pa. Sept. 11, 2008). Upholding student discipline for creating a fake MySpace page of principal. The school initially based the discipline on the student infringing copyright (by cutting and pasting the principal's photo) but this aspect of the case wasn't mentioned at all in the court's reasoning.

* O.Z. v. Board of Trustees of Long Beach Unified School Dist., 2008 WL 4396895 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 9, 2008). Two seventh graders make a video about killing their teacher, described as:

The slide show is essentially a dramatization of the murder of Mrs. Rosenlof. The first slide photo states, "Mrs. Rosenlof dies." Throughout the slide show there are photos of Plaintiff dressed up in a costume, depicting a woman meant to resemble Mrs. Rosenlof. There is red text on each slide photo that describes the scene. One slide says, "Jelly Donut's knife: haha fat bastard. here i come!" In this same photo, the viewer can see a butcher knife lunging at Mrs. Rosenlof's character from the camera's point of view. The butcher knife is then laid on the fallen victim while the text reads, "hehehe. i'm a shank yoooooooooo!" At the end of the slide show, it reads, "your [sic] dead, BITCH! :D".

I think they thought it was funny, but no one else did. One of them posted the video to YouTube. It's unclear what happens to the poster, but the co-content creator was suspended and forced to transfer to another school for her eighth grade. In this case, her TRO request is denied, even if she didn't intend the video to be publicly distributed and even if the video was not a "true threat."

* Spanierman v. Hughes, 2008 WL 4224483 (D. Conn. Sept 16, 2008). Teacher who was fired for inappropriate MySpace communications with students can't sue the school.

* An encouraging update on the Lori Drew prosecution.

* Bill McGeveran on Facebook Beacon and legal liability.

* Good NYT article on the sociology of Facebook and Twitter.

* Sam Bayard on an interesting but confusing ruling from Montana on its shield law applied to anonymous online posters.

* Verdana Partners v. Giles. Online newspaper wins anti-SLAPP claim.

* Jardin v. Datallegro, Inc., 2008 WL 4104473 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 3, 2008). A litigant's taking down a blog post and its comments is not destruction of evidence.

* Nemet Chevrolet has appealed its 230 loss. Previous blog coverage.

* Do Facebook's anti-spam policies overregulate Facebook's power users?

But please no flashing text (i.e. blinking text).

WordPress themes normally apply the same style to all of the widget titles within your sidebars.

With some additional entries to your theme's style sheet, you can give each widget title its own unique appearance, transforming the (boring) version above to:

How do you add entries to your theme's style sheet?

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3 & 4.

When adding entries to your theme's style sheet, it is best to add them after the existing content.

The style sheet entries used to achieve the above are:

.widget_recent_entries .widgettitle
{
color: blue !important;
font-size: 1.7em !important;
}

.widget_categories .widgettitle
{
color: white !important;
background-color: blue !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
padding: 10px !important;
}

.widget_pages .widgettitle
{
border-bottom: 2px solid black !important;
}

.widget_calendar .widgettitle
{
font-variant: small-caps !important;
}

So how does this work.

When a widget is rendered to HTML, it is done so using the following format:

<li id="widget-id" class="widget widget-specific-style">
<h2 class="widgettitle">Widget Title Text</h2>
...
</li>

Each widget has its own unique ID and class specific style, as well as the generic widget' class.

If we look at the recent posts widget, we see:

<li id="recent-posts" class="widget widget_recent_entries">
<h2 class="widgettitle">Recent Posts</h2>
...
</li>

So we can style any widgettitle' classed item which follows a widget_recent_entries' classed item as is our want.

So to achieve our pimped version, we added the following:

.widget_recent_entries .widgettitle
{
color: blue !important;
font-size: 1.7em !important;
}

The period character (.) before the names .widget_recent_entries' and widgettitle' is critical since this is used to denote a class name.

You will note the use of !important which forces that specific setting to be used. If this was not used, then the entry may be overridden due to the rules used to determine the precedence of style sheet entries.

Now consider the categories widget, we see:

<li id="categories-227973261" class="widget widget_categories">
<h2 class="widgettitle">Categories</h2>
...
</li>

So to pimp the categories title we add the following:

.widget_categories .widgettitle
{
color: white !important;
background-color: blue !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
padding: 10px !important;
}

Now the categories HTML is slightly different to the recent posts widget in that the ID is qualified by a number, 227973261 in this case. The recent posts widget can only be used the once in your sidebars, whereas the categories can be used multiple times, and the ID, which is automatically generated by WordPress, uniquely identifies that instance of the widget.

Using the class name within the style sheet will cause all widgets with the same class to be affected. So if we added another Categories widget to the sidebar, its title will be styled the same.

How can you pimp the category titles differently? I'm glad you asked.

If we look at the page source we will see that the categories widgets are rendered as:

<li id="categories-227973261" class="widget widget_categories">
<h2 class="widgettitle">Categories</h2>
...
</li>

<li id="categories-234397751" class="widget widget_categories">
<h2 class="widgettitle">Another Categories</h2>
...
</li>

We target individual category widget instances by using the widget ID instead of its class, so the style sheet entries become:

#categories-227973261 .widgettitle
{
color: white !important;
background-color: blue !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
padding: 10px !important;
}

#categories-234397751 .widgettitle
{
color: white !important;
background-color: red !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
padding: 10px !important;
}

The hash character (#) is used to denote an ID of an item within the page. So, we are styling any item which has a class of widgettitle' which follows any item with an ID of categories-227973261 or categories-234397751.

So now our sidebar looks like this:

Whilst the widget appears within your sidebar, the ID will not change. However, if the widget is deleted and then recreated, the ID will change. So any existing ID based style sheet entries will no longer have any affect.

I would save the original theme's style sheet and also record any changes you make to this file. This will allow you to easily identify what changes you have made and why, so if your theme is updated, which will replace the contents of the style sheet within the theme, you can easily remake your required changes.

Have fun pimping your widget titles!

This post was inspired by a comment posted on our Simple Image Link Plugin page. The original comment is here and my response here.

Let me tell you a story

Lid does a number of things around the Web, and sometimes I even find it hard to keep up. So I have a Google alert on her, so I can see what she is doing and what people are saying about her. That's my excuse anyways.

Last Friday I got an alert from Google with 3 references:

The references are:

1. Lid's ReadWriteWeb post about Social Media and who is doing it well from the Social Media Marketing Summit in San Francisco.
2. A post by Laurena about delicious and tagging which discusses and references Lid's article -just what the Web is intended for.
3. A post by Oggi' which looks remarkable like Lid's - it starts with the same 20 words - and even references her by name.

So who or what is Oggi's blog? Here is a screen shot.

Here is a breakdown of Oggi's blog:

1. 3 separate groups of Google advertising - two text based, and the third image based.
2. The title of the post which is the same as Lid's.
3. The content of the post is the same initial 20 words of Lid's post, then followed by Original post by Lidija Davis with Lid's name linked to her post on ReadWriteWeb.

Now the link on Lid's post is interesting in that it is not a direct link to the post on ReadWriteWeb, but rather an indirect link via Google's FeedBurner service. Here is the link:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/nS1e6RgCjbw/social_media_for_business_who_is_doing_it.php

So what about the other posts on this blog? Surprise, surprise, they all reference other people's posts in exactly the same way. The same title is used, same first 20 words, and a link to the original post via FeedBurner.

Just to prove to myself that Google is still in fact indexing Oggi's blog, I did a site search for Lidija, and found two previous ReadWriteWeb posts.

So what is the point of Oggi's blog?

To hi-hack anyone who is searching for the title of noteworthy posts, so that if they click on the links, they will invoke 3 separate Google blocks of ads, with the user clicking through to the original article.

Now, who wins out of this?

1. Oggi - for the princely sum of a few fractions of a cent.
2. Google - for recording and charging the lucky advertisers for appearing on Oggi's blog - this too would be minimal; however, it is still money on the bottom line.

The individual amount of money changing hands is minimal; however, multiply this by the number of hapless visitors and it could get into the hundreds for Oggi, and multiply this by the number of Oggi clones out there and now you are getting into the thousands for Google. I must state that I have absolutely no clue as to the actual numbers, but I think I have underestimated both sets of numbers here.

So who loses?

1. The users of the Web for being distracted by useless profiteering
2. The advertiser.
3. The Web in general for being littered with content which has absolutely zero value.

So to recap:

1. I was sent an e-mail by Google alerting me to the existence of Oggi's blog, of which I was blissfully ignorant until then.
2. I visit Oggi's blog and find that I am reading a post of zero value to me, has zero content, well actually 29 words copied from elsewhere, and which is surrounded by 3 block's of Google advertisements.
3. The link to the original post is via Google's FeedBurner service.

The only thing which is not Google's is the blogging software, which is WordPress in this case. Otherwise, we would have had a clean sweep. Digressing a bit, we had a bit of fun last April fool's with this post on Google acquiring WordPress (remember this is not serious).

Now what Oggi is doing is cookie cutter stuff, so I can't see how Google cannot detect that the intent is none other than injecting a post in between the user and what they actually want to view and benefiting courtesy of Google ads.

But then the conspiracy person within me has a theory, and we all have one, just the degree varies (checkout ReadWriteWeb's very own post on Chrome)

Why aren't Google proactively purging such sites from their index, and thus alerts?

If they did then they loose money since ads are not being triggered.

I certainly hope this is not the case. I would expect that purging 100% of such sites from the index is actually impossible, but I think that low hanging fruit such as Oggi are simple enough for a group of 2-3 Googlers to solve - a few, ok, many, 20% days perhaps.

It maybe a long bow, but the theoretical dilemma is interesting, and no doubt finer minds than mine have discussed this to death.

I googled Google to see if you can report such blogs so this site is removed from the index, but the only thing I could find on the first page of the results, I am not a patient searcher, was a reference to reporting copyright infringements which requires me to mail in a letter (I kid you not).

I was expecting to find a report abuse' link one click away from the Google's home page, in About Google specifically.

With search being an integral part of everyone's online life now, and that given that googled' is now a verb, it plays a critical component of the Web, in that it potentially can control the pages which are viewed by users, thereby controlling the ads which are displayed, thereby controlling the potential revenue received by Google.

Google currently receives a lot of freedom in what they do, which they have rightly earned, but how can we be sure that this is not abused in the future?

How can we, the citizens of the Web, be assured that there is no conflict of interest between the search/index side of the business and the advertising side within Google?

Is there a common theme here? Checkout Michael Gray's view on Google's book search.

</rant>

In AdSense ads Google serves to websites, they don't always disclaim the ads as such; arguably, this job could be left to webmasters (though they sometimes do show the disclosure, which causes redundancy for those webmasters adding their own disclosure). However, even Google at their own site doesn't always add a disclosure, apparently. Take a look at the bottom of this Book Search page: it shows a blue box with text like Master Hotel Management - Masters Degree to improve your career in hotel management. - www.Ritz.edu. Hovering over the link shows ...google.com/pagead... in the URL, so I suppose it's an ad.

[Thanks Ionut!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Unmarked Google Ads | Comments]

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