Posts by Steven Hodson

Braindead TechCast EP45: It’s Techmeme Friday and is there nothing to report on except Apple?

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Posted 1131 days ago

Yes it is that time of the week again where Sean and I take a look at the headlines on Techmeme at the time when we hit the record button. Granted we don’t do a scripted show but on Fridays it is even more off the cuff than usual.

The really sad part about tonight that out of all of the stories on the front page of Techmeme at the time of recording the majority of headlines had something or other to do with Apple. This makes for a lopsided show because just how many times can you make a smart remark about Apple in 20 minutes. Well you get to find out in tonight’s show.

Some of the headlines we take shots at.

Dell’s 7-inch and 10-inch Streak tablets leaked! – Engadget
Apple in advanced discussions to adopt AMD chips – AppleInsider
Steve Jobs Says Apple Made a Mistake in Rejecting Pulitzer Winner’s App – Media Decoder
Search with fewer keystrokes and better spelling – Official Google Blog
Tech Sector in Hiring Drive – Wall Street Journal
Apple Introduces us to a New iTunes “Concert Ticket +” System – Patently Apple
Calif. cities dominate Apple’s top 10 markets – The Social
Security Experts ‘Shocked’ by Palm’s WebOS Vulnerabilities – Tech Check

Enjoy the show

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Canadian bloggers expect to pay CBC for use of media

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Posted 1131 days ago

For those outside of our borders unfamiliar with our broadcasting companies the CBC is better known as the Canadian Broadcasting Company and is funded by the Canadian government via our tax dollars. So when I read the other day that they had signed on with iCopyright, an American licensing agency, I just shook my head in amazement.

This came out in a podcast by TVOntario’s Jesse Brown and the head spokesman for the CBC to try and find out why a publicly funded broadcaster was now expecting; with the help of iCopyright, to collect monthly fees from any Canadian business or blogger who runs excerpts of CBC media on their blog. Not only that but the broadcaster is requiring anyone who wants to noncommercially use the pubic’s media for discussions, archiving, criticism, etc to get written permission first.

So not only does the CBC exists because of our tax dollars they now what use to pay for the ability to use what is technically our media in what would obviously fall under fair use. That is if we have asked for permission to do so first even though they have no problem letting our media be available on YouTube for free.

One other interesting tidbit – iCopyright also has a bounty in place that will pay out up to $1,000,000.00 to Canadians who are willing to rat out other Canadians who are using our publicly funded media without their permission.

Maybe someone needs to remind the CBC what publicly funded means.

Fans are worth $3.60 each. That Much?

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Posted 1131 days ago

Did you realize that your following or friending someone, or some company, had a monetary value?

Well, thanks to fellow blogger Adam Singer I found out that yes indeed there is a price sticker on my forehead, at least according to some company called Virtue (with a name like that you gotta know this isn’t going to end well). It seems that after studying a combined 41 million fans from their client’s pages (there are 400 million accounts on Facebook – I’ll let you figure out the statistical value of their sample base) the people at Virtue have concluded that a fan is worth $3.60.

All this “based on impressions generated in Facebook’s news feed” eh. Wow. Incredible.

The only problem is – as Adam pointed out – this is for the most part, all bullshit. Virtue said that it arrived at this dollar figure based on a $5 CPM that they say is worth $300,000 in media value if a brand has a million followers.

A couple of points that Adam makes regarding these figures is worth mentioning

This company is lumping together their clients who are from multiple verticals – something that makes this number muddied even if you were going to take it seriously (you shouldn’t).

Impressions by themselves from the news feed – or from the web in general mean absolutely nothing to a company’s revenue (unless the company is ad supported).

Tagging a fan to impression value makes absolutely no sense.

They claim a $5 CPM without any rationale for that number.

The other big point is that these numbers are totally self-serving as Virtue’s main business is selling Social Media management solutions, but of course because it’s all about Social Media no one would have any reason to skew or glorify questionable numbers now would they.

If you ever wanted a clue though as to how Social Media is all about marketing; regardless of all the it’s about the conversation you hear pouring out of these people, it is bullshit studies like this that put a price sticker on us in order to sell products.

Braindead TechCast EP44: Drizzle is a viable defense for murder in Vancouver

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Posted 1132 days ago

There was a worrying moment when Sean and I thought we might have a repeat of Tuesday’s non-show thanks to Talkshoe but we persevered and managed to get everything behaving nicely. As result we got to talk about a few things tonight starting with how even a simple email from Steve Jobs is all of a sudden a newsworthy event that everyone and their brother has to read the tea leaves over.

The conversation then turned to Twitter once again and how the announcement of them looking at having their own URL shortening service instead of bequeathing the ‘official’ title to Bit.ly. From there we talked a little about the whole Annotation thing that has most of the developers pretty excited.

The show ended off with us shaking our heads over the latest wishlist from the RIAA and MPAA and how there seems to be absolutely no real interest from the tech blogosphere over this or ACTA.

Posts referred to in the show

Canadian wireless carrier claims next-gen iPhone to arrive in June – AppleInsider
Steve Jobs Replies To Email: “Are You Nuts?” - MacStories
ACTA: The acronym hardly anyone knows yet should be scared to death of – The Inquisitr
RIAA & MPAA wishlist to screw the consumer – The Inquisitr

Enjoy the show

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Kids say the cutest things, or how school is a perquisite to life

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1132 days ago

I went to a school like this when I was 10

Ah the innocence of youth isn’t it wonderful.

One of the great things about being a blogger is that I get the chance to reader some great thoughts from a younger generation that is growing up with technology that my generation has had to grow into. It might not like there is a difference but there is as the technology that was always changing around us is second nature to a generation that has grown up in a world where there has always been the Web and things like smartphones of laptops.

I mention this because in recent months thanks to Louis Gray I’ve connected with two of those young voices that are already making a place for themselves on the Web. It was a post the other day by one of those youngsters, Holden Page, that got me to smiling as he recounted why his generation doesn’t like school. His reasons are good but they are no different that the reasons why kids of my generation didn’t like school either. It is only with age and experience I think that one begins to see shy schooling is important – even though I will admit that it needs a serious overhaul.

Braindead TechCast EP43: Twitter owns the day & no we don’t have a Steven Segal fixation

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Posted 1133 days ago

Wow, we finally got to do a show, even if it is getting posted a little late but like yesterday Talkshoe decided it wanted to be a royal pain in the ass but I was finally able to get in and do what I need to make tonight’s show already for your listening pleasure.

Much of tonight’s show is taken up by the obvious discussion that comes out of a day that was all about Twitter and their Chirp developer conference. Even though there were more than a fair share of buzzword and kumbaya there was a lot really interesting information that will take some time to digest.

The show ends up with Sean being able to get a bit of a rant off his chest that had to do with Conan and the Steamy awards.

Oh, and the Segal reference .. well you’ll just have to listen to the show to find out what the hell that is all about.

Posts referenced in the show

When Your Web Service Lets You Down – Sean P. Aune
Twitter Announces Live Social Graph Streams – Jesse Stay
Twitter Adds New Terms of Service to Its Developer Platform – Jesse Stay
Twitter’s @anywhere and Why it May Be Too Techie for Their Audience – Jesse Stay

(as you can tell Jesse had some of the best posts on the event that weren’t centered just around the hype and the numbers – good job Jesse)

Enjoy the show

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Cory Doctorow admits to being conned

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Posted 1133 days ago

The other day Cory Doctorow posted a story on Boing Boing about soyburgers being laced with neurotoxins – specifically hexane a neurotoxic byproduct of gas refining. Well it turns out that he was spoofed

Looks like I got spoofed: the study in this morning’s post about neurotoxins in soyburgers turns out to have been funded by an anti-vegetarian, pro-meat lobbying group, the Weston A Price Foundation. These are also the folks who say lard is good for you. Maybe the science is good, maybe it isn’t (read the comments for good debate on it), but I sure feel a lot more suspicious about it than I did this morning. (Thanks, Xeni!)

Now I may not always agree with what Cory writes, besides his science fiction, but it is really good to see a blogger of his stature willing to admit when he was wrong about something they have written. My respect for the man has gone up a notch.

Implementing @anywhere is pretty damn simple

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1133 days ago

As most anyone in the tech world knows today was a pretty big day with Twitter making some pretty big announcement of which was the immediate availability of their @anywhere platform for bloggers to implement on their blogs.

For those that don’t know what the @anywhere platform is a quick search on Google will get you all the answers you need but the short answer is this from the @Anywhere developer page

Twitter @Anywhere is an easy to deploy solution for bringing the Twitter communication platform to your own site. Add follow buttons, hovercards, linkify @usernames, and build deeper integrations with “Connect to Twitter.” @Anywhere promotes a more engaged user base for your site.

Now I got to admit I was a little reluctant to try ind implement it as I was expecting some sort of long drawn out process getting the required API key and to be honest the sign up page to get one was a little confusing. Then I came across a post someone I was subscribed to had shared in GReader that made the process a snap to understand.

So a big thanks to Nick O’Neill at SocialTimes for putting together a video walk through of what you need to do to get the API key and how to insert the required javascript code into your theme. It took me literally 5 minutes, or less, to get installed on this site.

At this point I just have the linkify users and hovercards options installed which you can see by hovering over my @stevenhodson Twitter user name. I will be taking a look at the other options that @anywhere provides at some point and will let you know how it goes.