Recently in English Category
sevenseven
The 12th b'ak'tun of the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar will end. The New York Times has a lengthy article of what that might bring to the world: The Final Days. [via Cynx]
Okay, I'm on Pownce. I don't get it. Obviously the hoi polloi will flock to it - twitter is getting a lot less attention these days. Now I just have to mention the iPhone and maybe Facebook - now I have the two buzzwords of the week in one post.
Much of what we've been doing lately
Originally uploaded by heather.
I feel sorry for those Flickr people in the front line. [via Cem]
We had to wait long, but the explanation is there:
one of those International-Business-School-Greaseballs someone at Yahoo! Germany to step out and take the heat.
The decision to change the Flickr experience in Germany was never about censorship - it was made to try to ensure that Yahoo! Germany was in compliance with local legal restrictions. In fact, we're all getting really uncomfortable that the words "flickr" and "censorship" are being jammed together with increasing frequency because that is _so far_ from the direction we're trying to move in. The central problem is that Germany has much more stringent age verification laws than its neighboring countries and specifies much harsher penalties, including jail time, for those with direct responsibility (in our case, it would be our colleagues in the German offices and we're not willing to make a call that has that kind of consequence for them). [...]Sadly in confirms my initial thoughts about the reason which I voiced over at Robert Basic's blog and in a way at Cem Basman's blog: Someone at Yahoo! Germany, potentially someone who couldn't care less about Flickr, suddenly found himself in the position where his head would roll when there is trouble. And to be rather safe than sorry, they used the sub-par filtering system to ensure a certain level of safety against this possibility. And while all this is happening, many people are not too happy about the decision and continue their protest in very artistic ways. And I'm still waiting for
So, after one day of this Flickr madness, what did happen all day?
Steward Butterfield of Flickr answered. And didn't say much. But he said enough - that they can't discuss the whole thing in public at the moment. It's not enough for the mob, even though the team is working very late at night to resolve the issue. It's quite obvious to me what is happening there - some lawyer at Yahoo Germany doesn't have a lot of balls and decided that safe is better than sorry. This is, by the way, a thinking that is spreading too much and too fast in the German public, but that's a different topic altogether. And now I do feel quite bad for Flickr staff - they are trapped between a rock (the Yahoo lawyers) and a hard place. (the enraged Flickr users)
Talking about enraged users - the blogs are buzzing with anti-Flickr posts and requests for alternative photo hosting companies.
How about me? Well. I'm still waiting for whatever end will come out of this. I'm very disappointed by Flickr - they used to be my "feel good" place on the internet. Flickr gave me my interest in photography, connected me to many great people from all over the world and gave me an "online home." And it would be a big step and a big loss to leave all this behind. The talent, the vibrant community, the wonderful and amazing pictures there. I have big doubts indeed that I could part with that. This personal angle is even stronger in some. [last link via alltagskakophonie]
And others? Sadly I have to say that certain individuals in the help forum and certain groups act very retarded - so much in fact, that I actually think that maybe it is a good idea to censor them...
I have a feeling that today, 13th of June 2007 will be a day that the officials at Flickr won't forget that easily. The photo-sharing site, beloved by many, thought they had hit the jackpot by rolling out versions of their page in eight other languages besides the original English.
The main problem though are not the language, even though the translations are a bit, well, special. The main problems are the two new "features" they introduced along with the translation.
The first thing is about payment - they nixed out Paypal support, the only way people without a credit card are able to buy things from abroad online. That is a major mistake since they are basically turning away people who want to give them money.
The main problem though is something that some people refer to as The Big Flickr Censorship. Flickr decided to take away the right to choose which kind of content user want to see by disabling the SafeSearch filter settings from people in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong and Korea. Until now the Flickr staff still did not quite explain why, so the whole thing is getting quite ugly rather fast.
Oh, what happened to my good old feel-good-Flickr?
