Only-Dreemin, Fine Art Thieves

from Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection by Thomas Hawk

stealing IS a crime, right?, originally uploaded by _rebekka.

Well mark this down as another fine art gallery that thought that they could rip someone's photos off just because they put their photos on Flickr. Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira (or more simply _rebekka as she is more popularly known on flickr) is one of flickr's most popular photographers and a friend of mine. In addition to doing interesting and provocative self portraiture work she also does some amazing Icelandic landscapes. But that's not why she's getting some attention this morning. She's getting attention this morning because she's posted the above composite to her flickrstream and written a post about how she's been ripped off by Only-Dreemin, a London based print-selling company. They also have an eBay store here. Rebekka says that this store basically ripped her photos, sold them for thousands of dollars and now won't compensate her for what they stole from her. In my case, a friend of mine came across their store on ebay and recognized one of my prints. (this was way back in january i think) I looked into the matter and discovered 7 more of my photos being sold there. In the case of pictures 1, 2, 6 and 7, the image had been divided up into 3 vertical panels. ( Something i would never DREAM of doing myself. ) Furthermore, the images had been given new and exciting titles, like "Seraque II" and "Attica", "Dawn expander II" and " Joga" (barf). I spent a good many days researching, going back thru their customer feedback, and was able to track back the sales of at LEAST 60 prints made from my images. These prints sold for a total sum of 2450 british pounds (around 4840 US$ ) What makes this worse is that Rebekka is an art student and single mom living in Iceland and hardly has the money to pursue this company through the legal channels. She has tried and hired an attorney but is now left stuck with an attorney bill after this company still won't pay her for her work that they stole. At least a letter from the attorney was able to get her images (which are all right's reserved) off of Only-Dreemin's website. This isn't right. Stealing is not right. To take someone's photographs and then print them up and steal them sucks. It's a violation. A while back someone tipped me off that a guy out of Israel was selling prints of my work as the "exclusive" provider of Thomas Hauk (he misspelled my last name) prints on the internet. I emailed the guy and he took the photos down. You wonder for all the people that are getting caught ripping photos off of Flickr, how many are not getting caught. Only-Dreemin deserves to learn the lesson that stealing is not right. I'm sorry this happened to you Rebekka and hope that this company in the end makes things right with you financially and publicly apologizes for the way that they operate their business.

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Glimpse

from EVERYTHING 2.0 by Bob

Buy things that celebs wear

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Contextual In-Video Advertising: ScanScout

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Video advertising is a final frontier in the monetization of Web 2.0. Adbrite was first to market with Adbrite In-Video. Last week Google started testing in-video text ads on YouTube.

Cambridge, MA based ScanScout joins the fray. Founded 2 years ago, ScanScout launched recently and has followed up with an announcement of $7million Series A funding in a round led by General Catalyst Partners.

At first look, ScanScout's video advertising product looks identical to what Google is testing with YouTube. Text ads are overlaid on the video and open video-on-video advertisements or external sites.

We don't know a lot about the tech behind Google's offering. I noted in my post covering the subject last week that the sample YouTube advertisements lacked context. ScanScout on the other hand has no question mark on the issue.

ScanScout technology scans each video and determines content, with ads delivered contextually to match each scene. Think of it as an Adsense for video because it's exactly how it works, but on scenes as opposed to pages.

I'm yet to be convinced that text based overlays are the future of online video advertising. ScanScout argues that pre-roll and post-roll are regarded as dead by many because they "leverage an old paradigm that essentially ignores the consumer", and yet this optional form of advertising can easily be ignored itself.

If in-video text advertising is indeed the future of online video advertising, contextual delivery is essential and ScanScout provides a product that delivers exactly that.

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Shhhh! A Secret Google Search URL That Removes Adsense Ads

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

Google makes most of their money from AdSense ads.

While it is technically possible to block Google ads on web pages through Firefox extensions or by modifying the hosts file, these hiding methods are mostly implemented by tech-savvy users and may not have that big an effect on Google's revenue.

However, here's a secret trick - if you append the parameter "output=googleabout" to Google Web Search URL, the search results page will not carry any AdSense ads that are otherwise seen on the top and right sections of the page.

Here's a direct URL to search Google minus ads:

google.com/search?output=googleabout

Not sure why this parameter is in place but this could have an impact on their bottom line since it allows users to search Google sans advertisements without installing any geeky hacks. Thanks Vedrashko.

The following lines, when added to the Windows HOSTS file, will block Google from serving ads on your computer and won't track your visits on sites that use Google Analytics.

# [Google Inc]
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com #[Google AdWords]
127.0.0.1 adservices.google.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com #[urchinTracker]
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com #[Google Analytics]
127.0.0.1 imageads.googleadservices.com #[Ewido.TrackingCookie.Googleadservices]
127.0.0.1 imageads1.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads2.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads3.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads4.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads5.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads6.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads7.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads8.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads9.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 partner.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 www.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 apps5.oingo.com #[Microsoft.Typo-Patrol]
127.0.0.1 www.appliedsemantics.com
127.0.0.1 service.urchin.com #[Urchin Tracking Module]

Related: How IE or FireFox Makes Money from Google

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Google v. Yahoo: Who Cares The Most About The Environment?

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

SouthPark dedicated an entire episode to the smugness of hybrid car drivers and San Francisco residents in general. The episode is funny because its largely true - Silicon Valley is well known for having a left-leaning, environment-loving population that sometimes feels superior to the rest of the country. They cheered when Al Gore won an Oscar for his movie about global warming, and they are cheering again as some of the largest Internet companies in the valley are jumping very publicly on the "green" bandwagon.

Google and Yahoo in particular seem to be in a race to prove who's the greenest.

Google

Google is investing a lot of money in solar technology, saying that they will partially power their huge data centers with solar power. They are also installing 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at their headquarters in Mountain View. The panels will cover the roofs of the buildings, and Google says it is "the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S."

There are frequent references to the benefits of being carbon neutral on the Google blog as well, and last year Google launched the " Summer of Green" website to help people travel in an environmentally friendly way.

Last week CEO Eric Schmidt said the solar energy policy is not only the right thing to do, but that it will save the company money as well. While it is certainly true that Google's energy costs will decline, the savings will come nowhere near to offsetting the cost and maintenance of the panels themselves. Google is doing this because they think it's right, and because they will get positive press out of it.

Yahoo

Not to be outdone, Yahoo has gone green in a big way, too. Earlier this year, co-founder David Filo pledged that Yahoo would go carbon neutral, basically by purchasing carbon offsets for their massive electricity usage.

Today Yahoo will go one step further, and they are bringing in actor Matt Dillon to help them. They (Yahoo and Dillon) are announcing the "Greenest City in America" challenge, and will search for the most environmentally friendly city in America. The winner gets a whole fleet of hybrid taxis (or the cash equivalent). Another fleet of taxis goes immediately to New York City.

Yahoo will also urge people to become more environmentally friendly via two handy websites -Be a Better Planet and Yahoo Green.

So who's the greenest? No idea. But more hybrid cars and solar panels are popping up around around silicon valley, giving the SouthPark guys plenty of material for a follow up episode or two.

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