A San Francisco-based team has developed “Beautiful Craigslist Ads,” a free online wizard that makes each post simple and sleek, it says. The classified ad website is notorious for its bare-bones layout and few formatting options.
Users fill in information, such as details about rent, neighborhood and lease term, which the tool then organizes in an optimal way, according to its Kickstarter page.
MORE: New Tool Eliminates Ugly Craigslist Ads.
A federal appeals court has decisively rejected a legal theory that would have placed anyone who embeds a third-party video on her website in legal jeopardy. In a Thursday decision, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “video bookmarking” site myVidster was not liable to the gay porn producer Flava Works if users embedded copies of Flava videos on myVidster.
Judge Posner’s reasoning is interesting. He argues that when you view an infringing video on a site such as YouTube, no one—not you, not YouTube, and not the guy who uploaded the infringing video—is violating copyright’s reproduction or distribution rights. And since simply viewing an infringing copy of a video isn’t copyright infringement, he says, myVidster can’t be secondarily liable for that infringement.
Viewing an infringing video online may lead to a violation of copyright’s public performance right, Posner goes on, but here the law is murky. The judge called on Congress to help clarify exactly how copyright law should apply in the age of Internet video.
And if even one of copyright’s most respected jurists is confused, it’s a clear sign that copyright law needs work.
Embedding is not infringement
Flava Works sued myVidster because users kept adding links to Flava videos to the myVidster site. myVidster is a “video bookmarking” site that automatically embeds bookmarked videos on its site and surrounds them with ads. To the untrained eye, it looks like myVidster itself serves up the infringing copies of the videos. Based on that perception, the trial court judge ruled that myVister was directly infringing Flava’s copyrights and granted a preliminary injunction.
Of course, if embedding is direct infringement, then anyone who embeds a video without first researching its copyright status is at risk of being a direct infringer. That would put a damper on the practice of embedding, which has made the Web a more convenient and interactive place.
The Motion Picture Association of America, of course, was thrilled with this initial result. But as Google and Facebook pointed out in an amicus brief late last year, the lower court’s decision was inconsistent with the relevant precedents.
MORE: MPAA “embedding is infringement” theory rejected by court | Ars Technica.
So what do you do if someone is being mean to you online? Cry? Sit there and take it? No. You survive. You prevail. Here’s how to beat the bullies.
Take threats seriously
Look, if someone threatens you with physical harm via the Internet, go to the police. No matter what. No exceptions.
But if things are less severe …
Take it offline
If your friend is being a jerk on the Internet, try to hash it out off the Internet. As magical as it is, the Web just isn’t a good way to express sincerity. Odds are, you two will misunderstand each other online and exacerbate your spat. Just bury the hatchet face to face.
Tattle on them
It’s easy to talk smack online. And it’s just as easy to whine to the authorities about it. There is shame in telling on people in kindergarten, or in the mafia. But not online. Snitching is just a tool in your belt, not a sign of weakness.
Twitter doesn’t have a formal policy against being mean. But actual threats, privacy invasion, and spamming are all verboten — as are “abusive” tweets, which is a little nebulous. If you think you’re being abused, not just in the midst of an argument, report the infringing messages here. If Twitter agrees with you, your antagonist will either be warned or suspended.
The same goes for Facebook: Every post can be reported directly to Zuckerberg’s Internet police — and luckily for you, victim, Facebook is much stricter than Twitter. On paper, at least.
MORE: How to defeat your enemies on the Internet – Technolog on NBCNews.com.
Joey Rabbitt, a web designer and frontend developer currently working for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, shares some techniques to keep the client sign-off process smooth
I’ve worked as an in-house designer, a freelancer, and in a creative studio. The role of the client can change depending on the job, but the sign-off process is always the same. After you’ve dedicated your time and creative energy to a project, it can be demoralising if the client doesn’t like it in the way that you hoped. On top of a deflated ego, redrafting your work can cost time and money. I’d like to share some of the techniques I’ve learnt to keep the process as efficient as possible.
MORE: 10 steps to get designs signed off and keep your client happy
This month, Mark Penfold’s round-up of the best new tools ranges from cutting-edge experiments to down-to-earth utilities. Give them a try: they’re all free
This month sees a mix of the boundary-pushing and the practical. The two aren’t such strange bedfellows as they might appear, at least when it comes to web development – for the simple reason that just about any attempt to stretch the realms of the possible will cause a few holes to appear in what you’ve got. And that’s where the practicalities come in.
So we’ve got a 3D CSS3 lighting rig and a PNG image cruncher, a media production suite and a cookie cutter for jQuery. You can’t afford to lose sight of the details when you’re trying to make changes to the big picture.
What’s more, many of the dev community’s brightest stars are associated with detail work. Take, for example, the Modernizr project, also updated this month. When it actually comes to building the web, it isn’t content that is king: it’s utility.
MORE: New tools for web design and development: July 2012
Digg is back. The social news site that coulda been a contender — or actually was a contender for a while — has risen from the ashes of its recent sale to Betaworks.
The current version is not, however, the Digg of old.
Not only has the site been completely rewritten from the ground up, but it’s far from complete. In fact, as the announcement notes, the site was rewritten in a mere six weeks. That’s impressively fast, but it has definitely left some rough edges on the initial release.
Today’s release is best thought of as a work in progress — it’s still buggy and feature incomplete — but it does give a glimpse of Digg’s future. This time around Digg is more visually focused — think one part Pinterest, one part Flipboard.
MORE: Reborn Digg Starts Over From Scratch | Webmonkey | Wired.com.
OAuth 2.0 is a rewrite of the original OAuth spec, which offers a secure way to sidestep the dilemma of having to hand over passwords to third party sites and apps to access user data. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo are among the high-profile sites that have embraced OAuth in some fashion.
Unfortunately, according to Hammer those same big names are at least partly responsible for making OAuth 2.0 the fiendishly complex and convoluted spec that it has become. Hammer is not the first to question the usefulness of OAuth 2.0. In fact, we’ve previously argued that OAuth 2.0′s complexity is hurting the spirit of API experimentation on the web.
Hammer isn’t just questioning OAuth 2.0, he’s abandoned it entirely and completely erased himself from the project, calling it “a bad protocol… bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it.”
In Hammer’s view OAuth 2.0 is “more complex, less interoperable, less useful, more incomplete, and most importantly, less secure” than its 1.0 cousin.
MORE: Developer Quits OAuth 2.0 Spec, Calls It ‘a Bad Protocol’ | Webmonkey | Wired.com.
Large numbers of US homes have dropped pay-TV services, with big losses for satellite provider DirecTV, and cable companies Time Warner and Comcast. Rounding up the latest quarterly earnings results issued by major TV providers, Reuters reported today that Comcast lost 176,000 subscribers, Time Warner lost 169,000 customers, and DirecTV lost 52,000.
While Reuters said these losses total about 400,000 American homes dropping pay-TV service since the beginning of the year, it’s still a small minority. Time Warner Cable has more than 12 million customers, for example, and many customers simply switched services, as Verizon’s FiOS TV and AT&T’s U-verse added 275,000 subscribers in the second quarter. The second quarter is traditionally weak because of people moving before summer and college students leaving campus.
But this quarter’s losses were stark for DirecTV, which lost customers for the first time ever, and for Time Warner, who lost customers for the tenth straight quarter and lost more than analysts expected.
MORE: US homes drop pay-TV as DirecTV, Comcast, Time Warner lose subscribers | Ars Technica.
If you work from home, you owe it to yourself to set up a proper office space. It’s vital you have somewhere to concentrate that’s separate from your home life — and is hopefully a nice space to spend time in. A good working space is even more important if you operate your small business out of your home.
To help you out on this rather specific front, we have pulled together some useful tips from experienced home-workers and chatted with home office expert Lisa Kanarek, founder of WorkingNaked.com. Also keep in mind that having a home office can entitle you to certain tax breaks, so your investment can end up right back in your pocket.
MORE: 10 Tips for a More Beautiful and Functional Home Office.
Gmail users will soon be able to use the same video chat technology that Google uses for its Google+ social network. Earlier today the company began rolling out the newer Google+ Hangouts functionality to Gmail, which has had video chat for the last three years.
This is mostly an under-the-hood announcement of an effort that’s slated for completion within the next few weeks. The biggest difference is that unlike the service’s previous video chat, which was based on peer-to-peer technology, the upgraded service will offer improved reliability and also let users connect with people using Google+, according to the company.
MORE: Gmail gets video Hangout | Internet & Media – CNET News.