Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Pirate Bay Trial

Friday, March 6th, 2009

pbay

The trial is over and the world is now awaiting the judgement. The outcome will not only have impact on the legislation in Sweden. No, this is a global issue and it will pretty much set the tone for file-sharing all over the world. It has been quite the battlefield in the court room and being the good Samaritan that I am I will clarify the arguments of both parties.

The Prosecutor & Plaintiff

It’s not the technique that is the issue; it is the fact that there are Torrent files available on The Pirate Bay. Consequently, the site is guilty of distributing copyright protected material. Also sites linking to illegal material can be found guilty in the Supreme Court.

The accused have knowledge that copyright protected material is distributed through their site and they have done nothing to prevent it. The accused can be sentenced even if their site is a form of search engine. This according to previous sentences.

An agreement among the accused to form the company Random Media shows that all four should be held responsible. Three of the four have signed a contract and the fourth is mentioned in it – all according to the prosecutor.

The Accused

The Pirate Bay is nothing but a search engine. It is not possible to convict the supplier of the infrastructure for what the users are doing.

The prosecutor has not been able to show where and when the violation was committed, hence they can’t be convicted for being accomplices. It is not even clear that the violation was committed on The Pirate Bay.

Three of the accused maintain that they can’t be held personally responsible for the site. Only one of the four accused admits that he is operating the site, also adding that the purpose never has been to spread any copyright protected material. Nowhere on the site are visitors encouraged to file-share copyrighted works.

Pirate Bay Quotes

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

pirate-bayOhhhh!!! The shenanigans are over in what could be an epic trial of the year, of the century, of the internet age.

Officially putting Sweden on the map, the TPB trial will establish precedent whether their website and services facilitated illegal music file distribution or their service cannot be held liable for what people do with it. Because The Pirate Bay never hosted any music, the defense claims they have not violated any copyright laws. The prosecution is convinced, along with the movie and music industries, TPB is the next living kin of satan. Hyperboles and exaggerations ran amuck at the trial.

Pirate Bay Trial Famous and sometimes, Stupid Quotes:

“Songwriters and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. The Pirate Bay is disregarding those rights and abusing the creativity of the people who own them.” – Ger Hatton, ICMF

“You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife.” – Roger Wallis, professor at KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm
(his wife received over $4000 dollars worth of flowers in a day)

“It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.” – John Kennedy, CEO of IFPI

“Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face” – Rickard Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party

“It’s a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file-sharing … copyright protected works.” – Monique Wadsted, Prosecutor

If found guilty:
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström could face two years in prison and a $12.7 million fine.

Well, the verdict will come out April 17th, till then we hope for more mudslinging.

Friday Madness – Google goes Hooters

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Have you ever wanted to change to homepage to Google.com? And you just didn’t know how? Well the folks who created Firebug must be the smartest people around. Sammy decided it was time to revamp the google page. We rather like it now; the guys especially love the Hooters addition.

(click to enlarge)

googleismessedup-full

Google Chrome Soon Coming for Mac

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

google-chrome

Google Chrome has been available for people using Windows a couple of months now and it seems as if all Mac users soon can take advantage of it as well. Ok, I don’t know if all these Mac lovers, including me, want to use Google Chrome as the standard web browser since Google has a tendency of acting and appearing as “big brother”. But that put aside it at least seems as if they have begun to see the end of this, apparently, very complicated process. Now, my question to you is (which means that I probably haven’t put the issue aside ): What do you think about Google Chrome in general and if you are working on a Mac – will you use it when launched?

/David

Boost Your Web Design Rep: Create A Wordpress Theme

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

wordpress-themesWant to market yourself as a competent web designer? Spread the word that you are open for business?
Then I recommend designing a free unique and stylish Wordpress theme. Not only is this a perfect opportunity to show off your web design skills, design the theme mind-blowing enough and you’ll have a great number of webmasters using it in no time.

Visitors by the thousands will flood your online portfolio in search for a hi-quality free Wordpress theme or freebie as it is also referred to. In fact, free hi-quality Wordpress themes are so hard to come by nowadays, it’s like gasoline in Mad Max, so don’t be surprised if Smashing Magazine themselves make space for your theme. This popular online web design magazine is devoted in bringing Wordpress freebies to their readers. If you theme is hot enough, they’ll surely pick it up.

Your site will also get better ranking in search engines thanks to the link you’ve included in the theme footer leading back to you the creator. More potential customers will find you site and contact info hopefully leading to more work for you.

In any case, making a Wordpress Theme of great quality and top notch web design will at least prepare you for future web design projects. Already a market has expanded around the Wordpress CMS with more and more websites using it, thus increasing the demand on unique and differentiating themes. Becoming a Wordpress Theme devoteé is entirely realistic as there are whole agencies doing it already.

Here are 2 examples of freelancing web designers who have gotten great recognition thanks to their impressive designs of free Wordpress themes:

Andrew Lindstrom, WELLMEDICATED – created free theme ZinePress that got picked up by Smashing Magazine and embraced by the Wordpress web design community.

Paul Bennett – creating the Viewport theme this web designer not only broke new web design territory with an innovative theme design, but used the good name of Wordpress to prove his skills and potential.

US Adults Don’t Want the Internet

Friday, February 6th, 2009

I recently read an article in the USA Today which said that about one in four American adults don’t use the Internet and that many of these don’t have any desire to go online either. Close to one third of these adults apparently don’t have any plans to use the Internet – ever.

These figures must come as a slap in the face for Mr. Obama and his colleagues as they’ve just set aside a couple of billions for broadband expansion. I’m obviously all for this expansion as I like every improvement of the web. The reason for this alienation of a huge part of the population apparently has to do with costs for switching from dial-up to broadband and the fact that these adults don’t know how to use the Internet.

Ok, I can go along with the fact that people aged 80+ (of course there’s exceptions) might not be a good target group for the web. But what about the rest? Perhaps it’s just me but I would feel handicapped if I wouldn’t have access to the Internet each and every day. And I really mean EACH and every day. I can’t even resist going online when I’m on vacation. You know, just to check my email or browse the web for something totally useless. Anyways… I just think it’s funny how America, the great superpower, is slacking behind on the usage of the Internet. I’m sorry, but sometimes I keep thinking about the good old states as hillbilly-nation (hence the picture)…

Finding Good Music Online

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

I recently read an article about how the Internet has made millions of MP3’s available for us with a click of a button and that it at the same time, paradoxically, also has made it harder to discover new music. Being the music enthusiast that I am I felt as if I had to write a little something on this issue. Yes, it’s true that the Internet has made millions of songs available for us but I don’t agree that it at the same time has made it more difficult to discover new music. I am stumbling upon new artists/groups that I like as good as every single day. The article mentions four different approaches to finding new music: Pandora, Mufin, Lala and eMusic. All of these seem to have some kind of technical mumbo-jumbo techniques of analyzing music and your taste in music.

The Hype Machine

How about The Hype Machine? I use it every day and it’s more of a “human” way of getting your hands on great music. Simply type in an artist or a song that you like and you’ll get a list of all the music blogs that have written a post about it. Most of these blogs will also provide an MP3 with whatever is was that you were searching for. A blog posting something about a song/artist that you like will probably also have other posts about something that you’ve never heard before and still could like. Just take a quick look at the blog and you’ll notice quite quickly if they have a similar taste in music as you. Music blogs tend to be quite “niched” so if you visit a blog operating in your favorite genre from time to time you’ll for sure discover something new. I mean – it doesn’t have to be all that difficult…

A list of blogs that’s posting MP3’s

When searching for a song or artist (in this case Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen) you’ll get a list of all the blogs writing about it. Click “Read Full Post” and you’ll be redirected to the blog. You can also listen to the music directly from The Hype Machine.

Improve Your Website Now

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

I’ve already written posts about how you can improve the look of your website through using the proper typography and by taking a good look at the details. Hope that it helped you somewhat and that you maybe at least got inspired to look at things from another angle. I know that it’s not easy to break ones normal pattern but it could be good.

Well, now I’m back to tell you about how to improve the performance of your website. Yes, I know that there’s a lot written about on the web but I thought that it might be a good idea summing the best tips up. What it’s much about is scaling your site down so that your visitors won’t have to wait forever for your pages to load. Actually, I’m not going to talk so much about it here but I’ve written an article on the topic so please check it out here!

Take a look at the details

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

As many things in life is web design much about the details. Paying attention to all those small little things might take your website from ok to brilliant. When you rough out the first idea of a site/page you obviously won’t be able to make it a 100%. Half of the work will probably remain to be done. Start thinking critically and start looking at various different ways of fixing the design.

Even though you might be under pressure of getting the design done you shouldn’t rush this moment through. There might be some late nights but it will be well worth it. Start polishing the site’s design and when you start having trouble focusing it might be time for a short break. When you come back you’ll probably be able to watch at things in a new angle.

Experimenting a bit (it’s better to have tried something and rejected it than never have tested it out) might be a good idea but remember to still keep it consistent. If for example the pixels don’t match on a site you risk the chance of creating something very messy looking.

My last advice would be completing everything. If you intend to leave something semi-good you might as well not do anything at all. And whatever you do – don’t forget to take a look at the details!

Cheers!

The Carbon Footprint of a Google Search is a Cup of Tea

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

According to an inaccurate story by The Times of London, a poor physicist has been center of attention of CO2 emissions by data centers.

The article states ” Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.”

True?  No, not even.  No one knows where this figure came from, not even the physicist, Alex Wissner-Gross.  He admitted to making statements that Google, as well as other data centers, leave an environmental footprint.  As to how much this impact is on a personal level, such as visiting a website or doing a google search, remains to be quantified.

So 7 grams / search isn’t the right but maybe we will find out the environmental cost of a search one of these days.