Tag: milwaukee

Categories
Uncategorized

Your Rights (You gave them away!)

I came across this post today, from a guy who posted his video on YouTube, then saw it on VH1, and took the VH1 video, showing his video, and tried to show it, and… Well, go read the post….

I’ll only deal with the first part in which his video was used by VH1. When first saw one of those “web video” shows on TV months back, I knew something would go wrong. I was hoping they’d show a video that was under a non-commercial license (which would not include anything on YouTube obviously.) Well, this isn’t exactly how I saw it happening, but it’s close. Sort of. It is my belief that Christopher Knight surrendered his rights to his video when he uploaded it to YouTube. Well, more precisely, I should say that I think he granted YouTube a very liberal license do to whatever the hell they wanted to do with his videos… Below is just a snippet from the YouTube Terms of Service:

“For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.”

I’m definitely not a lawyer, but read it over, and do you see the “royalty-free… transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute… display… affiliates… business…. in any media formats and through any media channels” In other words, “You hereby grant YouTube the rights to do whatever the %$@&! they want with your content.” I mean, I can’t read that any other way.

How much do you want to bet that Viacom is an affiliate of Google/YouTube, and if they aren’t now, they will be tomorrow. Honestly, I caught a lot of crap from people because I kept saying that YouTube was bad/evil/thieves, etc. Sure, I’ve been known to promote rival services like Ourmedia and blip.tv which, you know, actually let you control your creations, and maintain your rights.

You have choices people! I’m amazed by those who get all outraged about accounts and videos being deleted. It’s a service, someone else runs it, deal with it. Get your own account, post the videos there, or on a service that is friendly to what you do. Argh…..

We may have to hold a Creative Commons Salon in Milwaukee sooner than we thought.


Categories
Uncategorized

Creative Commons + Milwaukee?

Milwaukee area artists, musicians, writers, photographers… Are you using Creative Commons licenses for things you create? Are you interested in learning about why you might want to use a Creative Commons license?

We are looking for people who think Creative Commons is a good thing, to share their experiences and opinions (and their work!) If we can find some folks interested in this, we might hold a Creative Commons Salon in Milwaukee.

We teach our kids to share… why shouldn’t we?


Categories
Uncategorized

Bucketworks is moving!

Good news! Bucketworks is moving… It’s good news because Bucketworks won’t just disappear, but it’s “challenging” news because a lot of work will be involved. But you can help!

Bucketworks

As you may know, Bucketworks was a big part of making BarCampMilwaukee happen, and making sure everyone involved had a great time.

Read about the move, and if you can help, please get involved. The folks at Bucketworks (typically) aren’t a bunch of tech geeks, so if you can do networking or help with computer-related things (or anything else really!) step up and do it.

Thanks, yo!

Categories
Uncategorized

Return of (to?) Milwaukee

A while ago I hinted that I might be coming back to Milwaukee, at least to work, and it looks like if all goes well, that will be the case, at least for the next three months…

So it’ll be back to the Third Ward for me, with “regular” work hours. (That in itself should prove interesting!) It’ll be a nice change from running all over the Lake Country to get my work done.

I’m still keeping it hush-hush, but it looks like I may be doing some really interesting work with a local company that has a great vision of how the web should work.

Who knows? I might be able to make some great connections to further Web414 while I’m at it. I’m also really looking forward to spending more time in Milwaukee. Maybe I’ll do that guest appearance on WMSE now. ;)

Categories
Uncategorized

Milwaukee Design Firms, Bad Web Sites…

I spent some time evaluating the web sites of some Milwaukee design firms, and I’ve gotta say, I was sadly disappointed. I do not want to name names, because I’m going to discuss actual trends rather than specific issues. (Plus, I know people at many of these companies, and to be fair, I should disclose that I do work for at least two design firms in the area.)

Also, if you have not read my posts on Business Web Site tips, you may want to see them now: #253, #267, #271, #285, #301. Many of them apply…

The overall trends I saw were the following:

  • Inability to print pages/content
  • Inability to resize or select text
  • Inability to open multiple windows/tabs due to navigation using Flash
  • Music playing on page load (with no way to stop it)
  • Text as an image, or within Flash, which does not get indexed by search engines

Overall, many of the problems of poor usability were caused by Flash. (I know, I have a history of being somewhat anti-Flash, but so often Flash is anti-usability, so it all works out.) Many of the sites I evaluated had just one or two results in Google, which is probably not ideal for companies that want potential clients to find them.

To be fair, I know many design firms end up not overhauling their sites for a long time because they are too busy doing client work, but honestly, most of them looked like graphic or visual designers with no background in usability designed them.

Milwaukee design firms, it may be time for a reboot…