This video is doing the rounds…it’s hard to describe, aside from the fact that the editing is well….super cool :-)

Originally posted on February 19, 2007 @ 9:49 pm

Read this for background.

A few weeks ago Viacom demanded YouTube to remove 100,000 videos from the site. As the story goes, some innocent users got caught up in the process, and now the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wants to hear from the wrongfully accused.

Two such examples include the removal of a homemade movie of a group of friends eating ribs and a trailer for a documentary about a gay professional wrestler, both of which contained no Viacom copyrighted material, EFF said.

Victor Rook, the filmmaker whose clip about the gay wrestler documentary was “accidentally” removed, is worried about how the removal and the subsequent notice posted in place of the video about the copyright may affect his reputation.

That note said to anyone looking for my trailer that I violated someone’s copyright, Rook said. And that isn’t true. That’s where they defamed me.

CNet has more.

Originally posted on February 15, 2007 @ 2:39 pm

YouTube have apparently banned two educational videos about how to detect testicle and breast cancer, featuring a well known British TV doctor. Err, yeah, that didn’t sound right, but as far as the story goes this Dr. Chris Steele actually is a real doctor.

Dr Steele told El Reg: “These are videos that I have produced at my own expense to help educate the public. I know for a fact that people find this material very helpful, as they are often provided with minimal support information when they enquire about these procedures.”

The reason for banning the vids? Well, might be offensive to kids, 18+, yadayada. Sounds ridiculous if you ask me. The Register have the story, with creepy pics (NSFW).

Via Shiny Shiny

Originally posted on February 15, 2007 @ 11:09 am

The MyBlogLog service, owned by Yahoo nowadays, was exploited to spam its users this weekend. There was a hole in the invite to co-author system, and it was promptly used. A lesson hard learned for the team, as can be read in a recap blog post.

This is not the first time MyBlogLog is spammed, but at least it didn’t affect the actual MyBlogLog widget on the sites using it this time around. It’s one of the problems of using hosted services like this. People can use it for bad things, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

That’s why you should always consider hosting your own solutions. Sure, they can break and be exploited as well, but at least you’re in charge.

Originally posted on February 20, 2007 @ 4:20 am

A number of my favorite bloggers have noticed their feeds have increased. I’ve also noticed a shift. The reason for it is because Google is now reporting feed subscriber counts. And it’s about time. I’m a huge metrics nut so its not to early for this.

According To Mike Arrington

In response to requests from probably thousands of other online publishers, Google announced today that it will begin reporting the number of subscribers any RSS feed has through Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage. Other feed reading Google products may be included in the future but these are the two big ones.

FeedBurner requires reporting from feed reader vendors in order for their subscribers to be counted. Feedburner’s Rick Klau said this morning that the Google announcement is good news but reminded readers that Feedburner offers additional statistics including the number of subscribers who actually view your feed and click throughs on individual items.

Originally posted on February 17, 2007 @ 7:31 am