The Inquisitr » blogger

Tucker Max says it’s cool by him to pirate his movie

Steven Hodson — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:42:20 +0000

For those who might not know who Tucker Max is here’s a little background. Tucker is a 34 year old who has fame and fortune by recounting tales of his real-life drunken antics and sexual antics. Out of this he got a book deal in 2006 that saw I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell hit the NY Times Bestseller.

The popularity of the book then landed Tucker a movie deal based on the book that will be hitting theaters tomorrow in a “limited release” and it is the release schedule that has prompted Tucker to tell people living outside of the US and Canada that if they want to see the movie to go right ahead and pirate it.

Other foreign release: Again, we have no control over foreign release at all. None. They can go day and date, they can wait a year, they can just send it straight to DVD, they can do anything they want. That is the way foreign release work, and asking me about when they are coming out is pointless. I don’t know and it’s not up to me. If you live outside the US and are desperate to see the movie and can’t find the release date in your country, then just pirate the movie and watch it online. I am serious. I have no issue with that.

hat tip to Torrent Freaks

60-year old woman blogger stabbed to death in Mexico

Steven Hodson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 02:38:48 +0000

Canadian René Wathelet was a successful financial planner who had decided to make the quiet little Mexican island called Isla Mujeres, which lies 10 kilometers off the coast of Cancun, as part of her change in careers. The mother of of three grown children had been intent on building a a new career around social media consulting business and had both a professional blog as well as her personal one – En direct des Îles.

This past Thursday though this dream came crashing down when neighbors reported hearing screams coming from René’s home. Shortly afterwards Mexican police found her dead from a reported 30 stab wounds to her chest and neck.

Police also said that they had arrested a 24-year-old Mexican by the name of Joaquin Palacios Garza as he was trying to flee the scene of the murder.

"She was full of life, she had these eyes that sparkled all the time, she’s the kind of person you want at your party," said Michelle Sullivan, a friend of Wathelet’s in Montreal.

"It’s particularly hard for us to comprehend what’s happened because she was full of life."

Wathelet kept residences in both Montreal and Isla Mujeres for years before moving to the island permanently a few months ago, Sullivan said.

In her final blog entry, dated the day she died, Wathelet wrote about her morning walk along the beach and looking north across the waves toward Montreal.

Source: The Star – Blogger stabbed to death in Mexico

image: Lanry Parra, NOVEDADES DE QUINTANA ROO/AP FILE PHOTO

Turkey bans Blogger due to a handful of blogs linking to pirated football games

Duncan Riley — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:27:57 +0000

Turkey has completely blocked Google’s blogging service Blogger due to a handful of sites linking to pirated football (soccer) games. The ban took place Friday and blocks the entire service, not just infringing blogs.

The court ruling (censorship in Turkey is decided in the courts…mostly) followed a complaint from Digitürk TV, a subscription based digital TV platform that owns the right to transmit live coverage of Turkish football league games. Digitürk had asked Google to remove blogs that linked to pirated streams of their coverage (notably only linked, but were not hosting the content.) Google didn’t take the sites down, so Digitürk obtained a blocking order through a court in Diyarbakir for the two domains and their IP addresses, which in the case of Blogger are shared so now the entire service is blocked in the country.

Under Turkish copyright law, blocking is allowed where sites link to copyright material, where usually in western nations, a link may not necessarily constitute an offense in itself. Digitürk has previously been successful in having Justin.tv and MyP2P TV blocked in Turkey.

(via basbasbas and cyber-rights)

Will “Following” Give Blogger a Boost?

JR — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:47:06 +0000

Google’s hoping to pack more punch into its Blogger publishing platform with a soon-to-be-added ability to have FriendFeed-style “followers” on your blog.

The feature will look familiar. Anyone with a Google account, it seems, can opt to follow a blog. Then the site owner can add a widget with all the followers’ mugshots to the front page.

Where Google gains an advantage, though, is with its integration into other properties: Any blogs you, as a reader, opt to follow will appear in a special folder in your Google Reader — and you can also click on any blogs already in your Reader and subscribe to them as a follower from right there. Google is also working on building a tie-in with FriendConnect, its social tool introduced this past May, so Blogger sites can use it to add another set of social features to their blogs as well.

So will the add-ons drive the masses over to Blogger for hosting? Of course not. But for sites already hosted there, it’ll add a new layer of interaction and some extra room for social growth. For the casual blogger content hosting his or her site with Google, at least, it’ll be an interesting option to gain.

Google

AIM Offers New Social Aggregation Tool

JR — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:01:33 +0000

AIM is expanding its reach to include integration with other social-oriented services.

The options come as part of the newly launched BuddyUpdates feature for AOL’s instant messaging platform. The feature lets you link your buddy list to third-party sites including Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, del.icio.us, Mixx, StumbleUpon, and YouTube. There’s also an option to add an unlisted service, so you could theoretically connect almost anything — a non-Blogger blog or a FriendFeed page, for example.

Once linked up, friends can see your recent activity from the AIM sign-in page or right within the AIM window itself. The BuddyUpdates service is still under beta mode.

Study: Blogspot, Naked Female Celebs Pose Worst Malware Risks

JR — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:31:50 +0000

Blogspot.com is the worst when it comes to malicious content, according to a new report released by antivirus company Sophos.

Sophos says Google’s free blog hosting service has more malware than any other single site on the Web, with 2 percent of all the world’s dangerous code — both in hacker-created blogs and in innocent blogs infested with malicious comments. Google says hosting any malicious code is, of course, a violation and something its staff actively works to avoid.

Another curious discovery: Messages claiming to contain naked photos of Angelina Jolie or Nicole Kidman are the most common forms of e-mail-based malware, Sophos found.

Overall, Sophos says there are now 11 million different pieces of malware floating around, with 20,000 new samples coming in daily. Engineers say they’re finding three times the amount of problematic content as they did last year.

Four ways Google could destroy Digg

Duncan Riley — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:40:23 +0000

With news that Google is alleged once again to be close to acquiring Digg, some may suggest that the future of the popular social voting destination is assured. But looking at Google’s list of acquisitions, it is anything but. Here’s four ways Google could destroy Digg as we currently know it.

Stagnation

While Digg is a popular service is its current form, any site that doesn’t evolve over time to keep the interaction fresh risks losing favor, particularly in a competitive space. Feedburner was acquired by Google for $100 million in June 2007, and the notice of the acquisition is still sitting on the front page. In over 12 months nothing much at all has changed at Feedburner, with the exception of some users getting to display Adsense ads in their feed. No Google login integration, no fresh services, nothing much at all really. Feeburner has one advantage: a near monopoly in third party feed support, and many of us use it by default, and that’s the only reason it hasn’t blead users post Google. Feedburner also proves that the price of the acquisition doesn’t matter in Google pergatory, so despite a rumored $200 million price tag, Digg could easily suffer the same fate.

Unloved

Jaiku was acquired by Google in October 2007 and since that time has remained unloved with no promotion or even reasonable support. When microblogging first came of age last year Jaiku was talked about as the No 2 in the space after Twitter, today, outside of a core few users, few use it, and even if you wanted to use it, they stopped accepting signups post Google acquisition. Not long ago it went down for a couple of days, and there were so few people left using it that hardly anyone noticed. It was rumored that Jaiku was acquired for the IP to be used in Google’s mobile endeavors, but we haven’t seen anything in that regard either. Microblogging would seem to be a natural service for Google to be in, and yet as more and more services enter the space, Google sits and does nothing with a platform that would have been booming if it hadn’t been acquired. The Digg lesson is that companies acquired by Google can be ignored and even forgotten. There is one thing for sure: Digg will never get the same amount of attention in Google as it gets now.

Ignoring existing customers

Google acquired Urchin in March 2005 and used the software as the basis for Google Analytics, the problem is that it then ignored Urchin’s existing user base for years. Urchin offered an installed, paid analytics package that was fairly popular when acquired, and a new version was actually in testing at the time of acquisition. Over 2 years later that software was released, and only then after some strong criticism. The Digg lesson is that Google loves IP, but doesn’t always appreciate existing user bases. Imagine if Google decides to use the Digg engine to power a Google service (and the rumors have Google News in the spotlight), but then completely ignores Digg.com.

Spam trap

One of Google’s earliest acquisitions was Pyra Labs, the company behind the Blogger hosted blogging service. Keeping spam off blogs has always been a battle, but in the early days it was an issue actively addressed by the Pyra Labs team. Post Google acquisition, Blogger quickly became the favorite service of spammers worldwide, in part driven by a belief that as a Google owned service, links on Blogger blogs are indexed more quickly and have more validity. Google has made the occasion noise about spam on Blogger, but the service is still one of the largest repositories of spam online, and the volume has never really decreased. The Digg lesson is that any acquisition by Google will bring attention to Digg, that may result in even more spam (the service is already a target, but they do a pretty good job in dealing with) and that Google may do nothing to address any future spam issues.

Conclusion

With a $200 million price tag you’d think that Google would look after Digg post acquisition, but as the four examples shown demonstrate, Google inaction in price agnostic. The most successful acquisitions Google have made nearly all included merging the acquired company into Google products, or using them to launch new Google products (and in both cases the original brand ceaseing to exist). The exceptions: Blogger, the favorite destination for spam worldwide, and YouTube, which Google is struggling to make money from. Grand Central is a maybe, but even that has had issues post Google acquisition.

Digg