I think everyone probably has some favorite relative; or so we keep telling ourselves they are, who no matter how nicely you try and tell them to quit it keep on sending you all kinds of crap via email. So not only to we have to struggle with a constant flow of spam, notifications coming out of the wazoo but we have to deal with Uncle Joe Bob and Aunt Bobbie Jo’s recycling of the same stupid links you got from other people 10 to a 100 times last week.

However we could actually see a rise in email usefulness thanks to – you guessed it – Facebook. It seems that social sites like Facebook are seeing a rapid rise in the sharing of links. Yes apparently social sites are seeing an increase to around the 66.8% mark of users sharing links which is surpassing email’s 65.1%. Granted it might not seem like a lot of difference but common we gotta take the good news where we can find it and anything that reduces the load of crap hitting our inboxes should be celebrated with a block party – on Facebook of course.

As Jason Meserve over at Technologizer says

Rather than in-boxes cluttered with “Me too” and “That’s great!” replies from a litany of people you may not know, social networks are serving as the catchall for everyone’s need to chime in and giving hope to those that desire to “zero” their inboxes.

All hail ‘zero’ inboxes with many thanks to Facebook so please keep up the good work people. The Web thanks you.

Please keep sharing your crap on Facebook – it may save our email inboxes is a post from: The Inquisitr

Generally when blogs talk condescendingly about the newspapers moving online we like to point out how they never link out to blogs that they mention or one’s that they quote. To a point I can understand the reasoning behind why they go this route, I don’t agree but I understand, however when it comes to other kinds of linking the policy is just stupid.

The reason I mention this is because I saw a mention of some music tagging software on Friendfeed and the link provided was to a Wall Street Journal Technology online post. The post by Geoffrey Fowler talked about two specific software packages that you could use with your MP3 files to help clean them up. The two programs were TuneUp Media and MusicBrainz Picard neither of which I had heard of before so I was interested in taking a look.

Except there was a problem with trying to do that – no links. The only link in the whole post was for Apple because iTunes was mentioned in relation to TuneUp Media and it only lead to a WSJ page for stock information for Apple. When it came to the two software packages though nada.Zip. Zero links.

The thing that gets me is that neither of of the products mentioned had anything to do with what WSJ could construe to be a competitor. They would have been links to products that maybe their readers would have appreciated being able to check out. This would have been an added value (although blogs would have linked out naturally) for the WSJ readers.

There was no ‘threat’ to WSJ losing readers. In fact they would have been helping their readers. It is this kind of attitude regarding linking that is only going to make people look for alternatives to these old media online efforts. It might seem like a simple thing to get bitchy about but sometimes consumers really appreciate those little things – especially when they don’t cost anything to give.

Newspapers really need to learn to share is a post from: The Inquisitr

Just as we think that people are beginning to understand how things work on the web along comes idiots like this. It was ridiculous when an organization like the Associated Press (AP) said that bloggers and the such were going to have to pay to be able to quote from any AP articles if the quote was over a certain number of words. Now it seems that PR firms and news monitoring services in England are going to be facing an effort by the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) to impose a license fee for any links shared with customers.

This is according to a post at the Press Gazette by Matt Wardman where he wrote

According to a circular sent to members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, and seen by Press Gazette, the NLA will be introducing a new form of licence from 1 September to regulate "web aggregator services (such as Meltwater) that forward links to newspaper websites and for press cuttings agencies undertaking this type of activity".

From January 2010, the licence charges will also apply to PR practitioners and "other organisations forwarding links to newspaper websites as part of their commercial activity".

The CIPR states that this will apply to "almost all newspaper websites excluding News International titles and the Financial Times".

NLA managing director David Pugh today confirmed the introduction of the new licence extension governing weblinks.

Do these people just not get it? The idea that they really think that they can actually make some-one pay a license fee in order to send links in an email is beyond stupid – it’s moronic.

Good luck with that.

Some people just don’t have a clue, this includes the Newspaper Licensing Agency is a post from: The Inquisitr