Random Thoughts of Mine...

FTC Guns for Blogger Shills—and Misses

Blogger payola is risible, but the new FTC guidelines are misguided, unenforceable, and utterly useless.

by Dan Costa

The FTC released guidelines designed to crackdown on the blogger payola—the risible practice of paying people to write favorable things about your products or company. As the editor who runs the Reviews team here at PCMag.com, I thought it would be worth my time to wade through the 81-page guide of regulations. After all, the penalty could be $11,000 per violation. Near as I can tell, the regulation will require every blogger to disclose payments, gifts, and professional interests for every tweet, post, or email that supports a given company. In other words, this mess of regulations misunderstands media, creates unenforceable rules, and, quite possibly, violates our First Amendment right to free speech.

For starters, let me review how PCMag.com does business. Vendors loan us products to review. We test them. We send them back. That's pretty much it. Staff can't take cash or gifts of value from vendors—although you will be hard-pressed to find a staffer without at least a dozen 512MB USB keys filled with press releases and images. There is also a drawer full of T-shirts. Our advertising department has no say in what we write and neither do vendors. Sometimes companies are upset about what we write, but they know the deal going in.

PCMag has been in business for longer than I have, and I take lot of pride in working here. Truth be told, many of our competitors also have rigorous editorial standards. A lot of established blogs have standards that are just as high. For that matter, I know individual bloggers who are informed, scrupulous, and utterly enjoyable to read. So why is the FTC setting up different types of rules for PCMag, or indeed, why is it setting up rules at all?

The new rules extend far beyond bloggers. Facebook updates, Twitter posts, Tumblr photos, even word-of-mouth marketing can be now be regulated by the FTC. Like most people, I despise this type of covert marketing more than anything. But, at some point, I think we have to let people post, blog, tweet, and say what they want to one another. We can decide whether or not to believe them.

Read the rest of the article here.



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Microsoft fans call for Opera boycott
Don't pick on little ol' Redmond

Windows enthusiast site JCXP.net is asking fellow fans to delete the Opera web browser from PCs and devices in an act of solidarity against European antitrust action.

"Today we are proposing a complete boycott of all Opera software," David Taraso, editor of the JCXP group, wrote in a blog post late on Friday. Taraso blames Opera Software for goading European regulators into a regulatory showdown with Microsoft.

The European Commission filed antitrust charges in January alleging Microsoft unfairly stifles competition by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. The investigation was spurred by a 2007 complaint from Opera Software, maker of a rival web browser and long-time outspoken critic of Microsoft's dominance. Although the lawsuit was later joined by Google and Mozilla, Taraso blames Opera as the instigator.

The plot thickened in the EU case on Thursday, when Microsoft said it would ship the upcoming Windows 7 operating system in Europe without Internet Explorer, in an apparent attempt to preempt antitrust measures. The EU hastily rejected Microsoft's response as inadequate, with Opera jeering at the sidelines.

"This is absolutely nothing more than a company who can't legitimately gain market share trying to squeeze their unpopular browser onto Windows systems," Taraso wrote. "Opera is simply upset because their browser is dead last in market share, and has already been surpassed by the recent released Google Chrome browser and Apple's Safari browser for Windows."

Read the rest of the article here.

I, for one, will not be boycotting Opera! As many of you know, Opera Software is working to take the web back to the old days. I might try that feature out when Opera 10 comes out. Back to the EU/Microsoft case; Lanc Ulanoff wishes that the EU will just leave Microsoft alone already.




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I was surfing the Internet when I found this video of a mysterious angel-shaped light caught on hospital camera. Was it really an angel that was caught on the film? Is this a Christmas miracle?

I also wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!



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Happy Birthday Kerstin!

Have a wonderful, fun-filled day!



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Miro is our core project. It's a free open-source desktop video application that is designed to make mass media more open and accessible for everyone.

Television is the most popular medium in our culture. But broadcast and cable TV has always been controlled by a small number of big corporations. We believe that the internet provides an opportunity to open television in ways that have never been possible before.

Miro is designed to eliminate gatekeepers. Viewers can connect to any video provider that they want. This frees creators to use the video hosting setup that works best for them-- whether they choose to self-publish or use a service. It's the kind of openness that the internet allows and that we should all demand.

How many of you have ever heard of Miro before? I had never heard of it until after I downloaded Firefox 3 one day. On the Getting Started page, they have links to some Internet sites that they think people will enjoy. One of the sites was Miro, which is an open source Internet TV and video player.

I went to the site to check it out. It looked interesting, so I decided to download the application last night. They get videos from all over the world, from sites, such as YouTube, and even some P2P sites. There are currently over 4,700 channels of videos in different categories, such as: Comedy, Family, International, Public Broadcasting, etc. You can find all of these channels on the Miro Guide website, which is easily accessible from the Miro application. The player comes with 4 basic channels to start you off, along with some tutorial videos on how to use the various functions of the Miro application. You can see a screenshot of Miro here.

The channels go along the sidebar on the left side of Miro. You can easily add or delete channels, even rename them, if you so desire, with the click of your mouse. While surfing the channels, I found one called Carribean Beats, which is a half-hour show featuring videos from West Indian musicians. I subscribed to that channel. When you subscribe to a channel, you have access to all of the videos on that particular channel. After you find the channel on the Miro Guide, you can preview a few of the videos on that page without subscribing to the whole channel. Videos that you do download, are kept on your computer for 5 days. After 5 days they are automatically deleted from your computer, unless you decide to keep them or delete them before that time. Once you subscribe to a channel, new videos are automatically downloaded when they become available.

I've been testing it and the application runs well on my 6-year old PC. Miro runs on Mac, Linux and Windows. Download it, give it a try, then let me know what you think of it. Here is your chance to Get Miro. Enjoy!




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