Bit Revolver

This YouTube video shows KTLA reporter Eric Spillman ridiculing customers who are standing in line to buy the new iPhone 3G in Burbank, CA. As if Spillman wasn’t doing a good enough job of making himself appear unprofessional, the first customer to whom he lobs a few snide questions fires back with some questions of his own regarding Spillman’s integrity as a journalist. Someone buy that man a beer.

Link via Daring Fireball.

Photo sharing site Flickr has announced a deal with Getty Images wherein the stock agency will approach Flickr members to include specific photos in the Getty inventory through a special communications platform that is currently under development.

Getty images has a post regarding the deal on their blog, written by Flickr general manager Kakul Srivastav. A shorter but equally detail-barren post is up on the Flickr blog, and there is some discussion going on in the Flickr help forum.

A Q&A with Flickr and Getty confirms that Flickr members who enter into deals with Getty will be paid, but has a bit of disheartening news for Flickr contributors looking to quit their day jobs:

From our perspective, on the Flickr side, we’re not expecting this will be a huge stream of monetization for our members. For some it might be, but that’s not really the driving force. The driving force is we really feel we want Flickr to be a place where photos can be all that they can be.

This pretty vague statement could mean the licensing fees won’t be much, but it could also mean that since it sounds like Getty will be making individual selections on the image level, one photographer will probably not contribute more than a few photos to the Flickr/Getty collection. Photographer Thomas Hawk mentions to a Seattle PI article that claims contributors will be paid in the same manner as professionals.

Whatever the case may be, the Flickr blog makes light of the fact that their members produce some truly remarkable photos — which should rightly translate into competitive licensing fees.

“The D3, D700, and Canon” is a sharp analysis of the state of professional-grade digital cameras by James Duncan Davidson. While Canon has been going after the introductory consumer-level DSLR market full-force, Nikon has managed to catch up to Canon’s line of professional-grade equipment.

My own photography is quite casual so I have not been chomping any bits — in fact, I was quite happy to purchase a brand new 5D at a significant discount — but I can definitely feel the tension in the air when it comes to the subject of a 5D successor. If Canon ever had any intentions to abandon that niche and push its users up into the 1-series bracket, then the Nikon D700 has certainly changed that game plan.

This post is a test post. I am using it to evaluate Ecto, the desktop blogging software for Mac OS X. Attached to this blog post is a photo I took on a trip to Washington D.C. in February of 2006. Enjoy.

Interesting observation: apparently, the topic of quitting smoking is big business for Internet advertising. Since I wrote about a method of using your PDA to help quit smoking, I have been deleting quite a few spam comments from the post.

Usually most of the spam that comes into my sites originates from automated systems. These comments on the other hand, appear to be from owners of ad-laden “how to quit smoking” sites who are actively seeking out blog posts like this in order to post a quasi-irrelevant comment with their URL attached.

The much anticipated version 3 of the Firefox web browser is due for release — but instead of just putting up the application for download, the Mozilla Foundation is orchestrating Firefox Download Day 2008. Download Firefox on the date they release, and you can be a part of world record-breaking history.

Quite an ingenious way to chase a larger slice of the web browser marketshare. And hey, I am all for it. Firefox is a quality open source application whose weight and influence in the browser market helps spur innovation and keep all the other software vendors on their toes. I’ve been using Firefox for years, so sure, I’ll show my support and help chase the Guinness World Record for most software downloads in 24 hours.

I have been writing Of Zen and Computing for over two years, publishing computer help, tutorials, tips, tricks, and general technology information in my best attempt at Plain English. Over that time, I have published one article or post nearly every business day of the week. Why keep it up for so long? Advertising dollars? No. Making money is great, but it doesn’t provide fulfillment. E-mails like this do, though:

I am a radio reporter and your tip for recovering deleted files from a memory card just saved my tuchus. I conducted three hours of interviews yesterday and thought they’d been lost. But the PC Inspector Smart Recovery found the files. It took more than 2 hours to process. But it was worth it. Thank you for your website — it’s a great public service.

- Jill B

With hundreds of millions of blogs on the Web, and most bloggers quitting after just a few weeks or months, it is easy to feel like just another drop in the bucket. Without a clear vision of why I blog, I too would probably have quit a long time ago… but hearing from readers who have directly benefited from my writing is the perfect motivation.

Consumerist reader Peter, who pays for top-tier Internet service from Comcast, recently found that Comcast’s definition of unlimited doesn’t really mean unlimited. Comcast is infamous for cutting off subscribers who download too much, and Peter received a notice warning him of such.

The infuriating part begins when Peter is told that an unlimited account is not entitled to download an unlimited amount of data, it is just entitled to download a limited a mount of data faster. What’s worse, Comcast cuts off customers who download too much while and at the same time refusing to inform them of what their bandwidth cap is or how much of it they have consumed. When was the last time your mobile carrier fined you for going over your minutes, but refused to tell you how many minutes were included in your plan?

Link via Ross McKillop.

Broadband Reports covers the ever-developing story of cable broadband providers looking to role out bandwidth caps. As customers consume more and more online content, their ISPs are looking to set up limits and fees. Sounds like prime time for competing services like Verizon FiOS to lure away customers.

We used to pay companies like AOL per-minute to get online. That didn’t last very long. Does anyone honestly think paying per-gigabyte might be any different?

After my teammates and I ripped up the opposing players in a particularly one-sided Halo 3 match, we all congratulated each other in the post-game lobby. A member of the losing team chimed in:

Good game? That game was awful!

One of the winning players quickly corrects him:

That’s because you lost!

To which he reasons:

Well, I guess if I lose at this game, at least I win at life, right?