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I wish I was at WisCon today, but since my lymph nodes are actually actively attempting to secede from my body, it is probably just as well that I am not.
I kiiiind of thought I was going to be sick to death of the first two episodes of Dallas season two. I mean, I have watched them at least six times, and I've watched the Ann and Sue Ellen scenes many more than that. I was going to skip them in my rewatch.
But I just finished with the first one, Battle Lines?
Ohmygod, it is so good. I am excited all over again about season three. This show has such incredible potential; this season would have been fucking amazing if Larry hadn't died. I can't. I really, really cannot. Fucking flawless.
I didn't notice it before, but the oil guy Elena makes mentions his first job at WestStar, which was one of the companies from the original. And I loved Harris taking a grape from the bowl in Sue Ellen's kitchen; it was a nice precursor to the nuts. And Ann telling Bobby he can hate her later kills me, knowing what happens.
I'm really, really not over the scene with Ann going to Sue Ellen to ask for the tape back, which I thought I was going to want to fast forward after having seen it so many times. I just want Mitch, Brenda, and Linda to have all the scenes together always. I suspect at least one of those people would support this.
But I just finished with the first one, Battle Lines?
Ohmygod, it is so good. I am excited all over again about season three. This show has such incredible potential; this season would have been fucking amazing if Larry hadn't died. I can't. I really, really cannot. Fucking flawless.
I didn't notice it before, but the oil guy Elena makes mentions his first job at WestStar, which was one of the companies from the original. And I loved Harris taking a grape from the bowl in Sue Ellen's kitchen; it was a nice precursor to the nuts. And Ann telling Bobby he can hate her later kills me, knowing what happens.
I'm really, really not over the scene with Ann going to Sue Ellen to ask for the tape back, which I thought I was going to want to fast forward after having seen it so many times. I just want Mitch, Brenda, and Linda to have all the scenes together always. I suspect at least one of those people would support this.
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In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:
Follow me on Twitter.
- Wednesday, 0003: RT @anildash: Thanks to @bradfitz @lisaphillips @dormando & so many others for memcached, without which the modern social web wouldn't run.
- Wednesday, 0831: @semanticist Indeed so. The light is useful to me as a driver to know the state of the other light.
- Wednesday, 0834: @semanticist Some of them trip on legal right on red turns.
- Wednesday, 1238: RT @oakandsage: A poorwill is arguing with a rooster.
- Wednesday, 1251: RT @ajaromano: Basically currently all fics are transformative until proven derivative in a court of law (which has only happened once ever… ( read the other 10 )
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I'm just listening to two co-workers talking about a tv-show, trying to decide if I should tell them that due to a slight misunderstanding, one of them thinks that they're talking about Band of Brothers, while the other one thinks they're talking about some documentary about mongoose... :D
My aunt adopted my daughter: how I birthed my niece
Now, it's great that she chose to not murder her baby and instead gave her to a loving couple. But the whole thing is odd, especially in the way she tells the story.
Here's my comment, which I'm sure will be removed. (I love how they go all Buffy and order commenters to not be "judgey". Which, of course, is being just that.)
You weren't "together romantically" or "any kind of couple" and yet you were having sex with this guy? The way this story is told you'd think you became pregnant magically! No wonder you had to trick your mind into thinking you are not this child's mother by "decid(ing) really early on that this child wasn't mine." Of course she's yours, along with the man who is her father.
(I know this will be removed because the only people allowed to "judge" are those who cheer on every situation, but I wanted to say my piece. One day this beautiful little girl will be asking and saying these same things.)
Now, it's great that she chose to not murder her baby and instead gave her to a loving couple. But the whole thing is odd, especially in the way she tells the story.
Here's my comment, which I'm sure will be removed. (I love how they go all Buffy and order commenters to not be "judgey". Which, of course, is being just that.)
You weren't "together romantically" or "any kind of couple" and yet you were having sex with this guy? The way this story is told you'd think you became pregnant magically! No wonder you had to trick your mind into thinking you are not this child's mother by "decid(ing) really early on that this child wasn't mine." Of course she's yours, along with the man who is her father.
(I know this will be removed because the only people allowed to "judge" are those who cheer on every situation, but I wanted to say my piece. One day this beautiful little girl will be asking and saying these same things.)
Conference is over, and entirely possibly a success. Logistically, it went smoothly enough that the biggest thing affecting my full functioning on day 1 was that the charger I'd brought wasn't working, forcing me to fall back on the emergency battery charger.
Topped off the day by calling my BFF. ♥
Topped off the day by calling my BFF. ♥
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Can we have one day without having to come home to some headline about mayhem, whether natural or man made?!
My God, beheadings in the streets of London? This is what we've come to now?
UK jihad murderer: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you"
I'm going to say it because no one else will:
This cult needs to be BANNED in every civilized country. NO MORE Muslim immigration. Deport those Muslims who are here illegally. Monitor ALL mosques and close down the ones that preach violence. No more teaching Islam in schools. No more bending over backwards every time Muslims claim to be offended.
I'm offended by little girls being raped and murdered* and I'm offended by someone having his HEAD CUT OFF in broad daylight in the middle of the street. This cult is from the pit of hell and everyone knows it.
And those so-called moderates who do not condemn this behavior are just as bad.
If you want to run your pathetic countries into the ground and live like ANIMALS, have at it. As for the rest of us,
WE WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!
NO MORE!!!
* This story was posted to Jihad Watch but it's not been verified to my satisfaction. I will take it at face value for the moment. If it turns out to be inaccurate, I will say so.
My God, beheadings in the streets of London? This is what we've come to now?
UK jihad murderer: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you"
I'm going to say it because no one else will:
This cult needs to be BANNED in every civilized country. NO MORE Muslim immigration. Deport those Muslims who are here illegally. Monitor ALL mosques and close down the ones that preach violence. No more teaching Islam in schools. No more bending over backwards every time Muslims claim to be offended.
I'm offended by little girls being raped and murdered* and I'm offended by someone having his HEAD CUT OFF in broad daylight in the middle of the street. This cult is from the pit of hell and everyone knows it.
And those so-called moderates who do not condemn this behavior are just as bad.
If you want to run your pathetic countries into the ground and live like ANIMALS, have at it. As for the rest of us,
WE WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!
NO MORE!!!
* This story was posted to Jihad Watch but it's not been verified to my satisfaction. I will take it at face value for the moment. If it turns out to be inaccurate, I will say so.
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I've seen it come up several times on Dreamwidth (haven't checked LJ yet), and I'm sure it's all over Twitter and Tumblr. But.
John Scalzi's breakdown of the Kindle Worlds licensed fanfic thing, and why it's not a good deal for fanfic writers.
You can check out Amazon's info on the subject.
I notice that they say that there are "content guidelines" for each fandom, but they don't link to the guidelines for the three fandoms that they've licensed. I wonder if they plan on forbidding f/f and m/m in the extremly heterocentric Vampire Diaries universe, for example. I mean, the majority of the show is built around that annoying love triangle. (You may love it! Feel free to! I don't actually hate it, but I am frustrated by how it's taken over so much of the plot.)
Also, I notice that there are no editing requirements, which. I am not going to pay for unedited drivel, okay? At least with free fanfic, I can back-button hard and fast if I uncover bad writing (or spelling and grammar). Maybe that's contained under the "we don't accept books that provide a poor customer experience" clause? They reserve the right to decide what constitutes that, after all.
Honestly, if you want to pay to read Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, or Pretty Little Liars fanfic, I'm sure you can find plenty of fans who would take your money. (I mean, hell, I would.)
Oh, Amazon. I do hope this gets shut down hard. I just don't see this working out well for the writers you sucker into it. I wonder if SFWA is going to get involved?
ETA:![[journalfen.net profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fandom_lounge has also gotten in on the commentary about this.
John Scalzi's breakdown of the Kindle Worlds licensed fanfic thing, and why it's not a good deal for fanfic writers.
You can check out Amazon's info on the subject.
I notice that they say that there are "content guidelines" for each fandom, but they don't link to the guidelines for the three fandoms that they've licensed. I wonder if they plan on forbidding f/f and m/m in the extremly heterocentric Vampire Diaries universe, for example. I mean, the majority of the show is built around that annoying love triangle. (You may love it! Feel free to! I don't actually hate it, but I am frustrated by how it's taken over so much of the plot.)
Also, I notice that there are no editing requirements, which. I am not going to pay for unedited drivel, okay? At least with free fanfic, I can back-button hard and fast if I uncover bad writing (or spelling and grammar). Maybe that's contained under the "we don't accept books that provide a poor customer experience" clause? They reserve the right to decide what constitutes that, after all.
Honestly, if you want to pay to read Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, or Pretty Little Liars fanfic, I'm sure you can find plenty of fans who would take your money. (I mean, hell, I would.)
Oh, Amazon. I do hope this gets shut down hard. I just don't see this working out well for the writers you sucker into it. I wonder if SFWA is going to get involved?
ETA:
fandom_lounge has also gotten in on the commentary about this.A lot of people have asked me for my thoughts on Kindle Worlds, since I (and my company!) have a stated interest in this kind of thing.
For those of you coming in midway through this story, Amazon has just announced that they'll be publishing fanfiction for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries, allowing the fic to be sold for money. The author will receive 35% of net revenue (for works of 10,000+ words) and royalties (unspecified) will be payed to the rightsholder of the fictional universe.
I think a lot of people have a kneejerk reaction to this which is strongly negative—"Jesus Christ, it's FanLib all over again!" People also have the expectation that it will fail, that fans are not interested in selling their works. I don't think that all that negativity is entirely justified. Here's why:
Still, I suspect that there is a large enough base of writers who would like to sell their fanfic for any amount of money that Kindle Worlds will not have a hard time finding authors. I'd bet that it will serve as a point of entry for people who were otherwise uninterested in writing fanfic, too. This is another way that they're being smarter than FanLib: instead of trying to appeal to fans who are already uninterested in their deal, they are introducing the idea of fanfic to people who might not otherwise have been interested, expanding their base, so to speak.
A larger obstacle are the content guidelines. Kindle Worlds does not accept pornography, "offensive content," "excessive use of brand names" or crossover stories.* Contrary to what many people say, there is plenty of fanfic that falls within these guidelines and that I believe people would be happy to pay for. Take a look at the fandoms for One Direction or, yes, Twilight if you don't believe me. Yes, these content guidelines mean that a large amount of fanfiction is excluded from Kindle Worlds. So what? Maybe there becomes a bifurcated fandom structure—people willing to write stories within Kindle's content guidelines, and people who aren't. Who cares? If anything, I suspect that the stories "too hot for Kindle Worlds" will be more in demand, not less.
Generally speaking, I believe that fans are not too dumb to read a ToS. I believe that fans will choose to use Kindle Worlds if it works well for them, and they will choose not to if they are uninterested in its strictures. After all, nobody has to submit their stories.
Or do they?
I worry that some people in the entertainment industry are viewing Kindle Worlds as a way to "control" fans. This is a tale as old as time, or at least as old as when rightsholders really, really wanted the Harry Potter fandom to stop writing about Harry Potter being gay. (Yes, this was An Issue, long before Dumbledore came out of the closet. I swear to you, it was.) Can I blame them for wanting to control the stories they've told? Not entirely, no. I can't blame that impulse, any more than I can blame the impulse of a novelist to yell at fanfiction writers for "messing up their world." The novelist invested their heart and soul, Warner Brothers invested millions of dollars, in either case there are these weird outsiders coming in and making the stories about something else, something they never envisioned. What will happen? What if Harry Potter gets associated with gay porn? Then maybe audiences won't want to see it anymore! And then what?
But the thing about this view is that it's unrealistic. It does not reflect the realities of the internet, and it does not reflect the realities we've seen in the past ten years of fans interacting with corporations. Even though Harry Potter did get associated with gay porn (well, slash fanfic, but it's the same thing in the eyes of the uninitiated), it didn't stop it from being profitable. Hell, fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic turned it into a megahit among the most unlikely audience—and among the audience that people most want to woo, 18-30 year old males! Nobody would be excited to find out that their show was getting associated with 4Chan, yet 4Chan made it a runaway success.
There's nothing wrong with Kindle Worlds as one possibility among many. It actually represents one good thing: the recognition that fans are doing work for franchises, work which can and maybe should be compensated. That's a step that nobody has taken (outside of rare contests), to my knowledge. I know a lot of fans see this as cheapening their art by tainting it with commerce, but the fact is that the entertainment industry is all about making money, and unless fans are able and willing to talk in monetary terms, they will never be taken seriously. (Actually, it represents two good things. In its terms, it admits that fans have rights over their own fanfic, rights that can be signed away when you take part in Kindle Worlds. This seems basic, but it is not always recognized.)
Where Kindle Worlds may go wrong is if it is viewed by the entertainment industry as the be-all and end-all of interacting with fan creativity. That would create a no-win situation for everybody. Many waters cannot quench fandom, neither can the floods drown it—a fact that companies are likely to learn if they believe that they can condemn works that are not published within Kindle Worlds, or if they believe that fans will stop writing their porn and run happily into Amazon's corporate arms.
In the meantime, the answer to Kindle Worlds must come from within fandoms. It must come from places like Organization for Transformative Works, providing alternative spaces in which to share stories that are not within corporate boundaries. Everyone must educate themselves about what rights they hold to their fanfic, what rights they can choose to sign away, and what rights they have no matter what. This is not the end of a conversation. It's not the beginning of a conversation, either. We're in the middle of it, and we will be for a long time to come.
*This is especially funny given that one of the fandoms they're allowing as a "Kindle World" is The Vampire Diaries. How can you possibly write a Vampire Diaries fanfic without depicting racism, and probably using the N-word? A significant chunk of the story occurs in the antebellum South! I suppose that the TV show does it, but one of the things fanfiction is best at is engaging with issue that network TV can't or won't. Sigh.
Edited to add: Another great response to this, from a different perspective.
For those of you coming in midway through this story, Amazon has just announced that they'll be publishing fanfiction for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries, allowing the fic to be sold for money. The author will receive 35% of net revenue (for works of 10,000+ words) and royalties (unspecified) will be payed to the rightsholder of the fictional universe.
I think a lot of people have a kneejerk reaction to this which is strongly negative—"Jesus Christ, it's FanLib all over again!" People also have the expectation that it will fail, that fans are not interested in selling their works. I don't think that all that negativity is entirely justified. Here's why:
- The success of Wattpad shows that younger writers especially are interested in self-publishing and that many of them view fanfic as a road to a self-publishing career. For writers who view fanfiction in this way, Kindle Worlds would seem like a godsend.
- Unlike FanLib, Kindle Worlds is not framed politically—as "freeing" fans in any shape or form. A lot of people were turned off by FanLib's rhetoric who won't be turned off by Kindle Worlds.
Still, I suspect that there is a large enough base of writers who would like to sell their fanfic for any amount of money that Kindle Worlds will not have a hard time finding authors. I'd bet that it will serve as a point of entry for people who were otherwise uninterested in writing fanfic, too. This is another way that they're being smarter than FanLib: instead of trying to appeal to fans who are already uninterested in their deal, they are introducing the idea of fanfic to people who might not otherwise have been interested, expanding their base, so to speak.
A larger obstacle are the content guidelines. Kindle Worlds does not accept pornography, "offensive content," "excessive use of brand names" or crossover stories.* Contrary to what many people say, there is plenty of fanfic that falls within these guidelines and that I believe people would be happy to pay for. Take a look at the fandoms for One Direction or, yes, Twilight if you don't believe me. Yes, these content guidelines mean that a large amount of fanfiction is excluded from Kindle Worlds. So what? Maybe there becomes a bifurcated fandom structure—people willing to write stories within Kindle's content guidelines, and people who aren't. Who cares? If anything, I suspect that the stories "too hot for Kindle Worlds" will be more in demand, not less.
Generally speaking, I believe that fans are not too dumb to read a ToS. I believe that fans will choose to use Kindle Worlds if it works well for them, and they will choose not to if they are uninterested in its strictures. After all, nobody has to submit their stories.
Or do they?
I worry that some people in the entertainment industry are viewing Kindle Worlds as a way to "control" fans. This is a tale as old as time, or at least as old as when rightsholders really, really wanted the Harry Potter fandom to stop writing about Harry Potter being gay. (Yes, this was An Issue, long before Dumbledore came out of the closet. I swear to you, it was.) Can I blame them for wanting to control the stories they've told? Not entirely, no. I can't blame that impulse, any more than I can blame the impulse of a novelist to yell at fanfiction writers for "messing up their world." The novelist invested their heart and soul, Warner Brothers invested millions of dollars, in either case there are these weird outsiders coming in and making the stories about something else, something they never envisioned. What will happen? What if Harry Potter gets associated with gay porn? Then maybe audiences won't want to see it anymore! And then what?
But the thing about this view is that it's unrealistic. It does not reflect the realities of the internet, and it does not reflect the realities we've seen in the past ten years of fans interacting with corporations. Even though Harry Potter did get associated with gay porn (well, slash fanfic, but it's the same thing in the eyes of the uninitiated), it didn't stop it from being profitable. Hell, fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic turned it into a megahit among the most unlikely audience—and among the audience that people most want to woo, 18-30 year old males! Nobody would be excited to find out that their show was getting associated with 4Chan, yet 4Chan made it a runaway success.
There's nothing wrong with Kindle Worlds as one possibility among many. It actually represents one good thing: the recognition that fans are doing work for franchises, work which can and maybe should be compensated. That's a step that nobody has taken (outside of rare contests), to my knowledge. I know a lot of fans see this as cheapening their art by tainting it with commerce, but the fact is that the entertainment industry is all about making money, and unless fans are able and willing to talk in monetary terms, they will never be taken seriously. (Actually, it represents two good things. In its terms, it admits that fans have rights over their own fanfic, rights that can be signed away when you take part in Kindle Worlds. This seems basic, but it is not always recognized.)
Where Kindle Worlds may go wrong is if it is viewed by the entertainment industry as the be-all and end-all of interacting with fan creativity. That would create a no-win situation for everybody. Many waters cannot quench fandom, neither can the floods drown it—a fact that companies are likely to learn if they believe that they can condemn works that are not published within Kindle Worlds, or if they believe that fans will stop writing their porn and run happily into Amazon's corporate arms.
In the meantime, the answer to Kindle Worlds must come from within fandoms. It must come from places like Organization for Transformative Works, providing alternative spaces in which to share stories that are not within corporate boundaries. Everyone must educate themselves about what rights they hold to their fanfic, what rights they can choose to sign away, and what rights they have no matter what. This is not the end of a conversation. It's not the beginning of a conversation, either. We're in the middle of it, and we will be for a long time to come.
*This is especially funny given that one of the fandoms they're allowing as a "Kindle World" is The Vampire Diaries. How can you possibly write a Vampire Diaries fanfic without depicting racism, and probably using the N-word? A significant chunk of the story occurs in the antebellum South! I suppose that the TV show does it, but one of the things fanfiction is best at is engaging with issue that network TV can't or won't. Sigh.
Edited to add: Another great response to this, from a different perspective.
In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:
Follow me on Twitter.
- Tuesday, 0105: My fitbit #Fitstats for 5/20/2013: 6,195 steps and 2.7 miles traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/23LLYD
- Tuesday, 0703: Who hosts "Say Yes to the Dress: Galactic Empire"? Leia Organza Solo.
- Tuesday, 0848: Who is the ruler of the insects on Barrayar? Insectovors.
- Tuesday, 0956: "What is this?" "Slide whistle. For committee members and managers."
- Tuesday, 1225: @thette I woke up with the insectovor one. I got a whole 6 hours of beautiful sleep. ( read the other 14 )
Follow me on Twitter.
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Hi Azz!
Day 1 of the Epic Work Thing was a success: if the only problems worth mentioning are one guy without a registration packet, one substitute attendee, a broken zipper, nobody knowing which of 6 SSIDs were meant for us, dodgy audio on one video (video was bad, sound system amplified it), and the loose phone charger I brought not working: the first day went hella well.
Your backup battery is in the bathroom.
You have pants strewn liberally about the room.
Put your pajamas in the dirty laundry bundle.
The key is on the other bedside table.
Wake up, clean up, get dressed, and check out. The conference hotel has breakfast, internet, and work. You picked breakfast. You know you liked it.
Goodnight.
Day 1 of the Epic Work Thing was a success: if the only problems worth mentioning are one guy without a registration packet, one substitute attendee, a broken zipper, nobody knowing which of 6 SSIDs were meant for us, dodgy audio on one video (video was bad, sound system amplified it), and the loose phone charger I brought not working: the first day went hella well.
Your backup battery is in the bathroom.
You have pants strewn liberally about the room.
Put your pajamas in the dirty laundry bundle.
The key is on the other bedside table.
Wake up, clean up, get dressed, and check out. The conference hotel has breakfast, internet, and work. You picked breakfast. You know you liked it.
Goodnight.
I was already planning on rewatching season two, but I'm glad I waited. Now I can watch it with this vid in mind. If I don't rewatch it, it's basically just going to be an Ann and Sue Ellen video. I can tell you Pamela Rebecca's overall story arc, sort of, but I don't have a mental list of every scene she was ever in. I can't even do the first part of that for Elena.
I'm also trying this spreadsheet method of vidding I read about a while back. It's easier than writing scenes in parentheses beside lyrics, let me tell you.
I, uh. Don't know what program to use to vid. I have Final Cut Express on my iMac, and it's the program I'm most comfortable with, but my iMac has that annoying problem where it overheats and its fan sounds like an airplane propeller and it is just not a pleasant device to use. Vidding there will also require me to convert the freaking video files I have, which is tedious as hell, especially since the programs I have for doing that are on the older, slower iMac and don't work with newer computers. Honestly, it would be best to vid on my MacBook Pro, where I have tons of hard drive space and a much faster computer, but all I have is iMove '11. Yeah. Do people vid with that? Do people do anything other than look at it in utter disgust while longing for a previous version of iMovie that is actually usable? Somewhere on the Internet must be a tutorial. I am not convinced the program, despite being my only choice if I'd like to vid on a usable computer, is worth seeking out and reading that tutorial.
At least I have the air conditioner in now. That should help with vidding on the iMac.
I'm also trying this spreadsheet method of vidding I read about a while back. It's easier than writing scenes in parentheses beside lyrics, let me tell you.
I, uh. Don't know what program to use to vid. I have Final Cut Express on my iMac, and it's the program I'm most comfortable with, but my iMac has that annoying problem where it overheats and its fan sounds like an airplane propeller and it is just not a pleasant device to use. Vidding there will also require me to convert the freaking video files I have, which is tedious as hell, especially since the programs I have for doing that are on the older, slower iMac and don't work with newer computers. Honestly, it would be best to vid on my MacBook Pro, where I have tons of hard drive space and a much faster computer, but all I have is iMove '11. Yeah. Do people vid with that? Do people do anything other than look at it in utter disgust while longing for a previous version of iMovie that is actually usable? Somewhere on the Internet must be a tutorial. I am not convinced the program, despite being my only choice if I'd like to vid on a usable computer, is worth seeking out and reading that tutorial.
At least I have the air conditioner in now. That should help with vidding on the iMac.
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Kids wore me out today. Fell asleep on the train. Good thing I didn't miss my stop.
***
They were screaming about something upstairs. Couldn't hear what. I went outside to enjoy a bit of the weather since it's still nice out there. He came out, started talking about the cats and other nonsense. I wanted to ask, but I knew he'd just get mad. Not my business anyway.
The rest of my life is going to be this way.
I cannot believe God's going to let me rot here. I cannot believe this will be my fate.
***
They were screaming about something upstairs. Couldn't hear what. I went outside to enjoy a bit of the weather since it's still nice out there. He came out, started talking about the cats and other nonsense. I wanted to ask, but I knew he'd just get mad. Not my business anyway.
The rest of my life is going to be this way.
I cannot believe God's going to let me rot here. I cannot believe this will be my fate.
Rumors were swirling over the weekend about Yahoo acquiring Tumblr. Or, possibly, Facebook acquiring Tumblr to prevent anyone else from doing so.
Yahoo did buy Tumblr, and of course lots of people were talking about it this morning. I think in the long run, Tumblr was kind of doomed anyway without a buyout deal, because they still haven't figured out a good business model. And with the spectre of a Facebook buyout raised, I'd take my chances with a Yahoo-owned Tumblr over a Facebook-owned Tumblr.
That being said, I think Yahoo's model has been pretty detrimental to the properties they've bought overall. Their pattern has been to integrate Yahoo-specific hooks into their new acquisitions, then benignly neglect them, then reap the results of that neglect by shrinking the staff (whether by pulling them to work on other projects or just letting them go), and then close or "sunset" them, in a way that would make it difficult for those properties to pull out the Yahoo-restricted code and go on as an independent from there. Then again, I might still be traumatized on multiple vectors from how they handled the Delicious "sunset," both personal and professional. (And that's far from the first acquisition Yahoo has screwed up.)
I *want* Mayer to be the second coming, to have a coherent vision, for her actions to all be driving towards her vision. I want to regain my confidence in Flickr's future. The new mobile app has helped a little; it's still playing catch-up, but it seems to indicate that they're not fully asleep at the wheel anymore. But I'm still wary. And realistically, the only thing that's going to give me confidence isn't going to be a lightning bolt one-time action, it's going to be seeing Mayer's actions to turn Yahoo around *work* over a long period of time, while minimizing the destruction of things I love in Yahoo's custody.
But Tumblr, for me, is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. I'm not nearly as engaged over there as I am elsewhere. What drew me into the Tumblr stories: the footnote that Yahoo was expected to announce updates to Flickr Monday afternoon.
( Flickr account type comparison table: the updates )
1. Eligible Pro members have the option to switch to a Free account until 8/20/2013. What happens after that, I don't know. Automatic downgrade to Free? Automatic switch to Ad-Free?
2. Check your account history to see if you're currently on a renewing subscription or a one-time purchase.
3. It is possible to upgrade to the "Doublr" account, with all the privileges of the Free account type, and an additional terabyte of storage for a total of 2TB. Doublr is priced at $500/year. Because of this, I didn't bother giving it its own column in the table. Honestly, Doublr and Ad-Free seem more like a la carte add-ons than fully differentiated account types.
4. It is unclear to me what quality of HD video this limits Pro accounts to. Somebody with more familiarity with typical video file sizes will know better than I will. It's also unclear that the previous restriction of only Pro users being able to view HD video will remain; more likely that the FAQ just hasn't been updated yet.
5. And here's where we come to the big problem for me.
So it's unclear how much longer Pro users will get to keep their Pro accounts. And when Pro users switch to Ad-Free, they'll be paying twice as much per year to not see ads. And Flickr's wording here is pretty canny:
In other words? Free users are going to see ads on your Flickr photo pages, at the very least. What happens when you embed your Flickr-hosted photos somewhere else? And a free user, or somebody without a Flickr or Yahoo account, views your photos?
And yet, where else can we go? Where else can I see my friends' photos in a convenient community feed, and vice versa? We already know the answer to that, the ones we didn't want to hear: Facebook or Google.
I've been a Flickr Pro user for a number of years; even after I expressed my doubts about Flickr's long-term viability last year, I've kept my Pro account. As much as SmugMug is a better fit for my desire to be prioritized over advertisers as a customer, it's not community-oriented in its vision. There is no friends feed, like there is on Flickr and Facebook, and even if there was, I know exactly one other person using SmugMug right now anyway. And the costs aren't trivial ($40/year for the lowest level account). But they do seem to be rooted in the reality of running a successful independent web service. It's not perfect. 500px may be another option, but I don't see a friends' photos feed there, either. Both seem to be more oriented towards helping you sell your photos, though.
I'd hoped Yahoo investment in Flickr would help turn it into a solid Facebook competitor. Not this round. Nobody trusts Google/Picasa, either, and they're barreling straight down the realname path Facebook forged. So. How do we solve this? Go back to personal hosting? Wait, isn't RSS dying, too? :P Plus, the problems of the network effect are well-known, and difficult to overcome. We have this conundrum in modern Western society - we've come to trust and support larger global companies and forgive them their follies more than our smaller independent companies at the same time that we've also ceded our financial stakes in them to global advertisers.
But of course, all the smaller services I've been supporting haven't integrated modern things I consider core to my internet experience, like friends feeds or social collaboration. (Pinboard, I'm grateful for you; you saw a gigantic horde of us coming over from your social ex-competitor and you listened to us and made room for us, but you have a massive metadata problem in your "antisocial" culture, and that is probably eventually going to cause me to leave, because that's a cultural lack-of-fit I desperately want to fix. SmugMug, you're fancy and powerful, but I can't even share my photos with my friends without having to send them back out elsewhere like Facebook?) Which, you know, one-person products. Or at least small-team products. And I'm not saying these are simple things to implement, at all. They require dev time that's at a premium in smaller companies, and they also require that the visionary for the given software thinks that social stuff like that is a priority or a benefit for the culture they've been developing. But dammit, I still want more.
Yahoo did buy Tumblr, and of course lots of people were talking about it this morning. I think in the long run, Tumblr was kind of doomed anyway without a buyout deal, because they still haven't figured out a good business model. And with the spectre of a Facebook buyout raised, I'd take my chances with a Yahoo-owned Tumblr over a Facebook-owned Tumblr.
That being said, I think Yahoo's model has been pretty detrimental to the properties they've bought overall. Their pattern has been to integrate Yahoo-specific hooks into their new acquisitions, then benignly neglect them, then reap the results of that neglect by shrinking the staff (whether by pulling them to work on other projects or just letting them go), and then close or "sunset" them, in a way that would make it difficult for those properties to pull out the Yahoo-restricted code and go on as an independent from there. Then again, I might still be traumatized on multiple vectors from how they handled the Delicious "sunset," both personal and professional. (And that's far from the first acquisition Yahoo has screwed up.)
I *want* Mayer to be the second coming, to have a coherent vision, for her actions to all be driving towards her vision. I want to regain my confidence in Flickr's future. The new mobile app has helped a little; it's still playing catch-up, but it seems to indicate that they're not fully asleep at the wheel anymore. But I'm still wary. And realistically, the only thing that's going to give me confidence isn't going to be a lightning bolt one-time action, it's going to be seeing Mayer's actions to turn Yahoo around *work* over a long period of time, while minimizing the destruction of things I love in Yahoo's custody.
But Tumblr, for me, is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. I'm not nearly as engaged over there as I am elsewhere. What drew me into the Tumblr stories: the footnote that Yahoo was expected to announce updates to Flickr Monday afternoon.
( Flickr account type comparison table: the updates )
1. Eligible Pro members have the option to switch to a Free account until 8/20/2013. What happens after that, I don't know. Automatic downgrade to Free? Automatic switch to Ad-Free?
2. Check your account history to see if you're currently on a renewing subscription or a one-time purchase.
3. It is possible to upgrade to the "Doublr" account, with all the privileges of the Free account type, and an additional terabyte of storage for a total of 2TB. Doublr is priced at $500/year. Because of this, I didn't bother giving it its own column in the table. Honestly, Doublr and Ad-Free seem more like a la carte add-ons than fully differentiated account types.
4. It is unclear to me what quality of HD video this limits Pro accounts to. Somebody with more familiarity with typical video file sizes will know better than I will. It's also unclear that the previous restriction of only Pro users being able to view HD video will remain; more likely that the FAQ just hasn't been updated yet.
5. And here's where we come to the big problem for me.
So it's unclear how much longer Pro users will get to keep their Pro accounts. And when Pro users switch to Ad-Free, they'll be paying twice as much per year to not see ads. And Flickr's wording here is pretty canny:
Pro accounts have "ad-free browsing and sharing;" Ad-Free accounts only promise "no ads in your browsing experience."
In other words? Free users are going to see ads on your Flickr photo pages, at the very least. What happens when you embed your Flickr-hosted photos somewhere else? And a free user, or somebody without a Flickr or Yahoo account, views your photos?
And yet, where else can we go? Where else can I see my friends' photos in a convenient community feed, and vice versa? We already know the answer to that, the ones we didn't want to hear: Facebook or Google.
I've been a Flickr Pro user for a number of years; even after I expressed my doubts about Flickr's long-term viability last year, I've kept my Pro account. As much as SmugMug is a better fit for my desire to be prioritized over advertisers as a customer, it's not community-oriented in its vision. There is no friends feed, like there is on Flickr and Facebook, and even if there was, I know exactly one other person using SmugMug right now anyway. And the costs aren't trivial ($40/year for the lowest level account). But they do seem to be rooted in the reality of running a successful independent web service. It's not perfect. 500px may be another option, but I don't see a friends' photos feed there, either. Both seem to be more oriented towards helping you sell your photos, though.
I'd hoped Yahoo investment in Flickr would help turn it into a solid Facebook competitor. Not this round. Nobody trusts Google/Picasa, either, and they're barreling straight down the realname path Facebook forged. So. How do we solve this? Go back to personal hosting? Wait, isn't RSS dying, too? :P Plus, the problems of the network effect are well-known, and difficult to overcome. We have this conundrum in modern Western society - we've come to trust and support larger global companies and forgive them their follies more than our smaller independent companies at the same time that we've also ceded our financial stakes in them to global advertisers.
But of course, all the smaller services I've been supporting haven't integrated modern things I consider core to my internet experience, like friends feeds or social collaboration. (Pinboard, I'm grateful for you; you saw a gigantic horde of us coming over from your social ex-competitor and you listened to us and made room for us, but you have a massive metadata problem in your "antisocial" culture, and that is probably eventually going to cause me to leave, because that's a cultural lack-of-fit I desperately want to fix. SmugMug, you're fancy and powerful, but I can't even share my photos with my friends without having to send them back out elsewhere like Facebook?) Which, you know, one-person products. Or at least small-team products. And I'm not saying these are simple things to implement, at all. They require dev time that's at a premium in smaller companies, and they also require that the visionary for the given software thinks that social stuff like that is a priority or a benefit for the culture they've been developing. But dammit, I still want more.
OK I'm an ass, I've completely forgot who said they could beta for me? (Please forgive)
Anyhoo I have 1 ready to go and the 2nd is close, I'm half way there.
Alec/Max (wc: 4821 futuristic post Freak Nation with flash backs, PG-13 the most)
Alec/Zack piece. (more or less it’s a porn piece, A/B/O verse with Alec as the omega, my 1st knotting fic)
Last one I'll be starting very soon! Any takers for the above please lmk- again apologies if you already said yes & I forgot!
Anyhoo I have 1 ready to go and the 2nd is close, I'm half way there.
Alec/Max (wc: 4821 futuristic post Freak Nation with flash backs, PG-13 the most)
Alec/Zack piece. (more or less it’s a porn piece, A/B/O verse with Alec as the omega, my 1st knotting fic)
Last one I'll be starting very soon! Any takers for the above please lmk- again apologies if you already said yes & I forgot!
I've been making my own granola for a while now. It's lots of fun to pile heaps and heaps of stuff in a bowl, like a bucket of horsefeed. And it makes the house smell amazing.
I keep tweaking online recipes to my own tastes, and then forgetting my tweaks, so I'm writing this one down. This is mostly based on Andy Fairfield's Granola, with extra stuff.
(![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lonelywalker, basically everything in this recipe can kill you, so please never make it.)
( We're going to need a bigger bowl... )
I keep tweaking online recipes to my own tastes, and then forgetting my tweaks, so I'm writing this one down. This is mostly based on Andy Fairfield's Granola, with extra stuff.
(
lonelywalker, basically everything in this recipe can kill you, so please never make it.)( We're going to need a bigger bowl... )
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