For you paranoid delusional peasants out there who think the big rich websites play by different rules that the little people, here's some more fodder for your anger.

Recent documents from a lawsuit between YouTube and Viacom show how the companies vying to become the dominant video uploading websites (a battle which YouTube seemed to have won), knew quite well that to win the race to become the dominant video website would require focusing on illegally hosting copyrighted material.

So they weren't just content to simply turn a blind eye when people uploaded such copyrighted videos -- they were in a race to win the market, so naturally they did what any one would do, the founders of the site were busily uploading the illegal copyrighted videos themselves, in an attempt to boost the traffic on the site, and therefore win the popularity competition and make the big money.

Welcome to the web 2.0, where if you want to get bought out by google and make the big money, sometimes you have to do what it takes to inflate your traffic.  The law is for people in 2nd place.


http://arstechnica.com/te...outube-viacom-filings.ars

Wordoid lets you type in a word and it will report on the availability of domain names that are made from made-up derivatives of the word, that sound natural:

http://wordoid.com

Smashing Magazine posted an incredible list of 35 Beautiful Photography Websites.

http://www.smashingmagazi...iful-photography-websites

I'll add that one of my favs for large photojournalism is the Boston Globe's Big Picture site. The web may be bad for print newspapers, but it's been a boon for photography.

This is pretty huge for (recovering) political junkies like me -- this week c-span has finished putting it's entire video archives online, with an awesome search engine.  Some amazingly good stuff to watch here, and a big step forward for US citizens.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/

Another micro payment service, this one focused on social networks:


http://sparechangeinc.com

Good discussion of some cafepress alternatives:


http://www.squidoo.com/cafepress_alternative

Well...It's been 5 Weeks since I took the reigns on the Tech News section and a lot has happened since I started.  I have had A LOT of great feedback since starting and I must thank you all for your support in my new roles, here on DC! Anyway, hope you enjoy this weeks edition of your Tech News.
-Stephen

Table of Contents:

• Obama to 'aggressively protect' intellectual property
• At SXSWi, Facebook flexes its gaming muscle
• Shuttleworth heir opens up on Ubuntu biz
• Google '99.9%' certain to pull China search plug
• ICANN delays decision on pornography domain
• Android Has Enough Class for Opera
• Can a Clown-Nosed Wand Move the Needle for PS3?
• All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple: The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement
• Sniffing Out an HTML5 Conspiracy
• 15 memorable quotes from the Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde

FreewareGenius has a write up today about a (new?) free downloading tool StreamTransport.  Sounds promising, and even seems to have some url capturing features like those found in URL Snooper?


http://www.streamtransport.com/

BatchBlitz is a digital photo categorizer, filter and batch editor (freeware).

In BatchBlitz, you first select some source photos to be processed, specify where to output the processed files, define one or more actions to be taken, then simply click Start.

Website homepage:
http://www.sunlitgreen.com/

Regardless of what career path you follow, the ability to promote yourself and build a following is fast becoming an critical skill. One of the better books on the topic is Scott Kirsner's Fans, Friends And Followers: Building An Audience And A Creative Career In The Digital Age[


There's a write up and sample text available at Amazon if you'd like to take a look:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/...5&creativeASIN=1442100745

A paperback copy will set you back about $16 from Amazon. But Scott is celebrating the 2010 SXSW Week ( www.sxsw.com ) by offering a copy in PDF format for free at the following link:

Info and download link: http://www.scottkirsner.com/fff/sxsw.html

This is a great book, loaded with ideas you can either "borrow," or use to spark some of your own. Although primarily geared towards creative types, the core concepts apply to virtually every career. In this economy, the ability to "sell yourself" isn't just a plus - it's a necessity.

On Friday night, Ars Technica decided to set up a system to catch those visitors running "a very popular ad blocking tool" (presumably Adblock Plus), which in turn would block those users, not allowing them to see any content on the site. As expected, shit hit the fan once the users stopped freaking out, and found out what happened (kinda expected for a tech-centric site) with the articles. So, on Sunday, Ken Fisher, one of the site founders, explained everything about the experiment, and the reasons for doing it. Nothing new there, expect for the fact that ads on many Internet sites now are paid on a per view basis, instead of clicks.

While the post sounds very reasonable, and no one is threatening to cut access to those running adblockers, many people think otherwise, and express so in the post comments. What's more, now the debate spreads to the rest of the Internet, as the post gets slashdotted (and probably digged as well), and people starts weighing on the issue, ranging from John Gruber noting the complexity of the situation to Tech Dirt telling Ars that it's time to evolve and stop complaining. Other people, like Scott Wason at The Tech Report side with Fisher, painting a situation very similar to Ars Technica.

http://arstechnica.com/bu...to-the-sites-you-love.ars

One of the most ironic things about the whole situation is that the same Internet sites that are supposedly replacing newspapers as major sources of information are also struggling to find sources of ad revenue, and many say that their business model is 'dead' and they should be researching alternative models. So, are 'old' and 'new' media sharing the same dying model? Fun.

I should note that all the arguments 'for' and 'against' have been beaten to death, even here on this forum, but it's always interesting to see the affected business expressing their opinion on the whole matter. Now, if the ad companies said something as well...

I was lamenting on the irc channel and on a recent post that with video games becoming so cinematic these days, some of us would much more enjoy just watching someone play a video game like a movie, rather than actually playing it ourselves; especially with so little free time.

DC member ewemoa suggested http://nextgenwalkthroughs.com/ to me, and indeed it has some nicely organized walkthrough videos that look like they may fit the bill.  If anyone has other websites that collect comprehensive full-game videos, let us know!


http://nextgenwalkthroughs.com/

I'm discovered the following gem to automatically sync my coding changes to a test server over ftp. This utility uses ini files to configure source and destination then sync any changes after running it. Just add it to post-commit hook with subversion or mercurial.   Great documentation

http://www.cyberkiko.com/page/FTPSync.aspx