Between a few of us here and my friend Pete in the UK, we’ve spent nearly two weeks trying to get OpenX to work. We’re finally getting ad-serving technology put in in-house, after years of relying on the US ad networks we primarily work with. It’s also walking the talk: since I have advocated that Wellington moves to open source if I am elected mayor, then it makes sense that our Linux servers are running ads off an open-source ad-management program.
The first problem might have been caused by me personally: OpenX wouldn’t install. Pete re-uploaded the files, we chmoded the directories, and away we went. Autocade has been the first domain to host the ads that we are sending along, and it’s been so far, so good.
However, today we decided to give the home page of the Lucire web edition a go, and encountered a problem.
All was well for the first few hours, but then I noticed something strange: two different computers at this office were behaving differently with the geo-targeting.
We had fed in banners from two of our US networks. Let’s call them network A and network B. They were set, for New Zealand, to display at these percentages (roughly):
Network A: 98 per cent
Network B: 2 per cent
On computer one running Windows XP, the above was working.
On computer two running Windows Vista:
Network A: 0 per cent
Network B: 100 per cent
I’ve a fair idea of how geo-targeting works and two computers on the same network going through the same router with the same (outward) IP address do not, in theory, behave differently.
But, as Homer Simpson once retorted, ‘In theory, communism works.’
I hope the boffins can explain this one, because usually I have gone against expert advice to get computer hardware working. (The network was hooked up many years ago by yours truly, doing the exact opposite of what the instructions said—after, I might add, the instructions failed. My personal laptop and its Bluetooth connection were hooked up by finding the most illogical method possible.)
Surfing to the OpenX forums (Pete had been on the chat earlier, but no one was around), I tried to log in. Unfortunately, this proved impossible and errors followed:
No one was there at all, presumably due to the database error shown at the bottom of the page:
So, if any OpenX experts are out there and can answer our geo-targeting question, please give us a shout in the comments.
Despite fiddling around with all these online ads, there’s one company I know I will never deal with. And it’s not as though the online ad industry has come to us with clean hands, either, so this sullies them further.
After surfing on July 10, I found I could no longer get on to Facebook. Every time I typed www.facebook.com, I got the screen below (excerpted):
Which led me to here:
Somewhere along the line, I must have got to a web page that hijacked my web browser. It didn’t alter the hosts’ file, and I was eventually able to correct this by deleting all cookies and clearing the browser cache, but it left me with one clear message: I will never deal with Mediaplex.
Based on the above, this conduct is highly unethical and is nearly as bad as planting a trojan or a virus on to a user’s computer. And Googling the incident, I found that many others had encountered the same, sometimes when typing in other sites.
I was saddened to find out that Mediaplex is part of Valueclick, a company I dealt with for years. We eventually ended our contract with Valueclick. I don’t recall the reason exactly, but I suspect it was down to the low advertising rates the company delivered. There were no concerns over its behaviour.
When I was on the Mediaplex site, I noticed that Commission Junction was part of the same group. We have been asked to join CJ many times during the 1990s and 2000s but always read the terms and conditions. It had something similar to this clause (which is in its current agreement):
Dormant Accounts. If Publisher’s Account has not been credited with a valid, compensable Transaction that has not been Charged-back during any rolling, six consecutive calendar month period (“Dormant Account”), a dormant account fee at CJ’s then-current rate shall be applied to Publisher’s Account each calendar month that Publisher’s Account remains an open yet Dormant Account or until Your Account balance reaches a zero balance, at which time the Account shall become deactivated. Transactions will not be counted if the Transaction subsequently becomes a Charge-back.
In English: if you don’t make a sale over six months, they have the right to charge you. When you pay it all back, they kill off your account.
There’s nothing illegal about that, but considering every other affiliate programme we have seen does not do that, then I bet a few people who were less careful about reading their agreements would have been taken by surprise. I found it questionable, and refused to deal with the company. (It seems, if you believe some of the links on Google, that we got off lucky.)
This latest stunt tarnishes the entire group: Commission Junction, Mediaplex and Valueclick. Caveat proponor.
In plain English, when a city is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt—depending on who you believe, the figure is between $200 million and $400 million—how do you get out of the hole?
1. You can sell the family jewels, and there’s water left. We tried this in the 1980s, and now so many foreigners own New Zealand companies that the profits go offshore and we lose a source of tax revenue. Not good, doesn’t work.
2. You can put up the rates for residents to the tune of 5·58 per cent and hope they cover some of this. (The figure was 5·5, then 5·75—so much for transparency.)
3. You can keep praying that the Rugby World Cup will give a temporary boost and hope no one notices that the other years aren’t as prosperous.
4. You can look at what the city has in terms of creativity and intellectual capital, and build on that, especially if the world values the innovative thinking of New Zealanders.
Of the four, I prefer (4). This present mayor and council favour (2) and locked in that rise for us a wee while ago.
I know in some circles my name has become associated with the free wifi for the central city promise, but it goes a bit deeper than that.
Free wifi is like having roads in a city in the 21st century, and right now, what we have is like paying tolls on every single road we drive on.
Compare this to Finland, who enshrined in law the right to broadband, which became effective yesterday (July 1). This means every citizen in Finland has a legal right to having broadband at a minimum speed of 1 Mbit/sec. With netbooks and cloud computing on the rise, this seems to be the logical thing to do. The old ways of having programs on your computer are disappearing.
Get the infrastructure right—after all, Singapore and numerous US cities have done it, and Wellington has to play catch-up with Dunedin and Whanganui—and we can get other things right.
The sectors that have the greatest potential in the 2010s, and in my mind are the biggest earners for New Zealand companies, are the tech and creative sectors. Both rely on the ’net and a more visionary direction for Wellington in a huge way.
Clustering, mentoring and financing are the things we need to do, and they have to be driven from the top. Some are done through lobbying by a business-minded, pro-Kiwi mayor and council (rather than a pro-foreigner one). Others can be driven through council itself. But we need a shake-up in order to do this.
They are all possible solutions, and some are happening now at an ad hoc level.
I’d want to help those companies that are Kiwi-owned or will remain majority Kiwi-owned—this helps with job creation, with the city’s rates and with the country’s tax take. And if Wellington becomes a centre for this activity in the 2010s and demonstrates that we are an advanced economy, who knows what else we can inspire around the nation?
It’s not an overnight solution. But I know we have businesses out there that can generate millions for the New Zealand economy. Thanks to our social consciousness, many are sustainable. We already have examples in businesses I’ve cited many times before: the Sidhes, Wetas, Silverstripes, Catalysts of this world are creating jobs for Wellington. We just need to expand on that and stimulate innovation.
Equally important are the need for transparency and changing the culture within the Wellington City Council, topics for other posts.
That was a very interesting 30 hours. I found out about the ‘Wellywood’ sign yesterday afternoon, through Twitter, and Tweeted to say I hated it. Little did I know then that there was a huge Facebook group—6,000 strong at the time of writing—where Wellingtonians were making their voices known.
And when I got there to Facebook, I was inspired.
While my opponents were still talking hot air, I decided to act for the good of the city. I was inspired by one comment on the larger anti-sign Facebook group, which asked: surely someone holds the copyright?
First stop: the Hollywood Sign Trust. If anyone knew who owned the sign, it would be them.
I received a very nice reply from Betsy Isroelit of the Trust at what must have been very early hours in California, to say that she had referred it to the correct parties.
By the time I got up today, I had an email waiting from Global Icons, LLC, which, with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, owns the original Hollywood sign’s intellectual property. Global Icons, from what I understand, looks after this side of things for the Chamber. And would I please send them the artist’s impression of what the sign would look like?
And that kicked it off. I mentioned this to Rachel Morton at TV3 news before I was interviewed, and she took the initiative by contacting the CEO of the Chamber for comment immediately. It turns out that he did not know that the matter was already brewing in California, but he does now. Rachel tells me that he then put the Chamber’s lawyers on to the case. That’s two for us, nil for Mayor Prendergast and the airport.
All it took was the creativity of Wellingtonians to show something I have said from day one.
You know, creativity? The thing that this sign does not represent, and makes fun of?
And all it took were everyday Wellingtonians collaborating. I was inspired by the person on the Facebook group. And if I hadn’t approached the Trust and Global Icons, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to Rachel. And if Rachel hadn’t called the CEO, Global Icons would probably be going it alone. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit, because the credit is, really, everyone’s. The result should hopefully be that this horrible sign does not go up because people were prepared to act—whether by making their voice known on Facebook, or making some phone calls.
People power, not corporates, not élites, gets things done. And that includes this year’s mayoral election.
I received yet another junk fax today, which I believe are not permitted under the Telecommunications Act. My enquiries to Telecom suggest that this is the case.
This time, it’s a well known business based in town and in the Hutt. And you know what? I’ve now made a mental note not to go there. Unless they and these other junk faxers want to pay for the film and paper they use up. Because my giving them even more money is now an offensive idea.
A couple of years back, I outed a company that turned out to be an old friend’s. We patched up our differences (I would be happy to frequent his business given that his really quick response to show he gave a damn, and he has ceased this practice), though in the process we discovered that these fax lists date back to the early 1990s.
That’s right: they are as old as surgically enhanced parts of Demi Moore.
The usual defence is that anti-spam legislation in New Zealand does not extend to junk faxes, but what that paragraph does not tell you is that unsolicited, nuisance faxes fall under another law. From what I understand, faxes, too, have to be solicited.
When you are using someone else’s resources, beyond their time, to get your message to them, the balance feels wrong. By all means, send me stuff in the post, and pay for your own paper. Asking me for money when you are already wasting it with a junk fax is more arrogant than any form of top–down marketing—and separates buyer and seller more firmly into “us” and “them”.
You can’t help but wonder (without reading the court transcripts and judgement) how the sentencing of Koua Fong Lee could be so harsh. In 2006, Lee’s Toyota Camry, with his pregnant wife, daughter, brother and father on board, accelerated out of control and smashed into an Oldsmobile, killing three people in the second car back in 2006. The judge threw the book at him, giving him the maximum eight years, even though Lee, a recent immigrant, was adamant he was hard on the brakes and not the accelerator at the time of the accident. I don’t know Minnesotan criminal law, but one would think this churchgoing man, with no prior crimes, lacked the mens rea to deserve the full sentence; unless it was cumulative for the three deaths.
Investigations showed there was nothing wrong with the brakes—but, with hindsight, there could have been something wrong with the accelerator or the cruise control, considering that Lee’s Camry was going at 90 mph when it hit the Oldsmobile.
What we can very likely say was that this was not the America that Koua Fong Lee expected to emigrate to.
While the 1996 Camry Lee drove was not part of the Toyota recall, American media suggest that some of these models were repaired for faulty cruise controls. Chances are he will get a retrial, so in light of this new evidence, let’s hope the Lees, and the Adams and Boltons who lost their family members, will see some justice.
Can someone please explain to me how I have a Google Buzz account?
Yes, I know, all those people complaining about Google Buzz found that their Gmail contacts where, all of a sudden, added to the service.
And Google, this week, apologized for messing up.
Well, Google, please explain my scenario, because I don’t have a bloody Gmail account.
Yet, you’ve seen fit to provide me with a Buzz account—something I do not want—and, like so many others, added 19 followers to it.
Above: Buzz has been the centre of complaints for Gmail users these past few weeks. Google now extends that to non-Gmail users.
This was today. This was after your supposed apology for messing up people’s privacy.
I guess you’ve figured that after messing up Gmail users’ lives, you’re now going after non-Gmail users.
Incidentally, can someone also please explain to me why I have 18 requests for Google Reader followers when I have done everything possible to remove every last piece of information out of there? Just where did these 18 suddenly come from?
Above: Despite deleting everything out of my Google Reader account, today I have 18 people wanting to be the followers of an empty account. Nice one, Google.
Above: A new field was added to my Google Profile, checked by default—to ensure less privacy. Less than a day after it apologized for breaching people’s privacy. Hypocrisy much?
Are your people so stupid that you would introduce a new field dealing with privacy and turn it on by default? The week after your Google Buzz débâcle? Who did you hire? People from Facebook?
Does your HR department hire bottom-of-the-class guys, or do you find morons and train them down?
Rather ironical, considering that this week, I have been de-Googling my life. Looks like Google doesn’t like my removing myself from its services, so it’s forcibly put me on to new ones and created new options which it has checked by default, decreasing my privacy.
It wasn’t enough that you had put me on to Reader and turned on Web History after I turned it off.
Consider my profile deleted, dickheads. You are not getting any more of my personal information from me.
Really, Google, WTF?
Above: I don’t have Gmail. Look, Google, it’s in my “new products to try” section.
PS.: Deleting my profile has made no difference to my Buzz account: it remains there, complete with followers.—JY
P.PS.:Scootley at the Gmail forums explains that anyone can get a Buzz account, even if they do not use Gmail. Here’s what I don’t get (correct me if I am wrong):
• Buzz is part of Gmail.
• If I have never signed up to Gmail and agreed to its terms and conditions, what governs my relationship with Google over Buzz?
I decided to find out.
Answer: none.
On visiting Google Buzz’s home page, and following the links at the bottom of that page to the terms and conditions and privacy policy, I encountered these two pages:
Above: Google has no terms and conditions for Buzz (URL accessed 2.27 p.m. GMT [and again at 10.26 p.m. GMT]).
Above: Google has no privacy policy for Buzz (URL accessed 2.27 p.m. GMT [and again at 10.26 p.m. GMT]).
Ironically, I re-created a new profile and unchecked the ‘Display the list of people I’m following and people following me’ option, and now, Buzz has finally disappeared. (This did not work earlier—and Scootley confirms that that should have had no effect on Buzz’s presence in my Google Dashboard. Still, it’s gone, so I’m happy.)—JY
P.P.PS.: One consequence of having no Google profile is that Google punishes you in the search results. In an ego-surf of my name with quotes, I dipped 10,000 results because of the missing profile. (I also dipped 10,000 after an earlier attempt a few days ago of having my profile turned off.) Like one page on Google really counts for 10,000 hits—but apparently, Google gets pissy at you for turning your profile off!
Well, I’d rather have a drop of 10,000 references than have weird services appear in my Google profile!—JY
For those trying to leave Google Wave—and who have had no satisfaction whatsoever from the Google forums (what a surprise)—there might be one way.
There are quite a few reasons people want to leave Wave. One netizen had this concern: ‘It appears I have been linked to former associates who I have kept in my contacts list in case I need to take legal action against them; I want nothing to do with them. I am concerned now that I am going to appear in the Wave contacts of everyone in my contacts list—this is a nightmare scenario. This is a serious breach of my privacy.’ Others have found total strangers among their Wave followers who are not part of their Gmail contacts’ list or any others. Still others have found hackers and abusers who are writing extensions and other things to crash their accounts—something that has happened as early as October 2009.
With me, I can’t find much reason to keep Wave if I am de-Googling my life right now—it’s one service too many, and I am increasingly Google-sceptic these days. I also don’t like the fact that a brand-new email account at googlewave.com has been set up for me without my consent (this probably accounts for the appearance of “strangers” in people’s Google Wave accounts).
Today, Google announced that s. 11.1 would change insofar as its terms and conditions for Wave are concerned. It now reads, just for this service (and does not appear on the site-wide terms and conditions linked from your Google account settings, and to date, there is no separate set of terms governing Wave):
Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Google Wave account. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold to Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service. By submitting, posting or displaying the Content, you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its Privacy Policy.
Therefore, I wrote to Google’s Privacy Policy people saying I disagreed with the above change, and would they please cancel my Wave account?
You can find a link to the Privacy Policy here. There’s a further link from there to a form which goes to the Privacy Matters’ department.
I concluded the email with this paragraph:
Please be advised that I do not accept this change to our agreement insofar as my Google Wave usage is concerned, and request that my Google Wave account be terminated. However, please retain my other Google products until further notice.
You never know, it might work. It’s the only area where there still seems to be a form that’s read by human beings at Google.
I take no responsibility for others’ use of this information—it’s provided simply as a chronicle of what I’m trying. I would rather be Wave-free immediately than wait the nine months that Google claims a cancellation would take. (That’s right: officially, if you want to leave Wave, you have to be inactive for nine months, and then Google might cancel your account. No word on whether you also lose your googlewave.com email account.) I had hoped it could be done in nine seconds by surfing to a page, clicking ‘Cancel’ and having some processing time.
In related news, you now need three entries in your Google profile in order to be listed in search results. This is an increase of one: over the weekend, you only required two.
PS.: A month later, I can report that the legal route does not work.—JY
I was getting annoyed at Google for the services it counts as part of my ‘products’, but that was minor compared with what Harriet Jacobs has gone through with Google’s new Buzz service—which appeared to have put her personal safety in jeopardy (hat tip to Simon Green).
From what I can tell, Buzz shares, by default, your information with your Gmail’s most frequent contacts. In Harriet’s case, this included her abusive ex-husband, who emails her a lot. All of a sudden, she feared that everything that was in her Reader account was being shared with her ex.
She never made a Google profile, never signed up to Buzz, and never had her Reader settings on public. In fact, in the comments was this response from Harriet (sic):
I opted out of Buzz when it arrived, but it still auto-followed.
My “Contact” list only lists my boyfriend and mother as people who are approved for anything. Everybody else is on a separate list. This has always been the case. They were still auto-followed.
I never approved connecting ANY of my sites to Buzz. Reader and Picasa were connected automatically, without my permission or knowledge. My Reader and Picasa were private, by the way, but followers still showed up on my Reader (according to Google now, they couldn’t read anything, but they were still there).
I never created a Google profile. I checked that again this morning to make sure I wasn’t crazy, and I’m not. I never created a Google profile, specifically because I am so concerned with my privacy.
So! All future comments about, “Turn Buzz off,” “Make your stuff private,” “Don’t approve contacts,” “Make your profile private,” “You shouldn’t have approved Buzz in the first place” are to be deleted, because I DID ALL THOSE THINGS.
First, just to be clear: if your Reader shared items are “Protected,” no one except the people you’ve explicitly allowed to see your shared items have been able to see them. If your Reader shared items are public on the web, then they are discoverable by anyone. To make sure your Reader shared items are protected, visit this page in Reader.
You can block any unwanted followers in Google Buzz, regardless of whether or not you (or they) have a profile. This is one of the changes we made last night in response to feedback we’d received from others. Click the Buzz link in Gmail, click on “XX followers,” and then block them.
But, while Harriet is grateful that Todd responded to her concerns, she rightly points out (with my emphasis):
So! There are still a lot of issues with Buzz, and beyond all the bugs, there’s still the fact that they opted me into it without my permission—in fact, explicitly against my permission. That’s not something I’m going to forgive or forget, and there’s still a broken trust that makes me hairy eyeball even the nicest thing Todd can say to me.
Makes my issue with Google really, really minor. About this time last night, before I knew of Harriet’s case, I was prepared to complain about what was in my Google account settings:
As you have figured out, these are, according to Google, the stuff I use from the company. You can find this page by going to the Google home page and, provided you are logged in, via the ‘Settings’ link in the top right-hand corner. The down arrow has a link for ‘Google Account settings’.
The products are divided into two sections: those I am supposedly currently using, and those that I am not but might like to try.
This is where it gets annoying.
The big one that jumped out at me a month ago (this screen shot is from today) was Web History. When Google announced there would be a Web History service, I specifically opted out of it. I was very surprised last month to find it was turned on. I had to opt out again. As a result, this dropped down to the ‘Try something new’ category.
I opted out of iGoogle some years ago, and it’s also in ‘Try something new’. That was back when opting out of stuff on Google worked.
But that leaves some oddities up above. In alphabetical order:
• AdSense. I cancelled this last month after getting very fed up with Google’s behaviour elsewhere—and the six months’ damage to its brand from Blogger’s poor and, later, obstructive, support. Oh, and it was crap. No monies are outstanding. As far as I can tell, I am not on AdSense, yet it remains in the products I am “currently using”;
• Notebook. Never signed up for it; have no idea what it’s doing there. I cannot opt out of it;
• Picasa Web Albums. I was shocked to find half a dozen images in there that I never uploaded into it. They were mine, and they had come from my Blogger profile. As far as I knew, when I uploaded those photographs in the early 2000s, they were not being put on to Picasa. In fact, these photographs predate the opening of my Picasa account by many years. Nevertheless, I have deleted everything from it now. Picasa only exists in this category as friends have shared their albums with me;
• Reader. Never signed up for it, and was surprised to find a dozen blogs in there that I supposedly follow (which, again, came via Blogger—I was never told that following blogs would open a Reader account and have everything stuck into it), and even a follower. I have deleted everything from it now. There is no way to opt out of it. One friend has told me that I have Reader as a default for a Google user. But I don’t want it and am unlikely to ever want it, so why can’t I opt out of it?;
• SketchUp. I did sign up for it via Google Earth, but it was called something else. Whatever the case, I can’t leave;
• Subscribed Links. Never signed up for it, and cannot leave;
• Talk. Never signed up for it, and cannot leave it. The same friend informed me that I would have got this via Gmail. But, as you can see above, I don’t have a Gmail account. Given the way Google treats people and our privacy, I am unlikely to ever want a Gmail account;
• Wave. I was sent an invitation to it, and added one friend. However, as I am deleting unwanted services on Google, I am trying to rid myself of Wave, too. No such luck: despite deleting my two friends, you can’t leave this, either.
There are a few other things I don’t use personally, but signed up to them to help clients and colleagues (e.g. Google Docs—given the way Google has behaved, I am never going to create any Docs myself. Why bother, when WordPerfect is perfectly adequate?).
I’ve been taking things out of the Google Dashboard, too. Sooner or later, I expect my Blogger profile to disappear as I shut down everything relating to that service. It was in the Dashboard that I found I had a Reader follower, whom I never approved (he’s not a bad person, it’s just that I see no point of having a follower for a service I never signed up for, and never added anything to with my knowledge).
If you care about your privacy, I recommend you go in to your Google account settings and check what you might have been signed up to without your knowledge. As for asking for support on this stuff, forget it. I’m pretty sick of the Google support forums after months on them on a single issue—and it’s going to be quicker for us to sort these things out ourselves.
If you pop down to the comments at an earlier post, you’ll find that a chap called Mark was very upset I used a thumbnail (100 pixels wide, 67 high) of one of his photos. In fact, I’ve done exactly the same in this post with another gentleman’s work (albeit this one is under Creative Commons), so you can get an idea of what happened. Mark is well within his legal rights to complain, though we thought it was rather funny and slightly hypocritical that he spent all that time investigating me and my company when he could have written a polite message.
But this post isn’t about how short his fuse is or how he uses his time. I have written to people who have taken my work before, too, and have been far more effective, but they’re cases of entire duplication (a new copy on their server, no acknowledgement and no links back). I responded to him both privately and publicly, explaining that he was credited (though it could have been done better), and the thumbnail was hosted on and linked back to his Flickr account. I take with the non-response that he has conceded my point, but how do others feel in 2010 about thumbnail linking?
The law basically says that even thumbnail linking is illegal. It is technically a copyright infringement in most jurisdictions (the claim of ‘theft’ is wrong) although one could easily use fair use as a defence. Mark, as any photographer, also has a moral right over his work over which he can determine how it is to be used.
As I explained to him, my approach is to look at how I would feel (and I’m OK with a linked thumbnail, even without credit), and since his is the only complaint of this kind in four years of this blog, I’m going to have to take his position as a minority opinion in the days of Google Images and the like, which do even less with acknowledgement.
But it raises a fascinating question. It’s probably not as major as the controversy over Google Books, and it has been covered elsewhere before, but evidently it’s an ongoing issue.
How do people feel about thumbnail linking? Internally we are fine with it, but we are too small a sample to base a judgement on. Or, for that matter, what about the reproduction (and often uploading) of “found” items on Tumblr, where such behaviour is the norm?
For those trying to leave 
