hardwired

Make money from your grainy pics - this is not spam :-)

Not sure about this one. Remember during 7/7 there were loads of grainy photos [BBC] and movies from camera phones from the Underground and outside Tube stations?

Well if you snap something like this (or even something as pleasant as a motorway pile up or a passing Tsunami) you can now upload it and let Scoopt.com worry about the dirty business of making money out of international news organisations.

Why should profits from news photos be exclusive territory for the paparazzi? On the other hand is it good to encourage people to flash their Nokia in front of someone with their legs hanging off? No, I don't know either. But it's another example of entrepreneurs seizing the moment. With digital cameras now ubiquitous and the quality from camera phones increasing, so the rise of citizen journalism continues unabated.

Before you go uploading all your camera pictures, remember that by doing so you give Scoopt exclusive rights to use and sell your pictures (so no posting on your own Plane crash/Fallujah bombing blog).

Links
NUJ says citizen journalists should be called "citizen witnesses" [Press Gazette]
Web site to blend journalism with blogs [Seattle pi.com]
Scoopt aims to be middleman for UK citizen photos and videos [Citizen Paine]

Soft targets

Fascinating article in the paper today about 419 scammers. Originally from the LA Times, the article details the visit of a journalist to Nigeria to meet the fraudsters.

Apparently from 500 emails sent they can get as many as seven replies, with 70% of those replying ending up ripped off.

Microsoft: We Share Your pain!

Great video on the Microsoft website. You know that stupid error message when an application crashes and you can send an "error" report to Microsoft?

You can now be guaranteed that the messages get through and that Microsoft's developers feel that pain too.

"We believe that if our customers are experiencing pain, Microsoft employees should share that pain with them. This is where We Share Your Pain or WE-SYP comes in," says Mauro Meanti, General Manager Microsoft EMEA Server and Tools Business Group.

Who says MS don't have a sense of humour?

View video.

Ringmaster Jobs

While the world waits to see what Jobs & Co. will be releasing on Weds, we've found time for more enhancements that for some reason Apple hasn't thought of.

Who needs a media circus at White City when you've got genius like this to work with?

Desktop search: Your thoughts

Over on the Online Information Blog, Karen Blakeman is compiling thoughts on the variety of Desktop search tools that are available. She wants to hear what people think of things like Blinkx, Google and Yahoo desktop search tools.

Avoid scratches - use bubblewrap

This article on Gizmodo about the iPod reminded me of something i saw the other day.

Evidently the paranoia is spreading following recent stories about scratched Nanos as I saw someone in the street carrying their iPod still wrapped in bubble wrap.

We cunningly recreated this in the office this afternoon for your viewing pleasure.

You sexy thing

Look at this baby. More great looking technology that does a great job.

Leica's D-Lux 2 is also rumoured to feature 16:9 aspect ratio, according to Gizmodo.

Keep the curtains shut

So Michael Dell still believes there is life in the PC gaming market? (Dell releses new high-end computers - inspired headline writing from Business Week).

I questioned this in the office today. One response was that PCs have better resolution on the monitor than TV, two processors (though XBox 360 has 2), upgrade options, more power, two monitors etc.

But to get all that you have to fork out £800 to £1000. And a console takes up less space and is more sociable - ever had a night in with your mates playing Madden NFL sitting in your home office?

Sorry Mike, it all still looks very boy's bedroom.

I'm Profoundly In Love With Pandora*

A friend mentioned a website called Pandora last night and I’ve been trying it out this morning. I’ve been a fan of internet radio stations like SomaFM for a while, but this is a bit cooler.

You tell Pandora a band or song you like and it creates a playlist of music that you might like. With each song, you can say if you like it or not.

I put in the Stone Roses and after confirming that I still like listening to ‘I want to be adored’, a stream of tunes like Pearl Jam’s Wishlist (dislike) and some song by a bloke called Owen (undecided).

You get 10 hours of music as a demo, then it's $36 for the year.

*written by Ian Dury, apparently

Sheep may safely browse

It's widely know that IE7 was slated for release this Summer (I'm sure Summers are longer in California than in the UK).

This week I've been reading about Flock - a new "social" browser developed by some programmers from the Mozilla Foundation.

Flock - previously called Round Two - has features like tabbed browsing and RSS support, but its hot selling point, particularly for bloggers, is the integration with social bookmarking and tagging tools like Flickr and del.icio.us.

According to Wired, Flock is also rumoured to be setting up key partnerships for search, blogging and bookmarking.