Back in January, we posted about a case in which a scammer got convicted of phishing credit-card and other info from AOL users, and faced up to 101 years in prison. He's now been sentenced, and depending on how you look at it, got let off easy by getting sent to jail for 70 months. While his fate won't elicit much sympathy, it's also hard to see the case serving much wider use to society, despite the prosecution's insistence that it sends a proverbial message to phishers. The guy wasn't convicted of phishing, but rather of a litany of other fraud-related crimes, and it's hard to imagine that too many phishers don't understand they're breaking these, or any number of other, laws. Certainly this guy deserves some punishment for what he did, but to act like this sentence does anything to help stem the tide of phishing attacks hitting internet users each day is disingenuous, as a response-based legal strategy does very little to stop the attacks being carried out right now.

Ricoh has released updated fimware for their Caplio R6 digital camera. A minor update by all accounts, this fixes the skew correction feature as well as preventing the step zoom function from being deactivated when the camera is powered off. The third change is to display @settings have been changed' if switched on in the landscape scene mode. Link after the click.

My son loves toy catalogs. He’ll turn the pages and just imagine. He drinks the koolaid, and loves every minute of it. I love to watch him.

I hope he never gets to the point where he thumbs through a catalog and scoffs. Where he reads the descriptions and cynically dares them to be true. I want him to always retain his sense of wonder, his desire to believe the best.

What has happened to our optimism? I’m sure all of us can recall many a childhood hour spent thumbing through dog-eared toy catalogs, dreaming. How many of us still do? Why are we now so quick to shout “hype” at every new development? Why are we so afraid to believe? “Meh, it’s just another X.” “So-and-so did that years ago.” “I’ll believe it when I see it.“

I’ve found myself slipping down that poisonous slope recently. I’ve started to reevaluate, and I think I’d rather follow my son. Perhaps it’s not too late to recapture some of that childhood optimism.

TeamSnap is a smart new Rails-based product that lets people manage recreational or youth-league sports team online.

Anybody who’s coached or played on a recreational adult sports team or youth sports team knows how hard it can be to keep track of all the players, games, and team payments. TeamSnap takes the headache out of team sports by making it simple to manage your sports team online.

It’s well done too. Useful concept, great presentation, attention to detail, smart marketing site, nice buttons/icons, friendly, etc.

Some screenshots:

Nice buttons and icons.

Thoughtful blank slate.

“Andy” guides you through the team settings process.
“Save” or “Save and Create Another” buttons.

The upload button echoes the header icon so it feels like you’re doing the right thing. And note the nifty little inline cancel button at the button.

Matt from TeamSnap wrote to us to tell us about the launch and the inspiration he received from attending one of our “Building of Basecamp” seminars:

I attended your “Building of Basecamp” seminar in Seattle a few years back and wanted to thank you and your team for inspiring us to follow your lead and transition from a “web design firm” to a “web-based software developer” (still underway). Our team has read your blog and book with great interest—your insights have been invaluable to us as we’ve worked on TeamSnap…Thanks again for inspiration and support!

Glad we could help guys. And kudos on building a site that meets a real need and does it well.

Last Wednesday, I emerged from Paddington Station and hopped in a cab. “EYElington, please,” I said. “IZlington, you mean,” said the cabbie. “Oh, right.” Then, after asking how much the approximate cost of the trip wil be, he replied, “Whatever it says on the meter.” Twenty minutes and £23 later, I’m at the Business Design Center in the London borrough of Islington (make that IZlington) for @media 2007 — European Edition.

‘Twas a great conference, of course: 2 days over 2 tracks. Lots of inspirational stuff from talented folks of the internets. A special standout though was Drew McLellan and Simon Collison’s tongue-in-cheek battle, High-Noon Shoot-Out: Design vs. Implementation. When Drew starting passing out picket signs that read “There is no fold!” I believe there was no way to top it for the rest of the show.

My talk could’ve gone better I think, as a few few people even told me afterwards I seemed a bit “off”. Ah well, I blame the jetlag. It was the third time giving this talk, and those times previous I’ve received really positive feedback.

The highlight of the trip, was when Jeremy Keith presented me with a bottle of Pinot Noir (and Joe Clark a carton of cranberry juice), on stage during the Hot Topics panel that closed the conference. The wine was a gift for the word “bulletproof” that graces the title of Jeremy’s excellent book, Bulletproof Ajax. It was a nice wine (the label escapes me now, damn I should’ve written it down) and three of us managed to polish it off over the course of the hour. Naturally, I’m thinking a glass of wine should be sitting next to me during every presentation from here on out.

Later during the panel, Joe Clark announced that he has retired from his work on web accessbility. He’s done an enormous amount in the field — and his efforts should be applauded. Best of luck with what’s next, Joe. This follows a recent announcement from Molly Holzschlag that she’s leaving the web conference circuit. Again, enormous contributions to the field, and an inspiring speaker.

Two weeks prior to England, the whole family was over in San Francisco for @media America, followed by a few days of sightseeing around the Bay Area. This was a smaller, more intimate affair, with a single track over 2 days. But smaller can be a positive thing, and single tracks work when the presenters are top notch. A standout here was Richard Ishida speaking on internationalization — a topic I’m not directly tied to on a daily basis, yet his presentation was entertaining, informative and delivered flawlessly. Be sure to catch him speak.

My talk in SF went fine, although after a brief segment on microformats, I mistakenly said something like “stay tuned for much more on microformats later today. Tantek Çelik’s presentation is sure to be less cohesive than mine”. Laughter erupts, and at the time I wasn’t entirely sure why. I was enjoying the moment. It wasn’t until Tantek (good sport that he is) came up to me afterwards, chuckling. Oopsie.

Note for next trip: toddlers do not appreciate wine tastings.

First of all, I have to commend Google for finally trying to get in the game and protect content. At least its nice to know that they have an interest in trying rather than just talking.

Unfortunately for them, their approach puts them in a catch 22 situatiojn and a position that hasn't worked all that well for them in the book publishing business.

Based on what I have been able to read, it appears that the system is built upon content owners giving Google a copy of their content , which is then "registered" in their copy protection system. When a file is uploaded by a Youtube and hopefully a Google Video user (since Google Video is a far more egregious violator of long form copyrights), Google will then compare the file and its contents to a database of content previously made available to Google. If it finds a match, Im guessing that it will reject the upload, or at least, first attempt to get a confirmation from the copyright owner involved.

This all sounds wonderful in theory, but as Google found out from book publishers, not everyone likes the idea of Google having a digital copy of 100pct of their content, including me.

I recognize that it puts Google in a tough position. In fact, it could also be considered hypocritical on my part because I feel more comfortable with a user off the street buying and owning a DRM free copy of any or all of our movies or shows than I feel with Google holding DRM free copies of my content in order to protect it from pirated uploads. I dont have a good reason, but I don't trust Google with a copy of the worlds content any more than I would trust MicroSoft , IBM of the 1980s or any corporate SuperPower.

What is worse, once they announce their "solution", which is not really a solution, its going to give end users who steal content a sense of protection if the pirated content they upload is accepted. If it gets past their Content protection scheme, it must be legal, right ? Call it one of the many laws of unintended consequences. The amount of pirated content could actually increase. For small content owners who want to protect their content, this could increase their cost of policing sites for their content and filing takedown requests.


Plus, uploaders will quickly and easily beat the content owners to the punch by uploading files before it is entered into the copy protection system. Its going to be tough for some content owners to upload episodes of a show that hasnt been aired yet. Many shows, particularly news, gossip and obviously and others are in production right up till they are broadcast.

So despite a nice step in the right direction, Google is not absolved of its obligation to respect copyright.

What should Google do ?

They should take the easy way out.

They have announced that they more than a THOUSAND of content partnerships. Thats a big # and Im sure growing number. Which leads to the real solution for Gootubes content problems. Those owners who want their content posted on Google Video or Youtube can participate in their content protection programs. You want your cat fighting your dog tape, join the program. Which is exactly what all the music sites that offer content from independent artists do.

Of course none of those indie music sites has the user numbers that Youtube has and Google knows it. There is no way they want to be a fully protected site. So I dont expect this to happen any time soon. THere is too much value from illegal uploads. And as I mentioned above, GoogleVideo is more efficient an outlet than Pirate Bay, particularly for private groups. Why use torrents when Google has it all right there for you, delivered from some of the best datacenters in the world ?

Which leads us to the truth of the matter.If their copyright protection software works, they no longer need the DMCA to hide behind.

I dont think we see that happen until the Viacom Suit shuts either Google Video or Youtube down.

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Kodak has today announced six new digital cameras to be made available between now and September, four of them marking the debut of its new 'M-Series'. The M753 and M853 are 3x zoom models with 7 and 8 megapixels respectively. The M873 and M883 meanwhile both sport 8 megapixels, a large 3-inch LCD and all-metal construction with the M883 adding face-detection to the specs list. Also on the way are the Z1275 - a 12MP 5X zoom with 'photographically-advanced features' and the 7-megapixel ZD710 superzoom with 10X lens.