Julianna Yau’s blog

I used to be a big supporter of Telus. Great customer service, competitive plans, and…well, I really didn’t need anything else!

But that is quickly changing.

I recommended Telus to my business partner, and she has had nothing but problems with them. Billing problems, delayed delivery of voicemail notification, delayed delivery of text messages, and god knows what else. This is a huge problem for us, as we can’t conduct business efficiently if she can’t get her messages promptly (some of them were delayed by almost 48hrs).

Their customer service has degraded quite a bit. Not that I ever had to call them much, but service was always with a smile. The staff at their stores used to be more knowledgeable and better mannered. I used to be able to understand the person on the other end of the phone. None of that is true anymore.

Their new “Clear Choice” plans are what really did it for me, though. I was excited when Telus announced they were getting rid of the system access fee, and expected the new plans to be 2 or 3 dollars off either way. Instead, I found that the closest approximation to my current plan is a whopping $17 more per month. That’s $204 more a year! Of course, I realize that I can keep my current plan, but the prospects of changing my plan are more than a little distasteful. The next plan up from what I have now will cost me $34 more per month — or $646 over the course of the remainder of my 19 month contract.

What’s worse is the equivalent to my plan on Bell is actually 81 cents cheaper per month, and Rogers’ is only 32 cents more per month. An upgrade of my current package to Bell? $16 more per month — that’s a dollar less than what my current package would cost with a “Clear Choice” plan.

So the real clear choice seems to be leaving Telus whenever I can get a sweet deal and a new phone from Bell, Rogers, or one of the new telcos opening up shop next year!

Math overview:

(all plans except Clear Choice include System Access Fee, 911 Fee and Taxes; prices are current as of November 26, 2009 and are monthly)

I received the following email from Schmap.com today:

You’ve been sent a Flickr Mail from Emma J. Williams:

————————————————————

:: Schmap: Paris Photo Shortlist

Hi Julianna,

I am writing to let you know that three of your photos have been short-listed for inclusion in the eighth edition of our Schmap Paris Guide, to be published at the end of this month.

http://www.schmap.com/shortlist/[code removed]

Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:
i) See which of your photos have been short-listed.
ii) Submit or withdraw your photos from our final selection phase.
iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides.
iv) Browse online or download the seventh edition of our Schmap Paris Guide.

While we offer no payment for publication, many photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and link to high-resolution originals at Flickr.

Our submission deadline is Friday, July 17. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently - photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases).

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides
www.schmap.me/ewilliams

I wasn't very interested in the offer to begin with, but thought I'd at least take a look to see what the terms are, and which pictures they were interested in.

I don't consider those to be any of my better pictures from Paris, so I'm a bit surprised they made it onto a shortlist. The TOS are pretty standard, but notably has some good wording about the images not being sublicensed and the photographer being credited for the photo.

TERMS OF SUBMISSION

THESE TERMS OF SUBMISSION (THE “TERMS”) REPRESENT A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU, EITHER AN INDIVIDUAL PERSON OR A SINGLE LEGAL ENTITY (“YOU”), AND SCHMAP, INC. (“SCHMAP”). BY CLICKING THE “SUBMIT” BUTTON, YOU CONFIRM YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS.

1. PHOTOS
The term "Photos" refers to one or more photographs and/or images licensed by You to Schmap pursuant to the Terms.

2. LICENSE GRANT
Subject to the terms and conditions herein, You hereby grant Schmap a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license to include the Photos in the current and/or subsequent releases of Schmap's destination/local guides.

3. FAIR USE RIGHTS
Nothing in these Terms is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws.

4. LIMITATIONS
The license granted in Section 2 above is made subject to and limited by the following express limitations:

(a) Schmap may only distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and/or publicly perform the Photos pursuant to the Terms.

(b) Schmap shall be required to keep intact all copyright notices for the Photos and provide, reasonable to the medium or means of utilization, the name of the original author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, for attribution in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, and a credit (implemented in any reasonable manner) identifying the use of the Photos in any derivative Photos created by Schmap.

(c) Schmap shall, to the extent reasonably practicable, provide Internet link(s) to your Photos.

(d) Schmap shall not sublicense the Photos.

(e) Schmap shall indicate to the public that You reserve all rights with respect to use of the Photos.

(f) Schmap shall continue to make its destination/local guides available at no cost to end users.

(g) Schmap shall display the Photos at a maximum width of 150 pixels.

5. RIGHTS
You confirm that You own or otherwise control all of the rights to the Photos and that use of the Photos by Schmap will not infringe or violate the rights of any third parties.

6. NO OBLIGATION
Schmap shall have no obligation whatsoever to reproduce, distribute, broadcast, or otherwise make use of the Photos licensed by You to Schmap hereunder.

7. NO AFFILIATION
While the Flickr website and/or Flickr API have been used to short-list your Photos, Schmap claims no affiliation or partnership with Flickr.

8. MISCELLANEOUS
If any provision of the Terms is ruled unenforceable, such provision shall be enforced to the extent permissible, and the remainder of the Terms shall remain in effect. The Terms constitute the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the Photos licensed hereunder. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Photos not specified hereunder. If there is any dispute about or involving the Terms or the license granted hereunder, You agree that such dispute shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions. You agree to personal jurisdiction by and venue in the state and federal courts of the State of California, City of San Francisco. The license granted in the Terms may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of You and Schmap.

I don't understand how my images were selected for this project, because most of my Flickr photos, including those shortlisted, are still traditionally licenced; only a small selection of them have a Creative Commons license.

Although a few people have told me that they've also received these invites from Schmap and have allowed them to use their images, I have withdrawn my photos from their shortlist. I totally agree with this post on Thought Bubbles about Schmap, and can't help but allow my history with copyright to inform my decision. This business model (particularly considering that they didn't filter for photos that people have licenced with Creative Commons) uses photos without payment to enhance profit for their company -- not cool. Of course, Google's business model is also in that murky grey area, but a little differently. I'd argue that their image search doesn't use photos in the same way because I've never noticed any ads [yet] on their image search results.

There are tons of people who will give you "free" exposure online and offline. But most of the time, it's not worth what you're being "paid".

Incidentally, I went through my pictures and found a handful which I consider to be much better than the ones they selected:

I’ve been fairly quiet in the past few weeks because I’ve been switching to another server, but the DNS settings have been taking a ridiculously long time to resolve. Keeping the files and databases synced on two servers is a lot more work than I’m prepared to handle right now, with some of the other things I’ve got on my plate. This means I’ve missed the whole Facebook TOS media storm, and haven’t been keeping up with the various Net Neutrality issues in Canada or the “guilty on accusation law” being proposed in New Zealand.

What I couldn’t resist blogging about is something as frivolous as a meme. Only it’s not so frivolous because it hits my pet topic: copyright.

This is the original version of the rock band meme instructions sent to me on Facebook:

This project requires following the instructions below and maybe reading them carefully to understand.

1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use photoshop, picasa, or similar to put it all together.

5 – Post it with this text in the “caption” and TAG the friends you want to join in.

Of course, instruction #3 is where I have major concerns. Not all content on Flickr is licensed for use in this kind of meme. So here is my resulting album cover and revised instructions for step 3:

3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
The first image which has a Creative Commons licence which allows remixing will be your album cover.

Explorornis

Photo by aftab

After being disapointed by Fujijilm’s poor execution of their F-List campaign, I decided to unsubscribe from their e-broadcast. The unsubscribe page brought more disappointment still, as the lists from which I could unsubscribe were revealed and revealing:

To say the least, the list setup was a glimpse into the inner workings of Agent Wildfire, which seems to be Fujifilm’s campaign manager. To me, this kind of thing is just sloppy. I receive other emails managed by Constant Contact, so I followed the unsubscribe link for some to see what their unsubscribe page looked like. Unlike Agent Wildfire’s page, it was a clean page with the option to unsubscribe from everything. It could have been because the other organizations didn’t have as many lists, but I knew that wasn’t true. After a quick search of Constant Contact’s FAQs, I found the instructions for keeping the lists private.

Sorry, guys. You may be calling yourself Canada’s Word of Mouth experts, but I’m not too impressed.

This is old news in blog terms, but I just found out about it. Stephanie Meyer is the author of the Twilight series of vampire novels for teens. A draft of her latest book, Midnight Sun, was leaked onto the internet without her permission. According to her blog entry on her website from August 28, she’s fairly certain she knows who leaked it because “there were very few copies of Midnight Sun that left [her] possession and each was unique”.

Meyer has decided to postpone the novel indefinitely because of this, and I wholeheartedly support her decision. I was told about this by someone who is a fan of her work, and she’s absolutely devistated. Meyer was also good enough to her fans to offer her own draft of the novel on her website so that fans can read an authorized draft without having to choose between their loyalty to Meyer’s rights as a writer and the desire to read what they can of the novel.

Without more responses like Meyer’s to copyright infringement (even if it isn’t being done maliciously), I don’t think people will ever understand its impact on the creator. Although the world of instant publishing may not be sympathetic to it, there are still some creators who put effort into getting their work as close to perfection as possible. Unfinished works are like gestating animals—they simply aren’t ready for the world yet. Throw in the complication of someone else forcing it out and…well…you can figure that out yourself ;)

I started to test Postalicious for Word Press, but it didn’t work yesterday. Here are the links I tried to post, and keep your fingers crossed for it working tonight!

• Judge: posting shock jock clip to the web is “fair use” – Copyright meets censorship and politics again
• Patent Office finds voice, calls for software patent sanity
• Privacy for the next decade, not next week
• A new era in defining and applying fair use norms – Tackling fair use from a different angle
• Why scholarship around digital copyright needs ethnography – Re-thinking the approach to digital copyright
• FreeDocumentaries.org – Free indie documentaries. Sweet.
• Google’s problem with permission – John Degen asks “Why didn’t Google talk to writers and publishers before they started scanning?”
• Legal Torrents – Finally, someone trying to get ahead of the game. Via MAKE blog.
• Howard Knopf: Is Torture by Music a “Performance in Public”? Also see Suzanne G. Cusick’s paper on Music as torture / Music as weapon and Knopf’s follow-up.
• Nintendo no friend of homebrew market, sues DS cart makers

Passing through Union Station, you’ll sometimes come across stores offering samples of their goods. The commuters understand that this is something the stores are offering as part of a marketing strategy, giving you a literal or figurative taste of what they have to sell before you commit to a purchase.

This practice has parallels in art, with galleries where you can view work prior to purchase (and some even have loan programs where you can borrow a work for a period of time to ensure that you want to make the full investment) and the dying music store and its listening booths/stations.

In these instances, most reasonable people understand the purpose of the sampling strategy being used, and what is considered an acceptable use of the system. Someone who takes enough bagel segments in one visit to make up a whole bagel is obviously abusing the system. Likewise, someone who serially borrows work from a gallery without any intention of a purchase is abusing the loan program.

When I compare the brick-and-mortar practice of samples with the myriad of ways people are using the internet for marketing and exposure, I notice two things. The first is that when physical samples are provided, the party offering the sample is not reprimanded for trying to protect against the offerings being abused. The second is that with physical samples, both the giver and receiver have a consistent and, typically, matching understanding of what constitutes abuse.

So why do neither of these things happen where the internet is concerned? Somehow, in internet land, artists are framed as either greedy or clueless for trying to prevent their work abusive uses of the work they put online. And now that the idea that “everyone is an artist” is not merely more widespread than the emergence of contemporary art, but it is also being met with mixed reactions.

I think it’s great that so many people are creating work. But the use of “artist” as a label for anyone who has every made anything is diluting the value of the creative, administrative and physical effort required to “make for a living”. Art and artist appreciation is already a problem, with art education continuing to be cut from public education in favour of the three Rs. But the devaluation of the artist is a serious issue which is showing itself in the way people are talking about their entitlements to the use and access to art.

What is more appalling to me is that I’m told that creators create because of reasons other than financial gain, as if that were a justification for creators not being paid for the work they do. Why is this logic not applied to chefs, lawyers, educators, social workers, or anyone else who has chosen a career for reasons other than income generation?

John Darlymple from the Textiles Museum of Canada had a great presentation, Connecting Cloth, Culture + Art, on what they have been doing for the last 10 years.

Notes (and Flickr images)

-museums piggypack on technology developed by corporations
-the role of how the money is made
-focusing on the public and the programming; start with the inward looking, but the focus is on the outside
-three themes: reconsidering the role of collection management; keeping/setting pace with technology; how important a really conceptually strong program is for online presence

1997
-concept of shooting digitally was different
-digital cameras were inferior to 35mm cameras
-slides and indexes
-slides were scanned and saved onto CDs
-everything was still very physical
-did have website, built by a volunteer’s son
-very amateurish website
-just getting online, didn’t care what it was
-Museums Assistant Program
-collection management driven

phase 2
-grant from Virtual Museum of Canada
-trying to create a virtual museum –> recreating real world
-John felt this was the wrong decision because the internet is not the real world, but the internet can provide options which aren’t available in the real world
-gallery is decontextualized setting
-Cloth & Clay website –> archived on the Textiles Museum website
-online identity can be bigger than physical presence
-sites were static HTML because that’s all they know
-John attended course where it was taught by a web designer and a curator, but there was no link between the two
Cloth & Clay did as much as they could with static HTML
-requirement for digitalization of work —> Collections Manager
-requirement for better collections management and images

phase 3
-create online destination
-entrypoint to collection
-relevant themes
-told government they needed to digitalize collection and have a database of the images
-creating something online that we can’t do in physical space –> moving objects around; didn’t use quicktime
-also allowed people to zoom into images
-Zoomify
-plugins –> something that’s open and that people would already have
-challenge to store and backup images (highres source images) and space online –> changed much since then
-slides taken by many different people (volunteers, proffessional photographers) and scanned at different resolutions
-need to take the different shots; need to not reshoot images every time; not just file format but relevancy of images
-has style guide for how to shoot images of textiles!
-government funding insisted on digital images
-shot images from a camera on the roof
-MimsyXG vs archaic Access DB
–different levels of consistency of data input, tagging
–need to investigate how to transfer data –> rebuild vs import
–just access isn’t enough –> NEED consistency of data
–needed a fundamental shift of definition/concept of collection management
-60% of collection photographed
-not just adding all sorts of little notes on db info (resulted in inconsistency with use of fields; nothing was publication-ready)
-kept fields simple –> much to document, not many curators to sign-off; wanted to do everything in French (don’t -operate in French, but wanted to be able to offer the information in French online); built thesaurus for terms and used that for standard English data input and translated to French
-Textile Museum: collection; contemporary art & exhibition program (most dynamic part of their programming); educational programming (other programs had educational aspects, but they also have a specific ed program)
-use web to exhibit work for longer than the few weeks they can keep stuff on display due to the fragility of the work
-Digital Threads
-asked artists to create digital art – artists asked were not digital artists; had to work closely with them to make this work
-theme grouping of work, rather than chronological
-Joanna Berzowska
-didn’t want it to be a database experience
-serve researcher, but should be usable for general museum going audience and teachers
-clearest terminology and titles for users

(no, I don’t know what happened to the phase 4 notes…I’m guessing they’re the tail end of the phase 3 notes)

phase 5
launching a new website soon
In Touch (hoping to change name)
deliver online project
create hands-on learning experience
move things, feel the weight, etc
computer animation –> molecular reaction of textile
–> like SL?
take apart a textile online and reconstitute work
physics-based technology
increase level of immersion for users –> cultural journey
mgmgrand.com –> type of immersion textile museum is looking for
–time-out in the immersion experience to get more detail

questions
-level of skillset – challenge?
–had to identify target audience
–design site for target audience and user behaviour

-finding the right partner for these projects, esp for people who are not big on social media

-connection between online presence and marketing
–rely on emarketing
–online museum brings people to the physical museum

-concept of draft publishing versus polished publishing; Sebastian from Australia (forget the gallery…)
–more interactive publishing when things are draft; wikis, etc
–having everything polished only is not necessarily the best option, and they are welcome to feedback

-YorkU –> Kate Fletcher (?) –> takes digital and almost hologram

Eli Singer had a great presentation on How is the web transforming the arts?

Here are my notes (Flickr images here):

-memes
-diy culture, share culture
-democracy
-blogs – self publishing
-web breaking down hierarchies
-screen real estate equal for all publishers
-graffiti research lab
-public art and the web
-how to take graffiti to the digital life?
-companies taking grassroots graffiti art and using it for ads
-library of congress
–no histories behind images; put them all on Flickr, and through crowdsourcing, piece together history of the photos
–taking images out of libraries and putting them on the web for everyone
–tags an images
-how to weave yourself into a community or conversation on the web?
–not the same for corporations and arts institutions
–reputation within community
–bringing legitimacy to others by inviting participation
-The Power of the 2×2 Matrix
-casecamp.org –>!!!!!
-focus on the social, not the tool
-how can people connect with each other?
-”the network is the hub”; network can be anything
-strategic use of tools to create experiences for individuals, communities, and brands
-Broadcast model – source: cymfony
-peer to peer model – source: cymfony
-platform ==> community ==> content
-integrate into existing community vs building your own
-when integrating in an existing community, plugging into existing numbers
-who do you want to reach out to and who do
–”head” –> everyone; broadcast
–”tail” –> very specific number of people
–”shoulder” (Eli’s target) –> the mid-ground; not just about broadcast, but dealing with “meaty issues”
-which community are they in?
-word of mouth happening more online (blogs, social networking)
-whippersnapper
-curotatoral podcasting
-whippersnapper also on FB (group)
–art is for dead people show
–whippersnapper also has videos to explain how to participate (feels like Drupal instructional vids)
–uploading photos and tag with gallery name!
-SickKids hospital –> radiothon –> social media
–web is built for storytelling
–radiothon videodiary –> daily video; shot on-site; co-branded; rleased online; drive donations
–content –> how to maximize use of small size of screen and closeness to screen
–syndication!
–SickKids hospital widget; share button, donate button; allows websites to customize look of widget and add their own logo
-MoMA –> everyone else taking photos an videos and posting online… where was MoMA? they joined in when question was posed to them

Questions from audience

-permissions forms for people who were interviewed (esp when children involved)
–with SickKids, they already had an existing process and agreement form; added internet to form; contained location for filming

-what about getting off the internet? (dying communities) how to shut down a FB page?
–data owned by FB/YouTube/etc, not you
–control issues with own vs other community
–recognized of an issue; islands and walled communities are issues; OpenSocial
–whippersnapper –> difference between their own website and their presence on others
–own website is official voice; limited community
–most of the community lives on FB

-how to build a list of bloggers?
–technorati?
–local blog indexes
–flickr –> look for photoblogers in city
–follow linkbacks/trackbacks
–build human relationship first

-street teams for independent music community —> are there incentive-driven activities for online community? offering fans incentive to help? is it happening?
–can happen, but more for companies sending free stuff for reviews
–backstage access for blogging
–TIFF –> blogger for them; site listed on TIFF; on both TIFF website and own
—incentive was the affiliation
—real-time feedback
—connection with related ppl
—community, not volunteers
-incentive without alienation

-performance art; unions; limit of how much can be shared–how to address?
–Andy Warhol show –> no photos allowed; had Cronenberg talk about Warhol
–Shakespeare Theatre, Washington –> backstage access; interiews; gave bloggers access to their own images rather than bloggers’ images
–Stratord’s blog

-authenticity — how to achieve?
–err on the side of community
–flat hierarchy
–don’t just start broadcasting
–PARTICIPATE
–connect with leaders of community

-online prescence overshadowing brick-and-mortar gallery? (whippersnapper)
–their events are always packed
–made it about participation in the real space too

-engagement process, not just advertising
-people helping each other and having conversations with each other
-supporting social networking with staff –> resource intensive –> start small
-change in cultural experience

-some people don’t want to be involved because they don’t want to give away their story; ho to create more content?
–culture of secrecy
–Apple
–mystique
–Steve Job’s product launches!

A while ago, I was complaining about internet access to Russell McOrmond, and he mentioned Wireless Nomad to me. They’re an ISP co-op offering broadband/highspeed internet access through your phone line, with no caps, and also shares part of your unused connection as a free WiFi hotspot.

The system is fantastic, but it took me a while to switch from Rogers to Wireless Nomad. The reason? I loathe Bell. Really, really, loathe Bell. They wholesale the internet service to Wireless Nomad, and probably to any other phone company I could use instead of them. For the past four to five years, I have been living with only a cell phone because I rarely get calls (thanks to the internet and, again, because of my dislike of Bell). But supporting Wireless Nomad was really something I wanted to do, so the big B is now getting my money.

Getting setup with Wireless Nomad was painless, and David from Linux Caffe even brought my modem and router to me at CopyCamp! I plugged them into their respective ports, and everything was up and running in a few minutes. It was refreshing to not need to configure anything, and to have the option of wired or wireless access.

The speed of the connection is noticeably better than what I was getting with Rogers at their Express level ($44.95/mo, compared to Wireless Nomad’s $36.95/mo). The only thing which might be an issue for people is needing to log into your account to actually start your session if connecting wirelessly. I’m guessing this wouldn’t be an issue for most users who save their usernames and passwords in their web browsers, but I’m too paranoid to do that and am not bothered by having to log in every time.

Cancelling my service with Rogers was surprisingly painless. The “customer relations” guy asked me why I was cancelling, I said I switched to another provider, and he didn’t even ask who my new provider is. He just made sure I already had the new access setup, asked me whether I could return the modem or whether they should pick it up, and told me what the remaining balance was. When returning the modem, there were no hassles, no questions. It was actually refreshing to see that they knew how to handle cancellations properly.

Timeline:

• requested to be added to their membership list at the beginning of March
• received an email saying that they were ready to start the signup process in early April
• phone line setup with Bell mid-April; signed up with Wireless Nomad; received confirmation the next day
• the modem and customized router was ready for me two weeks later
• I got the modem and router a few days later
• time from first email to using their service (including setting up a phone line and going to get the modem & router): 2 months

Comparison of service prices and speeds:

The following information is accurate as of May 2, 2008 from the providers’ websites.