Gizmodo is blogspam: Diggnation’s Alex Albrecht agrees

In episode 24/5/2008 of Diggnation, a story the guys were covering which was linked to Gizmodo highlighted EXACTLY the concern I’ve had about this so-called tech news site for a long time.

Gizmodo seem to present stories they’ve found elsewhere as if they are there own, by making it very difficult to see the link to the original article, at the foot of the page. Annoyingly, they rarely include all the information about a story which you might need to understand it better – such as photographs or technical spec text files and so on; choosing instead to literally bury the link in two or three pages of internal links to other stories on their own site.

I was completely ignored when I submitted a self-reddit on this subject once before – about how it’s OK for big name tech sites to basically steal other site’s stories, but when we independent bloggers do it, all of a sudden it’s blogspam.

Well it would seem that, in attempting to understand more about a story which made it to the Diggnation script (if you can call it that) co-host Alex Albrecht came across the same problem that I’ve been complaining about ever since I first came across Gizmodo.

Perhaps anyone reading from Gizmodo might like to do the right thing and make it easier in future for people to click directly to the story as it was intended to be read by it’s original author, or better yet just stop self-submitting to Digg altogether, trying to make out like the work belongs to Gizmodo.

How to make good looking YouTube clips

I’ve been getting into a relatively new video podcast from Revision3 recently, called Tekzilla.

It’s presented by Veronica Belmont and Patrick Norton, of This Week in Tech and Buzz Out Loud fame and, apart from their slightly annoying, overly friendly presentational style, there is a lot of substantive info and gear news in there to keep you happy.

A tip I gleaned from the latest episode is something that I’ve been meaning to find out about myself recently, so I’m passing it on here – because I seem to remember someone asking me about this a while back and I didn’t follow up in much detail as promised.

Now that (certain) YouTube clips are also available in higher definition (not quite true HD, but vastly improved on the standard pixelated fair of old), what is the best type of file to upload for the highest quality results? Caption says it all…

If your video camera or webcam doesn’t allow you to change the quality settings, not to worry. You can upscale or ‘transcode’ the video using something like VisualHub, FFMpegX or VLC – the latter two of which are open source and therefore platform agnostic – so there’s no tears for those of you who still don’t own a Mac.

If you do own a Mac of course, you can also use the built-in Quicktime video player, to export in any video format you choose.

There’s also an article on YouTube about optimising your video for good looking playback…
http://youtube.com/t/howto_makevideo

In God’s name: Follow-up

I’ve never heard of “The TV Show” on Channel 4, but a researcher called Jodie, from the program, has been in touch with me after she read that I had blogged about ‘In God’s Name‘, the influence of Christian fundamentalists in British politics, a documentary shown on Channel 4 which I also wrote about here.

She has invited me to be in the studio audience for a debate on the program and the subject in general next month, but I’m nowhere near London and, in fact, that very weekend will be in the Lake District playing travel scrabble in a tent with Lucy.

I have offered to make a short video clip to be used instead, which she has said would be “great”. So, I’d appreciate some sage advice on how to be concise on a range of opinions. They’ll probably edit down anything more than 30 seconds long, so put your thinking caps on and give me some feedback on what to say in a short time as possible.

Alternativly, if you’re in London on the 7th of June, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll forward your details to Jodie.

Thanks guys!

“60% of Republicans are just misinformed Democrats”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., telling it like it is…

More…

Reddit.com upgrades

Reddit.com has added numerous subsections to the front page, which were always available before, but now are easier to get at and customise. There’s an (18+ advised) Not Safe For Work section and a number of other sub-categories in an improved, faster loading interface.

Reddit has been a lot more informative than Digg for a while, but these updates almost make it just as cool as digg too. I don’t mean cool in a small way – I mean it in the way that there’s only so many political dirt exposés, mainstream news bashing blogs and anti-scientology opinion pieces you can take in one day. The old site design suffered a lot for appearing to emphasise these stories and users who shared these views tended to club together and hog the agenda.

The new changes, however, make it easy to mix Lady titty (and I’m sure Man Willy if you’re into that) pics and filthy jokes, alongside a fair helping of serious content as well, to lighten the mood from page to page. Now that it’s easier to include more frivolous so-called subreddits on the main page (further customised in your preferences panel) it remains to be seen if reddit won’t loose something of what made it cool (as in nerdy) before.

Any changes made in an attempt to open a site up to a wider audience can’t be a bad thing and I’m already a big fan of the quicker loading and clutter free design – but I can’t help “feeling” like digg is still my homeboy. Reddit is a friendly enough gatecrasher – fairly well behaved when it’s drunk, but only really welcome to stay because it’s the buddy of someone you like and you know he’ll make sure it goes home quietly once the cheep booze has run out.

It’s still very frustrating that stories appear to have no sort-by-date relevance. If you leave page 1 open for as long as it takes to read three or four stories, by the time you open page 2 those same links from page 1 will reappear on that page and on page 3 and so on – until by page 4 you’re mixed up between what you read 2 days ago and stories which are still climbing the popularity ladder.

Not being a programmer I have no idea if this is something which it is easy to fix – or even if it something which reddit’s designers have done deliberately – although why that would be, I have no idea – since it’s one of a number of functionality issues, including the still broken and dreadfully unreliable search, which still have me going back to digg – where, for all it’s many issues, (the always promised but never delivered UseNet style comments system) digg still feels more mature; more like the gang leader, albeit one which shits itself in a fight and runs home crying for mummy.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/ – A much welcome feature is reddit’s Music Only section, which you can one-click include in your main page’s ‘feed’, or by clicking in the bold new (love it or hate it) right-hand side pane.

HOW?!

..on EARTH did I ever get together with a girl as beautiful as you?