From time to time, I like to create fun but ultimately pointless videos (such as this one of my cats wrestling, set to The Go! Team’s “Doing It Right”). To entertain my friends, I posted it to my Facebook page. Less than 24 hours later, I received an email from Facebook with the following content:

We have removed your video entitled “Kit Fight!” uploaded at 12:56pm April 19th, 2008. We did this because we learned that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio.

Now, I’m not going to argue the point. The video used 54 seconds worth of someone’s copyrighted material as a soundtrack. What disturbs me, though, is this video was not publicly available. It was only visible to my 30-or-so friends on the network. It was pretty much impossible for me to gain either money or fame by posting the video — at least until Facebook rejected it and I decided to post it to YouTube instead.

It’s extremely unlikely that someone filed a complaint against this video. Which means that Facebook is either scanning all uploaded content for “copyright violations”, or employing people to watch everything that’s uploaded (what a horrible, horrible job that would be).

Why is a private network within Facebook considered a public space when it comes to copyright law? Or is this just a case of Facebook protecting itself instead of it’s users?

I’m not really mad about this, but it’s a reminder that as a Facebook user, you are completely beholden to their corporate policies. It’s a valuable service, but they control the data you share with them. Creepy.

Update: So it gets weirder… Krista has had the identical video clip on her Facebook profile for the past 4 days. What triggered my takedown notice? If there’s an automated scanner, why wasn’t the video flagged for her?

When I bought my 06 Jetta, I knew there was one tradeoff I had to make — a lack of auxiliary input on the stereo, or any CD changer control for me to shunt my iPod into. It’s not that VW doesn’t provide these. It’s just that they weren’t provided on my car. I saved a bundle buy buying a demo model, and the speaker system is divine, but there was just no headunit/iPod fever in my future.

I figured at the time it would be a simple matter of replacing the factory stereo with an aftermarket one that featured aux-in. Aside from some Germanic connector funkiness, the VW actually features a fairly straightforwardly-sized double-DIN headunit that can be swapped out using an adaptor plate. Compare this to some of the custom fittings used in Subarus and Mazdas I’ve seen and I was feeling pretty confident.

Now, it’s not like I needed anything super fancy. I’ve been rocking a 3rd generation iPod since 2003 using an old iRiver FM transmitter that I picked up while still driving my Echo. The iRiver actually has remarkably clear sound. It can easily overpower any station not directly claimed in my area, and has nice clear bassy sound. I’m not an auto audiophile at all — combine the traffic and wind noise and I’m happy just to have something static free. But the iRiver only used the headphone jack on the iPod, and it was always a pain to stow it and retrieve it whenever I needed to pause or change tracks. And as my iPod battery continued its inevitable march into paperweight status, I was looking for something that I could dock with directly.

The first thing that stunned be about the aftermarket car stereo market was the price. The second was the cheesy slick salesman status that seemed to permeate the showrooms. But the price was the killer.

As soon as you get into the double-DIN market, you’re looking at $1000+ DVD systems or $2000+ navigation systems. I don’t need a navigation system (I’ve lived here for over 20 years), and I can’t imagine a single situation where I would want to watch a DVD in the front seat of my car. And even if I did, I have a iPod that plays video. A simple double-din CD player with an iPod connection couldn’t be had for less than $800, and that’s not including any kind of installation. And since I’m fussy about aesthetics (I did buy a VW, after all), I was astounded by the faux-techy UI veneers that seemed like they hadn’t been updated since, oh, Railroad Tycoon was popular. Which might explain why most of them look a lot like Railroad Tycoon.

So the new headunit was out. I’d upgraded to a Touch. It was time for Plan B. I realized (after checking my bank balance) that what I was really looking for was a nicer way to mount and charge my iPod, while still providing access to its controls. FM transmission was actually working quite well for me, so I didn’t need to throw that out immediately. I’d been reading about the Harmon/Kardon Drive+Play system for several years, so I decided to investigate further. Their newest system, the Drive+Play 2, seemed nice but was overpriced ($450) for what it gave me. The original system was available for only $80, so I bit and bought one. “Bit” being the operative word here.

After much fussing with the wiring, I managed to get the system wired into my car while only setting off one airbag alarm in the process (no permanent damage!). It took only a few days to realize just how high the suck knob turns when it comes to the Drive+Play.

For starters, the FM transmitter is absolutely horrendous. Apparently I’d been treated quite nicely by my iRiver transmitter, as the Harmon/Kardon version was not only seriously underpowered (resulting in frequent bursts of interference), but almost comically overdriven. Whenever my music would hit peak volume, the audio would compress to near-inaudibility, making it sound like I was listening to dance music over a 1950’s era intercontinental phone line. And since it was connected to the dock port, I had no control over the audio levels.

That wasn’t the worst of the Drive+Play’s offenses. The most heinous was it’s propensity for completely failing to turn the FM Transmitter on at frequent but random intervals. Let me say that again: the Drive+Play would fail to engage it’s only enabled method of audio output, treating me to a delightful (and long) serenade of radio static until I managed to massage it into compliance by fussing repeatedly with the station settings and cycling the power. Awesome.

My final solution is a lot like my first solution, just updated for the Touch and providing me pretty much everything I need short of a direct connection. I’ll work on that later (hello, eBay). What I settled on was a Belkin TuneBase FM that I found on sale at my local big box electronics retailer. The TuneBase is pretty much perfect: good quality sound (very close to what I was getting with the iRiver), charging station, and the thick stand supports the Touch perfectly. Sometimes the high-tech/low-tech solution really is the best.

A few days ago I posted about using Spanning Sync and Proximity to synchronize iCal, Google Calendar and my cell phone (a k790, although any phone supported by iSync should work).

It turns out there is a free alternative to Spanning Sync called GCALDaemon, which is a bit more work to get running but a decent alternative if you don’t want to pay for Spanning Sync.

Read the rest of this post… »

There was a time when I could keep my entire schedule in my head. Years of university test times and due dates were dutifully tracked by my brain. In the intervening years, however, I seem to have killed most of my long and short term memory with booze — or maybe I’m just a whole lot busier.

In any case, I’ve been facing an increased sense of panic every time I try to book an appointment. What if I have a conflict? Krista keeps her entire life in the pages of a daily calendar, so I’ve attempted to follow suit, digital style.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried, but every previous attempt failed for one reason or another:

• Google Calendar: I love having my schedule available from pretty much any machine with an internet connection, but launching it seems horribly slow and the whole experience is oddly divorced from everything else on my Mac. I could write a whole other post (and maybe I will) about my migration from Windows native apps to Web Applications, and back to native Mac apps. I think it says a lot about how good OS X’s integrated tools are, though, that I’ve taken that path.
• iCal: really, a beautiful calendar, but I missed the “everywhere-ness” of Google Calendar. I can do a one-way sync from Google to iCal using iCal’s Subscriptions, but anything I add to my local calendar won’t get reflected back. This is critical, as I’d like to be able to check the calendar from any other machine, including my cell.
• Sony Ericsson k790’s built-in Calendar application: a surprisingly full-featured little calendar tool. For my process to work, I need to be able to quickly add events on the go. iSync takes care of synchronizing iCal and the k790, but I’m too forgetful (and lazy) to sync it myself whenever changes are made.

I love shopping in the US.

I like to visit California — my sister lives in SF, the weather is always great, and there’s always a chance you’ll see someone famous. Our recent vacation along the Pacific Coast Highway was no exception. Just outside Santa Barbara, in a nice campsite across from El Capitano, I saw a celebrity.

The skateboarding dog from the iPhone commercials. On his skateboard. Slobbering heavily and clearly having the time of his life.

It was awesome.

Well, after three months of disk thrashing and obscenely poor performance, I’m going back to XP on my desktop. Vista has some niceties, but on that machine (only 1GB of RAM) it was just too painfully slow to use, especially with two accounts logged in at the same time.

Windows Explorer keeps frustrating me as well. Switching directories takes 10-12 seconds while it refreshes it’s thumbnail cache, and the “smart” columns wants to treat every directory as if it were full of MP3s (thanks, but I really don’t need to see the Artist and Rating associated with my ZIP files).

The change, for me, is actually much bigger than that: I’ve quit my job, and joined a startup in the online money transfer arena. This is the project I’ve always wanted. A small, focused team of great people, and the chance to work on something I can truly call my own. Live by the sword, die by the sword, and all that good stuff. I’ll be the sole UI dude, designer and implementer of wondrous interfaces for the website and administration tool. To accomplish this, I’ve made the big switch — I bought a Mac. MacBook Pro, to be precise.

I’ll post more in the future about my experience with the Mac, but if my initial impressions hold, it’s everything I dreamed it could be, and certainly everything Vista is not.

Some shorties:

• Expose: Wow. Completely changed my workflow. I love it
• Font Rendering: I never had a problem with Windows’ font rendering. Now I do.
• It Just Works: for the most part, it actually does just work
• Home/End keys: come on, Apple… really. I hit the Home key probably 300 times a day, and I’ve never, ever wanted the behaviour Mac’s use by default. Thankfully, there are workarounds for this
• Uptime: I’ve had it for a week, and I still haven’t rebooted it. Ever.

Three weeks ago, I decided to trade in the ol’ Toyota Echo for something a little more… ahem… manly. The Echo was a great car; it used almost zero gas and seemed virtually indestructible. Maintenance costs were limited to oil changes. Unfortunately, it also looked like a squished up baby buggy and had these ridiculously tiny tires that made driving in winter a bit of an adventure.

So enter the 2006 VW Jetta, a car I’d been eying for over a year. I love driving it, and I love the feel and consideration of the German-engineered dash. Apparently, though, I aggrieved the new car gods with my sinful pride, and punishment was swift.

On Saturday, while helping my friend Guy move, a girl backed into it with her SUV, crunching the tail light and denting the bumper and corner panel. I heard it unfold from the comfort of his back deck, and fortunately was able to get her insurance information. Damage was light but I’m sure the repair costs will be expensive, given the bodywork that will be required.

My pride had not been abated. I would look at the car out of the corner of my eye and think “Isn’t that lovely. And it’s mine.” So yesterday, while parked in the parkade beneath my office building, the CEO’s wife decided to back into my driver door with her SUV. Helloooooo, Christmas bonus.

That’s right. 5 Days. 2 reversing SUVs. 2 insurance claims. 3 dented panels. 1 busted tail light. 1 sad Ben.

At least I wasn’t in the vehicle either time.

After an seemingly endless series of false starts and short shipments, I finally have my Nintendo Wii. It arrived on Friday via Canada Post, a full 4 days after the guaranteed delivery date, just as panic was starting to set in. I had images of Future Shop employees or delivery men gleefully playing my Wii in their basement as I constantly reloaded Canada Post’s useless package tracking webpage. I was pleasantly surprised on Friday morning when I received a nice large delivery at work — just in time for me to leave town for Christmas Holidays and Krista’s birthday.

In any case, Krista and I spent a drunken few hours on Friday night setting it up and giggling as we created our Miis, then promptly getting my ass kicked at bowling. One thing is initially clear: I desperately need a second controller. The brilliance of Nintendo systems (I bought a GameCube shortly after release just to play Super Monkey Ball and Mario Party with my friends) is the social aspect of the party games. Passing the single remote between two people playing Golf or Bowling is fun but there’s an unfulfilled promise of multiplayer tennis and baseball. My second remote (and a copy of Zelda) are currently trapped in the bowels of Christmas package delivery hell, and probably won’t see the light of day until the new year.

Unboxing the Wii was a dream. Nintendo has clearly made a great effort in this regard, and everything is well labelled and easy to set up. Within minutes I was connected to my wireless network, and after a quick system update we were giggling again. It’s a happy feeling knowing that 50% of the electronics in my living room are connected to the internet and willing to tell me what the weather is like outside. Helpful, since it’s unlikely I’ll be seeing “outside” for quite some time.

I also had a chance try test out the Wii’s “trial version” of the Opera browser. I love Opera’s non-PC browsers. I won’t touch their PC version as I’m not fond of the UI, and you’d have to pry Firefox (and it’s add-on system) out of my cold, dead hands, but between Opera Mini and Opera Wii they’ve got the alternative-browser-on-an-alternative-device market locked up.

Opera Wii (Wopera?) is fast, makes excellent use of the Wii’s navigation, and renders this site flawlessly. The auto-completion on the on-screen keyboard makes typing URLs rather less painful than it could be, although at 480i (still waiting for my component cables) the default text is an unreadable mush. You can zoom, making things legible, but you have to re-zoom on every page load. Hopefully this will be fixed in the final release.

All in all, I can’t wait for Mario Party 8, a bottle of rye, and someone to buy me enough remotes for a 4-way drunken orgy of ridiculousness.

And blogged about the entire experience, along with my girlfriend Krista. I’ll probably be spouting some opinionated blather on this site that didn’t seem right to post for my family and friends to read (as opposed to, I dunno, perfect strangers?)

Here’s one to get us started: avoid, at all costs, connecting through the Shanghai airport. In fact, avoid the whole airport altogether — take a bus from Beijing if you have to, I can’t imagine how that could be any worse than the bureaucratic nightmare we experienced just trying to change planes. Ahem. Still pissy, although it could be the jetlag.