Flickr Over YouTube For Video

I just decided that even though I wrote about this already in a previous post, I had to vent a bit more as I find myself sitting here almost 2 months later and Flickr has finally released their video service.

It is really frustrating to me that Google has yet to follow through with an improvement on their private video groups. When you can define the friends in a group and even have another group such as family, why is it that you have to constantly choose who you share a video with if it is private? What is wrong with choosing an entire group in one step?

Could it be the 25 person limit on a private video? If that is the case, why not implement a group called private on youtube and just add all the people that are allowed to watch your private videos and put a cap on that group for 25 users? Without group privacy settings, it is a nightmare. Let me explain why.

I have a video that I uploaded 2 years ago and I currently have most family members as YouTube members to share the video. Disappointing though, I couldn’t convince my father to join YouTube to watch the video in that 2 year period. Now, he wants to view that video and all my other private videos I have on the service. Right now, I can’t add my father to a “group” and grant him access on all my private videos. Oh no.

Instead, I have to go through the 150 private videos one at a time and add him to the list of the 25 people that can view the video. That means that he is also going to get 150 emails saying that I have a video to share. On top of that, the other members who can view that video also get 150 emails as the system doesn’t seem to remember who could watch it previously. That is completely unacceptable.

Let me say that again. It is completely unacceptable.

If Google has a grand scheme to limit the private videos on their service and not make it the service of choice for said videos, then they finally have convinced me. I will not get rid of the private videos that I have on the service, but I will no longer be adding any new videos that are private. I have moved my videos over to Flickr where it seems they are happy that you have private content.

YouTube will still be a place where I will be uploading videos. The problem with the Flickr video service is that they stop you cold at 90 seconds and that doesn’t work for all videos. That means, I have to either put longer videos on my own service or continue to upload them to YouTube. I choose the latter for now.

I am not saying that if YouTube ever changes their privacy settings to make it easier that I won’t use them, but I am not really that happy. I have been a member for almost 3 years and the ability to add private videos and administer them is getting worse, not better. In the beginning it worked better with the groups. Now it sucks. I am sticking with Flickr.

Quit Stealing Content!

I decided that it was in my best interest to take down my music off this site, all 40+ cover songs I recorded.   It is one thing when I was getting my friends, family and readers coming to my site and deciding to listen to my covers of some of my favorite songs, but it was completely something else when I was going through my web logs and finding a bunch of sites stealing my work.   What a shock to find my content loaded on an external page with ridiculous amounts of advertising.   It was the last straw.

It just pisses me off when you find people that steal your work and try to get revenue through their sites with all their little advertising garbage.    Right now, all our blogs have a copyright at the top of our RSS feeds so that they show up on every entry and the best part is that if an RSS magpie steals your post, it shows up with a copyright and then several line breaks.    At least credit is served where credit is due even though it isn’t right.

When it comes to videos and photos, I guess a guy should try and put up some copyright notice, but when using services like flickr and youtube, this is impossible.    At least when they reference the photos they are linking to your pages on the respected services.    It would be nice if flickr would put up some sort of watermarking system, but it really isn’t a dealbreaker for me.

When it comes to audio though, even though I put my files through a flash player, my content still seemed to float into these other sites anyways.    Not only were the files on pages with advertising, but they were even trying to sell my audio files as fucking ringtones!   You can imagine my surprise coming across that.   Included as well was a nice little download link to get the audio file for anyone that wanted to download it.    Linked off my site, of course, since these thieves wouldn’t want to waste their own bandwidth…..

Where are the ethics on the internet anymore?    Were there ever any?    It is not their content and they shouldn’t be stealing it.    We all know the game is to do it and try and profit from the advertising if it can generate traffic.    Even the “legit” sites that are in it for more should ask before using such content.    They just use it and beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.    This is also a strategy I use with my wife, but really that doesn’t sit well when it happens to me.

So, the audio and music is gone for now.    The directory is back with authentication and will hang up in every single player out there that is stealing the content.    I guess I have to find a better mousetrap.   If anyone has some clues, please let me know.

We Aren’t Really Married?

Oh boy!   Were you married in a the past year in the Dominican Republic or know someone who was?    Better start asking some questions as an inquiry is showing that there have been a “bogus” weddings” scam uncovered: (from CTV)

CTV.ca News Staff

Dozens of Canadian couples who were married in the Dominican Republic are waiting to learn whether their unions were legitimate.

Investigators have uncovered an alleged wedding scam where more than 200 Canadian and British couples’ ceremonies may have been performed by bogus officials.

The Dominican Republic has promised to issue real wedding certificates to those who were scammed, but in the meantime a number of Canadian would-be newlyweds, are waiting to learn their status.

I am sure they will issue real wedding certificates because tourism is big business.    The real question in my mind is what my religious readers will think!    If you were not “officially” married in front of your maker, did it really happen?    Most might argue that if you are getting married around the world and not in a local church you don’t seem to care anyways.    That might be the case, but that is up for debate as well.    Personally, I would be upset and my wife would most likely be very upset if this happened to us.   Not only about not “officially” being married, but just taken advantage of is enough to get me going.

Yes, I was married in the Caribbean, but no it was awhile ago

We Aren’t Really Married?

Oh boy!   Were you married in a the past year in the Dominican Republic or know someone who was?    Better start asking some questions as an inquiry is showing that there have been a “bogus” weddings” scam uncovered: (from CTV)

CTV.ca News Staff

Dozens of Canadian couples who were married in the Dominican Republic are waiting to learn whether their unions were legitimate.

Investigators have uncovered an alleged wedding scam where more than 200 Canadian and British couples’ ceremonies may have been performed by bogus officials.

The Dominican Republic has promised to issue real wedding certificates to those who were scammed, but in the meantime a number of Canadian would-be newlyweds, are waiting to learn their status.

I am sure they will issue real wedding certificates because tourism is big business.    The real question in my mind is what my religious readers will think!    If you were not “officially” married in front of your maker, did it really happen?    Most might argue that if you are getting married around the world and not in a local church you don’t seem to care anyways.    That might be the case, but that is up for debate as well.    Personally, I would be upset and my wife would most likely be very upset if this happened to us.   Not only about not “officially” being married, but just taken advantage of is enough to get me going.

Yes, I was married in the Caribbean, but no it was awhile ago

Dry Christmas

I forgot to mention this story, but I thought it was quite amusing if nothing else.   I went to my sister’s place on Christmas Day and we arrived at her house in Calgary around 2pm.    We were hoping to grab some alcohol on the way managed to not find a single liquor store open.    That was not really that amazing since it was Christmas and all.

What was amazing was the drive around Calgary that I took afterwards realizing that the limited wine that my sister had in her house wasn’t going to cut it for our Christmas cheer.  I ended up looking in all four corners of the city for a liquor store that was open and found absolutely nothing!    This included 17th, Macleod Trail, Westhills, Sunridge, Univerity and several other mainstream locations!    I didn’t find anything but about 100 closed liquor stores!

By the time I ended up back at my sister’s place it was late and we didn’t feel like drinking anymore!   It was a fun, but dry Christmas!    I even thought about phoning “dial a bottle” or “dial a beer” from my college days (great friends at the time), but thought if I couldn’t find one that was open then I might be looking at $100 plus for a case of beer!    It just wasn’t worth it
So my conclusion is that I think someone should keep their liquor store open on Christmas day and charge the hell out of people because after all my driving around….I would have paid    Does anyone know of one that is open on Christmas day in Calgary?    Future reference of course….

YouTube Posts

I really want to start using YouTube much more for my personal videos. I started using YouTube in 2006, but since I was always afraid of putting videos up about that are “too personal” for the world to share, I really haven’t used it much. Google has allowed us to keep them private and the limit is 25 people. I don’t have that many to share with, so that works for me.

My username on YouTube is onvertigo and I only have 4 public videos. Not really that interesting either. I guess I like the private videos (about 130) better. So be it! Here is a test of adding one of my public videos:

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