Dave wants us to listen to the radio on our TVs. That’s his big new software… we can all gather around the TV, turn on FlickrFan, and listen to some awesome podcasts.
I just don’t even have the words for this. It’s like buying a Tablet PC and using it as a clipboard.
Everybody GET READY! Dave is releasing a NEW APP.
Maybe there won’t be millions of users, but my goal is to bootstrap a community of networked living rooms. For that I don’t need more than a couple hundred households who want to play and I already have that.
I will soon tell you more about the new app, and if you’re paying attention on my Twitter feed, you’ll get a pretty clear idea of where this is going. It’s all about communities, social features and big media.
He’s either tremendously enamored with himself, supremely disappointed by the “success” of FlickrFan… or both. This is easily the most pitiful thing I’ve seen on Scripting News in years. I feel bad for him.
I had intended to call the AP today and see what sort of agreement Winer had with them regarding FlickrFan. One of our enterprising readers seems to have beaten me to it:
eye,
I was fascinated by the prospect of having AP photos on my screensaver, so I downloaded Dave’s flickrfan software. After a day or so, however, I became concerned about the copyright implications so, to assuage my fears, I decided to give them a call. The guy I spoke with said he would look into the matter. He called back about an hour later to say that he doesn’t know where Dave is getting the images, but he doesn’t believe that this is on the up-and-up. He said he’d continue to look into it, but he doesn’t think he’ll find anything. He also, in our initial conversation, asked what sort of resolution the pictures were coming in at and seemed genuinely shocked by my reply.Unless there’s some memo that didn’t get circulated at the AP, it appears that Dave is passing out their pics without their permission. If I hear anything back, I’ll let you know.
[Name Redacted]
Two things, for the record: First, I have not verified the content of the above email and make no representations as to its truth. Second, I would be very, very concerned about enabling the AP feed in FlickrFan. If there’s no agreement between Dave and the AP, simply pulling the enclosures from that feed would likely be considered a copyright infringement (and could bring with it some serious liability).
One grain of salt to add to the above email: I believe a lot of things about Dave, but I have trouble believing that he’d be so stupid as to distribute these images without permission from the AP.
UPDATE: Got some down-time and called around. After a few transfers I was told that FlickrFan is an AP Digital client, although most of the people I talked to had the same reaction cited in the email. What that means, of course, is that Dave is paying for all of us to see the photos. I didn’t get the sense that anyone I talked to really understood the repercussions of allowing thousands of AP photos to be automatically downloaded to one’s harddrive but that’s not really my concern. It appears that FlickrFan is licensed. (While posting this update I got an email from the previous emailer saying essentially the same thing.)
Many times, the things Dave writes on Scripting.com are bizarre. Usually, though, they’re just bizarre and neurotic opinions. Seldom does Dave say something so inherently, flatly, and factually incorrect as what he said today:
Today’s XML-RPC is exactly as it was 10 years ago, which, if you were developing XML-RPC apps means that your apps still work, and that’s a good thing. Nothing that’s come along before or since rivals XML-RPC for simplicity and utility.
False. Just plain false. Dave believes that it’s true because he uses an ancient piece of software that does nothing but XML-RPC, but the “simple” fact of the matter is that, from the ground up, nothing is more simple than REST is. Take a look.
Here’s a sample XML-RPC request:
< ?xml version="1.0"?>
<methodcall>
<methodname>examples.getStateName</methodname>
<params>
<param> <value><i4>41</i4></value> </param>
</params>
</methodcall>
There’s a lot of complexity there. Just take a look and try to imagine that you’ve never seen XML-RPC before. Now let’s take a look at REST.
http://url.com/MethodName?param=value
Oh, yeah, Dave. XML-RPC is sooo much simpler.
If I could be Emperor of the Universe for five minutes I’d outlaw all holidays in November, December and January and would declare that everybody should be nice to everyone all the time, no matter what season it is!
Of course, what Dave really means is that he’d make everyone be nice to him all the time, since he surely couldn’t bring himself to return the favor.
I wonder how long in 2008 Dave will go before he says something not-nice about someone in a very public place. Bets, anyone? I’d guess the over/under is sometime next week, as more people start to say “FlickrFan is idiotic.”
Also, I thought this was obvious, but I haven’t seen it explicitly mentioned yet — every piece of Dave’s new “screensaver” has already been done. All you have to do is set FeedDemon (or any number of other clients) to automatically download enclosures into your screensaver folder.
The FlickrFan EULA makes it very clear that the software is for individual or “internal business” use only. That’s why it’s so odd to see Dave advocating that users violate his EULA just days after the software’s release.
So I’d like to try [FlickrFan] in two new venues to see what happens.
1. In a reception area in an office. Imagine one of the buildings at Microsoft. Or a doctors office, or the lobby of a VC firm. Install a big flatscreen TV on the wall, with a Mac Mini behind it, with a net connection, and let it run. See if people don’t gravitate to it. See if people don’t want to have meetings in the lobby. (I think some might.)
Other EULA issues:
Just some of the many questions that Dave is “too busy” to answer.
Imagine that Dave starts using a new web app.
Imagine, then, that the app starts publishing a list of all of the new users with links to their online identities.
Imagine that this is an “opt out” situation.
What’s the over/under on the number of web-tantrums Dave would throw?
Dave made a change to FlickrFan (probably sent out via the mandatory phone-home autoupdater) in which the flickr account names to all new users to the software are published online. Long-time readers who know that that Dave is a “do as I say, not as I do” kinda guy will guess that this new “feature” is… SURPRISE… opt-out.
What’s more, when questioned about it, here’s what he says:
Since we’re still in the first 24 hours, the culture of this community is still to be determined.
It’s going to be a fairly open community thing, that’s what I hope to telegraph from this. Have the discussion now, as opposed to later.
To the other poster, of course I was following the Facebook stuff, and if you go back through the archive of Scripting News you’ll find that I wasn’t terribly critical of what they were doing because I understood the issues and tradeoffs.
Let’s deconstruct that, shall we?
As one might expect, Dave’s new software set off something of a storm of complaints form photographers who a) don’t understand the technology and/or b) don’t understand the law.
Here’s pretty much the bottom line: when you post something — anything — publicly on the web you’re basically giving the world the freedom to take a copy of it for their own personal use and enjoyment. Not to sell, not to display publicly, not to give away, but for personal, private use.
Lane Hartwell says, in a comment:
if I have my images marked ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I mean just that…no reproduction in any form without my consent.
Unfortunately for her, that’s not really how it works. In fact, it really can’t work that way. It’s impossible for Computer B to display an image that’s stored on Computer A without reproduction. Does Lane really expect everyone who loads up Flickr to pick up the phone and call her before their browser makes a cache copy?
Besides, isn’t the real problem here that Flickr is transmitting the URLs of JPGs that are supposed to be marked “all rights reserved”?
After all, when Dave says: “When you publish an RSS feed with enclosures you’re inviting people to download your content and store it locally.” He’s absolutely right — that’s the whole point of RSS enclosures.
Arguing that downloading things from RSS enclosures is copyright infringement is like putting all of your valuables in a vending machine and then trying to press charges against the people who use it for “theft”.
Then again…
When Dave’s website was being marked up by Google’s Toolbar he didn’t like it, but it was basically the same thing as FlickrFan is doing (although far more innocuous). If we’re very, very generous to FlickrFan, we can say that the software is remixing Flickr so that we can view it our own way, which is what Google Toolbar did when it added links to pages at our request.
The contrast is that in the first scenario it was Dave’s site being remixed and here Dave is the remixer. In Dave’s world, that makes all the difference.
Dave Winer posted the following entry today on Scripting News before sending it down the memory hole:
Did I invent photocasting and catching?
Well, no I didn’t. And you can quote me on that.
There are quite a few apps that run on desktops that read RSS feeds with either picture enclosures or media-rss enclosures. They all seem to coordinate with, or are screen savers. (FlickrFan falls into the first category, it’s not a screen saver, and people who say it is are wrong.)
But I’ll tell you this, mark my words, I will make this a big deal, I will get major content companies on board, and I will spawn competition, and invigorate the existing products, and when it’s done, a lot more pictures will be flowing to a lot more living rooms, laptops and desktops because of the work I am doing.
I wasn’t the first podcaster either, I think that honor goes to Steve Gillmor and Chris Lydon. But when I started podcasting in the summer of 2004, a lot more people saw that they could do it because I showed them how, I made it my business to demystify it, and because I’m so obviously an amateur (if he can do it so can I).
And, as with podcasting, the technology for this stuff was my creation.
The post was republished by Planet PGC before deletion.
Long bet: Two weeks from today, even Scoble won’t be talking about this application.
Cutting through the hype and BS, here’s what FlickrFan is: the most bloated mac screensaver you’ll (n)ever download. All of the jabber about Twitter, feeds, uploading to flickr, etc is all just fluff. There are better apps for all of those things, and they actually work better separately than FlickrFan does.
FlickrFan basically downloads a whole bunch of photos (it took about 90 seconds for it to completely saturate my wireless connection) to a folder on your computer and then makes use of Mac’s built-in photo screensaver to display them.
Dave says: “FlickrFan is the next step in really simple content distribution, pictures flowing to your desktop.”
Heh. FlickrFan is a glorified photo downloader.
What’s really great, though, is that the photos aren’t attributed in any way. I don’t know which photos are the AP’s, which photos are from my contacts… nothing. It doesn’t pull in photos that I’ve marked as “favorite” and it doesn’t let me specify sets or tags or anything. (UPDATE: I’ve heard that it can do this, but you have to hunt down the RSS feeds for all of those things and add them separately)
This is a piece of software that could’ve been effectively written in about 45 minutes — which doesn’t make it bad, sometimes simple is better — but after all of the self-fellating (and talk of months of development), I was expecting a little more.
Bottom line, if you want a Flickr screensaver check out Flickrbits — much higher quality stuff there… and they’re not “platforms” whose EULAs (speaking of which, the url that the EULA references generates a nice 404) force you to allow the software to “phone home” to get updates without your permission.