Links for 2007-08-26
- How to do water droplets in Photoshop in five minutes I mean it's fascinating and everything but having watched it all the way through twice I still actually have no idea how they did it or what each of the various things they did accomplished. Still, a fascinating five minutes.
- I'm fascinated to hear that there are PR databases full of my contact details! Oh happy day! Do you work in PR and want to differentiate yourself from the unscrupulous people who lie and spam for cash!? Then get access to these databases and find out what they say about me! Screencaps preferred!
- A new version of Thinglink has launched. It's got some weird little usability irritations for me, but it's nice to see it up and running. Big two problems for me: clicking on 'home' takes you to a login page for some reason, text on the homepage doesn't make it clear what's a tagline and what's a link. Otherwise pretty interesting!
- If you remember, Google turned off its TV distribution efforts and everyone who had bought things using its local DRM found that they no longer worked. They were 'reimbursed' with Google store credit... Google have since reimbursed people. That's good. But this is the narrative of future DRM-based media collapses, only in the future when a company goes bankrupt you'll not likely get reimbursed for your lost media...
- Vaguely entertaining video parody of a supposed Microsoft Zune version of the iPhone Honestly, at the moment I think pretty much everyone is still reeling from the launch of the iPhone, so it feels a bit mean to pick on Microsoft in particular. Still, it's sort of funny.
- A nice supportive message from Stowe Boyd... "Tom expresses the feeling that most well-known bloggers share: a learned avoidance -- if not physical disgust -- of PR folks who bombard us with PR."
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
My reading of the Privacy and Communications Act 2003 is that, in your case, press releases are spam. You seem to be blogging as a private individual not as a business, which means you have to opt in to any commercial emails to receive them, plus there needs to be a clear opt-out link.
In theory the maximum fine is £5000. Probably unlikely to be enforced in this case, but maybe worth investigating from your end. The Information Commissioner looks after this stuff.
There is also a clause about directories in the Act, although it's not clear from my initial reading whether this is likely to cover media databases rather than just telephone directories.
→ Posted by: Chris Edwards at August 26, 2007 6:27 PM
Seems like there should be some kind of "do not call" list you can get yourself added to, to get yourself striken from those PR databases. I'm sure I'm being overly optimistic about that, though.
→ Posted by: http://openid.aol.com/rslovinger at September 6, 2007 6:52 AM