“My biggest beef with the New Newsroom, though, is what has happened to headlines. In old newsrooms, headline writing was considered an art. This might seem like a stretch to you, but not to copy editors, who graduated from college with a degree in English literature, did their master’s thesis on intimations of mortality in the early works of Molière, and then spent the next 20 years making sure to change commas to semicolons in the absence of a conjunction.”

– Gene Weingarten, “Gene Weingarten’s Column Mentions Lady Gaga“

Unfortunately, Esther now has to duke it out in small claims court against this entertainment Goliath.  It’s unclear whether SBE ended up using the photos, but the murky agreement — consisting of emails back-and-forth with the PR company representing SBE — makes for an unclear outcome.  (Full disclosure: As a fellow blogger, photography enthusiast and personal friend, I am unabashedly on Team Esther.)

Amateur photographers — or hobbyists, in this instance — can often run into trouble when navigating the business of copyright and licensing.  Licensing is much more complicated than giving someone permission to use the photo; there are different levels of photography licensing, from commercial rights to first rights to one-time use rights.  And unless you work for hire or sell the rights completely, you always retain the copyright to the photo.

In a boon to amateurs everywhere, Flickr announced recently that it would be clearing a path between photographers and potential photo buyers through a new program called “Request to License,” run through an already existing partnership with stock photo agency Getty Images.  A simple profile setting now allows you to include a “Request to License” link on all of your photos.  According to Flickr:

“When a prospective licensee sees an image marked for license, they can click on the link and be put in touch with a representative from Getty Images who will help handle details like permissions, releases and pricing. Once reviewed, the Getty Images editors will send you a FlickrMail to request to license your work, either for commercial or editorial usage. The decision to license is always yours.”

The licensing experts at Getty Images would have helped Esther not only with proper documentation, but also with determining the necessary licensing level.  As the PR company made the request, it was likely that the photos were needed for a media outlet — and editorial use needs not the purchase of full rights.  I speculate that SBE balked at the cost of the copyrights, considering they did not intend to use them for commercial use.

To include “Request to License” on your Flickr photos, go to Your Account > Privacy & Permissions > Make your photos eligible for Getty Images.  From there, choose Enable.  (Click to enlarge.)

Flickr provides a full account of how to set up your account, as well a FAQ on how Getty Images works.  Not all photos are available for licensing — you can’t necessarily sell pics that have trademarks or celebrities on them, for example.

The ease of this new program inspires another question — does that mean Creative Commons for photography will now become obsolete?  As one who used to provide CC licenses on my photos, I’ve since reversed course.  Though I don’t mind allowing others to use my photos with credit, I find that credit is rarely given.  And the purpose of a CC license — to increase exposure to your work — may drive some traffic to your Flickr page, but rarely does it lead to monetary gains.  In fact, those using your photo are doing it precisely because it is free.

And the end of the day, it’s all about getting paid, right?  Go Team Esther!

Interesting reads on copyrights and licensing:
Photography Rights – Licensing Your Work
Is Creative Commons bad for copyright?

“…the implications of the Post’s plan to use bloggers as free labor are troublesome for its paid columnists. The Post has several good local columnists like Colbert King, Courtland Malloy and Robert McCartney. If bloggers fill their functions for free, the Post will inevitably phase them out. In the labor movement, we have a term for workers who undercut other workers and threaten their jobs: scabs. As a labor guy for sixteen years, I have no intention of blogoscabbing.”
– Adam Pagnucco, Maryland Politics Watch

I guess this begs the question: why are so many bloggers willing to work for free, particularly for media outlets that can afford to pay them?   So many talented writers willing to work for pennies Google ad clicks on the dollar…

“I also blog at the Huffington Post” is almost like “I also blog at WordPress”
– @ShutUpFoodies

Of course, geolocation is the big social trend these days, particularly in this new game of Foursquare.  I only know vaguely of its uses — mainly that you “check in” to places using your mobile phone’s geo-tracking system, and that you earn “badges” for being a patron of said location any particular number of times.  I’ve never warmed to the idea of announcing where I am to the exact latitude and longitude at any given moment, but I know plenty of friends who do get a kick out of it.

Anyway, for those who do like this kind of stuff, I want to direct your attention to two articles I read recently about people being stalked and scammed through the new geolocation social media networks:

“Fourscared and Fourscammed” – Lalawag.com
“Location-Based Social Networks: Delightful, Dangerous or Somewhere in Between” – NY Times via ReadWriteWeb

I’m not the alarmist type, but I admit that this one sent a few shivers up through the back of the neck.  With Internet stalkers doing everything from creepy phone calls to money scams to outright burglary/robbery, I hope you all take basic safety measures to protect yourself from the inevitable weirdos out there.

The basic advice: (1) don’t Tweet/Foursquare your location until you leave, and (2) don’t “Friend” anyone you really don’t know on Facebook.  Or if you do, add them to a particular Friend List that you can exert additional privacy controls over.

And (3) for chrissakes, edit yourself.  Or you might end up here.  Or here.

I can’t quite decide if Jamie Oliver is a media darling or a media whore — is there any sort of media he hasn’t touched? — but I have decided that I like what he’s doing in “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” a reality show/documentary about the Naked Chef’s attempts to reform America’s school lunch system and improve our eating habits.

I especially like that he’s not pussyfooting around the topic of healthy eating.  It’s not about preaching that “fresh, unprocessed food is good and healthy for you!”  but rather giving serious ultimatums: “This stuff is gonna kill your children.”

In the most recent episode, Jamie attempts to show schoolkids the sort of ingredients that goes into their beloved chicken nuggets that they eat at least several times a week.   According to him, this experiment “works every single time.”  Take a look:

“What’s scary is that we’ve brainwashed our kids so brilliantly, so even though they know something is disgusting and gross, they’ll still eat it if it’s in that friendly little shape.” — Jamie Oliver

Watch full episodes online at ABC.com.

I’ve been tinkering around with CSS, PHP and Javascript recently, and since I already had some HTML and graphic design experience in my back pocket, I told Robby I’d give it a go and build it from the ground up.  So I present to you… RobbyMarshall.com 2.0!

I encourage you to check it out, not necessarily to toot my own horn, but more so because I think you might enjoy Robby’s music.  The site is hardly finished — we’ve still got plenty of photos and other fun stuff to put up, but we just got out of beta mode so I was eager to show it off.  Pretty soon I will be tackling the task of subscription services and e-commerce, so stay tuned for that.

If you’re looking to build your own website, or even just spice up a blog, here are a few beginner’s tips that really helped me out:

• WordPress.org.  If you are an artist, a freelance anything, a small business or just someone who has thoughts, I can’t recommend WordPress enough.   Most hosting services already offer it as an easy-to-install application.  Though it was built as blogging software, WP’s open-source coding has made it optimal for building professional websites as well.  On top of that, their search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities are top-notch — this, perhaps more than anything else, is invaluable.  (See last point.)
• Themes. This is where the old saying “you get what you pay for” holds true.  Paying for premium WordPress themes is the best way to get a professional, polished look.  As a bonus, most of them come with support forums in which you can ask newbie questions and receive personalized help.   Now a word from the wise: do not go trolling for free pirated premium themes on file sharing sites.  On top of breaking copyright laws, you are usually walking into a trap — many of those “free” themes will have hidden hacks and links (often to porn sites), or worse, viruses or malware.  Studiopress has a great article about how to avoid these suspicious themes. There are too many unexplored themes out there to have a favorite, but I’ve enjoyed using Studiopress Lifestyle 4.0 theme on The Wanderkind and really liked the interface of Headway Themes in building Robby’s site.  (More great “theme frameworks” here.)
• CSS. If you want to have any control over the design of your theme, teach yourself some basic CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets.  You’ll need that knowledge if you want to change anything from margin widths to the way a link changes color when your mouse hovers over it.  Check out CSS Basics for a solid tutorial.
• DOM inspector. Headway actually pointed me toward this while I was making Robby’s site, and now I can’t imagine designing one without it.  This application breaks down the HTML, CSS and script code of every web page you’re looking at, allowing you to see the code with its corresponding element.  If you use Firefox, get Firebug.  Safari already comes with Web Inspector.  Get DebugBar for Internet Explorer (although most experienced developers will gag at the thought of designing on IE).  Here’s what Firebug looks like when I run it on my site:

• SEO.  Good WordPress themes have solid SEO built into it already, so there’s little you have to do except know how to maximize what you have.  The point of SEO is so that people who don’t know who you are can find you when they are searching for terms related to your site.  Quick tips: make sure your page/post titles reflect the topic properly, add meta tags wherever possible and use lots of relevant links — the link text should relate to the link itself as opposed to saying “click here.”

I’ve done enough geeking out for one post.  I’ve got a couple of other projects in the works, so hopefully I’ll have some more insights to share later.  Feel free to send me any questions, and I promise to do my best to point you in the right direction.

“According to a study of 1.5 million tweets, released this year by Oxford University Press, the words ‘cool,’ ‘awesome,’ ‘wow,’ and ‘yay’ are among the most common on Twitter.”
– Vanessa Grigoriadis, “America’s Tweethearts,” Vanity Fair

For those of you who are active Twitter users, I encourage you to read the article, if only to satisfy your jeer quota for the day.  I’m not even going to get into how barf-tastic this article was (“tweethearts,” “twilebrities”).  This article is just an embarrassment to proponents who understand and utilize the power of social media for good.  As Caroline McCarthy of CNET says,

“Twitter has proven to have legitimate value as a business and marketing vehicle, and its power users — including the women pictured and quoted in the article — are capable of a lot more than cutesy soundbites about “engagement” and catty jabs…”

Well said, Caroline.  Now if Twitter could only figure out how to make money…

“I’m having a hell of a time connecting to your blog.  Think you’ve gone big time and the Chinese Commies are shutting you down?” he joked.  I figured my slow server was to blame.  He countered with the fact that Facebook was also banned in China, and that attempting to access The Wanderkind on Internet Explorer will result in the same endless loading cycle that happens with Facebook.

“It always gets stuck on the fifth green bar,” he explained, reloading my page again.  “Ooh, four bars this time.  Movin’ up in the world!”  He sent me a screenshot to illustrate:

I’m at a loss for words as to what I could have possibly written to have red-flagged myself with the Chinese government.  Perhaps my Khmer Rouge post?  Or maybe they don’t like me calling them out on the shamelessness of their street vendors?  This post probably isn’t going to help things either.  But I’m not alone — I’m in line behind the ranks of Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Blogger and just about every other social media site in the world.

If you want to check to see if your site is also banned in China – and there are hundreds of reasons and “keywords” that could result in your site being banned — you can check your URL with sites like Website Pulse, which will ping your site from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.  Apparently Hong Kong thinks I’m A-OK, but as for mainland China, they can suck a big fat First Amendment.

She was referring to the recent proliferation of Sprint into her guilty pleasure, ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.” Sprint recently partnered with the network to produce a series of integrated ads that run alongside the show as a sponsored spin-off series, “Another Desperate Housewife.” The mini-series’ story line consists of a housewife, her cheating husband and her best friend/betrayer — and how each uses Sprint to conspire against the others. We’ll cut to the good stuff:
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The actual tagline: “This is betrayal… on the Now Network.” Or in Tiff’s words, “Are you a cheating whore? Grab a Sprint phone!”

This is hardly new for Sprint. The cellular company also teamed up with my guilty geeky pleasure, NBC’s “Heroes,” to develop a webisode series called “Slow Burn,” about a woman with superpowers who contacts her long lost daughter (also with superpowers) by sending photo texts through her Sprint phone.

The ad peeps are calling it a revolution. Adweek explains the new trend in brand integration as a way to combat the “increasing challenges in DVR penetration.” (Sounds naughty!) By creating a program that is seamless with the tone and style of the show, Sprint hopes to capture viewers’ attention and keep them from fast forwarding through their commercial. Ad Age points out the slight risk in developing a promotion that is so closely tied to one show — the commercials can’t air anywhere else other than the show for which they are designed.

Many experts are saying that these types of commercial spin-offs will continue to grow as networks and advertisers devise even more seamless and shameless ways to shill products. According to Adweek, Sprint is quite happy with the results so far, and we may be seeing more outlandish sponsored series soon.

(Maybe a Sprint-sponsored “Mad Men”? Imagine the look of revulsion on Matthew Weiner’s face…)

One thing you won’t be seeing is the now canceled “Family Guy” episode sponsored by Microsoft. The half-hour special was to embed Microsoft Windows 7 content directly into the plot, but Microsoft backed out when they realized that the show would contain “riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest” and were not a “fit with the Windows brand.” Of the several thousand people that work at Microsoft, has not one seen “Family Guy?” It was probably for the best anyway, considering this trailer:
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The question remains: how effective is brand integration into television? Although Microsoft has yet to figure out, as for Sprint… well, their June 2009 commercial on the Palm Pre didn’t exactly inspire a blog post, did it? You see, though my good friend may despise “Another Desperate Housewife,” she recalled the plot, Sprint’s involvement and the tagline with ease — short of putting the phone in her hand, Sprint couldn’t ask for more. I admittedly always stop fast forwarding on the DVR when I see “Slow Burn” come on “Heroes,” no matter how cheesy I think it is. To that effect, I would say Sprint is doing an outstanding job of reaching its audience. But we’ll see if that translates to phone sales. (Sorry Sprint, the iPhone had me at hello.)

At the risk of exposing just how few people read my blog, let’s take an informal poll:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Some amazing gems from Jon Stewart’s recent rant on CNN this past Monday:

“You fact checked an ‘SNL’ sketch. That’s what you fact checked. A ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch. You got together, did some research, put together a report… on an ‘SNL’ sketch. While you were doing your research, did you also find that sharks live in water and don’t deliver candygrams? That’s there’s no African American equivalent of Mr. Rogers? And the majority of boxes do not have d*cks in them? Did you find that out?”

– Jon Stewart, “Daily Show“