Why Some People (Like Me) Might Be Hesitant To Follow You On Twitter
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 10, 2011
Yes, I had to mention Twitter one more time. I could lie and say I’m mentioning it so that it’ll be the 200th time I’ve mentioned it in a post in almost 1,100 posts, though it’s actually true, but if that were the reason I was doing it then it would be a pretty shallow reason.
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Why am I talking about this again? Because the speed at which I seem to have people suddenly following me has been picking up lately. Now, I believe a lot of these people that end up following me are only doing it hoping I’ll follow them so they can drop me and think I don’t know about it. Silly rabbits; don’t they know I know about Friend or Follow, which lets me see who’s not following me that I’m following? For that matter, don’t some of the rest of them realize I also know about Twit Cleaner as well?
I like to think I’m a much better judge of the types of folks I follow on Twitter these days. I’m certainly not a snob, but I have my criteria for how I determine who I’m going to follow that suits me fairly well. Of course, everyone should have their own rules, and I’m not going to supplant those rules with my own. Still, I know that some of my rules some folks should look at and say “hey, that makes sense”, while others will say “I can’t believe he said that.”
Who me? Y’all know me better than that. Of course I’m going to say it. Hopefully, I’ll say it in a manner that doesn’t sound like I’m slapping anyone in the face, but I can’t guarantee that. After all, I’ve noticed how few people that have popups on their blogs comment here anymore; can’t be concerned with it because those folks needed to know how irritating they are to the rest of us, and many of you have said the same thing in your comments. Truth hurts sometimes, but if it’s working for you then why should you care what I have to say about it? It’s making you sales, or getting you subscribers; good for you. I just won’t be there.
Anyway, what types of people am I hesitant to follow on Twitter? Or rather, what could those folks be doing that makes me hesitant, which means most of the time I’m probably not going to follow them whether they’re following me or not? And are there reasons why I don’t follow those things across the board? Have I intrigued you a little bit?
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One final thing before I get going. Our buddy Val has named me as a recipient of an award she just came up with called the No Rules Blog Award. Some of you are on this list, so I hope you go to check it out. In particular she said she doesn’t always agree with what I have to say but I know my own mind; love that, and how much truer could it be? So, thanking Val for this award, let’s put those words to use and see how prophetic they might be today.
First thing; is that a tiny url that you have as your website or blog site in your profile? I immediately think you’re trying to trick me into going to a site to pop malware or a virus onto my computer. Let me get this straight; you have a blog or website, you want people to visit it, yet you cloak the link? Nope, ain’t happening, and if that’s the case then I’m not following you. I do that because if I follow you anyway and then you put a link out to something that might intrigue me, I’m not as sure of you and your motives, and I’d rather not even entertain the thought; sorry.
Second thing; did you mention in your profile that you’re a Christian, or Muslim, or any other religion? Do you also have a religious quote in your profile? Unless I met you elsewhere I’m probably not following you. I have nothing against people’s religions, but I do have a problem with people throwing it in my face, being an ultimate non-believer. If you feel your religion is that important then it probably means you’re going to be proselytizing, and frankly, I’m not the one you really want to deal with; trust me on that one. If it comes my way I’m going to be out to destroy your feelings; I hate being pushed that much. Therefore, I’d rather avoid the possibility as much as possible. Oh yeah, I’ve looked through many of your previous posts as well, so I’ve probably found your pattern if it’s there.
Third thing; is every other word out of your mouth a curse word? I’m not a prude; I have a couple of folks I follow who throw out some fairly bad language every once in awhile. But it’s not a consistent thing, thank goodness, because it’s unnecessary. I don’t want all that in my stream, where other people following me might see that sort of nonsense. I don’t want to start talking to you and then have a lot of that coming back my way as your response, whether we’re in agreement or not. So, if I don’t follow you, I don’t have to worry about it.
Fourth thing; that picture! At least you don’t have the egg anymore, but what the hey?!?!? If your image is freaking me out every time I see it in my stream you’ve got to go. This has more to do than dealing with pictures of bugs (I hate bugs!). I keep wondering how some people have decided to select the images that represent them. Sure, if it’s your personal account and you only want to talk to your friends then fine. But if you want to talk to the masses, or have the masses see what you have to say and really care about it, pick an adult picture. Heck, even if it’s a picture of your kids, at least it says that you might be someone worth following.
Fifth thing; I’m going in a different direction here. I didn’t want to repeat myself from some of the previous things I’ve written talking about Twitter folks that I’m hesitant to deal with or things I don’t like all that much, so instead of writing a fifth thing I’m just going to link to those posts instead. Cheap way out; heck, we’re already over 1,100 words! Here we go:
This last one I’m sharing not because it highlights any gripes I have, but because Sire loved the first video and I like keeping him happy when I can: How Do You Twitter?
Yeah, I’m done; as the velociraptor on The Critic once said: “Perhaps I’ve said too much.” Nah; said what I felt needed to be said. Still, I’m betting I could have gone further; what makes you hesitant to follow certain people on Twitter?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Mitch Mitchell
Trouble With WP Images? You May Be Stuck With Some Of It
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 23, 2011
Every once in awhile I have problems uploading images to my blogs. I wasn’t sure what the deal was, but I finally decided it was time to go after the problem, as y’all know I will almost always do eventually. If you’re having problems uploading images, your reason could be in here.
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Frankly I had multiple issues. One, I might try to upload an image and get this weird error message about my homespages and running out of space. Two, the image might upload to my computer, but wouldn’t give me the option of adding it to my post. That obviously does me no good whatsoever. And a couple of times it would just quit in the middle, and that would be that. I could just upload the image to my server and then pull it in, but that negates the WP Smush-it plugin I use to try to reduce the size of some of my images.
So I went online looking for my solutions. The most common solutions I came across were to increase the size of the memory of your site via adding code to a file called php.ini. Not everyone has that file, but it’s easy to create and add, and it actually has solved a problem for me in the past when I had problems after upgrading to WordPress 2.8. But across the board, it doesn’t always work.
I went looking to find out why all the recommendations weren’t working and I came across something interesting and, of course, it makes sense. I have what’s called “shared hosting” via 1&1. The main packages of all the large hosting companies are shared hosting, which keeps the prices down. It’s a great deal, and you pretty much get a lot of space.
Pretty much, that is. It turns out that not all hosts will allocate you all the space you think for everything you do. One of the things about 1&1 is that they restrict the total size of images you can upload in a month. I never knew that until I started doing some reading. However, it doesn’t only depend on the images, strangely enough. It seems that one of the things taken into consideration is the space your plugins take up as well. So, for most of us, we get between 30 and 40 MB of space.
Since I knew I couldn’t do anything about the images, I decided to look at my plugins, which I’ve never really thought much about before. By totally getting rid of 5 plugins, it seems I cleaned up lots of space, and if I make sure not to upload a lot of large images, I shouldn’t have that problem anymore.
Ah, but my problem wasn’t completely over. At this point all that had improved is that images were uploading; I still couldn’t seem to access them. That meant it was time for more research, and after a long while I came upon something that I’d never considered. It seems that, depending on which browser you use, you could have problems uploading images after a certain point. I use Firefox, and I have always used the browser upload for my images. The recommendation I came across was to first clear the cache on my browser, close it, open it back up, then switch to the flash uploader instead.
Hey, I’m game for anything, even if it seems kind of petty. Lo and behold, it worked. It seems using flash overrides whatever blog you were having, and though it seems to take a little longer to process your images, at least it processes them. I did a test on an older post where I had uploaded a very large file, and it handled it with no problems. That turned out to be great because they WP Smush-it had the opportunity to make it a much smaller file, which would help that particular post load much faster.
There you go. If you find yourself having any problems with your images, it could be any of the reasons I mention above. The fixes are relatively simple, and it’s probably best to at least give them a try to see if they resolve your issue before going any further with all the files and such. One other recommendation was to call your hosting company to see if they would increase your file storage size, but everyone said it was doubtful that would actually work.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
WP Smush.it
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 23, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I was looking at my website on Alexa. One of the stats it had said that my site loaded slowly. Supposedly, 90% of other websites load faster than this site.
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Although I dispute that, since it seems to load fast, I decided to take a look at it anyway. And I realized something that could be slowing things down are some of the images I’ve loaded into the posts. Most are larger than 100KB, which isn’t overly large, but once you start getting up to larger images then things will start to drag.
I wasn’t sure what to do about it until I read somewhere (wish I could remember where) about a plugin called WP Smush.it. What it will do is reduce the size of the images you upload without your losing any of its resolution. I can’t begin to tell you the technology, I’m afraid.
I loaded the plugin, then wasn’t sure what to do with it. In essence, I couldn’t figure out where the images were to do anything. Me being me, though, I searched and figured it out. The images are under Media to the left in your WordPress admin area, then Library. I hadn’t ever paid attention to this area before, so it’s pretty neat seeing all the pictures I’ve uploaded there.
Well, that’s not fully accurate. It will only show images you uploaded through the WP image area, which means it won’t show any images I uploaded through FTP (file transfer protocol for the uninitiated, which means stuff you upload to the internet via some kind of program). That’s too bad because every once in awhile I find that I have to upload an image that way because, strangely enough, WP gets mad sometimes if it thinks you’re uploading an image that’s too big; weasels! lol
Anyway, if you’re in the media library you’ll see images, and to the far right, once you’ve added the plugin, you’ll see where it’ll give you the option to “smush.it now”. I did that to some images and saw that each image was reduced a certain percentage. After doing it you get the option of doing a re-smush, but I haven’t tried that yet. I did go to check the post to see if it made the images look bad, but I didn’t notice any problems. Also, once you add it, any time you add an image it’ll automatically smush the image once you post your article, either live or for the future. That’s neat as well.
So this might be an option of something you can try if you notice, when checking your own post, that it’s loading kind of slow.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Images Used By Permission & Copyright Laws – Guest Post
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Aug 12, 2010
Following up on my post yesterday titled The Quest For Legitimate Images, I was able to convince my friend Scott Thomas to write this post explaining his position on the topic as well as giving us some insight into the issue.
 Scott Thomas Photography |
Mitch and I were discussing the use of photos on this blog a couple of weeks ago. I told him he should find the person who took any photo he uses on his blogs to ask permission to use it. What he said disturbed me and I find it is a prevalent attitude found around blogs, websites and even in advertising and other media. He said if he can not find the person who created the photo and sees it in other locations, he saw no reason not to use it.
As an amateur photographer with aspirations to sell my work on a regular basis, I find such statements very upsetting. I countered saying if someone took one of his articles or published works and posted it or republished it under their name without asking permission, giving credit or payment, what would be his reaction? What would be yours?
Copyright infringement is rampant on the Internet. People feel if it is found on the Internet, it must be free to use. It hurts established professional artists, photographers, writers, musicians and other creative artists who are trying or are making a living from their hard work, investment in education and equipment and talent. Yes, things are changing. Are they changing for the good?
The Copyright Law of the United States protects a creator from others using his creations without his permission. It goes on to say, at the time of creation, the creator copyrights his creations. Be it a shutter click on a camera or keystrokes on to a screen, the photograph or text is copyrighted and given all the protection of the Copyright Law, whether it is published publicly or not. If people are to use something created by another, they must ask and receive permission before doing so. Permission may be just a simple verbal agreement or a written contact which may or may not include the exchange of funds. For photographs, people agree to a use of a photo and scope of that use. Usually it is for a one-time use. If its for advertising, the money can be substantial and the rights to the photo may be purchased outright. In essence, the photographer gives up his copyright “rights” to the buyer. However, he still owns the copyright to the photo.
How does this work in real life? The photo used to illustrate this article is a prime example. At the time I took the photograph and the image was saved to my camera’s memory card, I owned the copyright. My camera even embeds the copyright notice into the photo’s metadata as part of the file. The photo is a creation of mine and is a whole work of art. If someone was to use it without my permission in any way, I could go to court. Would I? That depends on how it was used. Usually, when this happens, I simply inform the person and they either stop using it or we negotiate fair use of the photo.
There are the buzz words you probably have had in the back of your mind while reading thus far. Fair Use is a part of the Copyright Law. It is there not to hinder but to help people wishing to use other’s creative work in exhibiting their own work. A prime example is reviews of books, movies, concerts, and art exhibitions. The reviewer will quote or show examples of the work being reviewed. This is allowed under Fair Use. When I review books on my blog, I will quote the author and use a photo of the book’s cover. I do not replicate word for word long passages of the book and call them my own. That would be against the law. Another part of Fair Use is to give credit to the person or persons who created the work. Again, for my book reviews, I find the author’s blog or website to link to. Fair Use is a win-win if used under the spirit in which the law was written.
If you are familiar with Flickr, the popular Internet photo sharing community website, you will see the term Creative Common license. In short, the photographer who puts a Creative Commons license on a photo is allowing its use under certain conditions without having to directly ask for permission. Those conditions are spelled out in icons under the photo. They range from unconditional use to restrictive use of a photo for only personal use, derivative uses or not and commercial use or not. All Creative Common licenses require a link back to the location of the photo being used. Make sure you understand what you can and can not do under a Creative Commons license. The photographer is being nice enough to allow use of the photo without negotiation or payment, please, don’t abuse it so, like Fair Use, Creative Commons licensing stays a win-win.
Getting back to my photo. What would constitute Fair Use of it? If someone asked me if they could use it on their blog about ice hockey, I would ask for a credit and a link back to my blog or website. My “payment” if you will. That is a common practice among bloggers, photographers and other media outlets. If the photo was part of a book I produced or in my Flickr photostream, someone may use the photo as an example of my work in a review of my photography. Fair Use has been taken many ways in the U. S. courts over the years. For a layman’s explanation, visit Tim Wu’s excellent article on what constitutes Fair Use.
I know it is easy to Google photos and download them for your use. Someone created the photo; it is their photo. Not yours to use, duplicate, render it in another form (crop, print, change, etc.), publish and certainly nothing you can use to sell without permission of the person who created it whether or not you know who that is. You’ll find reports of people finding others using their photos or other artwork and suing them for monetary damages. The law gives fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to people who are found to have infringed on another’s copyright. Sounds silly for a personal blog I know but is no reason to simply ignore it. Just because something is on the Internet, does not mean it is free to use.
I hope this sheds some light on why people should seek out and ask permission to use someone else’s photograph or images on your blogs, websites and other electronic media outlets.
I thank Scott for his article here, and I know it’s an interesting and controversial topic across the board. We’d both welcome hearing from you and your thoughts on the issue. If you’re interested in learning more about photography and seeing some great shots check out Scott’s blog Views Infinitum.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
The Quest For Legitimate Images
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Aug 11, 2010
You know, there are times when you battle with ethical issues, and you’re either ready to give up on them or just move on. I don’t struggle with that issue often, but once I think about something that involves an ethical decision, I just have to work my way through it.
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This time, the ethical thing concerns images that I’ve been putting into this blog. Truth be told, for me there were two issues out there. One, those images that you knew belonged to someone else, and two, those that you couldn’t confirm.
Of course, there’s been the debates and the discussions I’ve seen online. My friend Scott, who has a photography blog, got me into a discussion one day on the topic. My point to him is that I have papers filed with the government proving my copyright, that I can put a symbol on any of my work (I’ve got music and my first book copywritten), and that by adding that copyright symbol at the end of my stuff (and, these days, that copyright thing you see at the end of most of my posts), show that I own the copyright. However, with images, if there’s no watermark, or no copyright symbol on a website, or no attribution anywhere, that it becomes very difficult to figure out whether an image has a copyright or not. His belief is that one can always find it; mine is that at times it’s literally impossible.
Regardless, the issue is still out there. Now, I’m not saying that I’m going to do this for every image, because I sometimes get an image from Imagekind, which I’m an affiliate for, and of course there are times when you know someone put together a mashup of sorts that, if there’s a copyright that’s been violated, so be it, but there is a way to help get around this type of thing.
If you notice, today’s image and yesterday’s image has attribution. It turns out that you can get images from Flickr, a site I’d never gone to unless someone sent me a picture they wanted me to send and it was there, and find images you can use. Seems there’s this search function you can select that will find photos based on a description you put in and, most of the time, they allow you to use the image if you give them attribution and link back to their Flickr page with the image.
I’m not going to portray myself as any kind of genius for figuring this out, however. I got the information from Hubspot’s story titled How To Use Creative Commons To Add Images To Your Blog. There’s a video there, and I’m really glad because I wouldn’t have figured it out without that. And there’s one other thing. Something they tell you that you can do in the video is actually something you can only do if you have a Flickr account, which I won’t because I don’t have any photos that I’m ever going to pop up on any site like that. So, I have to do it the long way, write my code and add the image in a much different way. But no matter; at least I’ve found a place where, if I use those images, I know I’m in the clear.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy something! ;)
