Month: March 2012

Taken Aback by the Shutting Down of Clipmarks and Amplify

Clipmarks Shutting Down

Without any Advance Notice

Both Clipmarks and Amplify show the same notice:

Clipmarks (and Amplify with the same notice) is shutting down immediately. We’ve had a wonderful run and we are grateful to everyone for taking the journey with us.

We’ve arranged for all of our users to be granted Clipboard accounts, which we believe is the best place for you to continue clipping the Web. Our existing users will receive an invitation by email, but anyone else can request an invitation directly at www.clipboard.com.

Clipboard will hold Clipmarks’s databases in trust and if there is sufficient interest they will provide a migration tool to import Clipmarks clips into Clipboard.

Please visit the Clipboard Blog for more information about this news.

Now What?

I’ve visited ClipBoard and signed up, but refuse for the moment to clip anything. Especially because Clipboard is very vague about what it is going to do about the data put in trust. Today I visited the blog post again….97 comments thus far. There will be more definitely.

Sure services can and do shut down. Doing so without the possibility to save your activities is inexcusable….

Why Taken Aback?

I was especially taken aback because I enthused about it in Testing Clipmarks.

N.B. In a comment back in October 2009 I said:

Only question is what happens if the original content will be removed – what will happen with the clip -, but I have a feeling it is also stored on the Clipmark server, we will see.

So why moan? Actually because I’m a bit mad – mad on my self- because I had to manually re edited many posts here and on our sister blog, while I knew!

Well it’s done now.

Imagine when Pinterest shuts down, or FaceBook…..

Tweepml added to the Internet Graveyard?

TweepML ceased operation.

I was enthusiast (Using Tweepml to Manage your Twitter Contacts and do away with #ff and #tt) about their easy interface to make lists of Twitter followers. However in autumn 2010 they were banned by Twitter and although they seemed in operation again in autumn 2011 (albeit with hiccups), they are not there anymore… Their site has been down for over a month now and their last twitter activity dates back to half January 2012. Their url seems paid for until July 2012.

Sad! RIP TweepML.

Leftovers

TweepML-(tweepml)-on-Twitter

As always you still can find some leftovers as for instance a Twitter account with over 10k followers and a klout score of 19…LOL that says something for Klouts precision.

A nifty replacement for TweepML? Anybody?

The Internet Graveyard – Slideshow

Internet Graveyard
Found this telling photo at FunnyPhotos.net.au

Intro

Sites come and sites go. The longer you blog, the more blogs and internet services you’ll find disappearing or becoming something else, because they stopped, were merged, acquired or simply wanted to start earning some (more) money.

For some time I used to keep track of blogs that passed away in a category Dead TravelBlog Society.

Recently I’ve been confronted with several services being closed down. Services that I used in one way or another for my blogs. Therefore I’ve decided to create a second, broader category “Internet Graveyard“. For the moment I’ll leave the two existing next to each other and sometimes overlapping each other.

How to keep track of all the changes?

Every WordPress Blogger should use the nifty WordPress plugin by the name of Broken Link Checker by Janis Elsts of W-Shadow.com. See for W-Shadow’s blog post regarding the pluging W-Shadow | Broken Link Checker. I’ve been using it a couple of months now and it is a great tool to keep your blog lean and mean with links that work.

From time to time, through this plugin you’ll find out that one or another nifty 3rd party service you are using has stopped.

And Slide.com did Stop

According to its site, Slide.com has closed down as of March 6, 2012 and is not longer available.

Luckily I had to rework just one post where I had used their Slideshow.

Furthermore they seem to have given a nice advanced warning of their plans:

Update on Slide’s products and our commitment to our users
(8/25/2011)

We wanted to give you all advance notice that in the coming months, a number of Slide’s products and applications will be retired. This includes Slide’s products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party. We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. While we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven’t caught on as we originally hoped.
Most importantly, we wanted to take this opportunity to reassure you that we’re committed to helping our users preserve their data as easily as possible. We recognize that many of you have stored valuable content with us and want to assure you that, wherever possible, you will have ample time to download that information or transfer it to another service.

For example, on Slide.com, we will enable users to either download their photos or export them to a Picasa account. We are working to release this export feature over the coming weeks and, once added, users will have several months to take advantage of transferring their photos.

In this respect they have done better than some other services I will address shortly.

Russia: Agent Provocateur Caught with its “Pants Down”?

Pants Down

“Pants Down”?

It appears that the sexy frilly lingerie brand Agent Provocateur has provoked its Russian fans. While launching a whole new site for Russia, Agent Provocateur has blocked access to its international sites from Russia. Allegedly the prices for its products on its Russian site is 50% to 100 % higher than on its international sites. Effectively it has significantly increased its product price for its Russian fans by way of modern internet censorship. While baring in mind their products cannot be said to have a lot of “substance” anyway, I would say this, when true, is a big Internet Marketing #FAIL.

Update

Take for instance the brand’s Mazzy Bikini
Mazzy-Bikini-on-pret-a-porter-com
On Pret a Porter dot com it costs UK pnd 171,-
Mazzy Bikini on Agent Provocateur dot RU
On Agent Provocateur dot RU it costs UK pnd 259,-

Last edited by GJE on March 9, 2012 at 11:15 pm

Happy Birthday John Cage

Happy Birthday John Cage from HappyHotelier on Vimeo.

This year the 100th Birthday of a famous American composer, John Cage, will be celebrated.

This Birthday cake installation for John Cage I found in an exhibition in the Museumsquartier of Vienna that I visited quite unexpectedly earlier this week. I made a small piece of video so that you get a feel of why all small loudspeakers were used to decorate the cake.

Featuring more than hundred different works, “MEMBRA DISJECTA FOR JOHN CAGE: Wanting to Say Something About John” is an homage to John Cage, whose hundred birthday is being celebrated around the world in 2012. The Latin term “membra disjecta” in the exhibition title indicates John Cage’s method of working with a scattering of elements from various sources. The subtitle refers to a multiple that John Cage created in Marcel Duchamp’s honor after his death: “Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel.”

If you happen to be in Vienna shortly a must visit exhibition!

Below is a trailer for an memorial of John Cage in The Hague on March 10, 2012: