We recently lost our weekly newspaper, thanks in large part to the Internet. Four newspapers just closed shop, in fact...in one fell swoop. But along with them went the website, which I often relied on for local news, since we no longer have a local radio station that carries the news. Ouch!
So, what happened today and why the reason for the title of this post? My brother went to the store to pick up a few things and decided to buy one of the baseball preview papers...you know...one of the special sports "rags" that come out every spring. Well, the clerk informed him that she couldn't sell it to him because it wouldn't "scan." The scanner couldn't read it! She told him to come back tomorrow because it "should be working by then." Umm, have things gone too far? I mean, she was there, my brother was there with money in hand and ready to pay. How DUMB is this?! I remember when power windows in cars were the new craze. In fact, I seem to recall one model that featured both power windows and window cranks! The person who came up with that idea at least had a clue.
The Time For Image Attribution Has Arrived
While I'm on the subject of technology, if you look at the images on my site, you'll now see an "attribution" line on many of them. None are on the blog yet, but you'll see them if you look through the painting collections here. (Eventually they will appear in every image on my site.) With the popularity of sites like Tumblr and Pinterest, I feel I have to do this... even if I don't want to. But if my images are going to be "shared" (lifted) I, at a bare minimum, want a credit line. Those who like Pinterest can scream "free advertising" at me all they want. I had a Tumblr account and saw how things were "shared" there. If an image didn't carry an attribution or watermark, you never knew where it came from. Once something got reposted, there was no telling. The same thing has been happening with "re-pins" on Pinterest. And if you do have an account there, I suggest you take a close look at their Terms of Service. Frankly, I don't think these kinds of sites would have near the popularity they currently enjoy if more people would take the time to carefully read the TOS.
Do you think maybe it's time we at least brought back the crank?
