Folk moving to Argyll must imagine that the natives Continue reading
Tag Archives: google
Tarbert’s location dispute with Google and TomTom all over national press
The pretty Loch Fyne fishing village of Tarbert, Continue reading
Tarbert (Loch Fyne) at war with Vodaphone and Google
What has Tarbert, Loch Fyne, done to upset Vodafone and Google? Continue reading
Google IS evil – stop the Verizon deal
Google is selling out the last frontier of essential worldwide freedom – Internet neutrality. Continue reading
Google’s new Street View mapping service causes some embarrassments
Google’s new mapping service, Street View – launched on Friday – is already causing embarrassment and has had to remove some images from its files. The system allows users 360 degree views on streets – and the houses in them – in 25 cities. Users type in an address in one of these cities and the Google cameras home in on the area.
Google had agreed to protect privacy by blurring faces and car registration plates in any senstive images. However, on release, complaints were received that led to Google removing embarrassing images such as that of one man emerging from a London sex shop and another throwing up outside a pub.
The rich, famous and protected have their privacy secured at source, hoever. The house of Google’s owner does not appear and Tony Blair’s London house in Connaught Square, which was on the map at the launch, has since been removed.
No more premium music videos as YouTube and Performing Rights Society fall out over licence fees
Within the last year YouTube struck a new and courageous deal with the UK Performing Rights Society (PRS). This saw it agree to pay an unspecified flat rate fee to PRS to cover the rights to all copyright music featured on videos posted on its website.
Apart from making straight music videos available to users, the YouTube agreement allowed home video makers to use copyright music in their sound tracks without a liability to pay the music rights which were covered by YouTube.
This has now fallen apart with YouTube walking away from negotiations and making thousands of videos unavailable to UK users from today.
Steve Porter, CEO of PRS, described himself as ‘outraged… shocked and disappointed’ by YouTube’s decision, saying that the action ‘punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent’. He has asked YouTube to reconsider its decision as a matter of urgency.
The disagreement appears to be about the level of the charge.
PRS say: ‘Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing’.
YouTube’s Director of Video Partnerships,Patrick Walker, has told the BBC that he had not wanted to take this action but that PRS was seeking a rise in fees many times higher than the previous agreement.
With negotiating positions so far apart he feels that YouTube has no choice but to take music content off the site while negotiations with PRS continue.
The dispute looks like becoming a mutual blame-fest, possibly with chauvinist overtones. Our own first hand experience would suggest that any Brits fired up to rush the barricades in defence of PRS would be advised to stay their feet.
Patrick Walker told the BBC that the rise PRS had demanded was ‘prohibitive’. He said: ‘The rate they are applying would mean we (YouTube) would lose significant amounts of money on every stream of a music video. It is not a reasonable rate to ask’.
From a very much more humble position in the online media food chain, this is a scenario we recognise. ForArgyll.com evolved from an early notion of being a largely speech-based online radio station. In putting our business plan together, we calculated that, with the number of streams we would need to attract, we would pay music fees of over £10,000 per annum for playing no more than 15 tracks every 24 hours.
At that stage we decided to avoid copyright music altogether because we could not afford it; and instead make a feature of unsigned Argyll musicians. That remains our policy against the time that we develop this side of our service. It means that we can use our audience strength to support new bands while avoiding the significant losses that we would otherwise certainly have incurred.
It really is a case of killing the goose. Ths current stand-off with YouTube has all the hallmarks of a sort of PRS heist – an early agreement to seal them in, followed by a swift hike from which YouTube have simply walked.
We’re with YouTube in this dispute. Their initial move was a bold one, liberalising access to copyright music and freeing up the creative conjunction of music with other expressive forms for ordinary people to develop and share – at YouTube’s expense. PRS is behaving like a Rachmanist landlord for the music industry which, in its own interests, needs to change its culture.
BBC stops its island blogs: For Argyll, the best performing Argyll-wide site, offers free replacements
The BBC today announced that it has stopped its Argyll and other Scottish island blog-hosting service, although it will archive everything posted to them while they ran.
It says to its island clients that ‘it has become apparent that the site does not best serve your needs’ and notes that the technology used has reached the end of its useful life.
What the BBC actually means – as anyone who has kept looking hopefully at these blogs will know – is that they’re mainly space junk, orbiting empty and untended. No one has kept them up to date.
The simple truth these days is that, whatever you’re doing – running a business, a community council, an association or club, an event or a festival – if you’re not on the web you don’t exist. And if your site is not refreshed with new material regularly – you’ve been gone for some time and no one’s interested.
So the BBC is quite right to dump the island blogs. It does its own site no favours to host dead matter.
Here’s the For Argyll deal.
Any island – in Argyll or within Scotland’s wider island community – and any mainland Argyll community or association that wants a website, we will give you a blog website free, we will show you how to use it (very easy) and we will host it for you in perpetuity for nothing IF you agree:
- to post all kinds of up-to-date news on it at least once a week and more frequently if possible
- that, if you don’t, we will dump your website if it has been untouched for two months
We can’t afford to have dead space on our servers because our site is now attracting highly significant volumes of traffic from Argyll, Scotland, the UK (total 60%) and abroad (total 40%).
Specific figures vary from day to day for a variety of reasons – for example there can be difference in traffic depending on whether it is a working day or a weekend day. However, according to figures taken today (11th December 2008) for the averages of last week’s performances, For Argyll is attracting:
- almost seven times as much traffic as argyllonline
- over ten times as much traffic as ArgyllCommunities
- over six times as much traffic as visitscottishheartlands, Visit Scotland’s site for Argyll and the islands, Loch Lomond, the Trossachs and Stirling
- a traffic ranking which is higher – at 620,230 – than Argyll and Bute Council at 650,701; than visitscottishheartlands at 4,599,987; than argyllonline at 3,754,942; and than Argyll Communities which was not ranked on the last week’s average but is showing a 3 month average traffic ranking of 5,636,697
- a site ranking on google.com varying from 19 (on page 2) to 21 (on page 3). As a new kid on the block, we are behind the long established sites on this – but evidence of our speed of growth is that we were at 86 (on page 9) three months ago.
We’re here for Argyll:
- to create a single sense of identity across the territory
- to provide new news on a several-times-a-day basis (have you ever thought how bizarre it is these days to keep news for a week and then publish it)
- to provide a world-wide shop window for Argyll’s astonishing resources in landscape, historic places and buildings, music, sporting activities, festivals, food and whisky
- to contribute to the raising of Argyll’s game to the rank it should and can occupy.
If your island, community, organisation, association, group or club would like a blog, please contact us here.