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Instagram’s Big Mistake

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

If you have logged onto the internet in the last few days, are an avid smart phone user, or have watched the news lately, than chances are that you have caught wind of the uproar following Instagram’s release of its new terms of service. The following sentence, found in the new terms of service, caused an enormous backlash:

You agree that a business may pay Instagram to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions without any compensation to you.


 Almost immediately after Instagram released the brief paragraph outlining the new terms of service that will go into effect on January 16, 2013, the internet exploded with a plethora of people threatening to delete their accounts and speaking harshly on the negative effects of these changes. Among those threatening to delete their accounts were highly prominent celebrities such as Anderson Cooper, Jonah Hill, Kim Kardashian, and Lauren Conrad who all took their frustration out about the policy on Twitter.  The photo app that everyone loved for its beautiful filters has quickly turned into the target of a huge amount of criticism and distaste.

Since the initial release of the new terms of service, Instagram quickly realized its mistake and has had three official press releases about how “they are listening” and vaguely alluded to changing the terms to better meet people’s requests. The changes were apparently not drastic enough and an Instagram user has filed a potential class-action lawsuit against the company for announcing the new terms of service.The San Diego-based law firm Finklestein & Krinsk filed its complaint in a San Francisco federal court.  Lucy Funes,  who is the person responsible for taking her complaint to federal court in San Francisco, has  stated that Instagram is, “taking its customer’s property rights” with the new terms to be put in place. A Facebook spokesperson (Facebook has recently acquired Instagram) said that the lawsuit is without merit and that the company intends to fight the claim vigorously.

Instagram’s new terms of service will officially go into effect on January 16,2013. Time will tell how many more changes the terms will go through.

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Posted in Photo Scanning, Products, Random Fun Stuff, Social Web, business, digital photography, iPhone, photos, technology | No Comments »

Flock

Thursday, November 22nd, 2012

While mobile and smart phone proliferation continues to make it easier to capture the memories we make with our friends and family, capture copies of documents, and even facilitates sharing them on social networks, they don’t help make it easier to upload those shared photos—at least they didn’t until now. The makers of the Bump app recently launched Flock, a passive photo sharing app that aims to change the way we upload and share photo albums with the people in the photos all while changing the way we interact with other apps. Things have come a long way from the days of uploading photos captured with digital scanning and emailing them to your grandmother.



The idea behind flock is that it should be easy for everyone in a photo to be invited to see those photos by accessing cloud-based photo albums—and it should all happen automatically. Most smart phones, like the iPhone, already automatically geo-tag photos and Facebook face recognition software can automatically tag photos. Using these two functionalities, the Flock app automatically identifies photos on your phone that contain Facebook friends, prompts you to share them, and then invites those friends to view a group album shared on the cloud.

There’s a lot to parse with this app, but the most important aspects are what it means for photo sharing and what it means for app use. Since this is photography, digital scanning, and digital photo blog, the fact that Flock isn’t actively trying to capture more of your attention, a dramatic shift from the paradigm of most apps developed today, is not our focus…but it is certainly interesting.

On the other hand, the fact that from now on you don’t have to take multiple pictures with different cameras in order to be sure everyone gets a copy is incredible and relevant for this blog. One of the biggest frustrations about taking group photos has always been figuring out how to make sure everyone who wants a copy of the photo gets it. Either you can stick one person taking multiple photos with different devices, or you can upload the photo onto one of multiple photo-sharing sites and invite everyone to view the album— neither are very convenient.

With Flock, every time you take a photograph using a smart phone that is connected to a Facebook account, it uses the social media site’s face recognition software to identify the subjects of the photo. Immediately after taking the photo, it prompts you to allow it to notify them about the photo and invite them to access the photos in the album. They can choose to view photos, or download them for other uses. The biggest advantage about Flock is that it doesn’t require any extra work for anyone.

Flock is the next step in the natural progression of strategies leveraging the power of mobile devices. It’s also a big deal for people who want to share and use digital photos in the most convenient way possible. Whether you use your phone to supplement digital scanning or take the best shots of you and your friends, Flock makes it easier for you to share them.

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Posted in Products, Random Fun Stuff, ScanDigital, business, digital photography, iPhone, photos, technology | No Comments »

Photo Privacy in Social Media

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Social networking is practically unavoidable now. What was once exclusively an endeavor for teenagers and hipsters, social networking has now spread to the masses. Regardless of age and race, the majority of the American population is a member of at least one social network. Facebook has become so commonplace that it is commonly integrated into everyday conversation and mentioned within the dialogue of television shows. One of the main practices on social networks is the posting and sharing of photographs. We all share, comment on, and are entertained by the photos that we post on social networks, but most of us are not aware of the actual privacy policies that these sites adhere to. Here is a breakdown of some of the most popular social-networking sites and their actual privacy policies when it comes to sharing your photographs.

Facebook








Image: Fusible

Last year, The Federal Trade Commission in Washington announced a large settlement with Facebook on the grounds of using, “unfair and deceptive,” practices concerning users’ privacy audits. The order called for Facebook to fully honor when users deem their content private. Prior to the FTC, Facebook had been allowing advertisers to access personal information, such as photographs, unbeknownst to users, and even if the content was put on the “private” setting. Furthermore, Facebook had been allowing outside application developers to access user information even after accounts had been deleted.

Twitter





Image: mediabistro

Similar to Facebook, the FTC went after Twitter after it failed to protect its users’ information. Starting in 2010, Twitter will be barred for the next 20 years from misleading its users about what is protected and private. Previous to the suit, Twitter failed to protect its users from security lapses which left them susceptible to hackers leading to a multitude of photos and “tweets” (text) being leaked.

Instagram





Image: articles.businessinsider.com

Instagram is a one of the most widely used and rapidly expanding photo-sharing networks currently available. What most people don’t know about Instagram is that it has a pretty troubling privacy policy when it comes to handling your posted photos. Instagram has basically outlined that if you choose to upload an image onto its network, they have the right to distribute, reuse, tweak or sell your image and you give up all of the copyrights. This is troubling to both photographers who utilize the site to share images that they have produced with the intent of receiving credit and to users who post photos that are personal and not meant to be shared on a larger sphere.

Google+





Image: socialmediaexplorer.com

In the beginning of this year, Google announced that it would be vastly changing its privacy policy that would encompass all 60 of its web services, including Google+. The new policy allows for the company to share data between all of their services and anyone who is signed in to any of their services, such as, Gmail, Google+, or YouTube, must agree to the policy—there is no opt-out option. Though it is noble that Google was so open about its privacy policy changes, unlike all of its counterparts (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) the change is still potentially detrimental. By integrating your data, Google has the power to access a large amount of your personal information that can be highly invasive and be utilized to accomplish tasks such as determining your current location.

Before using social networking sites to post your personal information, make sure you are fully aware of their privacy policies. Many sites tend to word their privacy policies in such a way so that they may appear to be a certain way but however are not. Make sure to use caution when posting on social networking sites; don’t be paranoid but some discretion may be necessary.

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Posted in Social Web, business, digital photography, photos | No Comments »

Kodak Exits Digital Photography, Printing, and Digital Imaging Business Completely

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

In August, the photographic giant Kodak announced that it was abandoning the photography business, exiting the consumer film market completely. Combined with the end of its consumer printer business and desire to sell off its document image scanning branch, this means the end of Kodak’s presence in the world of digital photography. The move out of “personalized imaging” and “document imaging” as Kodak’s CEO Antonio Perez describes it, will allow the company to focus on the branches that market to business and commercial interests, where recent financial success and strength has been more promising.

The one-time photo giant, who filed for bankruptcy in January of this year, also announced that its decision to stop production of consumer inkjet printers will lead to the elimination of more than 200 jobs above initial layoff estimates. Of course, this move is only the most recent in a series of drastic changes in its attempt to stop the bleeding and free itself by 2012 of the court protection that resulted from bankruptcy. It has already made many attempts to sell flagging assets or simply cease production, including giving digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and digital picture frames the axe, as well as selling its digital photography and online photo service, Kodak Gallery, to Shutterfly.

In other words, it is making an effort to completely divest itself of any and all assets and branches relating to film and digital photography and imaging for individual consumers. It will continue to sell ink for its printers, which it aims to stop producing within the next 12 months. Its core business will then be focused on supplying industrial grade film for aerial photography and motion pictures, for example, as well as on printing for packaging. Kodak has gone through some drastic changes as evidenced by reducing its workforce from a high of 150,000 workers in 1988 to about 13,000 by 2013, with the most recent cut helping the ailing company save more than $340 million a year.

With Kodak’s recent bankruptcy and years of slow decline, the most recent spate of cuts and sell-offs isn’t much of a surprise. It has been struggling for over a decade, beginning when digital photography started to displace film photography with the masses in the early 2000s. Despite efforts to adapt, the company that put cameras in the hands of millions for the first time in the 20th Century and developed the first true point-and-shoot couldn’t keep up with competition coming out of Japan. Repeated efforts to stem the bleeding have failed, and it has been hemorrhaging cash even as it attempted to sell off branches that nobody seems to want at anything near the asking price.

But that’s a small consolation for those who still rely on Kodak cameras and film, or who use Kodak photo-printing kiosks to print their digital photos, or worse yet, if you have a Kodak digital camera and hope to continue buying accessories and parts for it. But as a large portion of consumer digital photography activity shifts away from cameras, and especially from point and shoot cameras towards the extremes, it makes sense that Kodak struggles more and more to remain relevant. When most people are either using their smart phones or tablets for casual photos, or bigger, better cameras for anything mildly serious, the market for size-efficient cameras that don’t do anything else is shrinking, and another old photographic dinosaur is leaving the market as a result.

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Monday, October 29th, 2012

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Posted in Products, Random Fun Stuff, ScanDigital, ScanDigital Affiliates, Social Web, business, digital photography, photos | No Comments »

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