Archive for the ‘Social Web’ Category

« Older Entries

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.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Photo Scanning, Products, Random Fun Stuff, Social Web, 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.

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

*ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A $100 GIFT CARD!*

Monday, October 29th, 2012

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

L.A. Cancer Challenge 2012

Thursday, October 25th, 2012



The Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research is a nonprofit organization that sets out to advance the research of pancreatic cancer research by helping to provide more in-depth information, support and resources to patients and their families.  The foundation was founded by Agi Hirshberg, whose husband died of pancreatic cancer at 54 years old. To date, the foundation has accomplished a plethora of crowning achievements including: funding the Seed Grant Award Recipients who have since received $40 million dollars in NIH grants, raised more than $12 million for pancreatic cancer research, and granted over $650,000 in financial aid for patients. The Hirshberg Foundation has a number of ways that it raises money for benefiting the research of pancreatic cancer and providing aid to patients and their families, but one of the most successful, and invigorating, ways that it helps to raise money is through its annual LA Cancer Challenge.

The LA Cancer Challenge will take place on Sunday, October 28, 2012 at the
Veterans Administration Grounds in West LA. The event directly benefits The Hirshberg Foundation’s furthering of Pancreatic Cancer Research. This year the Cancer Challenge is particularly important to the ScanDigital team. Recently, one of our team member’s fathers passed away due to cancer. We partook in the challenge last year and were met with a good amount of support, but we strive to achieve an even bigger amount of participation this year and invite everyone to come join us and participate in a fun event with a great cause. We have named our team “Team Uncle Andy” in honor of our team member’s father. The LA Cancer Challenge Run/ Walk has two different options: the 5K which is 3.1 miles and the 10k are 6.2 miles. There is also a “Kids Can Cure Fun Run” for children under the age of ten which is about 1K. One of the highlights of the event is the Pumpkin Pancake Breakfast which is hosted by Mickey Fine Pharmacy and Grill. There will be a number of different kinds of pancakes to enjoy including pumpkin, blueberry, and buttermilk. There will also be a large selection of fun and flavorful syrups, sprinkles and other toppings to place on your pancakes to make them even more delicious. Additionally, there will be a huge expo with food and beverage samples from the Hirshberg Foundation’s sponsors.

So, if you want to support a good cause, get some exercise, and meet some great people, come join us at the LA Cancer Challenge. The walk will be a great time and since it takes place close to Halloween, participants are encouraged to wear their costumes!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Random Fun Stuff, ScanDigital, ScanDigital Affiliates, Social Web, digital photography | No Comments »

Facebook Photo Archive Will Get “Smarter” with Photos and Digital Scanning

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

There are roughly 3.5 trillion photos in existence in the world. Facebook boasted a repository of more than 140 billion photos at the start of 2012. This includes digital photos, which make up the majority obviously, and those uploaded with digital scanning. People currently take about 380 billion photos a year, slightly less than 50% of them captured with camera phones. Facebook anticipates that it will have had 70 billion new photos uploaded over the course of 2012, or roughly 18% of all photos captured in the same year.

This is by far the largest collection of photos on the planet and is estimated to contain fully 4% of all photos ever taken. And it means a number of things for how photography and technology will develop in the near future. And as having gone public puts increasing pressure on the social network to invent new monetary streams, it’s a fair bet they will look to get value from this huge and expensive archive.



With nearly 500 billion photos, Facebook will have enough information to help scientists develop incredibly accurate facial recognition software. They’re already working on decreasing the amount of false positives with their automatic tagging tools, and users are inadvertently helping them refine algorithms. We can all imagine what could happen if a publically accessible repository of photos became available or if Facebook were able to sell this tool to marketing firms and other companies, creating a world where cameras mounted throughout public spaces could recognize us instantly.

Beyond obvious uses of digital photos, the way it collects these photos and data about them will offer Facebook a lot more information. As opposed to using digital scanning to share an old photo, digital shots that we often capture using smart phones and upload through a mobile connection we often tell Facebook exactly where we are using GPS and geotagging. It leads to relatively mundane things like the potential for Facebook to construct places or even your experience based on photos you upload, as well as to glean information about users that would be incredibly valuable to marketers based on where you go and what you like to do.



Furthermore, a few professionals at the company consider Facebook “the world’s most powerful instrument for studying human society.” This mainly refers to the aggregate of the information it collects, not just photos. But the constant upload of new photos becomes even more powerful in light of all this information. Algorithms that analyze basic info in the photos along with the information people associate with them and the photographer or uploader could learn a great deal about trends in our tastes and activities, be it for commercial or scholastic purposes. For example, if software were developed to compare the physical characteristics of a person in a photo such as pallor and posture, against other, older photos of the same person, it could identify emerging illness. Combined with information about the person’s location and activity, this could hypothetically be used to pinpoint the “patient zero” in disease outbreaks.

Obviously, the power of the Facebook photo collection will increase as people upload more photos, more frequently, and closer to the time the photograph is captured. Similarly, the tools to analyze them, all this “big data” as it is called, are just slowly being imagined, let alone designed and tested. But the message is clear. For better or worse, Facebook is learning ever more about its users, through digital scanning of old photos, digital photo uploads, and the information we share, and it’s only a matter of time before it can crystallize the photos you upload into clear information about you and your surroundings.

Tags:
Posted in Photography History, Products, Random Fun Stuff, Social Web, digital photography, iPhone, photos | No Comments »

« Older Entries