Month: November 2007

Brian Auer has put together an awesome list of 87 great photography blogs and feeds. I definitely found some new photography websites worth following. Thanks for including Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection on your list Brian!

“I can already smell how fantastic the coffee smells up on Market Street, only one more day, just a few short hours, until Friday. Welcome to San Francisco ladies and gentlemen, Embarcadero Station.” — BART train operator this morning.

Every day the Embarcadero BART station is verbally announced when I step off of it in San Francisco. Most of the time it’s announced in a very fast curt muffled, “Embarcadero Station.” But every so often you get something more personalized when you hit the station, like the greeting that I heard above this morning. It makes me happy that someone would in their own little way try to send off 1,000 or so commuters with a positive message to their morning. That someone sees the world so optimistically and has to share that with someone else. I don’t know much about the man who said those words. I could tell that he was black from his accent. That was about it. I wish I knew who he was so that I could take his portrait and say thanks for his generous spirit.

Well if you’ve been waiting to by a Series 3 TiVo, now may be the time to finally take the plunge. TiVo just reinstated the best service option available, lifetime.

The Series 3 TiVo is one of the most compelling multi tuner HDTV DVRs on the market today.

More details here.

I started a group at Zooomr based on shots that have been faved on Zooomr at least 10x and there are some really great photos showing up in this group. Above is a screenshot of my own set of images faved 10+ times.

You can see all of my shots that have been faved at least 10 times on Zooomr here.

I’ve also started a set of images on Zooomr that have been faved at least 25 times which you can see here.

To check out some amazing photos check out the fav10 tag on Zooomr (we have more than 1,100 awesome shots tagged with this tag now). And if you have shots on Zooomr that have been faved 10 times or more, consider making your own fav10 set and adding a link to it to the group here.

From today’s Congressional Hearing with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan.

“When the news broke in August that this committee was investigating officials at Yahoo! Inc. in connection with repression in China, CNN International carried the story – but nobody in China saw it. As soon as the anchor started discussing this case, the screen faded to black. And that is typical. State control over media in China – from the printing presses to the airwaves to the Internet – is practically absolute.

Those who manage occasionally to pierce the veil of secrecy pay a heavy price. Such is the case with a young journalist named Shi Tao, who is languishing in a Chinese dungeon on a 10-year sentence because he pierced the veil, and a huge, U.S.-based multinational company practically led the police to his door.

On the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre three years ago, the Chinese government issued a directive forbidding journalists from covering anything related to this anniversary.

In a brief second that would have a momentous impact on the rest of his life, Shi Tao hit the “forward” button on his Yahoo! email account, and sent the government’s message to a NGO overseas advocating for democratic change in China.

When the Chinese government set out to unlock the mystery of who had publicly disclosed this document, they went to the offices of Yahoo! China to provide the key. The flagship American company represented by our two witnesses today – Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan – complied with the request from the Chinese political suppression apparatus and provided the necessary identifying information to track down Shi Tao.

If you think our witnesses today are uncomfortable sitting in this climate-controlled room and accounting for their company’s spineless and irresponsible actions, imagine how life is for Shi Tao, spending ten long years in a Chinese dungeon for exchanging information publicly – exactly what Yahoo! claims to support in places like China.

In February 2006, under the then-Republican majority, this Committee convened a hearing on, and I quote, “The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?” The hearing was chaired by my good friend and distinguished colleague, Representative Chris Smith. Witnesses included representatives from the State Department, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, Cisco Systems, and several NGOs. Yahoo! had been invited to testify specifically to address the facts of the Shi Tao case. They did so under oath, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Michael Callahan, the General Counsel of Yahoo, gave sworn testimony about the case and Yahoo!’s operations in China. Mr. Callahan has not been accused of perjury – that would be the willful violation of an oath either by swearing to what is untrue or by deliberately omitting information that is material. But as General Counsel for Yahoo! he did provide false information to this Committee in this critically-important hearing eighteen months ago.

In an effort to convince this Committee that Yahoo! was not a knowing agent of Chinese government repression, Mr. Callahan testified that Yahoo! had no knowledge of the facts surrounding the Shi Tao case at the time the company provided information to the Chinese authorities. Let me quote from what Mr. Callahan said:

“When Yahoo! China in Beijing was required to provide information about the user, who we later learned was Shi Tao, we had no information about the nature of the investigation. Indeed, we were unaware of the particular facts surrounding the case until the news story emerged.”

Based upon a thorough investigation by the staff of this Committee, we now know that while Mr. Callahan may not have known the relevant facts personally, other Yahoo! employees, in fact, did know the nature of the Chinese investigation against Shi Tao prior to our committee hearing. Specifically, the document provided to Yahoo! China on April 22, 2004 by the Beijing State Security Bureau stated, “Your office is in possession of the following items relating to a case of suspected illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities…”

Now, let me deal with the issue of what this means in a communist police state. The term “state secrets” is commonly used in China when a phony criminal case is concocted against political activists. A reasonable person who receives such an order would immediately know that the case in question involves a political or religious dissident. Even an unsophisticated person operating in the context of the Chinese police state would know full well that “state secrets” is a trick phrase used to fabricate a phony but devastating legal case against an innocent person who shares our values in an open and free society.

A key member of the Yahoo! briefing team that prepared Michael Callahan for his appearance before our Committee had a copy of the Beijing authorities’ document. Yahoo! China lawyers also had a copy of the document. Yet somehow, incredibly, Mr. Callahan apparently was not informed of these critical facts and the fundamental nature of the Yahoo!’s complicity with the persecution of Shi Tao.

Yahoo! claims that this is just one big misunderstanding, that Yahoo’s false testimony was really just a matter of an internal miscommunication. Let me be clear – this was no misunderstanding. This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst. I wish to repeat this: This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst. In preparing for testimony before this Committee, Yahoo! did not see fit to hire a translator to make sure the document upon which it relied for its entire defense was translated properly. Mr. Callahan never asked to see the document. And the Yahoo! lawyer who had it – by Yahoo!’s own explanation – failed to consider the document “significant,” even after Congress ordered Yahoo! to appear to answer directly on this outrage, which landed an innocent Chinese journalist in prison for a decade. Yahoo’s own lawyers in Beijing also had the document, and knew full well its meaning. Either Yahoo! has little regard for providing full and complete information to a duly constituted committee of the Congress, or it has little regard for the issue of protecting human rights.

Based upon the Committee’s bipartisan investigation of the Yahoo testimony, we have reached the following conclusions.

Yahoo provided false information to Congress. Despite the sworn testimony before the Committee that Yahoo! did not know the nature of the investigation into the Shi Tao case, Yahoo! employees did know that the Chinese government wanted information related to Shi Tao because of a so-called “state secrets” investigation in order to imprison him.

When Mr. Callahan later discovered that he had provided false information, he did not make the slightest attempt, not the slightest attempt, to correct the information he had given to Congress under oath. Six months after his testimony, Mr. Callahan became aware that some officials of Yahoo! did know the nature of the investigation against Shi Tao at the time it complied with the Chinese request for information. Despite Mr. Callahan’s explicit recognition that his previous testimony was inconsistent with the facts, neither Mr. Callahan nor anybody at Yahoo contacted the Committee, orally or in writing, to advise us that Yahoo had provided false information to the Committee. Inexcusably, there was no effort whatsoever by Yahoo to set the record straight after providing false information to a duly constituted committee of Congress. Mr. Callahan did, however, tell his public relations operatives to spin the Shi Tao story in a different direction.

After discovering that its General Counsel had p
rovided false information on this critical matter, Yahoo did not conduct an internal investigation into the circumstances under which false information was provided to Congress. Yahoo tried to sweep this grave transgression under the rug. No internal review of the matter took place. No change in company procedures was instituted.

Nobody at Yahoo has been disciplined for providing false information to Congress. Key employees related to the provision of false information to Congress remain at their posts.

Yahoo had no means or, possibly, intent, to prevent Yahoo! China from being a willing participant in political witch-hunts emanating from Beijing. Yahoo! Inc. had no American lawyers in Beijing. There was no mechanism in place for Yahoo headquarters to review Chinese efforts to ferret out individuals who wish to see a more open and democratic China.

A company of Yahoo!’s resources and sophistication operating in the Chinese milieu should have taken every conceivable step to prevent the automatic compliance with a request from the Chinese police apparatus. And to this day, Yahoo! has failed to change any of its practices in order to prevent such collaboration in the future. Yahoo! Inc. is now a minority shareholder in Yahoo! China. But one of our witnesses today — CEO Jerry Yang — sits on the Board of Alibaba, the parent company of Yahoo! China. If Chinese police today requested information from Yahoo! China related to a political dissident, Yahoo! China would turn over the individual’s email records and identity, who might be subsequently sent to prison, perhaps for ten long years.

My colleagues, I do not deliver these conclusions lightly. High-tech companies like Yahoo! are enormously important to the American economy, as well as the global economy, and they have transformed the way in which information is conveyed worldwide.

That said, I do not believe that America’s best and brightest companies should be playing integral roles in China’s notorious and brutal political repression apparatus. I will ask our witnesses today, in light of these embarrassing and appalling facts, whether Yahoo! is now prepared to endorse legislation authored by congressman Chris Smith and approved by this Committee to ensure that American complicity with high-tech repression ends.

It should be self-evident that companies cannot get away with providing false information to Congress. So today, I call on Yahoo’s top corporate executives to apologize to this Committee, the Congress of the United States, and the American people.

But first and foremost, I urge our two witnesses to face the family of the Chinese journalist who, as a result of Yahoo’s actions, has been tossed into a Chinese prison. When he first appeared before this Committee, I asked Mr. Callahan whether he had reached out to Shi Tao’s family to offer an apology and to provide assistance. The answer was a resounding “no.” Fifteen months later, Yahoo has yet to provide any aid to Shi Tao’s family. Mr. Yang, Mr. Callahan, Shi Tao’s mother is sitting in the first row right behind you – I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars due to Yahoo’s actions.”

Source: House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Hey, thanks so much to everyone who made it out for our photowalk last night. We had a great group of about 25 or so photowalkers who made the most of the beautiful architecture of downtown San Francisco.

We started at the Chinatown Hilton where we shot Coit Tower. From there we made our way down through the Embarcadero Center, shooting this massive 4 building high rise complex. Then we made our way down to the Hyatt Regency (where you can make it up to the 12th Floor without a room key and get an awesome shot of the Ferry Building).

After the Hyatt we took a break for a little dinner at Osha (awesome Thai food) and then made our way back up Market Street where we shot 444 Market Street, F Trains, and lots of skyscrapers like the photo above.

We then headed down to 2nd Street where we stopped by to wish Leah Culver of Pownce a happy birthday and then back to Kearny Street for more shooting.

We never did make it up to North Beach really, but we had a great time shooting SF Downtown at night.

Thanks all who came out and joined us and looking forward to getting out with everyone again soon.

To check out some of the great shots from last night check the Photowalking110507 tag on Zooomr!

I’m not happy with Leopard (Scripting News) Dave Winer is out with his thoughts on the latest “upgrade” to the new Mac OS Leopard.

From Dave: “Talking with a friend a few days ago, he asked what I thought of Leopard. He had installed the new version, like me, the first day it came out. “I’m not liking it,” I said. He said something that was simple, profound and revealing: “It’s like Windows.” It is. It’s that unpleasant to use. It disappears for long periods of time. Systems that didn’t used to crash now crash regularly. On one system three hard disks were rendered unusable, and I lost a couple of full days restoring them (luckily I had good backups).”

Wow, that does not sound good at all. I guess for me I’m just not sure what Leopard does for me beyond being the new latest and greatest. I mean, what problems does it solve for me that are not solved now. Like Dave I switched to the Mac because I hated Windows so much and hated all the constant errors I would get when I used Windows. My Mac experience thus far has been delightful. But my first impression of Leopard came when Kristopher Tate, our CTO and lead developer of Zooomr IM’d me when he found that Adobe’s Flash wasn’t compatible with Leopard (he blamed Adobe for this one). The result was that if you upgraded to Leopard you couldn’t upload photos to Zooomr anymore. I will tell you that uploading photos to Zooomr for me is 1000% more important than any tweak to the OS that Apple might through at me.

Subsequent reports that I’ve heard about Leopard have not been good. The experience by many is described as buggy and unreliable.

The thing about a Mac, the value of a Mac is contained in a single phrase: “It just works.” But if it *doesn’t* just work then the value of the Mac goes out the window. And it sounds like for a lot of people Leopard just *isn’t* working. I’m glad I waited for the upgrade.

Now for the truly creative person out there I’ll give you the killer video that you can make if you are unhappy with Leopard. I suck at video so I won’t be making this myself, plus I haven’t actually tried Leopard (I’m a scardy cat). But… if you want to make a cool video, you could remake the Mac vs. PC Apple videos but with Mac OSX as the Mac guy and the fat sick dude as Mac Leopard. There you go. Have fun with it and it’s not my fault if your video goes viral and Apple ends up suing you — even though parody ought to cover you there.

But seriously folks — why should I upgrade to Leopard? Is there any compelling reason beyond just trying the latest and newest gadgetry?