KateDickman.com: CommuniKATE

I woke up to receive an email that read like this:

Subject: A Copyright Owner Has Claimed Content In One Of Your Videos

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video Random Kid Dancing In African Village. The audio content identified in your video is Good Vibrations by Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

I understand and respect copyright laws but this just seems a bit excessive.  I’ve had this particular 40 second video up for over a YEAR and never had a problem.  This was the most NON-commercial use of a song you could ever imagine.  It was footage I took on my trip to Ghana Africa in a small village where a young boy ran out of nowhere and started dancing to the music that was playing.  His dance was absolutely hilarious so I decided to put “Good Vibrations” behind it to make it bit more entertaining.  Now it’s fully removed; all views and all comments because I violated a copyright?  I do believe that YouTube didn’t personally pull it down on their own but as stated above, the copyright owner did.  Come on now? How far are we taking all of this?  Pretty soon a child won’t be able to do school projects without getting the rights to an image or video clip.  This is the most innocent use of audio ever and I wasn’t making money off of it.  I suppose with the new ads YouTube is putting into place, someone is?  Highly doubtful.  (Their monetization methods are failing miserably) Either way, I just had to point out how ridiculous these times are getting and how people need to truly cool it with their policing.  There seems to be a gray area between what could be considered friendly promotion and copyright infringement. 

Well, the African boy’s 15 minutes of fame are up!  Sorry kiddo.

Ok so I was going to vote for Obama and then I did my research and am just as confused as ever.  I’m certainly not going to vote for McCain so it’s between Obama and nobody.  Either way, this was the funniest email that could have graced my inbox.  What a creative way to ask others to “Vote for Obama!”  I won’t spoil it for you but if you take a look, you are able to peronalize this campaign and send it to others after you view yours. Check it out:

(Tried to embed it but since it’s not from a common video site, I couldn’t)

Please click HERE.  You won’t regret it!

If you’re an Obama supporter, send it to everyone you know! They’ll be sure to get a kick out of it!

This is definitely not new news but something I keep noticing and appreciating; the ability to comment on people’s Facebook feed activity.  I have seen endless conversations via a person’s status update and really believe this was a great move.  They have integrated the functionality of a traditional forum thread into the platform and now more than ever people are debating politics, helping eachother with issues and creating more of a social environment than the typical Facebook wall can provide.  These comments show up visibly on the feeds while signing in and encourage the average user to chime in.  Friends of one person can communicate where they wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to do so thus creating more networking opportunities. I can’t say enough about this feature.  Take advantage of it if you haven’t already!

Ok so SEO isn’t my greatest love when it comes to internet marketing… social media is. Due to this being so, perhaps it’s taken me a while to get in the know with how much this “No-Follow” epidemic as grown in the past year or so. Now I know there are arguments from both sides on the pros and cons of this but I can’t help but feel that the any non-blog site (particularly e-commerce) looking to link build will be hard-pressed to find a way to increase their SEO efforts now.

No-Follow Making Link Building Far Harder

I understand the reason to add the no-follow tag was to prevent spammers from slapping their posts all over your blog. However, with the new spam filters (especially the Akismet filter) in place on most blogs, this no-follow thing is simply unnecessary. I understand most trying to get links were writing such bland posts like “Hi, great post!” on blogs which was providing no value to the conversation. However, say those who were interested in being a part of their niche blog community wanted to write something of value to these blog posts and deserved a little link credit? Where do they stand? We all know a BIG part of SEO is link building so what do the little guys do?

I tweeted about this and a few people were stuck while others suggested that they do something viral and submit that to the social bookmarking sites and have others blog about it but we don’t decide what’s viral. You are extremely lucky if a video or concept of yours goes viral. If it were that easy to create viral content, wouldn’t we all do it and as often as we could? I understand there are other ways to link build like article submissions and so forth, but how much work will go into getting one quality link? Today I looked at a top site in a position for a certain keyword and they had about 180,000 links. How does a smaller business even get close to that much with this no-follow tag in place? Where are the options to link build these days for non-blogging sites? I understand bloggers can write compelling content and tweet about it, submit it everywhere and share it with the world but what about content on sites that remain relatively the same? E-Commerce sites? Services sites? Is link building for smaller sites a lost cause unless they write ridiculous amounts of content on other sites or coerce some high profile bloggers to blog about them? Are opportunities existent anymore?

Comment if you wish… I genuinely would love to hear your input!

According to my favorite Facebook blog, the new Facebook Voter Registration App which was launched on September 25th, has gotten 40,000 people to register.  This number is staggering compared to the amount that may have registered had there not been an application designed for this purpose.  When turning 18, most students are not given the opportunity to register so easily and this tool has only made the process far quicker and available to the majority of new voters.  

To see that a mere social networking app has done so much in so little time is truly inspiring and certainly makes the positive side of technology a bit clearer in a day where we continuously hear of how it is negatively influencing society.  This is a great move by Facebook and could truly have an impact on this year’s election as young voters are more engaged than ever! 

Additionally, the official campaigns, political parties and PACs are using the Facebook medium as a way to influence hundreds of thousands of more voters.

Here you can find 2008 Facebook Statistics on American Politics.  What an exciting time to witness politics, no matter how crazy the race may be and again, kudos to Facebook for creating this modern way of voter registration!

I usually don’t pay much attention to these ridiculous ads with dancing Obama’s and blinking McCain’s but this one caught my eye (and not for a good reason).  It’s hilariously terrifying actually…

Michelle? Is That You?

While Obama and McCain look pretty much the same as always, their wives look horrendous!  SodaHead.com has done a terrific job of making Mrs. Obama look like an deformed cockeyed ogre while Mrs. McCain resembles that of an evil pixie.  The question is which one is more likely to cheat?  Well, if these photos were true I’m afraid it would be a draw on who would be first.  Although I’d have to say that poor Michelle most likely takes the cake as the least aethestically pleasing in this ad.

Perhaps the editing is to celebrate Halloween?  Yikes.

Ok.  So I’ve seen the reviews of Google’s new G1 phone and as a happy T-Mobile customer, I’m very, very tempted to buy it.  I’m quite impulsive with electronic purchases at times (I will admit) but bought the Blackberry Curve only 2 months ago.  I enjoy having the Blackberry Messenger and all of the various applications that have been created for the device over the years but am tempted to have the “newest” thing and discovering all that Google has to offer via a phone.  I suppose I should be patient and wait for more reviews until I jump into it… but part of me wants to buy it and discover it for myself and spread the word!  Will it be as “professional” as the Blackberry?  Will it be the iPhone killer?  Oh the questions!

Engadget has had several posts about the phone today - located here, here and here.  (There’s more on the site if you look).

What do you guys think?

I’ve been MIA.  I’d like to say I was busy changing the world or striking up the most insane business deals but neither are the case.  Either way, I’m here today and I’m posting so that’s a good thing?

I just noticed when I searched on Google (exclusively through Google Chrome), that after you type in the keyword you are looking for, Google suggests you search on various other search engines?  I’m confused!  Yahoo is the first they suggest you search on and MSN is nowhere to be found on the list. *Update: My mommy brain seemed to have missed “LIVE” on the list.  So yes, MSN is on the list*  Sure this makes it easier for us as searches looking for the most comprehensive list of results without having to pull up a million browsers but what is the benefit for Google?  Innerestin’.

Update: I ran a few more searches and the suggestion of other search engines is gone.  Could this be something Google is testing?

This is not a political blog whatsoever but I just want to quickly comment on who McCain who has chosen as his VP nominee which increasingly show us just how ridiculous his decision-making skills are. 

He has picked a woman who he has met ONCE.  The second time he met her, it was to offer her the nomination, Are we serious?  McCain, you’re certainly not a young guy.  God Forbid you become President and God Forbid you die during your term, you’re entrusting a completely inexperienced candidate to lead our country?

It’s almost as if he wanted a woman or a “surprising” candidate from the beginning and when looking at the list, he simply thought “Hey, I guess she’d be good!” 

Who is she?  Has anyone ever heard of her?  She’s beautiful, she’s smart and I’m sure she’d be good in various leadership roles as she has been in the past but as Vice President?  I’m all for a woman being in the White House but Hillary was more of my idea of a woman who could handle the job as Commander in Chief - not this nobody. 

Obama’s choice of Biden seemed “right”.  This just feels “off”.  How many Republicans can actually say they feel confident in his choice? 

Oh and for the comments about McCain trying to attract Hillary voters - that’s almost insulting.  Palin’s views and Clinton’s views are OPPOSITE.  Why would we vote for her?  Simply because she is a female?  She is extremely conservative and as someone who was planning on voting for Hillary, it was based on her views more than her being a female.  Just because Palin has a uterus doesn’t mean anything to me. 

This is more proof that McCain simply is NOT right for our country.

OBAMA please!

PS. Who thinks she kinda looks like SNL’s Tina Fey? (Or is it just the glasses?)

Update:  I’ve found Palin’s “blog”!  Ha ha - this is priceless - http://sarahpalin.typepad.com/

*Please note: If you can’t figure it out already, that blog above is a SATIRE blog for comedic purposes and not real. (Thank God!)