How to: Feathering in Pixelmator

Feathering in Pixelmator is very much off regular topics. However nobody seems to have explained how you do this so here goes.

Step 1: Use the Wand tool or a Selection tool to select the image you wish to feather

Step 2: Click Edit => Refine Selection

Step 3: Choose the amount which you would like to feather by & click OK

Step 4: Click Edit => Invert Selection

Step 5: Click Edit => Clear OR Hit backspace

That’s it really very simple. I stumbled across this and couldn’t find any resources or guides feathering in Pixelmator hence this quick post.

Free WiFi in Brussels

Free WiFi in Brussels, This is perhaps a little off topic to what I’d usually post.. I needed somewhere to keep a record of the free wifi points in Brussels and this seemed like a good place to put the list as any.

All of these locations are places where you can hang out happily without being hassled.

Please submit any good places you find and I’ll update the map.

View Free WiFi in Brussels in a full screen map

MRS against social media listening without consent

The source of the contention is
The Market Research Association (MRS), who, in a recent discussion paper have said that social media listening should only be conducted with the explicit permission of users.

I found this following a conversation and a blog Leonard Murphy from Greenbook blog on market research, his article and thoughts can be found here, mine are below:

There are a number of inconsistencies with the information reported

In particular it selectively quotes the FB T&Cs:
If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it

This refers to applications which sit within Facebook and which deal with opt-in consent for applications not for publically available data. It does not reference the rest of their terms and conditions or their privacy policy.

Facebook is clear that:
“Everyone” Information. Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, just like your name, profile picture, and connections. Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations.
Such information may also be associated with you, including your name and profile picture, even outside of Facebook, such as on public search engines and when you visit other sites on the internet. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete “everyone” content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook.

Twitter is even more explicit
Our Services are primarily designed to help you share information with the world. Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public.
and continues

Your public information is broadly and instantly disseminated. For example, your public Tweets are searchable by many search engines and are immediately delivered via SMS and our APIs (http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_faq) to a wide range of users and services. You should be careful about all information that will be made public by Twitter, not just your Tweets.

National Constitutions
The references to the national constitutions are implicitly relative to tapping into communications which are assumed to be private e.g. telephones. Not to conversations which by definition the user has made public or has agreed should be public. Users already have the right to be private, services like twitter and blogs simply give everyone a public voice.

Where there may be an argument, forums
Perhaps online forums could be constituted as private or public meetings which could arguably be deemed as inappropriate to monitor without consent. Again the T&Cs of these sites would need to be checked on a case by case basis.

Overall I personally feel that this white paper is poorly researched and biased.

These views are my personal views and not those of any current or past employer or affiliated organisation.

Good luck listening and replying to Email & Text while driving

I was on my way back from Henley yesterday with a friend. I suggested the idea that I should be able to listen and reply to my emails by voice in the car using a smartphone. She was pretty surprised and thought I was probably pushing the limits of what’s out there.

A morning of Googleing has revealed a complete lack of anything really decent in this area. I found this article which was a good step forwards in finding someone else on the same quest, they too however feel a little short changed in the world of ‘advanced’ handsets..

Here’s what I’ve found:
-Text’n'drive, Free/Paid, iPhone/Blackberry/Android (soon): This looked promising, you give it your IMAP/Pop settings and it will read out your email, however replies which is only available in the pro version is via mp3 which is pretty useless for most people. This would be a great app if integrated with SpinVox, as it stands, not awesome.

-DriveSafe.ly, Free/Paid, iPhone (soon)/Blackberry/Android: These guys look like they’re nailed the reading of emails as well, they even have a version that will plug into your BES server. Still no replying by voice though.

Dragon Dictation
These guys seem to be the leaders of the field. So far they have a dictation app for the iPhone/Android that works really well but doesn’t natively integrate with an email account and doesn’t read back email. They also have an app for Blackberry which allegedly lets you read and reply to emails using normal speech. Finally these guys are working quite heavily with Android, if you check the link below there is an article around a recent android phone that does text reading and reply, just missing the elusive email reply..

More links:
Android phone with Dragon: http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20003883-251.html
Bluetooth headset that reads your texts: http://www.myblueant.com/q1/features.php

That’s all so far, I’ll post anything interesting I find along the way..

Twitter & Blogs update for 01-02-2010

I often have a bunch of links that I send to friends and family over the week, so I thought I’d copy @brisboune who sensibly does the something similar and start posting them up.

• Seth Godins first Linchpin Video – Gary Vee sixty second video: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/02/linchpin-videos-first-in-a-series.html
• Who is using the internet infographic: http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/state-of-the-internet-image/
• Facebook still big: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/02/01/facebook-traffic-reaches-nearly-375-million-monthly-active-users-worldwide-led-by-us/
• Virility is all about making your users look cool: http://blog.hellohenrik.com/?p=1870 – via @andrew_chen
• Great notes on customer aquisition: http://andrewchenblog.com/2010/01/31/notes-on-customer-acquisition-and-viral-marketing-from-first-round-capital-ceo-summit
  
• Fifty ways to be more persuasive: http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-persuasive/1624
  
• The Danger of Crocodile Sales (Spot listening vs Talking) http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/03/the-danger-of-crocodile-sales/

I particularly like the last and first here. The last point is important, sales is about asking the right questions and building a rapport i.e. them talking not you. The first is Gary Vee who’s rubbing our faces in reality, we can be really great at a small number of things or average at everything.

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Make WordPress/Blog iPhone + Android Friendly Free

This is not a blog about WordPress but sometimes the awesomeness of developers supremely impresses me.

After reading a post on Scobilizer about hot startups to watch in 2010 I came across a company I had come across before called AppMakr.com who allow you for $199 will turn your RSS feed into an app that they will submit to the AppStore.

I thought to myself, I would like to be able to see my blog properly rendered on an iPhone/Android.

Two free ways
Method 1: Install this awesome plugin, activate it. Done

Demo: Visit this site on your iPhone/Android

Method 2: If you don’t have WordPress go here: http://iphonify.net
*I would use yahoo pipes to set-up a feed to iphonify so that you have control over the source URL/RSS feed(s) and can keep the same

Demo: Check out this very nice link which is aggregating all sorts of Man City news here: http://iphonify.net/MCFC

Set-up Free WordPress Backups in 1 minute

If you invest any time in your WP blog you should back it up. It doesn’t matter if your host already does it two copies is better than one, especially if yours is stored on your PC or inbox that you have instant access to.

I did this, I’m not very technical and it took literally 60 seconds:
-Download this: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/installation/
-Copy the wp-db-backup.php file to /wp-content/plugins/
-Activate the plugin at your blog’s Admin -> Plugins screen
-Take an immediate backup now by hitting ‘Backup’
-Set it to email you your backup as often as you want it hourly/daily/monthly..

*The plugin will attempt to create a directory /wp-content/backup-*/ inside your WordPress directory.
You may need to make /wp-content writable (at least temporarily) for it to create this directory. Most of us I expect use an ftp client like filezilla, right click on the wp-content folder and click file permissions to change them.

Simple. Go do it now!