As more great new companies are absorbed into big old companies, a whole new generation of change is lost. They can issue press releases saying how excited they are to be able to bring their product to a whole new world of customers, and how their new suitor will bring enormous resources to bear, but we know that’s usually not really what happens. Development slows, products stall, the staff that built the great stuff leaves, and mediocrity creeps in. Not always, but usually.

This could just as easily describe the purchase of Flickr by Yahoo. It’s remarkable how little the site has changed in the past few years.

I kind of want one… but the massive lens attached to it seems to defeat the purpose of a MICRO camera.

The documentary skips around in the history of photography, giving some artists no more than a few seconds of screen-time and leaving many out altogether… but for everything familiar that’s left out there’s something unusual brought in. For example… the first episode points out the influence of photography in the painter Degas, whose paintings have a “photographic” quality to them…. with cut off edges and arrangements that are reminiscent of stereographs. And there are many snippets of interviews with living photographers, art-directors, curators and others that make this series worth hunting down.

His aim is not to win Canon-carrying professionals over to the Motorola E815, already an ancient relic in the constantly churning mobile landscape. Rather, it is to escape — however briefly — what he calls the “megapixelmania” of contemporary photography, in which every aspect can be rigorously and technically controlled.

“It’s a way of preserving my artistic sanity,” Mr. Rocco said.

I did some research and discovered the following information:

1. Facebook makes it difficult to completely delete your account. While it will allow you to disable your account… your information, photos, videos, etc is still stored on their servers and will only be deleted permanently by “special request“. This feature was added after user complaints and a story in the New York Times and really… what proof do you have that your request has actually been followed through on? None really.

2. Facebook can decide that you haven’t given them enough information about yourself. From their terms of service. “We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile.” Gosh. How creepy. A social network site that investigates you. 

3. Facebook will disable your account without warning. If it does disable your account it won’t give you any reason for disabling your account. Reasons for deletion include adding too many friends too quickly, posting too much, browsing too much, or doing anything else that might make Facebook sad. This seems to be a feature of most social networking sites… they hate the idea of individual members becoming too influential or being able to use their popularity for anything useful… so they set up arbitrary limits and punish any sort of activity that deviates from the norm.

The thing that really caught my attention was Facebook’s decision (early this year) to change their terms of service so they own their users content. This change was done quietly and was stumbled upon by a blogger who happened to notice the change. There was a loud public outcry that caused Facebook to drop this policy… and while it’s wonderful that there was a change of heart, they could just as easily change their minds yet again.

(click on thumbnails for larger versions)

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