FotoBuzz viewlet We've released a web utility called FotoBuzz which allows you to annotate JPEGs using Flash on the client side and PHP/Python on the server-side. It's dirt easy to integrate into existing webpages. After including some CSS and JavaScript in the HTML head, all you have to do is add a single attribute to the image tag and it will do the rest for you.

The most obvious use for FotoBuzz is to label all the people in a family picture. However, there are much more practical uses for FotoBuzz. Here's a picture from Anandtech's recent article about the upcoming NVidia 6600 GT AGP card which has been marked up using FotoBuzz.


(People in RSS/Atom land: you'll have to visit this webpage to see the viewlet in action)

One of the first things we decided to do with FotoBuzz is use it to annotate one of the screenshots for Gush. Take a look for yourself.

Music Awards ABC has the 32nd Annual American Music Awards show on tonight which means no Desperate Housewives and no Boston Legal. Don't they realize that I've been waiting all week long for those shows?

Well, this brings me to my next point: Why do we need to give out awards for musicians? Isn't the boat-load of money they're getting good enough? Why can't they do the awards based purely on the number of records sold? Then we wouldn't have to have any nominations, guessing, or the show -- they could just publish the winners in the NYTimes.

Maybe I should go pirate some songs to make myself feel better.

ApacheCon Keynote Sessions Streamed From my Inbox:

ApacheCon is proud to announce free video streaming of its keynote sessions.

ApacheCon keynote speakers represent the sharpest and polemical minds in the community, including Miguel de Icaza, Wil Wheaton, Tim Cramer, Doc Searls, and Andrew Tucker.

Watch the keynote sessions for free at http://apachecon.lpbn.org/. See the ApacheCon schedule at http://apachecon.com/ for further details.

Regards...
-- Lars Eilebrecht

Personal IM in the workplace eWeek's "Instant Messaging Get Personal at Work" article is filed under their Messaging & Collaboration category, but I'm gonna have to file it under the So What? category.

According to the META Group survey sited by the article, 57% of respondents use IM for personal reasons. OK, so if you're a bone-headed manager this is alarming, but if you're a reasonable person you realize that this statistic is meaningless. Here are a couple of questions that would help clarify that statistic for us:

• If you're one of the 57% that use IM for personal reasons, do you also use it for work purposes?
• If you use it for personal reasons, how much time does it consume? Any more time than phone conversations and email?
• Are you substituting calling, email, and walking over to a neighboring cubicle for IM?

I think it's hard to prove that a person who uses IM for personal reasons would spend on average more time on IM than they would if they could only call, email, or lounge around the water cooler. If the person has so much time that they can spend dangerous number of hours sending personal IMs, then IM is not the problem, the employee is the problem. The reality is that the problem is probably a time or staff management problem. I'll goes as far to say that aside from controlling IM for viruses and making sure that people aren't sending out confidential material over IM, any other excuse for regulating IM is just a poor substitute for good management.

The fact that people are using IM for either personal or business is a validation of the medium inside companies. And so with some companies getting large benefits for using IM, it implies that if you don't its probably a sign of some other problem in your company aside from a technology issue.

PS. You should read the entire article for other useless statistics.

Firefox 1.0 Mysterious Icon Does anyone know what this is?

It appears very briefly when you open a new window.