Caturday, yo.

Found at I Have Seen the Whole of the Internet.

A cool idea that we hope to never use: The Stolen Camera Finder.

The concept is pretty simple — every digital photograph has information tagged to it in an exchangable image file, known as “exif data”. This contains some basic information about the photograph: the make and model of the camera, camera settings at the time of the photo, the date and time of the photograph.

Cameras (and photo software) can add other information to it — such as the “artist” and copyright information.

The Stolen Camera Finder takes a photo you upload, reads the EXIF data, and searches the web for photos with the same data — helping you figure out who has your camera.

Of course, we just tried it, and received zero hits, despite pasting our photos accessibly all over the Internet — if the program cannot find our photos on Flickr and Facebook, it’s not terribly well designed.

But a great idea, all the same.

Image found at Fuck Yeah Pretty Girls. Credit unknown.
Webcomic is Cereal With a Fork.

We cannot help but notice that this week’s Weekend Coffee — the first in a month! — contains fewer silly pictures and more good photographs than usual.

You are therefore particularly encouraged to click on the pretty pictures. As is the norm with pretty pictures, they look better when viewed in larger formats.

	Bruce Schneier has written an excellent essay on terrorism, fear, and why the Washington Monument should be closed.
Something to think about the next time you read that music-industry profits are down: While that may be true for the record labels, the musicians themselves are making more money than ever. In fact, if you buy two songs (in MP3 format) directly from a musician these days, they make more money than they would if you bought an entire album on CD at HMV. In short, new distribution channels are endangering the norms of the industry surrounding the musicians, not the musicians themselves.
	Here is a short story of methane release from melting permafrost.
If you are asked to review your own book, be careful.
	Some of the best bits from the Bloggess come when she interacts with clueless and incompetent marketers. It’s so ridiculous that I think it must be fake. Until I realise that I sometimes get these e-mails too. I just ignore them.
Adding to the list of reasons why my next computer will not be built by Apple: Apple forces a company selling third-party Macbook Air updates to stop producing them. I might not be the sort of person who tends to buy third-party updates for their laptop. But I find it hard to support a company that doesn’t allow it. If I buy something, it’s mine.
	So … Canada has this new copyright legislation, that a lot of people don’t like. So … the guy that wrote it goes on TV to defend it … … and … … he ends up giving a good explanation of why it’s a bad piece of legislation. Why is Canada doing this, again?
If life hands you lemon bars … make lemonade.