One of the main things that bloggers face every day is finding photos to accompany blog post that are free from copyright.

Sadly it is a jungle out there, and with millions of photos on the net you often have no way of tracking down the source, and even when you find a photo you think has been made available to the public domain it may in fact not be. My rule here has been, when in doubt don’t post it and to stay away from Google Image search.

Often times we get lucky and the PR firms will provide us with stock photos we can use, more often than not though we have to fend finding images on our own. Sometimes it is better to play it safe and not put any image up with an accompanying article. There are a number of sources for public domain images, but one has to be very careful and read the fine print on each image license to make sure that it can be used on a commercial website.

Over the coming weeks you will be seeing images on GNC coming from the folks at BigStock Photo, who have a huge library of stock images that can be licensed at a reasonable prices thus avoiding the concerns over using someones image incorrectly.

Image: Workgroup Image by BigStock

So today I got a client’s new website up and running. They had a service that basically built their website for them, which really wasn’t working for them. I ended up changing the whole service.

Before I did, I looked for a way to get all the photos off the old server. They had no FTP, no file manager and no way to get the photos off their servers. I emailed the support asking for a copy of all the pictures. What I got back really knocked my socks off:

Thanks for your message.

Unfortunately we don’t have any more access to your images than you do.

If you don’t have those images still on your own computer, the best way to download them might be to add them to a Photo Album, then view the album and download each image.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

Software Support Technician

Granted, the material on the site can be reproduced, but that means a little more work on my end. I was not too happy to hear someone couldn’t give back the content that is not theirs.

It’s not like this was a Geocities account. The company payed $20 a month to store data on. I can’t believe they just said “no” like that.

I know not everyone wants to know how to build a website. It’s not always the easiest thing to do. I’m just glad the site wasn’t too complex. I would’ve had a field day with their tech.

Instead, I canceled the membership and put the site on a trusted server.

I and others have been noticing a new kind of blog spam. Essentially relevant comments, being written by real people but linking to spam sites. I have noticed an increased number of these types of comments.

It is apparent that the battle on the comment spam front is starting to use real people. It is very apparent when you load the linked URL, they either try to link it from their contact info or are trying to hide a hyperlink in a period or single word so that it is not so obvious when you view the comment thread.

They are being pretty smart about it because a recent spammer I caught had left 10 comments without any external links. I assume this was to build trust within the system before he startrf to drop external links.

Bots are relative easy to beat but if spammers are using real people to leave relevant comments linking to their spam sites this will be a bigger challenge.

Talking with other bloggers with higher page ranks they are seeing similar tactics. I am at the point where I will ban any external URL’s from being posted by commenters.

I can sum it up in one word “Security” I have never had a MT install exploited. Cannot say the same for WordPress. I missed one of their frequent security updates and my mom’s blog got exploited in less than 2 days after the security patch was issued by WP.

I also run all of my blogs from a single control panel. One MT install drives all of my sites. I have nearly 20 blogs all running from a single control panel try that with wordpress. Thus when their is a update I update a single installation and I am finished.

The Movable Type editor also simply works, when I use an external editor like Blogjet as I am now. I know that when I hit publish the the way I have typed it in the editor is going to be the way it is displayed on my blog.

WordPress is nearly impossible to work with in the templating department. But the MT templating is very simple and it is very easy to make changes, great for novices that want to have a website that looks like their own. I get sick of seeing all of the cookie cutter boring design that make up a large number of WordPress sites.

I run both MT and WP blogs, and I will say without reservation that while I have given MT grief in the past for some of the things they have and have not done.  I can say that the MT platform is much more stable and it handles heavy traffic loads a lot better than WordPress ever will. SixApart

Note: This may sound hypocritical but for people just starting a blog that only need a single website WordPress is a good choice. I have stated on this blog that I would only recommend wordpress and generally that is the recomendation I give people. But I do add my concerns as listed above. For me though, and the way “I” run this site MT remains my only viable choice.

Andy McCaskey and I just spent a week in Vegas working CES. We busted our butts did not get much sleep in fact from Monday to Thursday it was a whole 14 hours for me.

We spoke to hundreds of vendors and were well received by all. Every booth we went to we were welcomed with open arms.  The vendors gave us access to Program Managers, Engineers, Product Development Teams, CEO’s etc..

We were invited to dinner by several groups in no pitch events that were really nice.

But what I have just seen on Gizmodo makes me really mad. A number of us have worked hard for a number of years to build the trust and gain acceptance in this show. We have had to provide examples of our content from previous years to get access to separate events like Show Stoppers.

We came and we worked, we did not Party we worked like dogs and to find out that some Gizmodo staff sabotaged a vendors booth at CES makes me sick to my stomach.

What a bunch of Amateurs, you have been invited to the event, they have given you credentials, you have been allowed access to a special lounge for the event to do work from an then you pull a stunt like this.

I say ban Gizmodo from every event that they want to cover in 2008. Many of us have worked this show on our own dime, and do not need some punks causing bloggers to get a bad name. My expenses to CES were at least $4000.00 alone that I paid out of pocket. This act can set the good will of companies towards podcasters and bloggers back a long way.

Gizmodo you deserve any punishment that is dished out. I hope Motorola, CEA takes legal action against you! [Stupid Gizmodo]

I had to laugh today when I read Gawker Media is going to pay performance bonuses to Bloggers on their network based on the traffic the drive to the site makes me really sit back and ask why?

Some of the Gawker Media blogs are top notch. They are probably read by a lot of people that are influential in the community. So why now are they worried about page views.

Is it that the revenue they are generating is solely reliant on the number of page views that they now have to push their editors to focus solely on driving page views.

Again folks my thoughts is that Audience numbers / Page Views are not important its the influences and engagement of those that do subscribe. It has been a long time since Gizmodo or Engadget have influenced a purchase of mine.

The reason is pretty simple I don’t feel that they are that objective. They say they are bloggers but to me their content is a breeding ground for content being feed to them by PR and marketing people. ValleyWag

When Feedster was alive and well last year I used it a lot. Today it has been reborn, but it is definitely a shell of it’s former self. Trying some standard search terms I follow resulted in what I would consider semi-relevant search results.

They have a cute widget to put on ones website and it nice and fancy but the search results have spam blogs in them all I want is the RSS feeds. Forget the widgets. Plus most of my custom searches are for my eyes only not the general public.

While I do not know the politics of who is behind the site and given the history with the previous company only time will tell if they will be able to ever compete with Google Blog Search or Technorati. Feedster

I am sick and tired of reading blog articles on such sites as Engadget that clearly were sourced from another site and then search in vane within the article trying to find the source article.

Effective immediately I am not going to link to articles on other sites that do not have the decency to link back to the source content. Doing so is doing injustice to the site that created the original source article. The team at Engadget does this a great deal.

What put me over the top was an International Space Station article that had 2 links to internal Engadget articles but nothing pointing back at the source material that they used to create the story.

I have been waiting a long time for SixApart to make the quantum jump and from everything I have read they are finally going to compete in a big way with WordPress.

There are some features of MT that have always been better than WordPress and now I am completely thrilled that what is being offered in the new version is going to be really amazing. I will have the beta up on a website in a couple of days but I will migrate Geek News Central and all of my other blogs over in short order. Movable Type Version 4.0