Comments for Waltzing Matilda

Comment on My first screencast by Linda_Margaret

Linda_Margaret — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:15:48 +0000

I have tried using screenr for the last few screencasts and it’s fantastic! I don’t know about my tone. I don’t want to speak too fast and make it hard to understand. I always go too fast when I’m enthusiastic. Hopefully I will get better with practice!

Comment on Tools Tuesday: Pinterest by Social Media Team

Social Media Team — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:39:48 +0000

@Silvia, thanks I’ve added the bit about private boards being a future feature.
Regarding possible copyright issues, we’re waiting for the law to cast its shadow and regulate these issues … only time will bring more clarity. In the meantime Silvia’s and Mathew’s comments can serve as a reminder, drawing your attention to one of the golden rules from the guidelines when using Social Media in EU communication: ‘Respect Copyright’.
The guidelines, staff regulations, ‘Code of Good Administrative Behaviour’ are often left unspoken but should always be explicit in your actions. When you want to share a link to a website, content, etc. you should always take a close look at the terms and conditions to make sure you’re allowed to do this. Sometimes you’ll need to ask for permission or pay to use the content that’s relevant to you. To give an example: the terms and conditions of the ‘Evening Standard’ prohibit us from sharing a link to their site. You can find this information when you visit this site’s terms, clauses 3.1 – 3.2.3. So always check the terms and conditions if you want to share copyright material.

When you’ve done this research but you’re still in doubt contact: DG COMM Copyright Task Force (COMM-Copyright@ec.europa.eu).

Comment on Tools Tuesday: Pinterest by mathew

mathew — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 05:50:34 +0000

Silvia’s right – those wishing to know more about (2) should read “Why I tearfully deleted my Pinterest inspiration boards”, by Kirsten, a professional lawyer and photojournalist.
Google it (I didn’t encode the link to avoid ending up in Mathilda’s spam queue), or just consider this quote:
“if some photographer out there decides that he or she does not want you using that photogs images as “inspiration” and decides to sue you … you will have to hire a lawyer for yourself and YOU will have to hire a lawyer for Pinterest and fund the costs of defending both of you in court. Not only that, but if a court finds that you have, in fact, violated copyright laws, you will pay all damages assessed against you and all damages assessed against Pinterest. OUCH. Oh, but it gets better. Pinterest reserves the right to prosecute you for violations.”
It’s just a suggestion, but maybe the Commission should do some research before recommending the latest shiny new toy and getting EU officials into copyright violation trouble?
Just a thought …

Comment on My first screencast by silvia

silvia — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:32:32 +0000

great initiative, however the tone seems a bit unenthusiastic. It’s hard to talk to a screen and be cheerful. Possibly having an audience could help

Comment on Tools Tuesday: Pinterest by Silvia

Silvia — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:34:56 +0000

Two remarks:
1. private boards are not a current feature
http://support.pinterest.com/entries/21051528-can-i-create-a-private-board
2. Before using Pinterest to pin images you should read terms and conditions. They are extremely restrictive and penalising for users right now. You can get into legal trouble.

Comment on My first screencast by simonfj

simonfj — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 01:02:29 +0000

You’ve come to the right conclusion. “….avoid the need to convert”. You asked a computer engineer, about media stuff? Well yu won’t make that mistake again, wil ya? Freebies do abound. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fileextensions/tp/free-video-converter.htm http://www.lumixsoft.com/
You’d could even take the direct route if you wanted to http://www.screenr.com/
But the problem is that you’re trying to solve your immediate problem rather than being sociable and looking at the bigger picture with your Ec peers; & coming up with a(n end-to-end) solution. Please don’t. It’s tiring watching the EC dinosaur trying to soar like an eagle, especially now we’re in the sociable stage of it’s catch-up with its outside (real) world.
You’ve got a bunch of remote peers/webbies, all trying to figure out how to coordinate what they’re doing. If you get hungup on a tool, you’ll end up like John Mac; believing a (twitter) tool is going to change things. But that just segregates a market by tool. A VC tool should solve the problem of how to help the webbies stay in touch in real time with you and each other, and do the screencast stuff as an extension. Google’s Hangouts, which you’ll be considering for eh…. hanging out, will have the (record) extension sometime on the future, but even then it’s a pain to try & reuse stuff.
Sorry to rave on. But the unis have always gone through what you’ve starting on; distance learning. I’m just trying to get groups like the EC webbies to come up with a spec, so we can begin to get serious about the new media stuff. i.e. building communities of practice/interest, instead of pumping out messages to the great unwashed. Your grumpy old man.

Comment on Connecting Europe’s regions by Stefan Happer

Stefan Happer — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:19:59 +0000

Great to see that the European Commission is building this online tool on Drupal! Do you have other examples of Drupal sites in the Commission?

Comment on Social Media and Les Bonnes Frites! by Piko

Piko — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:09:03 +0000

I really love your article. Its a nice description of how social media works. And now i really want to try this food there. Next trip-Belgium!

Comment on Free tools to analyse Commissioners on Twitter by DHaiduc

DHaiduc — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:15:34 +0000

Will you use Klout for Twitter?
How about count of “talking about” on facebook?
Can you not get more stats from each cabinet?
Also number of Retweets per commissioner is useful.
Number of lists created by commissioner (if at all)
And if the commissioner retweets other tweets (if at all)

Comment on My first screencast by Social Media Team

Social Media Team — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:42:13 +0000

@Daniel, thanks! I’m not the biggest fan of my voice. I remember as a teen I once tried out for a radio spot and was told I ‘did not have the voice for radio.’ I’ll check out the voice offer techniques for sure.
@simonfj I looked for free software to convert SWF to MPEG (via Google, of course) but there was no free software that did it well, only paid. I asked a computer engineer in the family to help me out, and, after 30 minutes, he confirmed that the only worthwhile conversion software was paid. So I think the future I will just try to avoid the need to convert. Please let me know if you find a good, free software that does SWF to MPEG. Then I could keep using Jing, which I like.
- Linda Margaret