If you run a website these days it’s fairly common for people to copy the address of an image file and paste it on a forum or blog.

This is known as ‘hotlinking’ a file and it’s frowned on because it’s theft. The website pays for hosting the image while the forum or blog gets the benefit and of course there is no link back to the hosting website. Not that a link would make the theft of content OK even there was one…

However the people who do this don’t realise to what extent they are playing with fire… (more…)

Mp4/H.264 files give great quality for online video in web players such as the free Flowplayer. But they must ‘stream’. In other words they need to start playing before the whole file has loaded (which may take several minutes). (more…)

About ten days from now I should have a much-improved internet connection. For a number of years I’ve been on 1Mb broadband with UKOnline and have paid just under £10 per month.

As I live in Manchester city centre, far faster broadband has been available to me for some time. (more…)

Watching the G20 protests on TV it seemed that every other person had a camera. Yet only two video clips of the Ian Tomlinson incident have come to light so far. One was shot by a member of the public, the other by a broadcast news team and despite professional cameras being outnumbered by ‘activist’ cameras to the tune of hundreds to one.

A fluke? I suggest not. (more…)