A while back, I posted about my ideal mobile photoblogging workflow, and the steps I took to make it work.  Well, I made some modifications and ended up with something that seemed to work.  It would post my photos via Posterous to Facebook and Flickr, then post a short URL to Twitter of the Flickr image.

But yesterday, my coworker Mark pointed out that this workflow created enormous amounts of noise in my Facebook stream, mostly because the content is duplicated.  Here’s an example:

Notice that this single photo appears 4 times in the stream: 1. Flickr photo, imported into Facebook, 2. Twitter shortURL pulled into Facebook status message, 3. Facebook photo, 4. Posterous link.  If I had also posted these to my blog, it would then get pulled in two more times, once via Twitter and once via Facebook RSS import.  The good news, of course, is that the feed on a user’s home screen is heavily filtered, and would likely only display one or maybe two of these (unless I happened to be their only friend).  But I’m going to try something a little different…..

The main problem here is the division between delivery methods and content hosting methods.  I prefer Flickr to host my photos, yet I occassionally want to post them to Facebook so I can tag them with friends.  But my content is aggregated and delivered on a number of services, all with slightly different audiences: Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed.  Because these services are all intertwined, I end up with duplicates by default.

So I’m going to default back to my old method: 1. post to Flickr directly, 2. pull it into Twitter/Facebook.  This removes hosting on Facebook, but will ultimately drive people to Flickr anyhow, which was my intention to begin with (I can’t stand the low resolution of Facebook photos).

Posterous: I love you, but I’m just don’t think it’s working out between us.

Tonight’s Moon was the brightest and biggest of 2009.  The photos basically speak for themselves.

I’m not writing this post so much because I love the song (though it’s pretty good).  Nor do I really think the video is spectacular (but certainly worth watching).  Nope, I’m writing this because I want to talk about Topspin Media.  Or more precisely, I want to point out what a fantastic idea the “self contained embedded player cum music store” is.

Simply put, imagine every viral media chunklet you’ve ever seen transformed into a fully functioning music store (literally) in a box.  Not only is it a fantastic step in removing control directly from the major distribution channels, but it utilizes the fundamental strength of digital media: the ability to produce infinite copies for free. By this I don’t mean that they’ve created some new monster of illegal filesharing, nor did Topsin really create a new way to download music; instead they’ve leveraged the way people already discover new music, through embedded and shared media.

Congrats to the Topspin folks.  I’ve been following this company for a while, and hope to see really great things from them in the future.

(Video via fistfulayen, the blog of Topsin CEO Ian Rogers)

Last night, new years eve, 2008/9, my cousin Josh and I had a lengthy bout of watching Michael Jackson videos on the web.  The conclusion (unanimous): they simply don’t make videos as awesome as this anymore.

Black or White (extended version)