Softpedia, control your ads?

I was on Softpedia.com, a software download website, to get an ISO image burner so I could burn a Linux (Ubuntu for those interested) DVD. When I went to download this program I was completely amazed by the awful ads surrounding the download pages. They all seemed to decide to also have a big “Download” button within them to fool you into clicking them instead of your actual download.

My question is – why wouldn’t Softpedia control what advertisements appear on these pages? Wouldn’t these ads negatively affect the user experience on the site? I clicked on one at first while not really paying much attention. I didn’t start the download because I saw the filename and knew it wasn’t right but other less careful or less tech savvy users would be totally confused by this.

Nice and confusingly, the advertisement's download button is bigger than Softpedia's actual download button

Even more confusingly, there are now two download buttons which aren't related to Softpedia at all surrounding the text links the user is supposed to click on.

Surely as a download website, you’d ensure these sorts of advertisements aren’t on your site. I just felt like I had to rant about that. Rant finished

TV studios – think global

After the recent complaints over Australia’s delayed broadcast of the Lost finale along with my own experience as a follower of Supernatural still behind in the storyline (see my other unhappy blog posts about that), I’ve been left to one conclusion – TV networks need to embrace globalisation rather than fight it for their own gains.

With the internet and social media now allowing the entire world to be connected instantaneously to each other, the delaying of broadcasting television shows overseas seems to have no valid purpose outside of marketing and profit. I can see no difficulties in the digital age involved in sending a new episode of a TV show to networks all around the world in an instant, digital pirates manage it straight after a show has gone to air.

From my understanding, the real reason studios delay each premiere is for marketing purposes. The idea seems to be that while the show can be broadcast globally, the crew behind the show can’t be sent globally to promote it all at once. Understandable but surely unnecessary in the digital age. Promotional campaigns through digital media outlets like Facebook and Twitter can lead to huge success for a show, just look at the amazing success of Glee. Not only does it hit twitter’s trending list quite often but songs from the show appear regularly in iTunes top 10 downloads. Compare this to the negative effects of ignoring social media or working against it – fans of Lost in Australia had to avoid social media and carefully choose what websites they visited to avoid having the ending spoilt before it aired in Australia. Forcing viewers to wait several days just because Channel Seven decided Wednesday would give them the best ratings is disrespectful to all the fans by putting ratings before its loyal viewers.

After the season 4 finale of Dexter in America (which aired before the season had even begun to air in Australia), I almost found out the major twist at the end on Facebook without meaning to. I won’t say how much was revealed but it definitely ruined part of the surprise. After all the work that goes into planning and scripting a series, surely the last thing networks want is to have the ending ruined for international viewers?

It is here which lies a huge part of the problem. Networks want to build buzz, they want people to talk about the show over social media – it builds up a show in amazing ways. However it builds up the show internationally not just locally. They want to do this while at the same time restricting when other viewers around the world can watch the show. It just doesn’t make sense and leads to people getting the shows online rather than through the methods the studio gets paid for. Will there be a need for national copyright restrictions on services like Hulu and American TV network websites if all viewers are seeing your show within about a day or so of its initial broadcast?

Why not open up these restrictive broadcasting borders, allow your shows to be marketed to the world as the internet and social media are already doing and make things easier for everyone?

Measuring path length in Google Earth

Ever wanted to measure the path length in Google Earth but could never find out how? Turns out, within Google Earth the ruler tool and the path tool are totally separate. You can’t measure a path within Google Earth unless you go through with the ruler and mark out your path again. BUT there is another way! Here’s a step by step guide to marking out a path and then measuring it:

Creating your path

1. Go to Add > Path
   
   

   Adding a path

2. Enter in a name for your path (you can also add a description)
   
   

   Naming a path

3. Click the “Style, Color” tab and you can also change the colour of your path along with how thick the line is (can be useful when differentiating between paths you’ve created)
   
   

   Setting the path colour and width

4. I like to click OK after this just to make sure those settings are saved.
   
   

   Clicking OK!

Marking out your path

1. To mark out your path, you need to open that path property window again. To do this, go to the list of “My Place” on the left hand side and find your path:
   
   

   Finding the path you've created

2. Right click your path and go to “Properties”:
   
   

   Getting back to the properties window

3. This will bring up the properties window which appeared when you first created your path. Move this window away from the map (so you can see it and mark out spots) but don’t close that properties window. To mark out your path:
   1. Click on areas of the map to plot out your path (the latest bit of the path will appear as a blue dot, earlier parts of your path will appear as a red dot)
   2. To remove part of your path if you make a mistake, make sure the spot you want to remove is appearing as a blue dot (if it isn’t click the red dot to make it blue – this is the currently editable spot). Right click it now it is a blue dot and it will be removed. If you right click on a red dot, it will remove the dot marked blue, so you have to make sure the dot you want to remove is selected and blue (confused the crap out of me for a few moments)!
   3. Once you are done, click OK on the properties menu to save the path.

Measuring your path

Okay, so you’ve marked out your path and have it saved. The fun step now is to measure this path! Google Earth does not seem to measure it on its own but there is another website which can measure it for you.

1. Right click on your path and choose Copy.
   
   

   Copying your path details

2. Go to the E.M.A. GE (Google Earth) Tools page here – http://www.emaltd.net/google/gec/utilities/index.asp?l=en
3. Paste the details you copied from Google Earth into the text field on this page:
   
   

   Pasting your path details onto the E.M.A GE Tool

4. Click “Calculate” (note if you want it in kilometres and metres, keep “British units” unticked. If you want it in yards and miles, tick “British units”):
   
   

   Choosing setting and clicking OK

5. The length of your path will then appear in the text field like so:
   
   

   What we've all been waiting for

That my friends is how you can measure a path you have made in Google Earth! Hopefully Google makes it possible to do this all within Google Earth some day but for now this method seems to work well.

Hope that helps!