UTTERMEDIA

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

The key term here is “non-exclusive”. Google are not taking ownership of your photo, neither are they revoking your rights to your own work. Whilst they can do all of the above (reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute) with your photo(s), you can still do the same too.

Notice also “on or through, the Services”. Google aren’t going to send your photos off to some third-party website for public distribution or use. They may however use your photo as a part of their services – services that they currently offer. Eg: your image may appear in Google marketing material, or perhaps something as ridiculous as a Gmail background image. The issue here is that your image is then facing a much wider audience than you originally intended (depending on your prevalence as a photographer). We all know that people pinch photos if they like the look of them, it’s very easy. So this, as before, is likely to happen in this situation, just on a much larger scale. It’s down to you whether you are comfortable with that or not. 

You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

Probably the scariest part of the terms. It does sound like Google will share you photos with other companies. However, ‘syndicated services’ again mean that these companies will be part of Google’s current service remit. At present, Google are not in the practice of distributing images commercially for profit or fund. If they do choose to do this in future, these terms will change and you, by law, will have to be notified (much like when your iPhone pops up a new set of iTunes T’s & C’s). If Google used your photo(s), it would only ever be in connection with services associated with Google, such as Maps, Google+, Android, etc.

You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

Google may resize your image, slap an ugly logo on it, or perhaps reduce the quality. No biggie, but again you may feel differently about this.

To summarise, these terms at first seem a little unnerving. But it is no better or worse than your images appearing in Google Image Search results, which, let’s face it, they probably already do, if you have a website or a Flickr account. The only difference is, Google may hand pick some of your photos from your G+ for their own use, as Google.

If you are a professional photographer you may feel that the above terms will detract exclusivity from your work, which is understandable. Perhaps slap a watermark over any content that you upload to your G+ account, or just provide lo-res/compressed versions. Either way, you won’t find yourself losing money or being exploited by Google, as their practices here are no different than Flickr, Picasa or DeviantArt. The only point to take away from this is that Google have the power to spread your image far and wide, under their own name, in a way that other online services do not.

“We believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.”

Motor-mouthed Mac money man Steve Jobs offers his introspective opinion on the imaginary iOS VS Android battle. Explained, he believes an integrated solution will triumph over fragmented multi-manufacturer solutions.

The Android OS is made by one company, to work on a handset made by another. The apps on that handset are tested but not vetted. Apple, however, create the OS and manufacture the handset as well as approving and testing all apps for said device.

Jobs is no stranger to saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. He vowed never to create a tablet device. He quashed rumours of the iPhone. However, his latest and probably throw-away rant goes against his mantra on a deeper level.

A company opposed to the intensive chokeholds of Flash, Apple strive for an open-standard for web and mobile device video. Flash is buggy, closed and bloated. But soon after my switch from iPhone to HTC, I suddenly learned that iOS is/was buggy, closed and bloated. Eg: the “1GHz” iPhone 4 processor is underclocked to 800MHz to prevent overheating. The HTC Desire 1GHz processor doesn’t really need speech-marks.

Openness in product design will bring manufacturers and consumers closer, and the end result with be something that the consumer can enjoy without being hypnotized by marketing, gloss and hype, and just “making do” because the GUI looks nice.

Like I’ve said before, the iPhone is an awesome piece of mobile technology. It brings so many features and experiences which are new to mobile users. These are not new features and new experiences, they are just packaged and marketed in a way that is accessible to the school mum, the technophobe, the toddler. iPhone is closed for that reason - it needs to be solid and straight, perfectly aligned to the needs of a user who wants it to “just work” without questioning why or how.

Android handsets (give or take a few) can do anything the iPhone can do, as good as or better. It’s the OS that really sets it apart. The hundreds of tweaks and options that you discover for weeks after purchasing your new device are just brilliant. Sometimes simple solutions to everyday problems, other times really nice features that you wonder how you coped without.

“Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errrr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.”

TweetDeck’s CEO responded fairly well to Jobs’ outburst. And good on him too, for the head of a predominatly Apple-targeted social network platform, he didn’t even really need to acknowledge Android. Instead though, he and his team have taken TweetDeck for iOS, thrown away the rulebook, and started right from the bottom up. The two versions, aside from visuals, are a world apart, with features that marry beautifully with the Android interface - features that iOS wouldn’t allow.

There is fervent competition within the industry between Apple and Android, but this blog post (one of many many millions) just goes to show how different both brands are when it comes to user-experience. So the question remains, why try to compete when you’re so different? Android outsold iOS weeks ago, but who’s counting?

10 years from now Jobs will have that Mac market share that he deserves, and perhaps the iOS VS Android dust will have settled, and we’ll have two even more different, honed and unique mobile platforms. And he can retire quietly. Toys in pram.

Let’s get straight down to business. I found the iPhone very restrictive and bland. When you look beneath the beautiful HD graphics and the glossy icons, it’s a simple BIOS. The minimal information and media that Apple actually let you put into the device is filed away exactly where they want it and how they want it….

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