Tag: Social Network

Retrain Your Audience

The Only Way to Beat Algorithms is to Retrain Your Audience by Y. Kiri YuY. Kiri Yu (KIRISKA.com)

The problem is that social media networks are centralised platforms that aim to monopolise their users’ attention and time. Their bottom line is in advertisement dollars, and the longer users are on the site, the more opportunity there is for ads (and data mining). It’s therefore in the platform’s best interest to show what is most likely to entrap their attention — and if the platform judges that you don’t make the cut, too bad. The problem is neither the artist nor their audience has any control over the platform. They can complain all day every day, and they do, but the platform gods aren’t beholden to their requests. The users aren’t the customers; they’re the products.

I think @nitinkhanna would enjoy reading this.

POSSE

Speaking as a citizen of the indieweb and not one … by AmandaAmanda (Amanda Unvarnished)

To add to all this, for me, social media, (with the exception of Mastodon and Micro.blog), has, to put it charitably, lost its luster. It’s become a chore, both personally and professionally, and the bad has finally gotten to the point where it outweighs the good for me. On a professional level, publishing criteria are getting so strict that publishing content, (especially when you’re scheduling it so as to not spend all your time staring at a social media client), has become fairly difficult, both because of the publishing rules themselves and because of the inaccessibility of scheduling services and their apps. This is most of the reason why I’m pulling the trigger and going full indieweb later this month. How the closed platforms treat their third-party developers also has some influence on my decision to pull the trigger.

Amanda, I agree, the social platform experiment has become tiring for me. My use of Facebook and Twitter have fallen off dramatically while my use of RSS feeds continues unabated. Even the act of POSSEing my content to social media is a chore. I have almost stopped doing it. And because of concerns about GDPR I no longer back feed comments and like from social silos. I disabled Brid.gy syndication to Facebook and Flickr and only occasionally syndicate to Twitter.

Avoiding syndication to social platforms has made discovery more challenging but I am hoping as the IndieWeb grows, this problem will be solved. We'll find each other the old-fashioned "Web" way. For example, I discovered your post and your website via Chris Aldrich's website.

Is The 32GB eyefi mobiPRO The Ultimate WiFi SD Card?

I just got the new version of eyefi's mobiPro SD card. Eyefi is calling this the Ultimate WiFi SD Card. Eyefi has printed this phrase on the cover of the package. But can this card stand up to the claim?

I have used an earlier version of the eyefi mobi card and when the company introduced the 32GB eyefi mobiPRO I was curious to see what was improved. I ordered one right away.

Most new cameras now feature Wi-Fi radios for transferring images from the SD card. The photographer can snap an image and transfer to a smart phone for editing and easy sharing to social networks such as Instagram. Instead of waiting until they get back to the computer, photographers can edit and share images in real-time.

But not all cameras have this feature. My Nikon D5100 is an older model which does not. I could sell my D5100 and buy a newer model with Wi-Fi. But that is an expensive solution. A cheaper solution is to use an SD card that has the Wi-Fi. This means I can use the camera hardware I already have while still enjoying some of the benefits of a newer body.

Eyefi is selling the 32GB eyefi mobiPRO at an early bird special price for $79 with 1 year of their Eyefi Cloud service. The package also includes a card reader. Although I have collected several card readers over the years including one is a nice touch.

Cover of box of 32GB eyefi mobiPRO

Inside the box I found a USB card reader, the 32GB eyefi mobiPRO SD card, and a membership card. On the back are instructions for activating the card and the cloud service. I have one of the original Connect X2 cards and one of the first generation 8GB mobi cards. The 32GB mobiPro seemed easier and more straight forward to setup than either of those card.

I launched the eyefi app on my iPhone and tapped the gear to bring up the Settings screen. From there I tapped Manage Cards and entered the activation code form the membership card. I tapped a few more button to install the mobiPro's profile and I was ready to go.

Inside box of 32GB eyefi mobiPRO

I inserted the mobiPro into the SD card slot of my Nikon D5100 and started snapping photos. The mobiPro is a class 10 card so I was able to use the full 4fps shooting speed of my Nikon D5100.

The mobiPro has RAW image support. When I was done shooting I launched the Settings app on my iPhone 6 and connected to the Wi-Fi signal of the mobiePro. Back in the eyefi app I was able to transfer RAW images to my iPhone. I did not time the speed of the transfers but they seemed snappier than the JPG transfer of the 8GB eyefi mobi.

I know that when using eyefi cards in the past that the battery of the Nikon D5100 was short. Perhaps this was because I kept the camera on while shooting to prevent the loss of the connection between the mobi and the iPhone. I have not tested it yet but given how robust the connection of the mobiPro seems I will have less fear of losing signal and I can turn my Nikon on and off as needed. Battery life should improve.

One of the complaints I had about the earlier mobi SD cards is that I could not choose which images I wanted transferred to my iPhone or iPad. With the earlier cards, connecting the iPhone to the mobi card meant that all the images on the SD card were transferred. My Nikon D5100 has a resolution of 16MP. Depending on the number of images I shot I could easily exhaust the storage of my iPhone. The eyefi mobi is one of the reasons I bought the 64GB iPhone 6. I often found myself running out of space while transferring images when all I really wanted was one or two images to share via social media. The mobiPro has a selective sync feature. I can choose which images I want transferred to my iPhone.

I couldn't find the settings for this in the eyefi app. This was frustrating but it turns out I needed to use the eyefi desktop app to set up the mobiPro with this feature. I found the instructions on the eyefi website. If I had paid attention to inside of the eyefi mobiPro box I would see the text directing me to the place on the eyefi web site with the necessary information.

I installed the mobi desktop app on my MacBook Air, insert the mobiPro via the USB reader, and configured the mobiPro per the instructions. Once complete I removed the mobiPro and inserted back into my Nikon D5100. I shot a couple of test images. To enable selected transfer I marked the image I wanted to transfer as locked. I launched the eyefi app and waited for the iPhone to connect. It was at this point I ran into problems. Neither the MacBook Air or the iPhone were able to connect to the mobiPro card. I tried repeatedly and after several attempts I had it working. This is the flaky network connectivity issues I had experienced with the earlier cards. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Is the 32BG mobiPro the Ultimate WiFi SD card? Perhaps not. The initial setup was easy but setting up the selective sync didn't go as well as I expected. Eyefi could invest some effort in making the WiFi connection more robust. I would be a very frustrated user if I only discovered about the selective sync setup needing a computer while I was out on a photo walk. Selective sync setup should not require a computer.

But assuming network connectivity issues don't plague this device I think I will enjoy using the mobiPro. The weather is improving and I have a number of photowalks planned for April and May. The 32GB mobiPro has arrived just in time for me to selectively share photos from my adventures.