A few interesting links about Photography, Technology, Social Media, and Gadgets that I’ve come across recently. Some are smart, some are funny, and some are just plain dumb, but they are all interesting for one reason or another. Have a look and let me know what you think:

• The picture of dishonesty: social media slaps down a wedding photo faker – Hartford online marketing | Examiner.com
  If you fake your entire career online, you're going to get caught. This article about a photographer who stole images from other photographers, including reposting images from entire weddings and claimed them as her own, recently found that out in a hurry.
• 4 Lessons Learned From Our Builder For Photographers
  Photographers need to be awesome to stand out. So do other service providers. It's not that hard, but you have to plan for it. You have to want to be awesome…
• Creative Collision: Branding is Everything
  You are your brand. You must own that. If your clients don't appreciate your brand, how can they see themselves in the photography that you might provide for them?
• Behind the scenes / Making of a QR code
  This photographer deserves a medal for the patience he displayed in creating his print promo piece. It's pretty incredible the lengths he went to to make something tactile for his promo piece. Of course he could have achieved the same look with about 5 minutes in Photoshop, but it's still pretty cool to see what he created.
• Enormous 6mm Nikon Fisheye Lens Up For Sale At £100,000 | Popular Photography
  I have some big lenses in my bag… I know because my photography clients comment all the time . But this one takes the cake. I'd love to see what the images that come out of this lens look like!

Photoshelter Promo Code: SE5PH32Y9C

I’ve had an account at Photoshelter for many years that I use to sell stock photography images. If you’re interested you can check out my collection of Landscape and Wildlife Photos from the Canadian Rocky Mountains and Prairies at www.Sean-Phillips.com. PhotoShelter is a great service that handles online sales, advertising, and high resolution file distribution. It’s a great way to attract new clients and it throws lots of Google juice towards my photography collection.

I just realized that Photoshelter has a referral system, and that can help both of us! If you’re planning to sign up with Photoshelter you can save some money by using this referral code. I will get a small kickback too, but the important thing is that you can save $5 to $30 on your Photoshelter seller account.

http://www.photoshelter.com/referral/SE5PH32Y9C

You can also just enter code SE5PH32Y9C when you sign up.

I recently realized that I had forgotten to change the copyright notice on some of my websites. I had changed it on all of my still and video cameras and in the metadata fields for Breeze Downloader Pro and Adobe Lightroom; I had even changed it on some of my websites. But somehow I missed a couple.

Instead of just fixing it now for the sites that I missed in January, I wrote some Javascript code to do it automatically based on the year. You can see the resulting text in the Copyright Notice for this site at the bottom of the right sidebar.

Here’s what the code looks like. Note that it automatically updates the year and it links to your email address from your name (in a method very unfriendly to spam harvesters). If you want to use it simply copy and paste into a widget or into your wordpress header or footer and it will start displaying.

NOTE – You must to update the 3 “var” fields to ensure that the code uses your own Name and Email address.

If you want to use this code in a post or a page then it will be much more difficult to make it work. You will have to refer to the WordPress Codex for information on how to use Javascript in a post or a page.

If you’ve never seen MOO Cards before, then you owe it to yourself to check them out. Basically they are really great custom business cards made using your own photographic images or graphic designs. They are a great way to show off your own product while also getting your contact details out into the wild.

The cards are produced on high quality stock that looks great and lasts a long time. You can choose from a range of sizes, including standard Business Cards, Mini Cards, or even Post Cards or folded Greeting Cards. The best part is that you can make several different designs using your best work, or every card can be different if you really want!

If you want to check them out before putting any money down, MOO offer a free Business Card Sample Pack. You get 10 full-color, double sided Cards, with your own photos, logo and text, shipped anywhere in the world, for free! That’s a pretty amazing offer.

Check them out at MOO.com. But wait! I have discount codes for you…

• Get 10% off any order using the code Q9JN53.
• Get Free Shipping on any order over $39 using the code 8AMX4Z.

Both of these offers expire on January 31st, 2010, so act quickly!

The Mozilla Firefox web browser has a really annoying safety feature where the version control system for Add-Ons (aka Extensions) won’t allow them to be installed on a higher version of Firefox than they’ve been tested on and approved for.

In theory this is a very good idea. The thought is that when new versions of Firefox come out, older versions of Add-Ons may not be compatible with the changes in the browser, and may then cause errors or system instability.

In reality most of the changes to the browser itself in dot releases (eg. from 3.0 to 3.1) are relatively benign and they rarely change anything related to most Add-Ons. This is not an issue if you only use add-ons created by proactive developers because they are generally quick to release compatible versions shortly after the browser update is released. But not all the time!

I have discovered two ways that you can get around this problem, and in my experience doing this over the past two years, I have never yet had an add-on that is marked as incompatible that didn’t work with the latest official and beta Firefox releases.

Here’s how you can do it yourself:

1. Install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter: “After installing this Add-On your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you’re using”. You can also report back to Mozilla whether there are any problems or not. This is a quick and easy way to make officially incompatible extensions work with your version of Firefox. I have only just started using this tool, so I don’t yet have any good data on how well it works.
2. Hack your Add-Ons: The Add-Ons available from the Mozilla Add-On Repository are simply container files (similar to .zip or .msi files) that contain a bunch of other files. You can use 7zip to open those containers, and then use a text editor to edit the “install.rdf” file contained within to change the version control information. Here’s a step by step tutorial:
   • Find your desired add-on from https://addons.mozilla.org/
   • Right click on the “Add to Firefox” link and save the file to your desktop
   • Install 7zip
   • Right click on the .xpi file you downloaded to your desktop, choose “7zip”, then choose “Open Archive”
   • Right click on the file “install.rdf” in the 7zip window, choose “Edit”
   • In your text editor search for some code that looks like “3.0.*“.
   • The number indicates the maximum version of Firefox that the add-on is officially compatible with. Edit this number to be something larger than the version you are trying to use it with. For example, if you are using Firefox 3.5, change this code to “3.5.*“
   • Save the file and close the 7zip window. Choose yes when you are asked if you want to update the archive.
   • Drag and Drop the .xpi file onto a Firefox window, and follow the prompts as required.

That’s it, you’re done. After restarting Firefox you should now have your favorite extension up and running again!

Note that while I have never had a problem in over two years of doing this, there is a risk that you could corrupt your installation of Firefox. You do so at your own risk and please don’t hate me if you have problems!

Good luck and be sure to let me know how it works out for you!