Author: Glenn Hauman

In a move guaranteed to accelerate the adoption of the PDF review copy, the Federal Trade Commission revised their “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” (click here to download),
urging bloggers who review products, from a book or DVD to a video game
system, to disclose if they received the product for free when giving
an endorsement. According to the Washington Post, breaking these new guidelines could generate up to $11,000 in fines. (There are no penalties directly associated with violating the rules. But the FTC could seek a cease-and-desist order. If you ignore that, the fines start coming in.) These new guidelines will be put into
effect on December 1, 2009.

Bureau of Consumer Protection representative Richard Cleland was interviewed about the guidelines to clarify for blogging reviewers. In a statement that shows that he doesn’t understand how the book reviewing process works, Cleland said
that newspaper book reviewers are exempt because “the newspaper
receives the book and it allows the reviewer to review it, it’s still
the property of the newspaper.” Cleland saw no problem with a blogger receiving
a book, provided there wasn’t a linked advertisement to buy the book
and that the blogger did not keep the book after he had finished
reviewing it. Keeping the book would, from Cleland’s standpoint, count
as “compensation” and require a disclosure– but there would be no such disclosure required if the blogger took the item and sold it for cash or store credit? Huh? (Are they trying to put the Strand out of business?)

This may accelerate another trend I came across recently: I understand that at least one major website has cut their book reviews back from twice a week to twice a month– and this was before the announcement of these guidelines, so maybe it will just be easier to cut reviews altogether. But apparently, it’ll be fine for them to keep promoting their own product relentlessly, and will presumably do so.

Here’s a tip that you may rarely need, but when you do, hoooo boy.

Let’s say you’ve been flatting a page for coloring, or you’ve sent it out to be flatted. The page comes back, and it looks decent– except when you go to select an area, you discover that the page was created with antialiasing on, which makes it impossible to make a decent selection for further rendering. How do you get the page un-antialiased, without redoing the entire page?

Here’s how.

First, you’re going to need to the BPelt Flatten plugin for Photoshop. (You may find it and Multifill useful for other flatting jobs as well.)

1. Duplicate the color layer.
2. Apply Filter -> Stylize -> Find Edges
3. Apply Image -> Adjustments -> Threshold at 255.
4. Set layer to multiply and merge down.
5. Apply Filter -> bPelt -> Flatten.

That’s it. You’ll get an un-antialiased image. Zooming in, you’ll go from this:

to this:

No, really. The energy level here is amazing.

We’ll have more for you later, but man, I am impressed by the reaction.

Just in from the AP:

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan authorities plan to impose fines on cable television companies that refuse to stop airing the animated television series “Family Guy.”

Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami says the program should be pulled from the airwaves because it promotes the use of marijuana.

He said Thursday that cable networks that broadcast “Family Guy” would be fined by Venezuela’s telecommunications regulator if they refuse to dump the program.

And you all know what the folks at Family Guy think about that sort of thing, right?

You don’t? Maestro, take it away…

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the episode in question.

Jesse Ventura was elected governor, so why couldn’t a costumed mystery man serve in the U.S. Senate?

Paul Kirk, the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s temporary replacement, shares a name but (probably) not the predilection for vigilante crime-fighting, with Manhunter, a DC character with an interesting history. 

In the comics, Paul Kirk used decides to become a crimefighter when his friend, Empire City
police inspector Donovan, was murdered by the supervillain known as the
Buzzard. He wore a superhero-like red costume with a blue mask. While
he had no superpowers, he was an above average athlete and possessed
superior tracking skills. Later, he went off to become a big-game hunter, but was killed by an elephant, then brought back to life by a secret society intent on ruling the world (insert obligatory Obama/ACORN reference here) and set up to lead an army of clones of him, but he rebelled and brought down the Council in a story chronicled by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson.

That doesn’t seem to describe the real-world Paul Kirk, but who knows? He could be a man of hidden talents.

Or it could be yet another one of those Paul Kirk clones running around…