An Honor from Public Knowledge

Other news I’ve been remiss in not posting until now: I’ve been chosen to receive an IP3 Award from Public Knowledge!

Awards are given to individuals who over the past year (or over the course of their careers) who have advanced the public interest in one of the three areas of “IP” –Intellectual Property, Information Policy and Internet Protocol. The awards will be presented at a ceremony Oct. 13 in Washington, D.C.

My stellar fellow awardees include Pamela Samuelson, Susan Crawford, Michael Geist. I’m really honored; this isn’t for Sita Sings the Blues (except maybe for how I released it), it’s for my Free Culture advocacy.

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The Betty Boop Festival

Boy have I been remiss in posting news. First item: I spent last weekend in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, attending the Betty Boop Festival.

There I learned about the fascinating subculture of Betty Boop collectors. Betty was big in Japan in the 1930’s – I had no idea. I wish there were pictures of Japanese Betty collectibles online I could share with you, but there aren’t; maybe Betty collectors are all cagey due to the intense licensing restrictions that surround the character.

I also learned more about animation legend Grim Natwick, who grew up in Wisconsin Rapids before moving to LA and changing cultural history.

I met a lot of people including Madison filmmaker Robert Lughai, who blogged this Boop Festival report with photos. I also met the venerable Maggie Thompson of the venerable Comic Buyer’s Guide, who shares her Boop Festival report.

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Embeddably Yours

Huge thanks to Brett Thompson for adding embed code to Mimi & Eunice!  Now they’re easy to share by anyone. Just click “embed this comic,” copy the code that pops up, and paste it in your blog or web page. Use ’em to illustrate your own articles! Insert ’em into your arguments! Share ’em with your friends! Go forth and multiply Mimi & Eunice!

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Mimi and Eunice: the challenge continues

So I missed my whole trip to California due to a badly-timed cold. Which means I have lots of time on my hands to bang my head into the wall that is the Mimi & Eunice web site.

I hired a developer who started building a beautiful new system in Ruby on Rails, only to discover that my web host, Media Temple, has a relatively wonky and outdated Ruby setup. That led the site to disappear for a few days. It’s potentially a really nice system (though it still has some kinks in it), but I may have to switch web hosts if I want to rely on it.

So I started uploading the strips in plain old WordPress, which is excellent in all ways but one some: the images don’t show up in all RSS feeders, they don’t show up in Facebook, and I can’t find a way to generate simple embed code for them. What am I talking about? Behold what I want, as shown on the fine comics site qwantz:

See that code it automatically generates that lets you embed any comic? I spent a day searching for a wordpress plugin that does that, and still can’t find one. Help?

And I don’t know why my Mimi & Eunice comics don’t show up in the RSS Feed in Firefox, but they do in other browsers. I already did this, and installed the AbsoluteRSS plugin. But I still can’t see the images in Firefox. Help?

I just want Mimi & Eunice to be as easily shared as possible. Help appreciated, but please don’t suggest ComicPress. Been there, done that, it has a lot of problems. Also my budget is exhausted of $$ to pay for consultants, since the Ruby on Rails project consumed it all. The nice thing about the simple WordPress setup is that each comic displays at a small size (640 pixels wide) but links to a high-res (2400 pixels wide) image suitable for printing. That’s important to me, because I want to encourage all kinds of sharing, including paper publishing. The current site has all the features I want except image embedding. Please tell me there’s a solution. Thanks. I love you.

Update: Brett Thompson has made an embed code generator for Mimi & Eunice! It looks big and text-y today but Brett says he will spruce up its appearance tomorrow. But you can start embedding Mimi & Eunice comics RIGHT NOW!

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