Information AboutSpymac |
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Spymac is a Web Magazine with a community comprised largely of Apple Macintosh users. Providing news, reviews, features, message boards, email, web hosting, and image gallery, Spymac members can also host their own Blog , online Calendar and forum. Spymac was founded in late 2001 as a Macintosh enthusiast site, by Kevin April and Holger Ehlis, going by the member names "AtariST" and "Nostradamus". One of Spymac's early stories concerned the iWalk, a supposed Apple PDA that was to be released on October 23 , 2001 . The photographs and description were shown to be a Hoax , possibly based on the rumors generated by the IPod 's development (the iPod was unveiled on the iWalk's purported release date). Early in 2002 , Spymac reported on the upcoming release of a similar product, again called iWalk. This article, complete with video of the supposed device, was not conclusively debunked, but numerous criticisms of the video cast doubt on its authenticity. As Of 2006 , Apple has not produced a new PDA. While Spymac has claimed in both cases to be a victim of the hoaxes, many detractors have accused the site of faking the material itself. Spymac now provides paid and free Internet services which are listed below. Nearly one million members have joined the site, though it is unknown how many are currently active accounts. Spymac launched the Internet's first public 1 GB email service, Spymac Mail, in April of 2004. This announcement came days after Gmail 's heavily publicized Beta launch. For a while, Spymac also produced its own line of notebook cases, computer accessories and office furniture, which could be purchased via Spymac's Online Shop. PRODUCTS AND SERVICES Spymac - Spymac offers a group of free services available to all members, including 1 GB e-mail (no POP access), web hosting, iCal hosting, member profile, member forum, blog and photo sharing through the Spymac gallery. Gallery - An open-to-all-members image gallery at Spymac. The Gallery allows users to Upload their photographs and have them Rated by peers for whatever qualities the photos may possess. Spymac Club - Due to be released on September 1st 2005 but released in mid-November 2005, Club replaced Spymac's Wheel and MailPro services. Club aims to offer one of the web's easiest-to-use blogs, a homepage with a large amount of storage and much more. It includes Spymac's new suite of Internet-aware applications that allow access and control of Spymac features from a user's desktop. Spymac Hosting - Paid internet hosting that lets users host their site with the same technology and in the same location as Spymac.com. Defunct Services Spymac Wheel - A now defunct service, replaced by Club. Wheel included software for either Mac OS X or Windows users and included Spymac Mail Pro (3GB of email storage), iCal and Web page hosting and an application to upload to a user's 'Spydisk'. Spymac MailPro - Now defunct - replaced by Club. Members received an advertisement-free 3 GB e-mail account that included IMAP , POP and Web-mail access, desktop syncing, Spam and virus filters, and (in the US and Canada) cell-phone integration. Spymac Shop - No longer in use - An online shop providing a range of items, from clothing, notebook bags, and office furniture. THE APPLE COLLECTION The website http://www.theapplecollection.com is a part of the ''Spymac Network''. The Apple Collection looks through the internet and collects pictures which contain the Apple logo. It provides galleries of these images listed by category and many desktop pictures. In the past, the site has also taken pictures from Spymac galleries without the permission of the person who uploaded the work. As the Spymac galleries are not allowed to contain copyrighted content (it is against the terms of service and can result in being banned from the site; Spymac has stated that it has taken people to court regarding copyright infringement) it should be assumed that the content uploaded is original work. The owner of the Apple Collection, David Vincent, claims that he has an agreement with Spymac which allows him to take an image (or part of an image) from the Spymac galleries to display on his website. Spymac denies any such agreement exists. CONTESTS Spymac regularly has contests and giveaways involving prizes. The website has given away IPods , iPod minis, Spymac Sunglasses, Wheel subscriptions and many other items to its community. However, some prizes are open to everyone - even if they are not a member of the community. SPYMAC WOS As of Friday April 7th, 2006, Spymac has announced its 3rd version of the WOS. The WOS's 3rd iteration comes on the heels of the 2nd; interestingly, the 2nd WOS was never fully operational since its September launch due to unforeseen technical difficulties.. WOS Version Numbering – The version numbering of the Spymac WebOS is a bit misleading. While Spymac is currently in version 5 of the WebOS, there were no versions 1 and 2. Spymac created the term "WebOS" in the third version of the site. Thus, the versioning started at 3. Overview – Spymac is powered by an integrated collection of Applications (developed in-house) that together form "Spymac WOS". The WOS has been updated three major times since its creation. The former update - Spymac 4 - is still in the stages of being developed and uploaded to the site, and has suffered from several setbacks. Several of Spymac's features are protected in a patent, currently pending, filed by Mr. Holger Ehlis and Kevin April. Smart Time Sensitivity – The WOS determines time-appropriate events, images, text, and everything in between by automatically syncing with each visitor's system clock. The login page features more than 24 variations of lighting to correspond with each hour of the day; the primary Navigational System darkens and changes as night falls; and system-messages adapt to the individual user's time. Though the features add to the eye-candy of the overall website, their contribution in function is completely aesthetic and redundant. Image Manipulation – Images uploaded to Spymac are resized, rotated, masked and framed based on the characteristics of each individual image, advanced Algorithms and a touch of random behaviour. Thumbnail creation in the Gallery, Auction items and even user Avatars are all handled in the same fashion, providing unique images to all areas of the site. These systems are often unavailable or buggy. Spymac blames these issues on fiber channel hardware installed shortly before Spymac 4's release. Event Management And Notification – When new emails and personal messages are sent to members, notification is provided by a number appearing (the relevant number of messages) in the user's site navigation bar. XML Output – (Despite claims, this been implemented on very few areas.) All dynamic content has a dedicated XML Stream , making integration with RSS readers, widgets and other Web technology seamless. Example streams include Forum posts (never implemented), Gallery comments (never implemented) and daily news. Alliance System – Spymac's friend manager allows members to control private images, build Alliance s and communicate secretly using Invisible Ink technology. 4 Unleashed – Two months after the promised release of Spymac 4, the Gallery section became operational, but many new features of Spymac 4 and Spymac Club appeared to be problematic and some were never released. Spymac 4 was abandoned as they didn't complete it with all the promised features, it was then released as Spymac V with the promised features COMMENTS & CRITICISMS The Spymac website, Spymac mail and almost all other features had been experiencing excessive amounts of downtime since Spymac announced the long transition to version 4. This caused many members (especially paying members) a lot of frustration. This problem was unresolved and ongoing from September 1, 2005 when version 4 was launched up until the Spymac website went down unannounced on 7th April, being replaced with an advertisement for Spymac V, the fifth incarnation of the website. Some prizes have been offered but not received. One member had to wait over ten months (since 29th December 2004) for a promised prize, and - despite numerous emails and discussions with site staff - he only received one issue of the "years subscription to a magazine" he actually won. {Link without Title} {Link without Title} Spymac's explanation is that the magazine in question was delayed with it's first issue, and that it is published in the US while the prize winner lives in the UK; however it is clear that Spymac failed to make sure this prize was delivered to the recipient, as air mail is quite obviously not that slow, and the first issue can hardly be delayed by more than two months. Judy Westcott, a contributing writer for Spymac, wrote an article in which she missed linking in the story, a link which provided the original information being discussed in the article. An apology by Westcott was issued for the omission of the link to the original story, and the omission was corrected. While some individuals had asserted the article was plagiarized, the issue of the missing link was quickly resolved when it was discovered and the story corrected within a 24 hour time period. Both articles contained the sentence: ''"HP will also provide Lucasfilm its high-end StorageWorks xp12000 disk array, which boasts 35 terabytes (define) of storage capacity."'' The word "(define)" was a hyperlink on the Internet News site (which explained the word "terabytes"), which as a result of Westcott's copy and pasting, made no sense in the Spymac version of the article. The plagiarism was pointed out by Spymac member "mduell". Spymac article Internet News article Throughout January 2006, Spymac faced a lot of criticisms. Many members, even a few devoted ones that have been there for a while, left the community. On January 27th, 2006, moderators adbmice, derigueurmortis, deurser01, Edg, jeffaarontaylor, kittykat84, RedRock, samh004 and Whosawhatsis sent Spymac a letter of resignation . In brief, they felt that Spymac seemed to care less about the community and more about themselves as a corporation. They disliked that Spymac had taken the responsibilities of suspending and banning members out of the hands of moderators and given them to Spymac Tech Support team, whose time could have been better spent fixing problems and whom they considered to be grossly incompetent and unqualified for these duties. Deurser01 has since rejoined the team. On January 30, 2006, Spymac ceased POP services to all free accounts, thus cutting off one of the service's major appeals. Spymac has also started inserting text-based ads throughout the site, including user-submitted posts. This has angered many members, arguing that Spymac is haphazardly using their words without consent to endorse a product that the writer may not endorse. As of mid-February, the text-based advertisements have reportedly been restricted to the news articles and are no longer supposed to appear in members' posts or Gallery comments. FTP access to Spymac for free members was also restricted permanantly (in Spymac 3 paid members were able to use a Web-based FTP system, or WebDAV.) On Friday April 7, 2006 ''the Spymac site went down without any warning given to either their free or paying customers.'' Spymac replaced it's website with an advertisement for '''Spymac V''' due to be released sometime in ''April 2006'' (along with a link to their webmail and some wallpapers ). Spymac V went live on ''April 14, 2006'' looking strikingly similar to version 4, apart from a handful of new features (mostly planned, but not yet fully functional) and an increase in the amount of advertisements for non-paying members. The amount of bugs and non-functionality in version V has led many members to make comments on the Spymac forums claiming that they have rushed out yet another version of their website before it had been finished or tested sufficiantly (as they did previously with version 4). It is uncertain whether Spymac will have a fully functioning version of their website or whether Spymac V will continue along the same vein as the troubled Spymac 4. In response to the frustration over unkept promises and spotty accessibility, AtariST promised Club subscriptions would be extended for a year. Dozens of sites, a few of which are listed in the External Links section of this article, have been formed by members wishing to leave Spymac in an attempt to re-invent the sense of community that Spymac once possessed before it became the more commercially orientated venture that many believe it to be today. These sites are often made up of disenfranchised members of the Spymac community or Spymac members who decided to move on to pastures new when Spymac was experiencing one of it's more excessive amounts of downtime. Whilst some intend to imitate 'old Spymac', many others have branched out to become unique communities in their own right. EXTERNAL LINKS
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