Creative Commons posts

Filed under: Internet, Kids, Open Source

The Kids Open Dictionary Builder: Do they define better than they punctuate?

by Kristin Shoemaker Aug 7th 2008

Vieux Bandit's bookshelves with lots of books. Click to Flickr

Lower your geek radar detector. You got me. I am a tech blogger. I also have a degree in library science. Guilty as charged, just put me on a cell block with wireless and a supply of graphic novels.

I am a librarian who is really okay with wikis. Would I accept every entry in one as gospel? No, but questioning is good in print, too. I believe wikis are, by and large, a decent starting point for further research, like any encyclopedia. If you're writing your doctoral thesis using only wikis, we seriously need to talk. Now.

Wikis, online open encyclopedias, I can deal with. The Kids Open Dictionary Builder makes me fear the future, and not because of all the talking monkeys and flying robots, either. Yes, I said The Kids Open Dictionary Builder, and I typed it just as the name appears on the Creative Commons blog. The blogger there typed it as it appears on the project's home page. Grammatical structure is not the writing skill that comes to me most naturally, but, guys, when you're educators pushing an open dictionary, it is comforting to see the name punctuated correctly.

Tags: book, creative commons, CreativeCommons, dictionary, Kids Open Dictionary, KidsOpenDictionary, library, open access, OpenAccess, wiki

Filed under: News, Open Source

Lessig for Congress - wishful thinking?

by Dolores Parker Feb 15th 2008

With Congressman Tom Lantos' recent death, some attention has been given to the idea of Lawrence Lessig, running for the vacant Silicon Valley seat in a special election in June. The idea is purely speculative at this point, however, there are some signs that a bid could be in the works.

For one thing, Facebook has a new group, "Draft Lessig for Congress," with ~~425~~ 682 members at the time of this writing. Another interesting development is Lessig's purchase of domain name change-congress.com. He is also on record endorsing Barack Obama, the presidential candidate whose message of change has undeniable momentum. Additionally, in his blog he is posting oblique references to the meaning of "real" change.

Clearly, the idea of change is one Mr. Lessig ideally suited for and whether the tea leaves we're sifting through here indicate he's going to run for Congress is wishful thinking or quite possibly the real thing, only time will tell.

Tags: change-congress.com, Creative Commons, CreativeCommons, Draft Lessig for Congress, DraftLessigForCongress, Free culture, FreeCulture, Lawrence Lessig, LawrenceLessig, open source, OpenSource

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Jamendo: Download and Share Music Legally

by Simon Kerbel Dec 22nd 2007

Who likes music by a wide variety of up and coming artists in many differing and unique genres? Who would like to be able to legally download that music to your computer and portable device? Who thought Spiderman 3 was the best of the trilogy?

If you answered in the affirmative to all three of those questions, we're afraid there's no hope for you, my friend. If you said yes to the above two, then read on!

Jamendo is one of the hottest places to legally download music, and they've just released a refreshed website. Updates include direct music downloads in http, more intuitive navigation, easier saving of tracks, albums, and playlists, and more.

All of the music on Jamendo is licensed by the Creative Commons license, meaning you can download, listen, burn, share, and talk about the songs as much as your heart desires. And though all the music is free, you can donate to the bands who have given you particular joy or satisfaction. Jamendo even shares 50% of its advertising revenue with artists who choose the "Revenue Sharing" program.

Jamendo also has a great community aspect; you can build customized playlists and share them with your friends and family.

Jamendo is currently running a contest in celebration of the release of their new version. The top 5 user playlists, as voted on by the users, will receive a free iPod Nano.

How sweet is that?

You can listen to free music, share what you like with your friends, and maybe win an iPod Nano. That's not just having your cake and eating it too. That's mixing the dough, putting it in the oven, frosting it, cutting it into pieces, and eating more than your fair share, all with a glass of ice cold milk.

So get cracking. Register for Jamendo if you haven't already and broaden those horizons.

Tags: contest, creative commons, CreativeCommons, free, iPod, iPod Nano, IpodNano, Jamendo, mp3, music

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Beta, Search, web 2.0

Download Squad's Invite-a-palooza: Day 8

by Lisa Hoover Aug 2nd 2007

Eight days into our Invite-a-palooza, we want to give a shout out to all readers who have taken the time to check out all the neat sites we've featured. We're having a great time giving out invitations, and we're not done yet.

Freebase, a collective knowledge database, is a terrific twist on information Web sites like Wikipedia. The creators of Freebase describe it as an "almanac" that sorts and organizes information so it is easily searched by people and software. Once it's opened to the public, users will be able to structure, contribute, search, and organize data for themselves. Since all the data in Freebase is licensed Creative Commons Attribution, users can also copy data for their own use as long as it's linked back to Freebase.

Though the site it still closed to the public, we have some invitations that will let you get in the door early. If you're among first 100 people to leave us a note in the comment section, we'll send one your way (make sure to activate it if you get an email confirmation). If you don't get in under the wire today, be sure to check back to see who's featured next.

If you know of a site you'd like us to consider for the Invite-a-palooza, drop us a note.

UPDATE: We've given away all 100 invitations for today's featured site but check back tomorrrow to see who's up next!

Tags: creative commons, database, freebase, invite-a-palooza, wikipedia

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, Web services, Social Software

Ficlets remixes fiction in Web 2.0 style

by Grant Robertson Mar 14th 2007

Ficlets spills some Web 2.0-coolness into a cup of collaborative fiction. Users submit super-short fiction stories -- really short. No, like really, incredibly short. All the fiction you can squeeze into 1024 characters short. -- which are then available for others to build upon with "sequels" (or build up to with prequels). They even provide you with inspiration for your stories, in the form of photos, themes, suggested beginnings and endings, and of course other ficlets.

All the Ficlets are licensed under the Creative Commons, giving the content a solid foundation for everyone to play fair and share upon. It's fun, creative and mildly addictive if you're into writing.

[via Boing Boing]

Tags: collaboration, collaborative tools, CollaborativeTools, creative commons, CreativeCommons, ficlets, socila writing, SocilaWriting, writing

Filed under: Text, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Podcasting, Open Source, Unix

Creative Commons version 3.0 has arrived

by Chris Brentano Mar 3rd 2007

Last week the folks over at Creative Commons released version 3.0 of their licensing suite for user-generated content. The bulk of the changes center around clarifying the existing licenses, and addressing the growing internationalization of Creative Commons content. With 3.0 also comes a compatibility structure that will allow them to identify and certify other licenses as CC BY-SA (Attribution Share Alike) compatible. They have also attempted to address concerns voiced by Debian and MIT.

Since the beginning of the Creative Commons in 2002, the language of the licenses had always been based around US copyright law and "generic" in nature because it was not specific to any particular country's laws. So when it came to applying CC licenses to works from other countries, the licenses had to be "ported" to conform to the law of those countries. In fact, the core license has been ported to 30 other countries, or "jurisdictions", to date. To this end, CC have spun the old "generic" core license into two parts: "Unported" (which is based around the language of international intellectual property treaties.) and a separate United States specific license.

If you are already licensing your content under a CC license, you may want to take a look at the updated licenses. But if you haven't taken a detailed look into the Creative Commons yet, there's no time like the present.

Tags: cc, copyright, creative commons, CreativeCommons, debian, intellectual property, mit

Filed under: Design, Internet, Design Tips

CSS Tinderbox: open source web design - DLS Design Tip

by David Chartier Feb 27th 2007

Today's Design Tip, the second in a recently re-launched series, brings some open source layouts to your web design tool box. The CSS Tinderbox features some Creative Commons licensed basic layouts that can easily lay the foundation for many of your design projects. All the layouts have previews available, and the site is of course collecting examples of their layouts being used in live projects.

A final bonus of these layouts is the leniency of the Creative Commons license: you don't necessarily need to credit CSS Tinderbox when using one of their layouts, though they request one when submitting your designs to any kind of design community sites or contests.

Thanks Abhijeet!

Tags: creative commons, CreativeCommons, css, css tinderbox, CssTinderbox, design, free, layouts, web design, WebDesign

Filed under: Internet, News, Web services, Google

Google's donation to CC is more than money

by Ryan Carter Nov 5th 2006

Google just donated $30,000 to the Creative Commons. The place that makes created works "copyrighted" for lack of a better word is apparently in Google's list as a benefactee. You may have heard the buzz around the web that is was not a big deal for Google to drop $30,000 to support CC. Heck, I wish they would donate 30 G's to me, I already sing their praises. I ask you: if Google's money meant nothing, as the ad-hoc consensus sees it, then what of it? Why did Google do it? I mean, Google has so much money, dropping $30K is like buying a box of crackers (sorry, got sick of the "drop in a bucket" cliche). In my mind (yes, a bit crazy, I know) it is merely a vote of confidence for the work of the chartiable CC. This doesn't surprise me too much, since Google has been at least sympathetic to the open-source camp. I don't for a minute simply dismiss the idea that Google most likely has ulterior motives, because they could, but sometimes companies do nice things for others. Which one is it? You decide, but the point is that Google recognizes the significance of Creative Commons. I wish more companies, people, and segments of the web did too. The blogosphere at least has it right.

Tags: creative commons, CreativeCommons, google

Filed under: Business, Google

Google's creative donation

by Chris Gilmer Nov 2nd 2006

Google is full of cash that they have to offload. Perhaps just for tax purposes, but also just to be good and give back to the community that gave them so much. What better place to give a nice wad of cash to then the Creative Commons (CC) during their annual fundraising campaign? Creative Commons is a little non-profit organization that helps creators of original content retains their licensing rights, and copyright protection, all the while permitting free use of their materials within certain guidelines. Creative Commons has also recently launched licensing for audio and video materials, giving protection on a whole other level. Google's $30,000 donation to CC was an extremely gracious gesture, again, showing that they do care about content.

Tags: cash, cc, creative commons, CreativeCommons, donation, google, tax

Filed under: Audio, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Podcasting, Freeware, Social Software

Britney: Social music, not Spears

by Ryan Carter Oct 13th 2006

Looking for music that is licensed for consumption, are you? Well, today you get "Lucky." How about Creative Commons-licensed, to be more specific? Our own "Toxic" Grant Robertson has found "Britney" to help you socially find and share your favorite CC-music (and other free-to-use licenses) and use it for whatever non-commercial means your music-loving heart desires. Britney is a digg-like site for finding the best that free-to-use music has to offer. Great for podcasting or blogging, batteries not included. As Grant says in his post at the Digital Music Weblog, this website is great with social music sharing, but not great for cranking out kiddos for K-fed, in case you were wondering.

Tags: britney, creative commons, CreativeCommons, free-to-use, music, social

Filed under: Design, Internet, Photo, Web services

Yotophoto: Find free photos by color

by Amber Rhea Sep 29th 2006

Yotophoto is a search engine specifically for free-to-use images. Most of the images it indexes have been released under Creative Commons, GNU FDL, or similar licenses, and a smaller percentage are in the public domain. This means you can use any images indexed by Yotophoto without feeling subversive. And if you don't want to go to the trouble of visiting the Yotophoto web site, there's a search plug-in available for Firefox.

Now, are you ready for the really cool part? Yotophoto allows you to search by color. Need an image that matches your site's color scheme? Either use the Javascript color picker to choose from a palette of over 16 million colors, or enter a 6-digit hex code. Yotophoto will find images containing the color you specified. For example, here's a selection of images that match Yotophoto's logo.

Tags: color, Creative Commons, CreativeCommons, Firefox, images, photo search, PhotoSearch, public domain, PublicDomain, search engine, SearchEngine, stock photos, StockPhotos, Yotophoto

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Apple, Microsoft, Open Source

Interview with DefectiveByDesign on TDMW

by Grant Robertson Aug 2nd 2006

DefectiveByDesign protests at the Apple Store in Boston, MA

The Haz-Mat suited activists of DefectiveByDesign gained quite a bit of exposure when they waltzed into Apple stores across the country carrying signs and informing customers about the rights they give up when buying DRM controlled music from the iTunes Music Store.

Our sister site, The Digital Music Weblog (she prefers to be called TDMW for short) caught up with the crafty folks at DefectiveByDesign for an interview about Digital Rights Management. DefectiveByDesign is an offshoot of the Free Software Foundation, the non-profit organization that maintains and defends the GNU General Public License, better known for providing the legal framework under which the myriad Linux distributions exist.

If you have any concerns about your rights in a digitally encoded future, you should read this interview. The folks at DefectiveByDesign aren't alone when they predict a bleak digital landscape ahead, where the content providers and device manufacturers are able to lock you in, and keep you from buying competing products by holding your media hostage.

Tags: anti-DRM, Apple, Creative Commons, CreativeCommons, Defective By Design, DefectiveByDesign, DRM, FairPlay, Free Software Foundation, FreeSoftwareFoundation, FSF, GNU, Lawrence Lessig, LawrenceLessig, Microsoft, PlaysForSure, Richard Stallman, RichardStallman

Filed under: Microsoft

Microsoft throws Creative Commons a $25,000 bone

by Jordan Running Jan 3rd 2006

Over on his blog Lawrence Lessig, chairman of the Creative Commons board of directors, writes, "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." The check, which arrived on December 30, put the organization well over their $225,000 fundraising goal for 2005. Though $25,000 is pocket change to Microsoft, it's still an interesting move. Is it truly a gesture of good will, or is Redmond trying to gain influence with Creative Commons?

Tags: creative commons, CreativeCommons, donation, fund drive, fundraiser, microsoft

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