Many Eyes on 1979

Credit where credit is due?

Question of the day here at Y: how to go about crediting a photo-illustration created in-house by combining two photos found at Flickr and used under the terms of a Creative Commons license? And then, further down the rabbit hole, should Y state some sort of open source use policy in effect for the image that results? (Here's a reference for how we might want to answer that question at Digital Inspiration). Or just post it to a Y account at Flickr?

At any rate, I went looking for some best practice... and I found Lawrence Lessig (which reminds me to add him to my list of books I want to read), quoted below in the weeds. I also consulted the New York Times for style of credit line (see example).

Finally, here's my suggestion for the credit line of the above described image:

Photomontage created from images obtained from Flickr (window and flower) through Creative Commons license.

For further exploration (yes, yes the weeds), here's a chunk (do I cite it some special way, or just provide this link?) from a November 2007 online article in Newsweek

a discussion has been underway for the better part of a year now. The Free Software Foundation, which maintains Wikipedia's GNU license, is teaming up with a popular rival licensing movement called Creative Commons to create an interoperable open source standard. "This has been my secret obsession and work for the last four years," says Lawrence Lessig, a Creative Commons founder and Stanford University law professor. "Make the legal issues totally invisible to the average user who is trying to use free culture in a way that is responsible and trustable." By making the two licenses interoperable, for example, users will be able to integrate text, photographs and music samples from Wikipedia with Creative Commons-licensed content on Flickr or jamendo. Posting, reprinting, sharing and otherwise licensing such material would simply require attribution (and not the actual clunky text of the license).

These may seem minuscule developments in the arcane world of open source content, but consider the The Public Library of Science, a striking counterexample to Wiley in that it publishes a group of science and medical journals online for free. Just last week PLoS published findings about fossils of a 110 million-year-old dinosaur that has come to be known as the Mesozoic Cow. The Creative Commons license the paper is published under permits basically any use (commercial as well as noncommercial) so long as attribution is given. The trend here, says Lessig, who sits on the PLoS board of directors, is that more and more important areas of copyrighted works—science, education, all amateur creativity, some professional—are moving toward a freer licensing system.

And what's this Public Library of Science? Now I have to go look into that, too...

Using IM and Skype on the job

Read an interesting account of how one new media company goes about it's day-to-day business using the latest web tech to "get it done" -- check this out:

From a larger discussion about web-enabled workflow:

If you want to understand what it's like to work at TPM, spend a couple days with your ten smartest friends and constantly IM with them. Set up IM windows for multi-person conversation, and break out those discussions with individual participants. And make the substance of those conversations deep-in-the-weeds investigative journalism. Make sure you don't often go more than, say, two minutes without contributing to the discussion. And see if you can avoid being overwhelmed.

Remember this, too!

And I want to read that book, flowing again through my slipstream wrt MyBoFISA this morning:

Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky
It's billed as a guide to organizing without organizations -- yes!

So order it at amazon or go get it in person at B&N - do it this weekend, self!

PS> Another book I should also pick up (yesterday was the 2nd time I wrote it down at Susan's suggestion):

The Report Card, by Andrew Clement
From an online review: "The author is straightforwardly raising an issue of great importance to children -- the use and misuse of grades and testing in school. But the way his main character goes about it is questionable at best, raising even more issues -- giftedness, protest, rebellion, and achievement."

A school-wide read? Perhaps!

PPS> Oh, yeah -- Lawrence Lessig's book, too:

The Future of Ideas
"Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed." YIKES!

Crossposting: MyBo FISA group touches on intersection of web dev and governance

So I want this item to appear in both my (current) blogs -- the Woodbridge Dems and the Lil' Ol' Blog. I've been following this MyBoFISA thing as it develops and I'm quite keen to examine how it touches on these intersections. And come to think of it, very much on the topic of my (not so current) GovTV blog, too.

So here is a key quote from the techPres write-up this morning (thanks Twitteriffic for pulling my attention to Micah's post the second he made it!), and then I will pontificate at my other two blogs (and come back here to provide links... soonest):

Zephyr Teachout has made the point here at techPresident that none of the campaigns have used the web, yet, to share power with their supporters--the most they've been willing to do is share tasks (like phonebanking or door-knocking). This FISA protest raises the question of power head-on: What were the arguments inside Senator Obama's policy circle over accepting or rejecting the congressional compromise bill? Who gets the candidate's ear? How did they get that access? The FISA fight also should force net-activists to ponder some questions too. How would you like to have input on the policy-making process? If you want a candidate to listen to you, what measure of standing should make your voice(s) relevant? Sheer numbers? Total donations? Your ability to make a lot of noise?

PS> So/then/also, maybe there is a better way to manage crossposting like this? If I figure that out, I will post it here on this blog, OK?

Other stray thoughts enter the slipstream

Along with cuts from Poetic Champions Compose, I've got whole bunches of ideas floating through my head today at work. Not least of which, of course, is why this place (the wider Y, not the smaller YSC) is so crazy intent on "cost recovery" that nothing can get done.

I'm about to give up on a request (a simple, easy, not the least bit out of the range of ordinary request) for the hi-res version of some pages of an InDesign file so I could create a blow-up reprint for framing here in our waiting room.

Should be no biggie; no can o' corn!

But no; lo, the cost recovery dragon breathes it's fierce ungainly breath:

...sending you a high res PDF of the file, it would be a $25 fee. Any additional design time would be billed at $125/hr.

OK. That's me complaining. Enough of that today.

I'm just going to grab text out of the lo-res pdf available online and toss it into a new layout of my own with the hi-res photos I have here already. Will that take me more than an hour? No. (Cost of my time, not to mention preserved sanity: Priceless!)

But in my alt world head I think

shoulda charged you for my hi-res photos when you were creating your original layout for this

Heeeeeeeeeeee!

Don't forget about Jing

This is the little ap I used to add content to my screencast.com account. I created a few pieces there, that I've just now figured out how to a) download, and b) share -- like so: