I found this Flash-based Flickr mashup. It works more like the old flicker map did. The nice thing is you can specify a tag and it will show all your photos for that tag. Here is my “remarkableohio” set all on one map.
TechCrunch has a story where copyright law has gotten out of hand.
A guy does a parody video using a Billy Joel tune. When I first saw the headline I thought the musician has ordered the take down because the music is protected by copyright.
That wasn’t the case. Instead, the photographer that took this picture complained that she was not paid for her work and so the video must be taken down.
This is one of those gray areas where the use of the picture could very well be used within the rights of fair use. Fair use does not require the permission of the copyright owner, and parody is one of the permitted uses. In the case of this video, the creator of the photo wanted attribution for the photo and didn’t get it in the video. Her feelings were hurt. Unfortunately, they weren’t protected by copyright law.
Last week I ran across this scanned copy of a detention notice for an unnamed student. According to the letter, the student was caught using “firefox.exe” and was given a detention because “firefox.exe” was not closed when the teacher spotted its use.
Today I found this response from the Principal (whose name is at the bottom of the detention letter). It seems that someone took a real detention slip and doctored it to create a hoax letter.
Since no names are mentioned in the hoax letter, it is hard to say if someone has been hurt by this. These actions do show the power of social networks and how school officials are going to have to respond to them… one way or another.
Not to be outdone by MIT, Yale has created a set of free online courses. The “Open Yale Courses” are seven introductory courses taught by distinguished professors. The topics are Astronomy, English, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology and Religious Studies.
In addition to the normal course materials, all classes are available in MP3 audio and Flash/Quicktime video. If you don’t want to watch the streaming video, all are available for download.
All the content for the courses is licensed under Creative Commons. Nice work Yale!
I use Flickr every day. It is one of those sites that has everything. I like to browser through the most interesting pictures, but find the 10-at-a-time interface too time consuming. FlickrLeech is a site that will show all 500 pictures on one page.
Retrievr lets you draw a picture in a “sketch” box and then do a search based on that shape. I can’t draw very well, but it is an interesting way to search.
http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/
Slightlyblue’s site lets you pick a background color and then searches Flickr based on that color.
If you need some Create Common licensed photos and don’t like the 10-at-a-time interface, here are two sites that let you search only the CC licensed content and view all of them on one page.
