Today, Creative Commons, in collaboration with Nike and Best Buy, announces a new project – GreenXchange – exploring how the digital commons can help holders of patents collaborate for sustainability. GreenXchange will be hosted inside the Science Commons wing of CC. GreenXchange draws on the experience of Creative Commons in creating “some rights reserved” regimes…

Miro, the free and open source video player launched their 2.0 version today. The update has tons of new features that will help you explore video on the web, including YouTube HD, Hulu and the like. Dean writes on the Miro blog about the new chrome on 2.0: A beautiful, all-new widget based interface Browse…

by the UNESCO Open Educational Resources Community today. For those of you who don’t know, the UNESCO OER Community is an international online community “[connecting] over 700 individuals in 105 countries to share information and discuss issues surrounding the production and use of Open Educational Resources – web-based materials offered freely and openly for use…

Creative Commons Salons in NYC have been building momentum and it is now time for our February salon. Come out to have some beers with the CC community (don’t worry, we’ll open it up early this time) watch some cool presentations, and meet some new faces in the free culture space. Since we’ve outgrown our…

We mentioned late last year that Jeremy Keith’s CC BY licensed photo was used in the film Iron Man. While that was particularly notable, Jeremy is a prolific user of CC licenses for his photos and other materials, garnering many reuses. A graphic design student asked him a series of 15 questions about CC. He…

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick gave a great case study lecture on Nine Inch Nails’ music business successes at MidemNet last month. He describes the “formula” as: Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$) Toward the end of the video he explains CwF also means “Compete with Free” and RtB…

Following up the success of Wikis Take Manhattan, a new project, Wikipedia Loves Art is launching this weekend: Wikipedia Loves Art is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009.…

More than a year ago, Free Culture advocate Anas Tawileh analyzed the state of Arabic content online. His portal Arab Commons has grown modestly but steadily since its launch in 2007, offering 11 full textbooks in Arabic, plus magazines, podcasts, poetry collections, and a number of art works — all within a few months. For…

If you’re like me, you probably never even heard of the TED conference until TED Talks launched online (in April of 2007). TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and their talks are given annually at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA. 50 speakers give “talks” or 18 minute speeches about a variety of issues,…

We’re at a very exciting time in the life of CC. We had a great year last year, and as you’ll read in this newsletter, CC is poised for even more growth and success in 2009 — in the realms of education, science, culture, internationally, and more. February also marks the one-year anniversary since the…