As anyone who’s looked at Mac OS X lately knows, one of the major new features in 10.4 is Spotlight, which allows you to search files on your computer based on specific bits of metadata. The great thing about Spotlight is that it goes beyond the traditional filename, changed date search and allows you to…
It was brought to my attention recently that mozCC didn’t properly display the metadata for some pages, including (embarassingly enough) those at ccMixter. So after an appropriate interval of hacking, swearing and coding, I present mozCC 1.1. This is a bug fix release, and everyone is encouraged to upgrade. If you’re using Firefox, the update…
Inkscape is a new open source vector graphics editor, specializing in the SVG format. In the past, vector illustration applications have been limited to a few expensive choices, so it’s great to see an open source project tackle an open format. As an added bonus, Inkscape even supports our metadata and does fine opening up…
An interesting wiki has been set up by the Social Science Research Council, inviting collaboration on a real-time history and analysis of the politics of open source adoption (POSA). By ‘politics of adoption’ the SSRC seeks to step back from the task of explaining or justifying Free and/or Open Source Software (F/OSS) in order to…
Educar, one of the largest Spanish-language online communities, has recently adopted a Creative Commons license. Educar hosts education-related content and communities around it.
Week before last, Creative Commons South Africa officially launched at the Commons-Sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons conference in Johannesburgh. The launch event and conference, primarily organized by Heather Ford, South Africa Project Lead, and Andrew Rens, South Africa Legal Lead, was nothing short of spectacular. The launch event on the night preceeding the…
A little late on the blogging (due to travel), but still worth reporting on: A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Free Culture Phase 2 conference. The conference was organized by Malkia Lydia and Colin Mutchler (father of Creative Commons’ theme song My Life and Free Culture Tour), and sponsored by…
Science Commons – a new project of Creative Commons that works to encourage sharing of scientific and academic knowledge – has launched an Open Access Law Program. The Program is designed to make legal scholarship “open access,” that is freely available online to everyone, without undue copyright and licensing restrictions. The Program involves an Open…
Jason Scott has created a five plus hour documentary series on Bulletin Board Systems. Prior to the commercial Internet local BBSes were “the net” for anyone without an Internet connection, typically only provided by major universities and research institutions. In short, BBSes are where many long time net denizens cut their electronic media teeth (including…
The comments period announced here for the minor tweak to the attribution language across all of our core licenses proposed for version 2.5 is drawing to a close. As befits a minor tweak, there has not been a tremendous amount of criticism or issues raised with the revised suggested language. Some important comments, however, raised…