So . . . I'm taking the Power Searching with Google certificate course. Hoping to learn a few tricks and really hoping to pick up a better vocabulary and teaching method to describe the tricks I already know and use. Right out of the shoot, in lesson one, I am very excited about the video by Matt Cutts, engineer in the quality group at Google, who describes how spiders and page ranking lead to the results we see.
It is an "unlisted video" on YouTube, and as such, am not sure if they will let me re-post, but until they tell me I can't, hope it will stay here for my future reference as a teacher and dedicated Google searcher. I hope it is helpful to others as well!
Showing posts with label website design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label website design. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Share the message
In my first free moments I have pursued my newfound interest in shared creativity allowed through Creative Commons licensing of copyrighted works. According to current US law, as soon as we create it in a tangible form, it is © copyrighted. I don't "own" my ideas, but I do "own" the text on this page. As of today, however, I am sharing this text with you, any of you who read it and may find use for it (sorry it is not more useful ☺ )
Through Creative Commons, by answering four or five multiple choice questions and copying and pasting a small bit of HTML code, created specifically for me, what's mine is yours. You may use it as long as -- you give me credit for it, -- you do not use it to make a profit, and -- you share alike with others. Check out my new CC License:
This work by Greg Lloyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
"Why can't we all just get along," (Rodney King) comes to mind. I fully support Ralph Clevenger's right to earn a living from his beautiful portrayal of the underwater portion of an iceberg. I support musicians and writers and perhaps even someday myself in pursuit of profit from publication. But for those of us who are not making a living from our work, why not allow others to enjoy the use of your efforts in exchange for the right to enjoy theirs when you need to?
It is simple and painless! You can go directly to the licensing page or check out the whole Website at CreativeCommons.org. Licensing is free and easy. Embedding license code into your website is as easy as embedding a video. Join the movement!!!!
This clip, also from Creative Commons, called "A Shared Culture," is very well produced and worth watching!
Through Creative Commons, by answering four or five multiple choice questions and copying and pasting a small bit of HTML code, created specifically for me, what's mine is yours. You may use it as long as -- you give me credit for it, -- you do not use it to make a profit, and -- you share alike with others. Check out my new CC License:
This work by Greg Lloyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
"Why can't we all just get along," (Rodney King) comes to mind. I fully support Ralph Clevenger's right to earn a living from his beautiful portrayal of the underwater portion of an iceberg. I support musicians and writers and perhaps even someday myself in pursuit of profit from publication. But for those of us who are not making a living from our work, why not allow others to enjoy the use of your efforts in exchange for the right to enjoy theirs when you need to?
It is simple and painless! You can go directly to the licensing page or check out the whole Website at CreativeCommons.org. Licensing is free and easy. Embedding license code into your website is as easy as embedding a video. Join the movement!!!!
This clip, also from Creative Commons, called "A Shared Culture," is very well produced and worth watching!
(And finally, where did I get copyright symbol and smiley face from? Two ways to get there! (1) Start Menu, (2) All Programs, (3) Accessories, (4) System Tools, (5) Character Map -- a chart of over 1200 characters that can be copied and pasted into any document pops up! Letters with accents, foreign language characters, fractions, arrows, hearts, and unimaginable creations - a very useful tool!! -- Much easier than searching throught all the different Webdings fonts). An alternate path for the geekier set is (1) Start menu, (2) Run, (3) type 'charmap'. Enjoy!)
Friday, November 21, 2008
Linking is legal !
Researching and writing about e-books, haunted by the Clevenger iceberg (another story for another day), my mind is still on the topic of embedded video in blogs. While it appears from my research that this is still an easy debate to argue from both sides, legal precedent seems to allow for this “linking” of video to private blogs and other Websites including MySpace and Facebook pages. Given the research I have done, which I will share below, I feel comfortable, at least for now, “linking” (read: embedding) videos, slideshows, and podcasts into this blog. I admit, my sources are primarily other blogs, but they appear knowledgeable and certainly involved in the debate. I welcome any comments or thoughts in agreement or disagreement regarding the legal or ethical considerations of embedded content in our blogs.
The Citizen Law Media Project explains that “linking to another website does not infringe the copyrights of that site, nor does it give rise to a likelihood of confusion necessary for a federal trademark infringement claim” ("Linking to Copyrighted," 2008). The article continues to describe that “deep linking,” linking to “a particular page within another site (i.e., other than its homepage)” has never been identified by a court as either copyright or trademark infringement. (“Linking”) While off topic, this is comforting information as I create my own directories of favorite links.
Though admitting “there is some uncertainty on this point” the article describes that inline linking or embedding, “placing a line of HTML on your site that so that your webpage displays content directly from another site,” when tried in a recent case in “the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that inline linking does not directly infringe copyright because no copy is made on the site providing the link; the link is just HTML code pointing to the image or other material. See Perfect 10, Inc. v. Google, Inc. , 508 F.3d 1146 (2007). Other courts may or may not follow this reasoning. However, the Ninth Circuit's decision is consistent with the majority of copyright linking cases which have found that linking, whether simple, deep, or inline, does not give rise to liability for copyright infringement. For discussion of these cases, see The Internet Law Treatise” (“Linking”).
“The situation changes when you knowingly link to works that clearly infringe somebody's copyright, like pirated music files or video clips of commercially distributed movies and music videos. In this situation, you might be liable for what is known as "contributory copyright infringement." Contributory copyright infringement occurs by "intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement" of a copyrighted work” (“Linking”). Fred vonLohman from the Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees that common sense to avoid commercially distributed media and to respect any rights published or indicated should protect bloggers from potential copyright violation when embedding content (“Linking,” 2008; vonLohman, 2007). On his Website, Christopher Heng points out that YouTube and most media hosting services offer users posting content the choice whether to “enable or disable the EMBED code for their videos. . . In theory, if the owner enables the EMBED code for others to use, it means that they” are willing and even pleased to have others embed their video (2008).
References
Bailey, J. (2007, December 20). Why I embed my images. In Plagiarism Today [PT blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/12/20/why-i-embed-my-images/
Heng, C. (2008). Is it okay to post YouTube videos on my website? (copyright question). In The site wizard. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/general/embed-youtube-video-copyright-matters.shtml
Howell, D. (2007, July 9). Embedding a headache. In Lawgarithms [blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howell/?p=146
Linking to copyrighted materials. (2008, June 3). Citizen Law Media Project. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/linking-copyrighted-materials
Ross, P. (2008, November 12). Copyright in a free market. In Copyright Alliance [blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://blog.copyrightalliance.org/2008/11/copyright-in-a-free-market/
VonLohman, F. (2007, July 9). YouTube embedding and copyright. In Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF DeepLinks Blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/07/youtube-embedding-and-copyright
The Citizen Law Media Project explains that “linking to another website does not infringe the copyrights of that site, nor does it give rise to a likelihood of confusion necessary for a federal trademark infringement claim” ("Linking to Copyrighted," 2008). The article continues to describe that “deep linking,” linking to “a particular page within another site (i.e., other than its homepage)” has never been identified by a court as either copyright or trademark infringement. (“Linking”) While off topic, this is comforting information as I create my own directories of favorite links.
Though admitting “there is some uncertainty on this point” the article describes that inline linking or embedding, “placing a line of HTML on your site that so that your webpage displays content directly from another site,” when tried in a recent case in “the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that inline linking does not directly infringe copyright because no copy is made on the site providing the link; the link is just HTML code pointing to the image or other material. See Perfect 10, Inc. v. Google, Inc. , 508 F.3d 1146 (2007). Other courts may or may not follow this reasoning. However, the Ninth Circuit's decision is consistent with the majority of copyright linking cases which have found that linking, whether simple, deep, or inline, does not give rise to liability for copyright infringement. For discussion of these cases, see The Internet Law Treatise” (“Linking”).
“The situation changes when you knowingly link to works that clearly infringe somebody's copyright, like pirated music files or video clips of commercially distributed movies and music videos. In this situation, you might be liable for what is known as "contributory copyright infringement." Contributory copyright infringement occurs by "intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement" of a copyrighted work” (“Linking”). Fred vonLohman from the Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees that common sense to avoid commercially distributed media and to respect any rights published or indicated should protect bloggers from potential copyright violation when embedding content (“Linking,” 2008; vonLohman, 2007). On his Website, Christopher Heng points out that YouTube and most media hosting services offer users posting content the choice whether to “enable or disable the EMBED code for their videos. . . In theory, if the owner enables the EMBED code for others to use, it means that they” are willing and even pleased to have others embed their video (2008).
References
Bailey, J. (2007, December 20). Why I embed my images. In Plagiarism Today [PT blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/12/20/why-i-embed-my-images/
Heng, C. (2008). Is it okay to post YouTube videos on my website? (copyright question). In The site wizard. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/general/embed-youtube-video-copyright-matters.shtml
Howell, D. (2007, July 9). Embedding a headache. In Lawgarithms [blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howell/?p=146
Linking to copyrighted materials. (2008, June 3). Citizen Law Media Project. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/linking-copyrighted-materials
Ross, P. (2008, November 12). Copyright in a free market. In Copyright Alliance [blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://blog.copyrightalliance.org/2008/11/copyright-in-a-free-market/
VonLohman, F. (2007, July 9). YouTube embedding and copyright. In Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF DeepLinks Blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2008, from http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/07/youtube-embedding-and-copyright
Sunday, October 12, 2008
My 'exemplary' school library website
Library school is great! We have no concerns regarding a budget, technology integration issues, district standards, or administrators with differing viewpoints. All we have to do is describe a piece of our “imaginary” library and it becomes real – just as we described it! The pay is lousy though!!! If we could only improve that, I’d “work” here forever.
This week we designed an “exemplary” school library website. Sadly, in all of our research, we never found a school website that embodied all of our suggestions. Some have moved forward with inclusion of things like blogs, RSS feeds, attractive designs, recommended book suggestions and other Web 2.0 features. Very few have adopted search bars on the front page or any type of federated search functions.
In the real world, outside of library school, we still have a long way to go. Highlights of my exemplary library website include:
- an easily memorable web address and links from all other school webpages with links back to all needed resources including classroom pages, schedule, and school e-mail
- a prominently featured federated search bar on the front page that will simultaneously search the OPAC, databases and the web through Google
- search guidance in the form of subject expansion or narrowing, through system generated keyword or subject heading suggestions
- the use of color and white space to enhance site organization and scannability
- links, tabs, databases, and other content organized according to typical user needs and designed to open appropriately in a new or existing window
- easily discovered and readable descriptions and search instructions
- search guidance in the form of subject expansion or narrowing, through system generated keyword or subject heading suggestions
- literature appreciation promotion through book summaries, reviews and recommendations, weblinks, and a blog for discussion
- online tips for research, planning, writing, and citing academic work
- information on internet safety, plagiarism, and copyright law
- library and computer lab schedules and librarian contact information
- a clear summary of the purpose of the website, the library mission statement, and links to library policies and procedures
- a non-academic, relevant reason for visiting the site regularly, perhaps a daily blog about events in the library and the school or RSS feed of school announcements
The final bullet may be the most important. We need to stimulate users to begin with the library instead of the commercial alternatives (Google).
I hope to get a website up soon where I will post academic responses and assignments that define my views and talents. I will post a more detailed description of my “exemplary school website” there when I do.
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