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Creative Commons Expert

The thing about posting things on the web is that you’re publishing to a world-wide audience of everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know, and if you happen to include in your slides a photo of someone, there’s a chance that someone who knows that person will see it, and they will probably mention it to that person…

Tweet

nickhacks alerted me that he saw one of my photos… I asked if the presentation he saw it in was available online somewhere, as I wanted to see it as well.

Tweet

He gave me a link, which wasn’t the actual presentation, but gave me enough info to find presentations by the speaker…

SlideShare

And there it is. Slide 108. A photo I created, and published on Flickr with a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike License. It’s a pretty liberal license. It allows people to copy, share, and adapt the work, but it does require that you attribute the work to the creator… you know, give credit to the person who created it. It’s really simple. I even have a nice explanation on my Flickr profile page. So for instance, if you used my photo in a presentation, you might list the attribution part on a “credits” page at the end. This is pretty common in presentations nowadays…

SlideShare

Skip to the end of this specific presentation and the last page presents credits. The only attribution I could find was a blanket “all from whom I borrowed material” which was a little disappointing. But even more disappointing is that right there, on the last slide, on the bottom, is a Creative Commons logo, which licenses the slides under the “Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike” license… the very same license my photo was released under.

Did this person provide attribution when using my photo? Not that I could find. Is the photo being used for commercial purposes? Determining Noncommercial use is the most frustrating part of Creative Commons licensing. The presentation the photo is used in is not being sold, and is freely available (under the same license, even!) but does this presentation highlight the presenter as an “expert” in their field (even though it claims not to) which in turn may result in the furthering of this person’s career? Is that “commercial” use in any way? Probably not, but without a lawyer, I’m never quite sure about this… Sadly, it’s probably something only the courts could decide. (At least the Share Alike requirement was met.)

So now the question is… What do I do?

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teleport – Mac Multiplier

I remember hearing about Synergy many years ago as a way to share a keyboard/mouse between multiple computers with different operating systems sitting on your desk. This would have been a dream come true for me back when I had a Windows PC next to my Mac at previous jobs, but nowadays I tend to use Windows only through virtualization software, so Mac OS X is always underneath.

teleport

It used to be that I’d have my MacBook on my desk next to my left monitor, and I’d lean over and use the keyboard and touchpad for various tasks, testing web sites in other browsers mainly, but it also comes in handy when your main Mac is beachballing it, but now…

teleport has completely changed the way I work!

I was about to dig into Synergy when I came across teleport, which is pretty much the same thing, but Mac OS X specific, and since I don’t need the cross-platform stuff, I skipped Synergy and grabbed teleport.

teleport

I’m basically controlling two completely separate computers with one set of controls. I can jump between them by just sliding the mouse to the edge of the screen. The power this provides is simply amazing… really, I can’t think of another thing that’s changed the way I work so dramatically in recent history.

If you’ve got two computers on your desk, look into Synergy or teleport. It’s that magic stuff you hear about from time to time…

Update 2010-07-30: See Also: Setting Up Encryption for teleport 1.0.1

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The Power Of Math

In The Power of Sync, Seth says:

100 people doing something at the same time has far more power than 300 people doing it over time.

I can see how this could make sense… but I can also see how it makes no sense. I’m no math expert but…

If 100 people buy your product at $100 at the same time, you’ve got $10,000. (You know, if your servers/systems/staff, can handle that load.)

If 300 people buy your product at $100 over the course of 3 days, you’ve got $30,000. (You’ve also got 3 times the number of customers now, which could come in handy in the future.)

Like I said, I’m no math expert… so maybe someone can explain to me why this is wrong.

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Interarchy’s Icon

People seemed to enjoy my post Twitter Apps Reviewed where I rated applications based on their icons, and this go-around we’re looking at Interarchy, a Mac file transfer application I’ve been using for many years.

Anarchie

Interarchy was originally called “Anarchie” and this was the icon under classic Mac OS. The small one on the left was all you’d ever see in the Finder, as classic Mac OS didn’t scale up the size of icons at all. I’ve blow it up here for you to see the pixels. Ahhh, icons were much simpler back then…. oh, where were we?

Interarchy

In the center are two Interarchy icons. On the left is the old brown Interarchy icon. I like that one. I like it a lot. At first I thought it was because of the similarities to the old Anarchie icon, but then more I think about it, I think it’s just a well designed icon. After installing Interarchy 9 I got the silvery icon on the right. It’s still a filing cabinet, but I think it loses something. It just doesn’t look as clear and sharp as the brown one. I know brown probably isn’t hip in the shiny Apple/OS X world, but honestly the brown one stands out much more for me. I’ve got a lot more shiny looking white or silver icons than I do brown ones. Still, progress marches on, and the icon changed.

Interarchy

I was still disturbed by the new icon… so much so, that I am actually using the old one on my copy of Interarchy. I thought I should blow them up and see how they look. Well, the brown one seemed to have a size of 512px wide/high, while the silver one was only 128px wide/high. The silver one just looks to soft and fuzzy to me.

Interarchy

Here’s the brown Interarchy icon, at full size. Besides the shadow at the bottom, I think it looks pretty damn good. In fact, this may be one of my favorite icons now.

Interarchy: TNG

Back at the Interarchy web site, we see a new icon, this one definitely looking better than the fuzzy silver one, but I’m still not sure I like it as much as the brown one. Maybe it’s just me…

Sebastiaan de With is the designer who worked on a complete redesign of the Interarchy icons, and you know what, they look good. Maybe the new icon will grow on me, I’ll get used to it, and all will be forgotten. Either that or I’ll just keep using the old icon. :)

(Oh, one more thing… please don’t use plain FTP. It’s insecure. Use SFTP!)

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Ron Prodoehl Memorial Bench

Ron Prodoehl Memorial Bench

My dad was very involved with the parks department in Greenfield, and after he died in 2007 his contributions and volunteering efforts were recognized, and that pretty cool.

On July 26, 2010 there was an unveiling of the Ron Prodoehl Memorial Bench at Jim Smrz park in Greenfield, Wisconsin, and that too was pretty cool.

The park itself is not really viewable on Google Maps yet, but it’s sort of nestled in between Kimberly Avenue and 39th Street. You can take 43rd Street to Mangold Avenue and you’ll find it.

The bench appears to be made of wood, but upon closer inspection, it’s actually metal, which is another fact I found pretty cool.

If you’re in the area, stop by, take a rest on the bench, and enjoy the view.