Creative Commons Licencing - Who Knew?!

Today, I wish to discuss something that I have not heard of before - to whit - Creative Commons Licencing.  As always, today's wild goose chase started with a simple enough query: "How do I make my images non-downloadable."  As always, my starting point is to ask the Google Guru, which turned up a couple of techie pages which, after I read through a ream of (to me) IT gobbledygook - pointed out two most basic points: 1) anyone with a printscreen button on their computer can do a screengrab and then crop down to the desired image, and 2) if they are viewing the image, then it's already stored on their computer, in their cache, so they already have it - so it's a bit like bolting the door after the horse has run away.  So having processed that information, had the light-bulb moment of understanding, and thought of an easy solution: WATERMARK EVERYTHING.  But then, I've uploaded tons of images, it would be very time consuming, ruin the integrity of the photo, and people would still be able to crop/edit/whatever the image - and quite frankly, my time is at a premium (in fact I'm skiving off right now while I type this entry!) so I found myself at a standstill.

So, I rang my ever-helpful, very IT-ofay big brother.  He posed a complete new set of questions, starting with this one: What do I want from my images and how can I make them work for me? Extrapolating from that we got the following:

1) Can I make money from them? Well, not really.

2) Do I want to make money from them? Well, yes, but it's not going to happen directly now is it.

3) Do I really want exposure??  ie - someone needs an image to illustrate or accompany an article, the deadline is tomorrow, and no time to discuss copyright and payment etc.  Easy solution: use that image, credit the source (usually when online it's a website) and reproduce the image as it is.  The source of the image gets extra exposure, potentially more traffic, leading to (potentially) more customers and more business which would lead to more revenue (hopefully).  

Obviously, this is the scenario that I want to encourage.  But how to do this?  The time consuming way would be to edit each image, add in the website, reload all images onto various sites (Facebook, website, Flickr), and as already discussed, I have no time to be doing this!  My brother told me about a website which explains in great detail the various free licences that are available online, which were created with the express purpose of protecting online work, and would probably solve my current dilemma.  After explaining briefly the various options available, I came to the conclusion that the one I want will allow my images to be reproduced for either commercial or non-commercial work, as long as I am credited (that's called attribution) and they do not change it (resizing does not count as change but cropping would change the image and would not be allowed) (and that's called no-derivs) - also known as Attribution - NoDerivs (CC BY-ND).  And let me tell you, it was dead easy to change on Flickr - all I had to do was go into the organise screen, select all, and then choose licence from the drop down menu, and pick the one I wanted.  Quick and easy, no large lumps of time-wasting involved.  I just have to work out how to apply that to my Facebook page and my website, (although that will be a lot quicker and easier than Facebook!). 

Anyway, it's quite an interesting subject, but then, as my brother pointed out, these are a set of rules, written by people who play by the rules for people who also play by the rules.  The only good thing is that if someone decides to break those rules, there is a structure in place to prove that there has been a breach of copyright.  And I thought it would cost a lot of money to sort all this sort of thing out.  Don't you just love Open Source resources!  When I have more time, I want to explore the Creative Commons website in more detail, but for now, I'm quite pleased, and having navigated this little detour, shall now proceed with today's plan.

And so, dear reader, here endeth the lesson :)

The End of the Social Media Tunnel!

Well, what an adventure we have had navigating the murky paths of Social Media, but I think we've come to the end of the journey!  I have discovered a great tool called Seesmic from which you can manage and moniter multiple social media streams all at once.  So you can post once, but in many places simultaneously, and you are offered many more options than just Facebook, Twitter and so on.  It is not perfect, but it is a good enough solution to my posting issues (which included both duplicate posts, or no posts depending upon which time you're referring to in my trials and tribulations of syncing things!)  Seesmic has also mentioned other forms of social communication that I've not heard of but to be honest, at this point in time I do not have the inclination or the necessary oomph to explore those options at this point in time.  I think my roller coaster ride into the world of Social Media has just about reached it's final conclusion - and I shall leave those avenues unexplored for now.  I am happy to report that my venture into Flickr was relatively harmless and quite painless in comparison to previous forays - I managed to sort out my photos and upload them with a minimum of shrieking and gnashing of teeth, and I have to say I am quite satisfied with the result.  More importantly, I now have a gallery on my website again showcasing some of my work - which, you may recall was the whole reason for my initial foray into Social Media - I wanted to overhaul and revamp my website, which is now complete, and therefore, dear reader one is quite a happy bunny!

The Futher Adventures of SpireFp in the World of Social Media

So, you didn't really think that I would be able to successfully navigate my way through the confusing world of Social Media unscathed in just one day I hope!  Naturally I was determined to clear the fog from my mind and have everything sorted tout suite!  Yes, well, more tout suite and less Hoot Suite let me tell you! How something that seemed so brilliant yesterday was today just a  big big mistake.  This miraculous-seeming app decided to not let me log in despite the fact that I was using the correct email and password.  And just to make sure, I logged into my email and found the confirmation e-mail they sent to the "invalid e-mail; e-mail not in use" - so I know for a fact it wasn't me making a typo - there was something fishy going on.  It must be said that as I was only using the free version, so to ensure it wasn't just a beta bug or something that you have to cope with in freeware, I went investigating,  and was shocked to find that many paying customers had fallen foul of this same issue.  I'd like to point out that I wasn't complaining quite so loudly after that little discovery.

So I retraced my steps and returned to the Google guru to hunt down those articles on syncing Facebook and Twitter which in my dubious wisdom I decided against reading yesterday.  Let me just preface this part of the adventure by saying that after much searching, I discovered a disclaimer explaining that if you unlink a Facebook account which has a Fan page attached to it from Twitter, at this moment in time, there is no fix for re-linking the page.  The frustrating part about that little snippet is that I only unlinked my Twitter from my Facebook page because that was number 3 or 4 in the "this might solve your problem" list in the FAQ from Twitter.  So it would have been helpful to have known that beforehand as I would have just left my Twitter/Facebook settings as they were.  However, I didn't, so, dear reader, I shall carry on with my tale of woe.

The most helpful article I discovered was one outlining the top 5 alternatives to Hootsuite.  But to my dismay, one by one, these wonderful options were falling by the wayside.  Brizzly is closing down, so I saw no point in pursuing that at all.  TweetDeck looked brilliant - but while you could manage multiple twitter accounts, you could only link to one Facebook account - and more importantly, no way (that I could see) of linking to a Facebook Page.  CoTweet looked similar to TweetDeck, so I thought I'd shelve that one and come back to it - but the blurb said that the free version was quite limited compared to the commercial version, so I wasn't really inclined to think all that hard about it.  Next one was Buzzom, and that had quite a writeup - but when I went to the webpage, I couldn't see any clues as to how to set up an account, much less how to log in to one, so I blew a raspberry at that (not literally of course - I do have a modicom of refinement!) and moved on.  The last one left (which was actually number 3 of the top 5) was Seesmic, and I have had a go at that one as well, and while it's extremely early days, at this stage, I'm almost quietly confident that it might just do what I want it to do.  There are a couple of things I haven't quite fathomed as yet, but all in all, I'm relatively happy with it.  But watch this space - because that could very well be subject to sudden change!

The annoying thing is this all came about simply because I wanted to update my website and improve it - and I just wish I'd decided to sync my social media channels last thing - rather than first off!  Ah well, I suppose this way I've (in theory) learnt alot... mostly of "what not to do Small Bear"!

Just as an aside, I've discovered that while it's extremely easy to upload photos to Facebook, it's no longer an easy thing to download them.  In fact it's nigh-on impossible.  There are a couple of clever apps out there, but no one satisfactory tool.  This again has only been highlighted because the widget I was using on my webpage is no longer supported, so I need to create a new photo slideshow - and I'm now delving into the wonderful world of Flickr and maybe even Picasa  Who knows what dangers are lurking in those dangerous waters... but that is most definitely another story!  Night all.

My foray into the confusing world of social media

So seeming as I'm off work sick (almost losing your voice and being unable to have the craic with the customers as well as coughing and hacking like a 90-a-day-for-20 years-smoker isn't really helpful when you're a children's entertainer) and now feeling better from sleeping solidly till 1pm this afternoon (my lovely friend and very talented photographer Ali Gordon from The Gift Gallery woke me when she rang to discuss a charity event we're both involved with next week for Ashgate Hospice at Bluey's Bar and Bistro in Alfreton) I decided to attempt to get to grips with the whole world of Social Media.

I'm quite comfortable with Facebook, in fact I'd say I'm extremely adept at utilising it to the best of my ability for advertising and cross-advertising purposes, which sounds awfully big-headed and boastful and for that I apologise, but it wasn't my intent, I was just being matter of fact.  Twitter, I've used minimally - spent a bit of time setting up my account, and connecting it to Facebook and vice-versa, but other than that, not really done a lot with it.  Out of curiosity, I Googled Facebook + Twitter - and the number of articles that came up was unbelieveable!  "10 ways to sync your F&T"; "5 different ways in which to connect you F&T" and so on... all of which I decided not to read because I didn't want to confuse myself any more than I already was.

Having spent a bit of time, I believe I've taken baby steps in familiarising myself with Twitter, and apart from being a little unsure of the difference between using the @tag and the #tag, I'm happy to say that it was time worth spent.  I even figured out how to make my profile(s) look pretty - ie customise them to my corporate image.  At which point I'm sounding like a complete newbie - which I'm not - but when you're not firing on all cylinders, thinking's over-rated really.

So onto my Blog.  Following a quick consult to my guru Google (to quote my brother several years ago - "Google knows everything, just ask it" despite the fact that he now tends to use Duck Duck Go) I learnt that there are two top free Blog sites, and I chose Blogger because I'm familiar with Google products, and it just seemed to suit my needs better.  However the proof will be in the response I get (if any - I'll be amazed if anyone is really interested in my rambling thoughts) when I send this out into the ether.

Reading back over what I've typed, I feel rather like one of those Grumpy Old Men/Women in the BBC series complaining of everything and anything to do with modern technology.  Perhaps my excuse could be that I'm not well so anything that doesn't go quite to plan, or cannot be done instantly must be difficult or confusing!  Or maybe I am just actually having a winge and a moan - despite having (mostly) enjoyed myself thoroughly during this whole expedition.

Just a side-note, what happened to My Space? It seems to be completely dead these days, does anyone really use it?

On that note, I shall log onto Hootsuite and update all my social media instantaneously with the news that I have managed (hopefully!) to publish my first blog!