The "Weekly WassUp" is a brief weekly overview of what has been showing up in "the feeds" in the last week.
In this issue:
- Yahoo!'s top searches for 2008
- Dec. 1 : Change.gov under Creative Commons
- Dec. 3 : .TEL open for business
- Dec. 4 : Google connects to your friends
- The Simpsons mock (m)Apple
Yahoo!'s top searches for 2008
Apparently, Britney still got it: Just like last year, she tops the Yahoo! list of overall searches for 2008. In fact, 6 out of the 10 most popular search terms were the same as last year's.
Dec. 1 : Change.gov under Creative Commons
The Internet and copyright don't have an easy marriage. What content can be re-used? What content is protected? How is it protected? ... If you want to allow people to re-use your original content, Creative Commons copyright licenses will answer these questions for potential users of your content. For that, the non-profit organisation Creative Commons (short: CC) has defined a whole spectrum of possible licenses between 'all rights reserved' and the public domain (no rights reserved), or -as they call it- 'some rights reserved' licenses.
Now, president-elect Barack Obama has put Change.gov -the website of his transition team- entirely under the most permissive of Creative Commons copyright licenses - CC BY. From the copyright page: "Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Content includes all
materials posted by the Obama-Biden Transition project. Visitors to
this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free
license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Change.gov
under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License." This is a huge change compared to the default 'all rights reserved' US copyright law.
Normally, works created by an agency of the United States government are always public domain. But since Change.gov is not currently the project of a
government agency this doesn't apply. Also, the public is being invited to contribute
their own comments and works to the site, and it is important to have a
clear marking of the permissions that other people have to this
material.
P.S. You can also license your work under Creative Commons in Belgium.
Dec. 3 : .TEL open for business
December 3 was the beginning of the “Sunrise” launch period of the new .TEL top-level domain. During this period, companies with trademarks can lock up their .tel address. After the "sunrise", there will be a "landrush" period from February 3 until March 24,
when the best .tel domains will be sold at a premium. General
availability will follow after March 24.
Now what's this new .TEL top-level domain all about? To begin with, it's not a regular top-level domain like '.com' or '.be'. The .TEL can only be used for pages holding contact information, divided into 5 different categories: contact info (name, address, ...), content links (websites, blogs, social networks, ...), identities (on gaming platforms, social networks, ...), geolocation (maps) and indexable text (general information, keywords that can be picked up by search engines). Moreover, you cannot design these pages yourself, but you have to do it using the forms provided by Telnic. The result will be something like their own .TEL page: telnic.tel. They also have a simulator on their website to see what your .TEL page might look like.
The data is public, but you can choose to hide some of the data and
show it just to friends, which must also have a .TEL address. The idea
is you don't need to give out a business card to people, you just tell
them your .TEL address.
Want one? Ask your favorite domain name registrar...
Dec. 4 : Google connects to your friends
After last weeks launch of Facebook Connect, it's now Google's turn to open up its Google Friend Connect service. Initially released last May, Google Friend Connect allows websites to add social features such as discussions, ratings, content sharing, inviting friends and the more using widgets (or 'gadgets' as Google calls them). It also allows people to log in using their Google account. Or Yahoo! or AIM or OpenID account for that matter. And that's exactly what the big difference between Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect is: Google Friend Connect is a more open solution which doesn't depend on one social network (i.c. Facebook). Also implementing Facebook Connect is notable harder than integrating Google Friend Connect. On the other hand, Facebook Connect offers two-way communication (from Facebook to the website and back), whereas Google Friend Connect is one-way only. We'll see where it goes from here...
The Simpsons mock (m)Apple
Few in the spotlights are spared the Simpsons treatment... so nor is Apple. Or should I say ... 'Mapple'?
