Am glad to announce that my book on Creative Commons titled ‘Copy Right and Left‘ will be launched on July 20th. You can learn more about the book here http://www.CopyRightandLeft.org .
Creative Commons has been an area of deep interest for me and I totally love the concept and the spirit behind it. It was a satisfying experience putting together the book. More importantly, this book was an excuse for me to push myself to understand the subject better.
I have always been a fan of small, short books that are easy to read. This book will follow the path and will aim to explain Creative Commons in a fun, easy-to-digest, casual manner.
The entire contents of the book is available online for everyone to read. In-fact, the entire book is written openly on a Wiki. While we were working on the book we would publish each chapter as and when it was finished. I wanted to make sure that I used the most transparent and most collaborative method to write this book.
The book will also come out as a dead-wood version and will be available for purchase at Rs.99. This is more to cover the printing and distribution cost.
So, how did this book come about? Oh, its a long story. Got the time? 
It was in late 2002 that I had first heard of the term creative commons. Honestly, it hadn’t captured my attention until the middle of 2003, when over a million licensed were issued. That was when I sat up to take notice. I started to read more about it in detail and took a strong liking to it’s concept of promoting creativity through sharing.
I was highly impresses with Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons and how just by his sheer conviction was able to make CC into a very respectable organisation. It was the meeting with him and Joi Ito (who later succeeded Lessig as CEO and is now the Director of MIT Media Lab) at iCommons Summits in 2007 at Dubrovnik, Croatia and in 2008 at Sapporo, Japan that made a lasting impression on me.
Much to my dismay though, a lot of us in India were ignorant about Creative Commons (CC) and it’s advantages. I felt it would be useful to have an easy to read book that explains CC with relevant examples. This was a 4 year wish that finally materialised with this attempt now.
I wanted to walk the talk and use the very concept of Creative Commons in the book writing process. I’ve generously used many of the contributions from people who have shared their experience and knowledge under the CC license themselves. Many of the contents of the book are taken from the Creative Commons website itself, particularly encouraged by the staff at Creative Commons headquarters. We have duly credited everyone whose work has been used in this book.
The book itself is licensed under the most liberal creative commons license. This means that anyone is free to use this book and build on top of it. Anyone can freely distribute it or even use it commercially if they wish (with no obligation to share the revenues).
Its at this time that I should really appreciate the hard work and dedication of 3 of my research colleagues, Watson Solomon, Sushmitha and Preethi. Thank you fellas.
The preparations for the July 20 launch have begun. Will update you with more information on that soon. Meanwhile, please mark your calendars. It would be awesome if you can join in body (preferably!) or spirit!
| Tweet |
| Tweet |
Here’s the column that got published in today’s paper.
Click here to see enlarged image
Phones that know where you are!
We all love taking photos on our digital cameras and camera mobiles. These are fond memories and would love to treasure. While we store them, what we don’t usually do is add information about each photo. A few of us blog or take the effort to give titles to the photos, but the majority of us just do nothing. Let’s face it. We’re are plain lazy or just don’t find it important enough to do it. Hence, the fond memories are consigned to the forgotten corners of our computer’s hard disk.
Enter automatic Geotagging. This is the latest feature in some of the latest mobile phones like the Nokia N78 that automatically finds out the location you are in and adds this information to the photo. For example, let’s say you shot a group photo in front of the Taj Mahal. The geotagging feature in the phone adds the tags, ‘Agra; and ‘Taj Mahal’ to the photo. How does the phone know this? Because the phone has the A-GPS feature (The Assisted Global Positioning System) and hence knows the latitude, longitude, altitude of the position you are in from the Satellite data. Understandably, you must have subscribed for a GPRS connectivity from your mobile service provider. (This is the feature that lets you access Internet from your mobile)
So, when you shoot a photo from the phone and upload it to photo sites like Flickr, details like the name of city and place are automatically uploaded too. Knowing where your picture is taken acts as a great memory jogger. It also acts as an excellent community tool. If someone wanted to see pictures of The Taj Mahal, your picture will result in the searches because of the automatic geo tag.
There’s more to just automatic geotagging in the latest phones. To explain this, let me walk you through an experience. Once, me and a bunch of friends did a cycling trip from Bangalore to Chennai. Being techies, we had a bunch of gadgets. One of us had an odometer fixed to the cycle’s wheel to help us with data on kilometers covered and average speed. Another friend had got an expensive GPS device that looked like a walkie talkie that gave information on the altitude and showed us on a map the path covered. And then a laptop with an Internet data card to upload all this information to our website so that anyone can follow where we are.
The Nokia N78 is in essence all these three devices put together. Amazing how technology has advanced. The phone can give the speed of our travel, time taken to cover the distance, average speed, the altitude, the map and more importantly live publishing of all the date online. Not to mention automatically geotagging all our photos.
The next time we go on a cycling expedition, we’re going to dump all those expensive paraphernalia and just pick up an A-GPS enabled phone.
| Tweet |
This blog post by Jeremiah Owyang reopened my eyes to blogging. For a long time, I’ve left this blog unattended. I could put the blame on increased workload, twitter and family but really, there should be no excuse. Especially when this blog has brought me jobs, work, friends, speaking, teaching, writing opportunities and much more.
Here’s what Jeremy says and I so totally agree with him.
“I pay myself first. What does that mean? It means before I get bogged down in email hell, and feedreader hell, I focus my priorities on the tools that will maximize my time. A blog is a broadcast tool that let’s me communicate to many people at once. It’s the most efficient use of my time, and it saves me time. For every email you write, you’re likely to get more in in return, and that’s not efficient. I look for efficient communication tools, and a blog is right for me”
It’s the rap on my knuckle that I needed.
| Tweet |
I’ve been on a blog hiatus. I’ve made zero posts in the last 20 days. In the same period, I’ve published 87 tweets on Twitter.
Most of the tweets would have translated to good posts on my blog but twitter has clearly spoilt me. It’s a lot easier to just convey my point in one sentence than sculpting an entire blog post.
Besides, I’ve started to write professionally for publications and that’s clearly taken priority. (I currently author columns for Business Standard, The New Indian Express and IAMAI’s official website). And not to mention an increased load on the work front.
All this means, this blog will continue to be sparsely updated. I’d advise you to check out my Twitter instead at http://www.twitter.com/kiruba . Lots more action there.
| Tweet |
Email:Kiruba @ Kiruba.com
Phone :+91-44-42733619
Mobile : 98415 97744
Snail Mail :(Home)
Virugambakkam,
Chennai, INDIA
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Syndicate this site