There are of course a lot of legal issues, and such a service should probably obey robots.txt. And there should be a very clear opt-out possibility for websites that have been targeted in user-contributed additions – maybe even moderation before the services are publicly available. It should not be seen as an attack vector, as a proxy method for illegal purposes or anything like that, but simply as a way of “helping” free information to be used freely.

Why?

A lot of data on the web is hidden in the so-called “deep web” behind forms or in inaccessible parts of websites. With a service like the above-mentioned, this would suddenly not only become visible and indexable, but even queryable.

What’s next?

Do with this idea whatever you like – expand, implement, trash or forget. Just remember, that if you use it in anyway make sure to attribute me according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, that all these 365 Social Ideas are published under.

Related posts:

1. Coordinate-Proxy – January 2010 Ideas
2. Open Data – January 2010 Ideas
3. Social Subway – January 2010 Ideas

I could mention a few companies, that I would know have a lot of information that they aren’t sharing but have no idea what to do with. Or maybe they have thought of some small thing to do with it but miss out on the great huge possibilities it might contain. One such site is Endomondo, a very cool running (or any other moving sport) service for tracking your movement. It will gather information about who’s running where how fast etc – live! And they don’t even use it live – they only use it (currently) for calculating your distance and given you your previously run/driven routes on a map. I know a guy or two, who would love to play around with such live data.

Another example is location-based games like the kind of foursquare or gowalla. I recently read about a larger competitor, who actually currently have more users – namely mytown. But they I checked it out, they have no open API and you cannot use the data you give them for anything else. And I’d rather give my location data to someone, who will allow me to re-use this data in any other fun application, that any other company might think of.

There are many many other examples of public and private institutions as well as small and large corporations, who have gathered really interesting data either directly or through crowd-sourcing, but have kept it to themselves. Please, share it – we will all benefit including yourselves!

Why?

Because even though you might have thousand of employees who might be able to think up great stuff – the millions of developers world-wide can think up even more.

What’s next?

Do with this idea whatever you like – expand, implement, trash or forget. Just remember, that if you use it in anyway make sure to attribute me according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, that all these 365 Social Ideas are published under.

Related posts:

1. Turn (Closed) Content Into an API – January 2010 Ideas
2. Coordinate-Proxy – January 2010 Ideas
3. App Idea Store – January 2010 Ideas

Well, I have implemented a very simple demo of the first steps. So far, the script only makes sure to add some extra text to the current selection when ever the mouse button is released (which is how most users select most text) and it only works in Firefox (tested in 3.6). Next steps include making the link direct to the actually selected content, record text copying in Google Analytics, add cross-browser checks etc.

The script is published under the same license as these ideas, CC-BY 3.0.

Why?

Copy-paste is another quite common way of interacting with websites and allowing people to easily spread the word about your website in a new way ensures you credit where such is due. Creating a full-featured jQuery-plugin from this should be fairly easy and then making sure it integrates with Google Analytics if present – and then we’re actually done.

What’s next?

Do with this idea whatever you like – expand, implement, trash or forget. Just remember, that if you use it in anyway make sure to attribute me according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, that all these 365 Social Ideas are published under.

Related posts:

1. Social Traffic Analyzer – January 2010 Ideas
2. Comment On Everything – January 2010 Ideas
3. App Idea Store – January 2010 Ideas

The site could even feature separate tracks for video and sound, transitions (for both video and sound), picture-in-picture, split screen and all the other classic video manipulation tools.

The end result should be downloadable as an FLV or converted to several other video formats (or even animated gifs, which would allow you to create such from any youtube video for forum avatar pictures and similar effects). And of course should it be possible to re-upload the video to youtube.

Legal issues should of course be considered here, informing users, that they do not have the rights to the new videos just because they “created” them themselves. But as Youtube protects themselves under the “safe harbor” legislation, automated services based on Youtube can probably do the same.

Why?

Because mashing up videos is fun. Adding a completely different soundtrack to your favorite Star Trek clip or creating animated gifs from classic fails. Not much business in it though.

What’s next?

Do with this idea whatever you like – expand, implement, trash or forget. Just remember, that if you use it in anyway make sure to attribute me according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, that all these 365 Social Ideas are published under.

Related posts:

1. Twikicatalyzer – January 2010 Ideas
2. Turn (Closed) Content Into an API – January 2010 Ideas
3. Open Data – January 2010 Ideas

After reading up on UK copyright law, my judgment is unclear – but mostly in favor of the NPG and thus against Wikimedia.

The CDPA of 1988 clearly states in the very first paragraph:

1. Copyright and copyright works
   1. Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with this Part in the following descriptions of work—
      1. original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,
      2. [...]

To me, one crucial part is the word “original”. This removes the possibility of claiming, that merely taking a photograph of another work is copyrightable in itself. The law goes on to specify what each of the four here-described works are, and it is clear, that taking a photo is an artistic work (defined in §4 sec. 1.a), but it is not an original work (in my opinion), when it is a photograph of a painting.

But the manipulation done by the conservationists when digitizing the photos includes a lot of work, which is definitely craftsmanship, but if deemed as artistic craftsmanship, it is in itself covered by the CDPA in §4 section 1.c:

4. Artistic works
   1. In this Part “artistic work” means—
      2. [...]
      3. a work of artistic craftsmanship.

My conclusion is thus, that it is irrelevant whether it is a derivative work or not (non-original works are never copyrightable) – the matter of the case is, whether the work of conservationists is artistic craftsmanship or not. And I’m leaning towards a “yes”, but I’m pretty sure the case cannot be settled without a court ruling, as it is clearly a case of interpretation. You can argue that a conservationist is merely a scientist, not an artist – but even scientific papers and articles are subject to copyright, and thus I believe, that the work of a conservationist is subject to copyright given that it is artistic craftsmanship and/or original scientific work.

Related posts:

1. How SnapABug works – and what they should do
2. The iPhone developer boycott in the works