Rethink Reflection: CEDO 535 Week 3: Connected Minds

Feeding My Twits:

I signed up for a Twitter account about a year or so ago but never used it. I never investigated the uses of it. I just thought people used it to exclaim about how good the coffee is at ... (which they do) or to post the location of the insurgents during a revolution.

Since learning more about it and using it I can see the benefits. I like to search and skim the #edchat and #edtech tags more than following certain people because sometimes you get a lot of tweets that you just don't care about. I also have started using Google+ and follow the same tags there. I haven't started using tags yet mostly because I forget. As I get more comfortable I'll probably start joining the conversations so I'll be heard and found.

Just as important as learning how to use these services for professional work is seeking out and finding the right tools to use them with for all your devices and getting widgets on your sites and such.

As for the RSS, it's pretty much the same as Twitter (for finding new or important things) except you get the whole story instead of a link to it. My problem with both of these is you just get too much information and then I spend more time exploring, trying out new things ... instead of getting any real work done.

Photo Sharing & Licensing:

I started using Picasa a while back when I was looking for a good photo program for my Linux box and was pleased that I could use Picasa Web with it. I never really thought about licensing my photos at the time (and in fact I only have handfull posted and shared, some for friends/family and some for use with other Web 2.0 apps so I'd have a URL for an image).

Here is a slide show of my submitted photos for the assignment this week.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Picasa Web Albums (Google) offers a blanket CC license for all images in your account which now applies to Google+ Photos as well since the two are now intertwined. Here is the sticky part. if you go here: Picassa Web / Goggle+ : Links to the album Fashion
, both link to the same album on the respective sites but the Picasa Web link redirects to Google+. When I work in Picasa Web logged in, I can see my license but Picasa redirects to Google+ for anyone else and Google+ does not show any copyright information nor does it show any tags.

Picasa/Google+ Photos are a great way to easily upload and share your vaction or party pics. However, for someone who really cares about their copyright such as a budding photographer or graphic artist, Google is not the site to use. You only get to choose a one license fits all. Additionally, Google reserves a non-exclusive right to any image uploaded to their services. This means a photographer cannot sell exclusive rights to someone else.

Further reading on Google's Copyright information and related issues: