My kids are back to school next week. We’re very excited! To get back into the swing and because we’ve had lots of questions we have been researching weather (hurricanes) online, which has led to today’s Byte – online resources for students and parents.
Scholastic
These are the people who sell the books you always wanted to order when you were at school. They have a nice hurricane site.
FEMA for Kids
This is the Federal Emergency Management Agency site. Their “what’s happening now” link tells you about any recent disaster areas and what FEMA is doing to help.
Yahooligans
This is Yahoo for kids, with fewer ads and more access to information. They only index sites that are good for kids.
Here are some good homework helpers:
BJ Pinchbeck
An index of sites organized by a teenager to help kids with homework.
Homework Spot
Looks like good info for projects and reports.
Your public or school library – you knew I was going to mention them. Online or in person the libraries are great. Online and in person – the librarian will help your student find information without doing the homework for them. The Internet Public Library is a great place to start.
In Minnesota one of our politicians recently got into trouble because he was republishing news articles on his web site without permission. Actually he was republishing modified articles without permission. It seemed like a good reason to remind folks about copyright.
Copyright on the Internet gets tricky because it’s so much easier to copy a creative form of expression – be it text, music, artwork or other. It also gets more dangerous because if you use copyrighted work on a web site anyone with access to the web can see it. So, it’s easier to get caught.
LLRX, a neat legal resource, just published a great article on Copyright and Licensing Digital Materials. It’s worth checking out for in depth info.
Here’s a shortlist of rules I have used with various clients when creating web sites:
- Links are not copyrighted. Links are really addresses and you can’t copyright an address because an address is not creative; it’s a fact. (You can’t copyright facts.)
- Republishing articles on your site is rarely a good idea. Even if you are the original author, you may not have copyright permission. Check with the original publisher before using an article and get explicit permission to use it. (Once you get it be sure to add that permission to the web site.)
- When in doubt – link to articles. As I said before links are OK. You can even preface a link with an annotation, rebuttal, or other comment. So, introduce an article and then link people directly to it.
- Don’t forget to add a copyright to your own work. Once you add the copyright sign; you are copyrighted. This is a first line of defense.
However if you want to get serious (or sue someone over copyright) you will also want to register your work with the US Copyright Office.
Today I’ve been checking out Amazon. I thought I’d share some of their new things; they’re kind of interesting. (This isn’t an endorsement for Amazon – just a look at what they’re doing.)
Purchase Circle:
These are lists of best selling books by population segment, such as employee of Oracle or person living in St Paul. OK, I’m not sure why you’d care – unless you had a job interview at Oracle and wanted to appear to fit in, but it’s kind of interesting.
Honor System:
Through Amazon you can provide your customers a way to pay you – perhaps to make voluntary payments or pay for digital content. In short you put the Amazon 1-Click icon on your site, the visitor makes the payment to Amazon, and Amazon pays you.
Amazon Yellow Pages:
This is a beta service – but if you run a business I think now is the time to make sure that you are listed and that you expand your listing – (since it’s free now). The easiest way to do that is to find your listing by searching your zip. Once you find it you will see places to “click to add or update info”.
Today’s Byte is short and sweet. I have mentioned it before, but not in years. The Wayback Machine
This site archives web sites. Search for a URL and it will provide links to how the site has looked through time. I love this site. I use it when I want to see an earlier iteration of a web site that I’m updating. I use it when I want to see access info I know was available last year. I use it when I want to see what a company has done with the web site over time.
The Way Back Machine does not index all sites. Some pages will not be available and some pictures or other items may be missing from a page but other than that it’s pretty darned good.
Last night I was helping my husband promote a one-day conference on Irish Literature & Music. (If you’re interested you can learn more here. It made me think that a lot of people are shy about sending emails to folks, when they shouldn’t be. Done right, sending email can be very effective. I successfully use email often to share info with strangers (often to promote conferences). Here are the steps I take.
I think of people who would generally have an interest in my message. For example it seems that local English teachers might have an interest in the Irish Lit conference.
Once I have a target group I think of two ways to reach them: through an association where they might be a member and through personal email. For example there is a MN Council of Teachers of English and I can get many of the teachers’ personal emails through their school web sites.
I send personal notes to associations asking them to forward the message on to their members, I ask them to add the event to their calendar if they have one, and I might offer to write an article on the topic if appropriate. This is a good way to reach a lot of people.
With personal emails I make them personal. I use the person’s name if I have it and I try to make a connection to the person using whatever info I have been able to glean from their web site. It might be as simple as saying “…since you teach English I thought you might be interested…” Sometimes I can glean more, “I see that you wrote your PhD on James Joyce, so I bet you’d be interested in…” Reaching people these two ways has worked very well for me.
It takes a long time to email this way – but the return on investment is usually pretty good. And rarely have I had anyone who was upset about receiving an unsolicited email message.
