Google has unveiled some faceted search tools (not that they call them that). It is very interesting to see Google struggle to add these tools while keeping its interface spartan. I think they’ve been fairly successful. When you do a search, try “Show options” (small type near the top of the results) and then “Wonder Wheel”. That’s a fun one!

Today the White House Flickr photostream acquired a new permissions designation. The White House had been posting its pictures with a Creative Commons license, but someone must have caught on to the fact that in order to attach a CC license to this material one had to have copyright of the material. As a work of the US government, the White House photos by definition cannot be under copyright. Instead, these works have now been designated “United States Government Work” and linked to the appropriate law.

What I don’t understand is why these works didn’t use Flickr’s already existent “Public Domain” designation. Works not under copyright are in the public domain, after all.

Furthermore, the White House has added this paragraph of legalese to each photo’s description:

This official White House photograph is being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way or used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Once the White House lets a photo like this out into the open it is fair game. Technically, even before it lets it out into the open it is fair game (we would just have to use a freedom of information claim to get it). I’m not sure what the purpose of this ugly statement is other than to muddy the waters. There is plenty of case law about using the president’s image in advertising, why reiterate that on each photo? This is unseemly. And even if they did want it reiterated, why not link the designation to a more informative statement than the law? That law is pretty hard to read, and it will leave most people reading way more than the single sentence that is relevant.

Grr.

We used to sing a song about the OPA in Essex, CT, with Chet Bowles and crew. The OPA team that gathered there were once the young troupers of the FDR administration, and long past its heyday they remember those glory days of fighting off the Great Depression.

President Obama has just changed the White House public liaison into the Office of Public Engagement (what a nice name). This is an effort to bring the public voice into the White House, and the briefing book they have created is a nice example of how that may work. I especially like that “Get the Insurance Companies out the Health Care” is the second recommendation in the health care section.

Most encouraging to me, though, are the faces. Take a moment to flip through the staff pages of the OPE. You’ll get a glimpse of what this administration looks like once you get past the big names. Young, diverse, excited. They look fired up and ready to go!

I love this example of Twitter users passing along data despite themselves. It pulls together so many threads: Processing for visualization, data mining for gathering facts from Twitter, geolocation via MetaCarta, even a bit of Wolfram to round it all out. Though there are all sorts of legitimate critiques about the role of Twitter data for tracking disease vectors, the interesting fact, for me, is that one person was able to leverage free form Twitter entries into a visualization of non-trivial data in just a few days time. This is a new world.

There are rumors that Apple is interested in buying Twitter. Alex thinks this may be an attempt by Apple to shore up its aging and less-than-reliable iChat infrastructure. I think it may be about data. Whoever makes Twitter less of a fail-whale service will be sitting on an unprecedented hoard of realtime data, the commercial possibilities of which are as yet unimagined. We are just giving our lives over to this massive dataset. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, but I do wonder what it will create.

Apple seems to think religious folk can’t take a little ribbing by an iPhone app. In order to avoid offending religious sensibilities, Apple has rejected the “Me so Holy” app from the iPhone store.

This app lets you use the iPhone camera to place your friend’s face into a picture of Jesus. Or a nun. Or other religious figures. Is Mohammed among them? Good thing Apple does not publish comics.

I think Apple is getting seriously off course by putting itself in the position of policing what uses tools might be put to. Of course “Me so Holy” could create something offensive. But so can virtually any drawing or photo collage application. What makes religious content so sacrosanct? (Um, ok, maybe that’s a dumb question.) Are we really so thin skinned? What makes apps like “iFart” OK, but “Me so Holy” taboo?

Apple needs to back off this policing kick. It is a no-win situation for Apple and will only inspire covert shenanigans that will serve nobody. The only criteria for App Store rejection ought to be concern that an app damages the system or itself contains illegal media (child pornography and the like). Otherwise, open the doors.

See your YouTube videos in a whole new way. It is fun how these mainstream services reach a scale where people write cool tools to manipulate them. (Hat tip: Andrew)

Mary loves walking Nathaniel to the school bus because it is a time that he often shares things happening in his life that she might not otherwise learn about. I can understand that. I love those moments of sharing. Still, I wish we could let our kids go a bit further afield. The other day I let Nathaniel go to the local park with two friends to play basketball. That earned me a horrified look and an order to head over to the park myself to keep an eye on the three of them. I went, I played b-ball too, I had fun. But I failed to let Nathaniel and his friends own the afternoon.

Today Andrew pointed me to an interview of Lenore Skenazy. Remember her? She let her 9 year old ride the subway alone in New York, earning all sorts of praise and condemnation. I believe she is right, we fundamentally wrap our kids in too much “protection”. They need room to grow, we keep them in pots way too small.

You want kids to feel like the world isn’t so dangerous. You want to teach them how to cross the street safely. You want to teach them that you never go off with a stranger. You teach them what to do in an emergency, and then you assume that generally emergencies don’t happen, but they’re prepared if they do. Then, you let them go out.

The fun of childhood is not holding your mom’s hand. The fun of childhood is when you don’t have to hold your mom’s hand, when you’ve done something that you can feel proud of. To take all those possibilities away from our kids seems like saying: “I’m giving you the greatest gift of all, I’m giving you safety. Oh, and by the way I’m taking away your childhood and any sense of self-confidence or pride. I hope you don’t mind.”

Amen. Of course, some kids will be hurt this way, but you know, kids get hurt every way you turn. How do kids get hurt the most? By being in cars with their parents.

We visit my grandmother in Austria regularly. On a recent trip my kids worked up a “Vienna Culture” comic book. Many pages were devoted to public transit, and one in particular to kids taking public transit to school. Alone. Heck, I took public transit alone in Cleveland, Ohio, from third to sixth grade. Why do we run school busses hither and yon instead of making public transit more multi-age and core to our society?

We worry so much about the worst case scenario instead of celebrating the varied and welcoming world around us. The irony is that the more we wall ourselves and our children off from the chaotic and beautiful world around us, the more that world loses its light and our children fail to thrive. Sounds like a vicious cycle to me.

OK, the Economist has found a prettier way to say this: “This house believes that existing copyright laws do more harm than good.” Check out their wonderful debate on copyright. I am impressed by the discussion and the way it hooks in reader commentary as well and professional contributions. Very nicely done. It also plays out over the course of a week. This is a very structured system for debate of hot topics, nicely done. At the moment, the resolution is getting overwhelming support. Take a look, learn, vote! (Hat tip to Joho.)

I was just bowled over tonight. This evening we went to the Performers for Peace concert Mary mentioned a few weeks back. Katie Korpi did this as a senior project at her school, but this was so much more than a project. It was an evening of peace, prayer, and performance that lifted my spirits and gave me a raft of new performers to listen to. If you have not heard of Ellis, Chastity Brown, Chances R Good, or Colleen Buckman, now is your chance. Give them a try. But for me, the song that turned me upside down was Ellis’ “How Would It Be” (also at iTunes). Enjoy.

Whitney Sorrow brings you Dracula in real time. Ars Technica credits the public domain with stirring the creative pot. Libraries and archives should be all about growing the public domain, let us be the fertilizer of the world’s creative flowers!