Video for Wikipedia: Guide to Best Practices
"This new effort takes advantage of a movement toward open video - a movement that has its roots in the free software movement that is largely powering the web today and which, through companies such as Apache, IBM, Mozilla, Oracle and Red Hat, has resulted in trillions of dollars of value creation for the stakeholders involved. The open or open-source video movement recognizes the contributions from, but also the limitations inherent in, the video work of industry leaders such as Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft. Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media and Silverlight are handsome technologies. But they have been developed and controlled by commercial companies that often protect themselves against innovations by outside coders, designers, developers, programmers - technologists, lawyers, producers, and educators keen to move away from proprietary solutions that are delivered for the benefit of shareholders first and the billions of everyday people who connect via the web a pale second.
The open video movement recognizes the importance of rights and licensing strategies designed to create profit or serve national interests, but it is critical of systems that prohibit access to film and sound assets becoming part of our collective audiovisual canon. Many film and sound resources digitized for preservation, for example, do not appear online because of dated copyright rules; and some of the great investments (millions of dollars in fact) by, for example, the U.K. government in film and sound resource digitization result in materials being put online only behind educational and national paywalls that keep students in Nairobi and Nashville from using London-based resources in their work.
Enabling video to catch up to the open-source movement on the web goes to the heart of our efforts to improve our understanding of the world. The central technologies of the web - HTML, HTTP, and TCP/IP - are open for all to build upon and improve, and video’s future should be similarly unobstructed."
(Peter B. Kaufman, 2010)
Fig.1 Kid Kameleon, CC BY SA NC
2). Video for Wikipedia and the Open Web October 2010 An Intelligent Television White Paper PETER B. KAUFMAN INTELLIGENT TELEVISION WWW.INTELLIGENTTELEVISION.COM THE OPEN VIDEO ALLIANCE Version 1.0
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Online soil degradation map launched in Nairobi
"A digital soil-health surveillance system, launched on 13 January in Nairobi, will enable soil scientists to map areas at risk of soil degradation and facilitate appropriate interventions that could help to curb food insecurity across the continent.
Undertaken by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the 'first ever' detailed digital map for 42 countries combines the latest soil science and technology with remote satellite imagery and on-the-ground efforts to develop an online map.
According to CIAT, this digital map of the continent's depleted soils will offer insights crucial for boosting food production. It will help provide solutions for poor farmers who suffer from chronically low-yielding crops due to degraded soils."
(IRIN, 13 Jan 2009)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
