Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Do you still Yahoo?

I abandoned Yahoo ages ago when I first laid eyes on my best friend, Google. After skimming through next month's PC World I remembered that sometimes it's good to revisit your roots. It looks like Yahoo is stepping up to the plate lately with their recent Yahoo 360 launch. They've also added a couple of new search engines, and purchased Flickr (which I have to admit had me slightly concerned seeing as Flickr is one of my new favorite things and I didn't want to see Yahoo get its cooties all over an otherwise decent service). One of their new search engines is the reason I'm writing this. I thought my librarians might find Yahoo's Creative Commons search engine interesting, if not useful.

For those of you not in-the-know, Creative Commons is a "nonprofit that offers a flexible copyright for creative work." Essentially they help authors publish their work with 'some rights reserved' giving them a choice as to how it may be used. I've noticed it's becoming big in the blogosphere, which makes sense as knowledge here is relatively collective (hmm, Blogosphere...Borgosphere. Quick turn away, my geek roots are showing).

Search results are limited to relevant information on the license as well as specific usage rights and conditions. "The resulting information can then be used, mixed, or repurposed by students, musicians, writers, educators and other content creators to ultimately create new content". (Bill Hartzer, Yahoo! Unveils Yahoo! Creative Commons Search Beta, March 25, 2005)

I can see one or two of you wincing. Don't freak out, this is not a bad thing. Googlezon is not coming for you...Yet.