Source and Attribute Creative Commons Photos Like a Pro

Miss Manners will be the first to tell you that when someone gives you a gift, the proper response is a warm, enthusiastic, “thank you!” in writing. Did you know that when you accept the “gift” of a Creative Commons-licensed work such as a photo or illustration for use in your web projects, Miss Manners would endorse that same, warm, enthusiastic “thank you!” in the form of proper sourcing and attribution? Being a good citizen on the web means demonstrating proper behavior, at all events. Today, we’re going to share the wonder that is Creative Commons and your responsibilities for sourcing and attributing any material you may download there.

Exploring Video: Three One-Minute Videos to Shoot with Your Phone Right Now

Earlier this week, Elizabeth talked about adding video to your posts to bring a new dimension to the experience for your readers, and Cheri gave you the lowdown on Video Shortcodes. Today, let’s look at three videos you could shoot and publish to your blog in the space of a few minutes, via the magic of your phone.

As you might have noticed, we have mobile WordPress apps coming out of our ears (in the best possible sense of something good coming out of ears that you can imagine), so whether you have a Nokia, Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Phone, or any other phone, chances are there’s an app that will make it easy for you to shoot some video and post it right to your blog without ever cracking your laptop open.

Video Shortcodes

Yesterday, Elizabeth talked about adding videos to your blog. Here let’s dive a bit deeper and look at how to use shortcodes to embed videos. On WordPress.com, you can use these handy bits of code to do cool things on your site with little effort, like embed files and create objects.

WordPress.com has a number of video shortcodes you can use to embed videos from a variety of sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, and Flickr. As Elizabeth mentioned, you can embed a video by placing its URL in your visual editor. But using the shortcode method lets you customize the video in various ways, from controlling its width and height to specifying a start and end time for a clip — it depends on the shortcode and the video service.