This blog features a creative Commons license that lets anybody do anything they like with the content published here, as long as proper attribution is given and it’s used for non-commercial purposes. I have agreements with a couple organizations to republish posts (including Ragan Communications and Social Media Today). Basically, what all this means is that the same content appears in multiple places. This is fine for increased exposure, and I’m happy if my words help bring traffic to another site. But despite the fact that the Creative Commons license allows anyone to slice, dice, mix and mash my posts however they like, I still haven’t seen anybody do anything really interesting with them.

Until yesterday.

Late yesterday afternoon I received an email from Barry Kayton, CEO of a shoestring startup in South Africa called Cognician. Kayton directed me to the initial release of the company’s application, which the company bills as a “thought processor.” I’ve used brainstorming applications before, tools that help you capture your thoughts and organize them. With each of these, you start with a blank slate. Cognician, on the other hand, presents you with a list of “cogs,” concepts that have already been mapped out by someone else. Cognician helps you apply these processes to your own efforts.

My post, Six questions to ask before launching a Facebook fan page,” has been turned into one of the first batch of cogs. The post, written back in March, was prompted by the flood of protests that consumed the Nestle blog in the wake of the company’s demands that YouTube remove a Greenpeace video linking the company to rainforest deforestation and the destruction of organutan habitat. The six questions weren’t meant to be all-encompassing, but rather to point out organizations need to think through their Facebook strategy in preparation for the unexpected.

Cognician walks you through each of the six questions, allowing you to enter answers while referring to that segment of my post. When you’re done, the whole thing can be exported to a Word document.

An explanatory video accompanies each of the cogs, like this one for the cog based on my post:

Other cogs available now cover topics like SWOT analyses, 17 must-ask questions for planning successful projects, the five W’s and one H, and one titled “The Six Thinking Hats.”

I replied to Kayton’s email letting him know I was impressed with the concept and delighted with the creative repurposing of narrative content. He let me know that there are many more bells and whistles the company wanted to include, but lack of funding has forced them to “scale back countless planned features just to get the core app out there.”

I can only imagine what those features might be. I definitely see opportunities to socialize the tool (share the results for comment, submit posts for conversion to a cog or release a tool that lets anyone create a cog), along with other ways to enhance the experience.

As it is, though, it’s both useful and inventive. It’s also free, along with an initial bunch of cogs (thus conforming to the “non-commercial” part of my Creative Commons license—although in this case, I’d give permission to use it anyway); additional cogs will be available for purchase from the Cognician store. The application runs on Adobe Air (like Tweetdeck), which I see as an added bonus.

Give it a try and let Kayton know what you think. He’s on Twitter, as is Cognician.

Oh, and any VC’s reading this? It looks like a good bet to me.