www.johndbritton.com

Sol Sender, the man behind the Obama '08 logo, recently joined VSA Partners as a strategist and, to celebrate, they posted a really amazing two-part interview on their web site, talking about the logo explorations and identity contenders to the iconic "O." David Airey at Logo Design Love has unpacked the visual highlights of the interview, which makes for a great set. What I love about all this work is that it shows that the "O" wasn't just a fluke but that it was the result of a proper identity exploration with a sound strategy and that good things happen when good designers are involved. Even in a market as crap-filled as Presidential campaign identities.

It's important to note that Sender did the logo and initial identity standards but it was art director John Slabyk and creative director of new media Scott Thomas who extended the identity into novel and exciting executions, like the mutable logos for different sectors of the population.

As we mentioned in our latest newsletter, we're implementing a few new policies. Things change pretty quickly at Kiva, and we want to make sure that our lender community stays informed and has the chance to give us some feedback. So, to give you a chance to do that, we'll be hosting the first Kiva Community Conference Call next week!

You can use the dial-in information below to join us for the call on Wednesday, December 17th at 2pm PST / 5pm EST.

Dial In (U.S.): 866-740-1260
Dial In (Outside U.S.): +1 303-248-0285
Access Code: 6415483

We look forward to hearing you on the line!

interplanetary internet

Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Gmail Product Marketing Manager

Not too long ago, one of the Gmail engineers broke out her vinyl cutter and made some Gmail m-velope stickers. Pretty soon, they were pasted to our desks, stuck on our laptops, and adorning the walls around the office. Then other people started asking us about them -- first it was just other Googlers. But when a guy I was sitting next to on an airplane asked where he could get a Gmail sticker, we realized other people might like them too.

So we designed some more, and printed up a whole bunch.



There's the standard Gmail m-velope -- dressed up in glitter. One of three bookplate style stickers you can stick on anything from the inside of a favorite book to your laptop or your skateboard. (Trading with friends is encouraged -- we realize the unicorn isn't for everyone.) And there's a sheet of keyboard shortcut stickers intended as a tool to help people learn Gmail's shortcuts. The adhesive is a bit more removable than standard stickiness, so you can take them off once you've trained your fingers.



So how do you get your stickers? We may be all about speedy electronic communication, but this time we're going old school with snail mail. Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope (along with a note if you're so inclined) to:

Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420

Make sure to include enough postage to return a sticker pack via U.S. mail. It's less than one ounce, so a standard $0.42 stamp will do if you're in the United States; enclose an international reply coupon (IRC) if you're outside of the U.S. And be sure to send your envelope in soon -- one per person please.

*Our lawyers asked us to make sure it was clear that your contact information won't be maintained in any way and these stickers are "void where prohibited and only while supplies last."

(photos by Dustin Diaz)

While other annual retrospectives are based on editors’ picks or sales data, the Last.fm Best of 2008 list is based entirely on what the Last.fm community has been listening to this year and shows which artist, albums and tracks defined the musical landscape in 2008.

We compiled the list by looking at the data in a number of different ways to get a full picture of what you all listened to this year. First we looked at absolute numbers. It won’t surprise any followers of the Last.fm weekly charts to know that Coldplay, Radiohead and The Beatles topped the list. While Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends” certainly made an impact this year, many of the other artists had not released any new material, and we wanted to know what artists really made 2008 different. So, we decided to slice the data to show us which new artists really broke through this year. We chose to define “new” artists as artists who released their debut full-length album in 2008 in the UK, and we ranked them by total number of listeners. Check out who made the top ten here.

Next we looked at the top albums by scrobbles in 2008. When looking at all scrobbles in 2008 by album again we saw the weekly chart champions dominated the list. We then looked just at albums physically released in 2008 in the UK and ranked them by listeners, and came up with a list that shows what albums are this year’s classics. See if you can name all top ten and then score yourself here.

The top tracks of 2008 list (as you can probably guess by now) is made up of tracks released in 2008 and ranked by listeners. Who dominated the list: earnest rockers or that summer hit you couldn’t escape? Check it out here.

Finally, we put it all together in a radio for your listening enjoyment. To mix it up a bit and keep you guessing, we expanded the radio to include the top 30 artists, albums and tracks of 2008. If you’re feeling sleuthy, you can track down the source of the radio to see who didn’t quite make it to the top.

Enjoy!

Update: If you’re logged in on one of our international sites, please change your language to English to see http://www.last.fm/bestof/2008

I sometimes put up a Powerpoint (well, Keynote) slide that says “Control doesn’t scale.”The assumption that large projects only succeed if they’re centrally controls led and managed turns out to have been true because we limited the scope of what we we considered realistic. You can build a Britannica using a centrally controlled system, but you could not build a Wikipedia that way.

But I know that there are some important counter-examples, so I’ll frequently add, “Except at an huge cost in expense and freedom,” for we know all too well that some regimes have managed to maintain intense control over massive populations for generations.

Today there’s an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald with Isaac Mao, pioneering Chinese blogger and Berkman fellow, in which he says the Chinese authorities are unable to keep up with increasing volume of social communications the 108M bloggers, millions in social networks, and people texting and twittering away.

So, maybe control doesn’t scale after all.

[Tags: isaac_mao control china berkman ]

Winter semester I’m teaching a new version of the Introduction to Open Education course here at BYU. I’m as excited for this course as I’ve ever been for any - partly because the course has been completely redesigned as a massively multiplayer role-playing game. From the Syllabus:

Instructional design faculty are frequently criticized for delivering information about innovative new pedagogical methods to their students in the form of traditional lectures - for talking the talk but failing to walking the walk. Setting positive examples is important for people in every field to do.

There are two ways to describe the design of this course, and both are equally valid. On the one hand, this course is a mix of direct skills instruction combined with project-based learning and collaborative problem solving. The course employs a progression of increasingly complex problems with supportive information, and requires students to synthesize hundreds of pages of literature, interview data, and their own design intuition to produce meaningful artifacts both individually and as part of highly inter-dependent teams. The idea of teach-reteach (characterized so well in Gong’s description of the Three Person Problem) is at the heart of the students’ day-to-day learning experiences.

On the other hand, the course is a massively multiplayer role-playing game in which students select a character class, develop specialized expertise, complete a series of individual quests, join a Guild, and work with members of their Guild to accomplish quests requiring a greater breadth of skills than any one student possesses.

One need not look very far to find indications that the genre is extremely effective in promoting informal learning - see the work of Constance Steinkuehler and John Seely Brown as examples. Despite the impressive work of Constance, JSB, and others, to the best of my knowledge no one has ever designed and implemented a university course as a massively multiplayer role-playing game. In addition to helping students gain a working knowledge of the field of open education (i.e., knowledge they can actually put to work), this course is a design experiment exploring the effectiveness of running a university course as a massively multiplayer role-playing game.

Visit the syllabus to learn about the four character classes, the specifics of the quests, and other information. I’m still inserting links to some of the readings, but the course structure is complete and I would love any and all feedback (including negative feedback) on the course design.

The course will be open again this year, meaning anyone, anywhere is welcome to participate. And yes, I will print and mail completion certificates again for those who earn and want them. =)

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it. Or maybe you'd like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.

Today we're launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don't feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

Watch our lead engineer, Amay, demonstrate a few ways to use SearchWiki in this short video:



This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives. We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users' search experience, and this is yet another step along the way.

Posted by Cedric Dupont, Product Manager, and Corin Anderson, Software Engineer

great for productivity and organizing mail

Article by Pin-Quan Ng

This morning, New Yorkers were gifted with free copies of the NY Times on the street - but they weren’t just any New York Times. They were copies from the future, dated July 4, 2009, and headlined with the long-awaited news: “IRAQ WAR ENDS.” The copies, bearing the same look and feel as the real deal, are filled with other fake news stories pointing to the pranksters’ hopes of what the future could hold (i.e., “New York Bike Path System Expanded Dramatically” and “National Health Insurance Act Passes.”)

The stunt is linked to The Yes Men, a liberal prank group that has been pulling off similarly bold and complicated hoaxes like this for years. While most people immediately recognize (and perhaps as quickly disregard) the stunt as a stunt,  Gothamist brings out an interesting take on it:

CityRoom spoke to Alex S. Jones, who co-wrote “The Trust,” about the paper’s history, “I would say, If you’ve got one, hold on to it. It will probably be a collector’s item. I’m just glad someone thinks the New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort… I consider this a gigantic compliment to The Times.”

CityRoom also got a quote from Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, who seems less enthralled, “This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it.”

You can read the fake issue online here. Watch the video below for more:

[via Gothamist]

© Christine Huang for PSFK, 2008. | Permalink | Comments (1) | Add to del.icio.us

cool site giving money to kiva for bearding your face in photoshop

By Chris Kelly, Gallery Project Manager

Last week, Google's Open Source Team hosted the Gallery project's first team sprint. Ten core team members, some from their offices at Google and some from as far away as Serbia, got together on the Google campus on October 22-24 to figure out the future of the Gallery project.

During the weeks prior to the sprint, the Gallery community embarked on some ambitious discussions about what we could do if we took advantage of new technology. We evaluated various PHP frameworks by implementing a basic UI in each one, reviewed feature lists, and examined as many available options as possible. Combined with usability work driven by Jakob Hilden that originated with the OpenUsability project's Season of Usability this year, these discussions and explorations paved the way for the sprint: major decisions and the beginning of a rewrite!

Once at Google we spent a lot of time discussing options, tinkering with code, and continuing discussions into the evening at bars and restaurants in Mountain View.

By Friday, we settled on code standards, feature lists, a new project management methodology using trackers on SourceForge and a shared task list in Chandler, and the Kohana PHP framework. We didn't quite finish the code yet, but it's all in our SourceForge Subversion repository in a temporary location, and we look forward to introducing Gallery 3 to the world in a few months.


Gallery Sprinters
(photo used with the permission of Chris Kelly)

More pictures and more details will be available on gallery.menalto.com later this week.

By Chris Kelly, Gallery Project Manager

Last week, Google's Open Source Team hosted the Gallery project's first team sprint. Ten core team members, some from their offices at Google and some from as far away as Serbia, got together on the Google campus on October 22-24 to figure out the future of the Gallery project.

During the weeks prior to the sprint, the Gallery community embarked on some ambitious discussions about what we could do if we took advantage of new technology. We evaluated various PHP frameworks by implementing a basic UI in each one, reviewed feature lists, and examined as many available options as possible. Combined with usability work driven by Jakob Hilden that originated with the OpenUsability project's Season of Usability this year, these discussions and explorations paved the way for the sprint: major decisions and the beginning of a rewrite!

Once at Google we spent a lot of time discussing options, tinkering with code, and continuing discussions into the evening at bars and restaurants in Mountain View.

By Friday, we settled on code standards, feature lists, a new project management methodology using trackers on SourceForge and a shared task list in Chandler, and the Kohana PHP framework. We didn't quite finish the code yet, but it's all in our SourceForge Subversion repository in a temporary location, and we look forward to introducing Gallery 3 to the world in a few months.


Gallery Sprinters
(photo used with the permission of Chris Kelly)

More pictures and more details will be available on gallery.menalto.com later this week.

By Chris Kelly, Gallery Project Manager

Last week, Google's Open Source Team hosted the Gallery project's first team sprint. Ten core team members, some from their offices at Google and some from as far away as Serbia, got together on the Google campus on October 22-24 to figure out the future of the Gallery project.

During the weeks prior to the sprint, the Gallery community embarked on some ambitious discussions about what we could do if we took advantage of new technology. We evaluated various PHP frameworks by implementing a basic UI in each one, reviewed feature lists, and examined as many available options as possible. Combined with usability work driven by Jakob Hilden that originated with the OpenUsability project's Season of Usability this year, these discussions and explorations paved the way for the sprint: major decisions and the beginning of a rewrite!

Once at Google we spent a lot of time discussing options, tinkering with code, and continuing discussions into the evening at bars and restaurants in Mountain View.

By Friday, we settled on code standards, feature lists, a new project management methodology using trackers on SourceForge and a shared task list in Chandler, and the Kohana PHP framework. We didn't quite finish the code yet, but it's all in our SourceForge Subversion repository in a temporary location, and we look forward to introducing Gallery 3 to the world in a few months.


Gallery Sprinters
(photo used with the permission of Chris Kelly)

More pictures and more details will be available on gallery.menalto.com later this week.

Posted by Chad Parry, Gmail engineer

Hello, you've reached Chad's mailbox. Thanks for your email about the latest Labs feature: Canned Responses, or email for the truly lazy. I'm on paternity leave so I won't be able to respond personally. Instead, I hope you'll enjoy this automated message.

If you're sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the "Canned responses" button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.






It couldn't get any easier unless Gmail automatically pushed the Send button. If you're lazy enough to think that would be a good idea, then read on, friend.

Gmail already lets you create filters based on a combination of keywords, sender, recipients, and more in your incoming messages. Turn on Canned Responses in Labs, and you can set a filter to grab one of your saved responses, create an automated reply, and hit the Send button for you.















You can set up different automated messages for different keywords, just like you said you wanted. (We're friends, so I trust you to use this power responsibly.)

Posted by Chad Parry, Gmail engineer

Hello, you've reached Chad's mailbox. Thanks for your email about the latest Labs feature: Canned Responses, or email for the truly lazy. I'm on paternity leave so I won't be able to respond personally. Instead, I hope you'll enjoy this automated message.

If you're sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the "Canned responses" button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.






It couldn't get any easier unless Gmail automatically pushed the Send button. If you're lazy enough to think that would be a good idea, then read on, friend.

Gmail already lets you create filters based on a combination of keywords, sender, recipients, and more in your incoming messages. Turn on Canned Responses in Labs, and you can set a filter to grab one of your saved responses, create an automated reply, and hit the Send button for you.















You can set up different automated messages for different keywords, just like you said you wanted. (We're friends, so I trust you to use this power responsibly.)

first press coverage of p2pu

As Jane reports on the Creative Commons blog, California’s OER pilot program has been signed into law:

Last week, a bill enabling the California Community Colleges to integrate open educational resources (OER) into its core curriculum was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger. AB 2261 authorizes the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges “to establish a pilot program to provide faculty and staff from community college districts around the state with the information, methods, and instructional materials to establish open education resources centers.”

Hal quotes me as saying that ‘introducing Open Educational Resources into the public education system is the most significant development since the establishment of Land Grant colleges and universities in the mid 1800’s.’ In fact, in my OpenCourseWars future-history, the federal OER bill is actually called the Third Morrill Act. I stand by this statement that OERs will be the most important development for higher education since the creation of the Land Grants, and I’ll go one step further and say that the widespread adoption of OERs by higher education and K-12 will be the most important thing that has happened to formal education since the advent of formal education.

You may think I’m blowing smoke, but OERs represent a mass-democratization of access that goes beyond formal education or even public schooling. Think about it - public schools are available only to (1) citizens (2) of a certain age. OERs, on the other hand, are available to everyone, regardless of nationality or age. As institutions adopt OERs and improve them they will contribute these changes back to the community. Like a feedback loop in a microphone and speaker, more and more OER of higher and higher quality will be increasingly available. Thank God that I’m alive to see this all happening! I’m truly humbled, and I hope to be able to continue to contribute to the advance of the open education movement.

George Mason University has developed a thorough compilation of English accents online at their Speech Accent Archive.  The site asks for a participant in the study to read a standardized elicitation paragraph and upload the recording.  In addition to audio samples of each accent, the Speech Accent Archive keeps track of biographical and regional data.  Each clip has a readout of the sample paragraph next to the phonetic transcription.

In a quick browse of their speakers, I found everything from a Yiddish to a Mortlockese accent.  This relatively simple idea has provided a structure for a unique set of data.  In addition to being a fun site to casually explore, it provides a resource for speech pathologists, actors learning an accent or even engineers training speech recognition machines.  If that wasn’t enough, all the files are released under a Creative Commons License.

© Nicko Margolies for PSFK, 2008. | Permalink | Comments | Add to del.icio.us