Archive for the ‘News and Events’ Category
Finally. I’m proud to be an American.
by Franz
Well Gang,
We’re gonna go off topic a bit here, but it’s my right to rant. This is the first day I have ever truly felt proud to be from the United States of America. When I was in high-school, forming my view of the world, we were in the first Iraq war - which I could see even then was an Oil rush, not a moral issue. If you’ve read much of the philosophical rants here, you know I’ve got no love for authority, so I really had nothing much positive to say about my country. When I saw the stars and stripes fluttering in the wind, all I really saw was hypocrisy and a new form of corporate colonial abuse around the world. Certainly the last 8 years have been beyond embarrassing.
While 9/11 was certainly a horrible event, to have the response be a declared war on a tactic and a general closing down of the communication process is inexcusable. To let it fester for a second term was beyond depressing. I find myself in Portland, Oregon frequently only surrounded by people with a similar world view - so to be part of a country that seemed to be so wholly missing the point was horrible. I wondered if our system was truly broken beyond repair. I wondered if our international reputation was broken beyond repair. I wondered if this was a place I wanted to raise my family.
Last night I became a new man. We had all heard the polls, we all had given our time and money to Barack, but still we all assumed McCain would win in some inexplicable evil way. Maybe Diebold would just hand him the vote, maybe there really were millions of closet racists as the media kept implying with the “Bradley Effect” - who knew, but the seldom voiced opinion of all of my friends was “snowball’s chance in hell” that a man named Barack Hussein Obama would be our President. But.. Amazingly..
He DOMINATED.. 2:1 in the electoral college!! took ALL of the battle ground states - none of this waiting around for a week while the lawyers hash it out - we knew while still having an after dinner drink! It was a clear and total victory and I couldn’t be prouder.
I feel like we just made a stronger move in the “war on terror” with that one vote than we did in the 8 years of that cowboy dicking around. I feel like if I were to be on an international tour, I’d be PROUD to have an American Flag on my backpack because we may not be perfect (my God that’s clear) but we’re able to do a 180 degree switch and elect a black man with the middle name of Hussein to the most powerful job in the world. “Give us your tired, your poor” because you TRULY can make something of yourself here. This country is NOT just a good-ol-boys network and we’re NOT Rome falling to chaos - the best truly IS yet to come and it’s going to make the WHOLE WORLD a better place.
Ya know I got truly excited about Barack almost 2 years ago now when I read a New Yorker article detailing his most enduring trait - the inherent ability to be a diplomat. Take two people with completely different views on something, accept that there is no “us and them” - no “good and evil”, but rather help them find common ground and a new understanding about how we all can get along. Its about communication and I believe that through open communication we can solve everything and anything. Frankly, I wouldn’t have chosen to give away c5 for nothing if I didn’t deeply believe that. Freedom of expression is freedom.
I honestly believe Barack Obama IS empathy and communication incarnate. I don’t think it’s gonna be easy, and I’m sure he’s gonna make us all work hard for it, but get ready for some actual thoughtful, deliberate, caring understanding and bridge building from your friends in the good old U, S of fuckin A.
PS: sorry about the last 8 years again.. uhh. mulligan?
PPS: I’d love to hear from our international friends as I know c5 is used as much out of the states as in em..
-frz
relaunched concrete5.org - now with forums where you can get paid to help!
by Franz
Well, we’ve been talking about our community marketplace for weeks now, and the first step is finally complete. We reorganized concrete5.org, buffed out the documentation features, added a job board, built out forums - even added a bounties forum where you can get paid to help on the project.
This just the beginning of new stuff you’ll be seeing on concrete5.org in the coming weeks. There will be a large theme library, a blocks and applications marketplace, and much more. Right now we need your help buffing out the content in forums and giving us any feedback you can.
cmsCritic.com knows good stuff.
by Franz
We just got lucky enough to get another interview! CMSCritic.com is a good looking site that I had never run into before they linked to us. You should check them out.
It looks like they’ve been super busy putting together a reasonably comprehensive list of CMS’s (as much as CMSMatrix.org’s community populated one seems to be.) It also looks like they’re taking a little more of a design centric/portal approach than opensourcecms.com has.
Any way you slice it, you should check out the interview.
write a how-to and make some money!
by Franz
The c5 docs need some love, and we’re adding to them every day. That being said, we need your help explaining how c5 solves YOUR problems. We know people are already building blocks and themes with c5, we want you to tell us how!
Write a how-to. Tell us how you built that custom block, or how you took your design and built a concrete5 site out of it. Please make it a little more technical than just “here’s my site” - ask yourself “could someone else learn something out of what I’m writing?”
Give us written words with pictures, or go out on a limb and do a screencast. We’ll accept either.
If we deem it helpful enough to post to the concrete5.org site, we will:
- Link to your site with your name in lights. (no we won’t make it blink, but yes thats the idea)
- We’ll send you a free c5kit, or $55 (us) via paypal - your choice.
- We’ll be very thankful to you, and its nice when people are thankful.
c5 is SourceForge project of the month… after only 3 months..
by Franz
Yeah that’s right. C5 rocks so amazingly hard that SourceForge decided to make us Project of The Month after only being on their site for 3 months! We’ve always thought of source forge as the Rolling Stone of open source - so we took some liberties with our photos…
Check out the whole article here!
Yay, THANK YOU SourceForge…
The old-fashioned lemonade stand goes web 2.0
by kate
Lemonade.com lets people create a widget that contains different products for sale from companies like Apple and EBGames and easily place this “lemonade stand” on social networking sites and blogs. People then earn referral fees when people buy products via their stand.
Welcome to the jungle, baby
by kate
At Enhanced Books, users get the chance to experience audio and video content for books, akin to an extras menu on a DVD. With the release of their newest book, Reckless Road: Guns ‘n Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction, the owners of Enhanced Books felt that their site needed a major overhaul.
Al’s Garden Center site blooms anew
by kate
Al’s Garden Center is a local gardening supply store with three locations in Oregon. They needed a website overhaul that would allow them to create and control the large amounts of content they wanted to display on the site.
Concrete builds OHSU Flash mini-site
by kate
Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) needed a dedicated mini-site where breast cancer patients could learn about the personalized care and expertise they could expect when choosing OHSU’s facility. At MyNameIsMartha.com, patients can meet Martha, the nurse in charge of OHSU’s breast cancer program. The mini-site serves to humanize and sympathize with what a breast cancer patient is experiencing at the outset of their treatment.
Regent Education built by Concrete
by kate
Regent Education is a provider of financial aid management software for institutions of higher education. They offer affordable, web-based, easy-to-use solutions to financial aid departments around the world. Designed and built for the financial aid and enrollment management community, Regent enables institutions to execute their financial aid strategy, and enables the 21st century student to access information - anytime, anywhere, any device, in any language. Their website was dated and needed to reflect that 21st century attitude.
Concrete builds Portland Roasting
by kate
Portland Roasting has been roasting coffee and espresso for the Portland community for over 10 years. In addition to a high-quality product, Portland Roasting focuses on sustainability and renewable resources, as well as farm and eco-friendly directives. Their website needed to reflect their commitment to both great coffee and socially-responsible coffee sourcing.
Rock Camp for Girls powered by Concrete
by kate
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls is a non-profit organization located in Portland, Oregon. Aimed primarily at girls between the ages of eight and eighteen, the camp teaches music and instrumentation as well as advocating social change and a positive female self-image. They needed a new website that was both easy to update and visually reflected the vibrancy and life of the camp.
Concrete Saves Natural Areas
by kate
Save Natural Areas is a political organization committed to the preservation of rivers, streams, natural areas, and wildlife habitat. Plazm came to us with the need for a design centric political website. The site would need to be updated with content frequently, which made Concrete’s content management system an obvious choice. The content management system was put into use to update information on the progress of the bond measure. This allowed the organization to truly speak to their audience as the campaign matured, and gave the bond measure an obvious advantage.
uXcomm chooses Concrete to build AJAX interface
by kate
uXcomm came to Concrete with a problem. They needed a front-end web application that was fast, powerful, and able to convey large amounts of information. This custom management interface was needed to handle large arrays of server hardware. The application was built using Java Server Pages (JSP), and Javascript, a client-side scripting language. Our application connected to uXcomm’s Java applets using SXML. The application was built to use AJAX whenever possible.
Concrete wins awards for Color of Sound
by kate
In July of 2005 Concrete the Studio featured an abstract expressionist who painted while listening to multiple audio sources playing at once. The sounds he surrounded himself with would affect the final palette and feel of his work, which is a phenomenon known as Synesthesia.