The Open Planning Project

Melkjug.org recently got a nice facelift. Congrats to Luke, Josh, and the design team - great work.

Melkjug is TOPP's newsfeed reader and tuner. If you're like me, your current feed reader probably has thousands of unread articles. Melkjug uses your preferences ("I like articles written by Kelly Vaughan" or "I like articles that Tim liked") to sort through all your articles and find the ones you actually want to read.

You can set your preferences by 'tuning' the handy filters in the right-hand column:

Besides the new look, the new Melkjug has added features like OpenID login, 'starred' items, and the ability to follow your friend's jug.

As with all our software projects, Melkjug is open source. You can visit the Melkjug project website at melkjug.openplans.org.

Congratulations, GothamSchools.org on the great site redesign!

Their celebratory post:

We’re GothamSchools, and we’re going live today with a new design. We hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, the kind where we challenge each other on the important things but have each other’s backs in the day-by-day effort to make schools better.

Here’s what you get from us: fair, accurate, and honest up-to-the-minute reporting from the front lines of teaching and learning in New York City. We won’t pull punches, but we won’t play gotcha, either. In fact, we already broke a story — the UFT’s probable stance against Mayor Bloomberg on term limits.

And here’s what we want from you: eyeballs, so many of them that when we wake up tomorrow morning the site has crashed and you’re left refreshing your browser in frustration. (Don’t worry, we have the bandwidth to support you.) We’d also like your insight: Leave us comments and send us tips with your scoops from the schools.

GothamSchools will be following developments in at least two arenas: what happens inside classrooms (any borough will do), and what happens inside Tweed Courthouse, the place that Chancellor Joel Klein calls “work,” along with all those other places we find ourselves when we’re on the trail of the Big Story: the UFT headquarters at 52 Broadway; the halls of state government in Albany; and in the heads of DOE officials, visionary educators, and involved parents.

To cement the distinction, from now on we’ll be organizing our daily dispatches into two distinct blogs. At the head of the Classroom is former teacher Kelly Vaughan, who after eight years of teaching in the Bronx knows a thing or two about schools. And anchoring the Newsroom are Philissa Cramer, formerly of Insideschools, and — here’s another new thing — Elizabeth Green, of the late, great New York Sun. You can read all of our posts in one place (just hit the “Home” tab at any time) or switch between the Classroom and Newsroom.

Here’s what else is new:

• We’ve crafted a snazzy new design to match the high quality of our reporting.
• We’ve created a place for longer and more comprehensive pieces than are typically included on a blog. Check these out in our Features section.
• We’ve added a calendar stocked with upcoming events, from professional development opportunities to parent meetings. Know of something happening? Submit an event.

GothamSchools is better today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow it will be better still. But we need your help. Let us know how you think the site can be improved. And above all, keep reading. We’ll be blogging.

Last Saturday, TOPP played host to Wikis Take Manhattan, a city-wide scavenger hunt and free media contest.

The idea:

One part streets -- more than thirty teams of scavengers spent Saturday afternoon taking pictures of curb cuts and separated bike lanes, all the while admiring the beauty of the city by foot, bike, and train.

One part copyleft -- all photos are Creative Commons-licensed, so they can be freely shared and remixed.This event generated gigabytes of freely-licensed content for StreetsWiki and Wikipedia.

And many, many parts fun -- everyone came back to to the TOPP office for pizza, beer, and mayhem. OK, well the mayhem was had mostly by the uploaders, who spent much of the evening frantically trying to upload and score thousands of pictures from dozens cameras.

The results? Well, the final tally isn't in yet (we're still uploading!), but we had dozens of participants, thousands of photos, and smiles all around. But don't trust us, check out the great Streetfilm.

Stay tuned for links to the final photo galleries.

The event was organized by TOPP, Free Culture @ Columbia, Free Culture @ NYU, the NYC Wikimedia meetup, and Creative Commons.

Further sponsorship was provided by Pure Food & Wine, The Camera Club of New York, Brooklyn Brewery, Bicycle Habitat, B's Bikes, Birdbath Bakery, The LimeWire Store, and O'Reilly Media.

Thanks to all who helped make this event possible! A special thanks to Emile from the Camera Club of NY for judging Best Photo.

Streetsblog, TOPP's transportation and urban planning advocacy blog, is looking for an experienced journalist to help point the way towards a more livable and sustainable urban environment.

Since its launch two years ago, Streetsblog has broken numerous stories and emerged as an influential voice in civic affairs. Our readership consists largely of city government employees, planning and transportation professionals, environmental advocates, members of the media and individuals interested in being involved in what is often referred to as the “Livable Streets” movement.

While Streetsblog has a distinct advocacy bent, the site is run by professionally-trained editors and reporters who aim to cover Livable Streets issues with newspaper-quality journalism. Towards that end, Streetsblog is seeking journalists with previous professional experience to do original research, reporting, interviews, investigation and coverage of events.

Check out the job post for more details!
 

Belated post on last week'sCreative Commons Salon NYC.

Behold, the power of open media.

This month's salon, hosted again here at the TOPP office, was fantastic. Free-as-in-speech is often best served with a side of free-as-in-beer. This salon featured Dean Jansen for the Miro Project, Rachel Sterne for GroundReport.com, and the Meerkat Arts Media Collective.

Miro - formerly Democracy - is the free, open source media player that has been making (air)waves of late. Miro could change the way we access the media, decentralizing the distribution of video and audio. Miro's support of open standards has caught the eye of places like TED and German Public Broadcasting. Hey, maybe you'll see a TOPP channel some day soon.

GroundReport is bootstrapping citizen journalism.  The problem? When mainstream media fail to cover critical issues - such as the genocide in Darfur - citizens have a hard time pressuring leaders to take action. GroundReport is an alternative to the mainstream media, with a wiki-driven, CC-licensed platform for use by correspondants around the world. GroundReport incentivizes reporters, paying each a proportion of the ad revenue through their stories.

The presentations wrapped up with two short films from the Meerkat Arts Media Collective.

The event was organized by Fred Benenson of Creative Commons.