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.

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.

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.

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!
 

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.

Streetfilms was there to capture the fun. Sounds like the video is a hit with the Livable Streets community:

• "We came into Manhattan via the F Train at Lex / 63rd and walked over to Park Ave. For the first time ever I was not worried about my kids running onto Park Avenue." - Eric
• "I signed up to volunteer at a summer streets event not really know what summer street was. It was the best time! i can't wait to experience the next 2 Saturdays. You will find me running, learning to bike and just dancing in the streets! Between the traffic and bike rental costs, I've never been motivated to learn but can't pass up free open road!" - Betty
• "The best news is that any and all cities can copy and follow NYC’s example, regardless of size and location. Portland did Sunday Parkways on June 22, in October Chicago, April 2009 Baltimore...Clarence's videos will help others get moving. It’s not rocket science...just do it!" - Gil Peñalosa (former Bogotá Commissioner of Parks, Sport, and Recreation).
  

 

This weekend's event was an amazing success, and we're looking forward to two more days of Summer Streets: this Saturday 8/16 and next Saturday 8/23.

Summer Streets is NYC's version of Ciclovia, a celebrated institution in Bogotá, Colombia. Every Sunday and holiday, Bogotá opens dozens of miles to roads to pedestrians, cyclists, runners, dancers, musicians, and everyone else. The event provides the physical space that makes for healthy, safe communities.

The Summer Streets video adds to Streetfilms' cache of fun and inspiring vignettes that can be used for Livable Streets advocacy around the world. Streetfilms like Ciclovia: Bogotá, Colombia have already helped inspire cities like Baltimore build critical support that opens their streets to the public.

For more great snapshots, check out Streetsblog's Summer Streets Photo Tour. 

Photo courtesy of doddnyc/Flickr. 

Today, we announce GothamSchools.org, a major foray into NYC's education scene.

"GothamSchools is a news source and online community for teachers, parents, policy makers, and journalists interested in learning about what works and what doesn’t in the nation’s largest school district. We seek to provide a clearinghouse for New York City school news and commentary, connect teachers and parents with resources, highlight effective practices in policy and pedagogy, and build a participatory knowledge base about education in New York City."

You can expect statistics crunching, up-to-the-minute reporting, and insights into the lives of teachers, students, parents, and principals. And best of all, you can have your say. It's a must-read for the coming school year.

The blog is is written by intrepid wordsmiths Philissa Cramer and Kelly Vaughan. Of the brand new site, Kelly says:

"We've appreciated the feedback of readers and friends (one blog-hating friend says we converted him!) who are responding to our posts and making suggestions about the site.  We're also working on a creative brief to guide the development of a visual identity and an expanded site."

Take a look!
 

Last night, we had the pleasure of hosting a Creative Commons Salon here at the TOPP office.

CC Salons are bi-monthly events that bring together fans of free culture and open source.  The format is 3 short presentations, followed by beer (sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery) and pizza -- a can't miss combination. Last night's presenters were the folks from Wikia Search, the hilarious comedian Max Silvestri (of Gabe + Max’s Internet Thing), and the Livable Streets crew from TOPP.

If you haven't tried it yet, Wikia Search is a new community-driven search engine that adds the "human touch" back into search.  Wikia was founded in 2004 by Jimbo Wales, the creator of Wikipedia (who was in attendance last night -- what a thrill!).  Not only do they intend to improve the quality of search results through the power of their users, the entire project is open source, including the indexes of the internet that they constantly crawl.  I must say, it's a pretty cool idea, and I've already set it as my default Firefox search helper.

Max Silvestri is a piece of work -- a comedian who, according to his website is "great at a bunch of stuff, but especially eating," he gave a gripping monologue about the social pitfalls of Facebook and confessed that he stays up late remixing other people's videos.

Lastly, we gave a short talk about the Livable Streets Network and how we've used Creative Commons licensing for our content, specifically for Streetfilms. By empowering viewers everywhere to freely copy and share videos like Ciclovia, permissive licensing makes it easier to convince your local officials to support Livable Streets projects.

We've been using Creative Commons licenses all along, but we haven't really established a coherent strategy for licensing all our various types of content.  Lucky for us, Fred Benenson from CC (who organized last night's event) came back today and helped us think through our options.  Thanks Fred!  Keep an eye out for more CC badges popping up across the TOPPosphere.

Update: Fred from CC blogged the event on the CC blog, and posted a photoset from the event.

The first thing you may want to do is sign up and become a member to take advantage of all the features of the Livable Streets Network. The log-in box is there in the upper right corner.

Contribute an article to StreetsWiki and help us build a comprehensive, community-created, online encyclopedia on sustainable transportation, urban planning, smart growth and the issues important to Livable Streets activists around the world.

Interested in starting up a Livable Streets project in your own neighborhood? Create a group and use our online tools to get organized, connect with other activists and find the resources you need. Or join an existing group and get involved with a project that's already underway, like the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance in Manhattan.

Contribute photos, videos and notable web links to Streetsblog and Streetfilms and check out other people's contributions as well.

Meet other members of the network and add to our growing list of Livable Streets blogs in cities around the world.

And, of course, please let us know if you find any bugs, glitches or typos. If you find something that doesn't seem to be working as it should, send a report to tips@streetsblog.org or leave a note here in the comments section. We really appreciate your help in this.