Lyre Calliope is a Mozilla community member who’s been closely following our work around building tools and projects for webmakers — and is connecting it to the storytelling and “noise to signal” challenges Phillip Smith has been writing about.

“The problem is not unique to Planet Mozilla — it’s a problem for the web. How do we find meaning in the era of Big Data? Let’s use Planet Mozilla as a chance to tackle this challenge.” –Lyre Calliope

• Listen to Lyre’s presentation
• Read his posts on distributing Mozilla Media Content and streamlining Planet Mozilla’s ‘signal to noise’ ratios
• Have a look at Phillip Smith’s new proposal around “bootstrapping technology news for the people”

“Planet Mozilla should evolve beyond being a glorified rss aggregator to a full blown news brand.” –Philip Smith

Mozilla Open Badges launches Beta

Mozilla’s Open Badges project now includes leading partners like the MacArthur Foundation, impressive collaborators (including NASA, Intel, Disney-Pixar, 4H and dozens of others now building badge programs using Mozilla tools) and — thanks to this week’s new Beta release of Mozilla’s Open Badges Infrastructure — publicly available software for badge issuers and developers to get on board and build with.

• Read about it on the Mozilla blog
• Learn more about Mozilla Open Badges — and earn your first badge
• Learn more about becoming a badge issuer or displayer
• Read more about the Beta release from Mozilla’s Senior Director of Learning, Erin Knight
• Developers: access the source code and technical documentation
• Join Mozilla Open Badges community calls

NOW OPEN: Apply to become a Knight-Mozilla News Fellow

The brand new Knight-Mozilla OpenNews web site is up and running — just in time to open applications for the 2012/13 Knight-Mozilla Fellowships! Apply now.

Fellows will be embedded with leading news organizations around the world, including the New York Times, the BBC, the Guardian, Zeit Online, La Nacion, Spiegel Online, The Boston Globe and Pro Publica.

Get involved:

• Read more about the launch announcement
• Check out the new OpenNews web site
• Apply to become a Knight-Mozilla News Fellow
• Check out this handy explainer video on the program and fellowships.
• Attend an upcoming OpenNews hack day

Mozilla Popcorn Maker ships version 0.3: aka “Breakfast Club”

Why is it called “Breakfast Club?” Because it’s all about the painful and poignant process of growing up. This release  aims at improving the user experience for Mozilla Popcorn Maker. New features: save and publish projects. New templates. Log in with BrowserID. Share you work. It’s for all the brains, athletes, basket cases, princesses, criminals and neo maxi zoom dweebies out there.

Get involved:

• Try out the new version of Popcorn Maker
• Watch Bobby Richter’s demo of new features
• Check out the release notes
• Learn more about how to get involved in Mozilla Popcorn (Ben Moskowitz breaks it down)
• Attend a brown bag on contributing to Popcorn: Tuesday, April 24th at 10am PT / 1pm ET
• Join the beta test group: email popcorn@mozilla.com
• File a bug

Build 1Gbps apps from the future: Mozilla Ignite wants your feedback

Mozilla Ignite is a new upcoming project and partnership between Mozilla and the National Science Foundation. The goal: invite developers to design and build apps for the smarter, faster networks of the future — in areas that matter like healthcare, education and energy.

The project will launch in early May. But in the mean time, we’re seeking feedback from developers. Does this pre-release staging site provide the information you’d need to get involved?

• Take a sneak peek at the upcoming Mozilla Ignite challenge site
• Send feedback to @mozillaignite
• Listen to Katrin’s presentation on what they’re looking for

Mozilla Summer 2012 Campaign: Teaching the world to code

As you know, we’re gearing up for a major summer campaign. We’ve been working hard on getting the message right — especially on the front page and partner page.

• Does this new front page tell the story?
• Does this revamped Partner Page spell out the “what,” “why” and “how” for potential partners?
• Check out these new promotional assets from Chris Appleton: postcards, t-shirt ideas and stickers to spread the word
• Sign up as a
  • Participant
  • Partner
  • Volunteer 

Assessment and the Web

 “When designing assessment for the web, we should look at many different theories and apply whatever pieces fit the best. Being the visual type I couldn’t help but draw a small illustration. Let me know if you found it helpful!” —Chloe Varelidi

Join the Wall Street Journal’s Data Transparency Weekend

 

 

 

April 13 – 15. Help build free web tools that promote data transparency and control.

• Read more about it
• Listen to details from event co-organizer Allan Gunn (yes, that’s his Wall Street Journal portrait above! epic.)