Posted July 26, 2010
The Rural Design Collective Summer Mentoring Program is working with author James Simmons to create an eBook on how to make eBooks! We are collaborating on the book at FLOSS Manuals, a site that makes it very easy for anyone to author their own book (with a focus on software manuals) and convert it to an eBook. This effort is bringing a wealth of information together to help everyone - especially teachers in the classroom! We are in the homestretch of our Kickstarter campaign - we would sincerely appreciate your support on this worthy project! Please visit our fundraising page and back our project - and share the page with others to help spread the word!
Reading, 'Riting and Reorganizing
Posted February 1, 2010
It's a new decade here at webchick.org - and I am amazed at what has been accomplished in the past ten years. I have had the great fortune to participate in several groundbreaking projects, many of which have grown up and taken on lives of their own. A lot of cool work is in progress at Point.B Studio, and I will be bringing that together in a site that better reflects my career and output over the past 25 years as an artist, designer, creative director and communicator. I am collecting some of that here and here, and you can read a bit about me at the web site for my mentoring program. In the meantime, if you have a creative idea that needs to become a reality, I am actively pursuing new gigs. Email me at webchick [at] invisible.net to discuss how I can help you achieve your goals.
Redesigning the Official Journals
Posted October 5, 2009
Point.B Studio recently had the opportunity to re-imagine what the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations might look like if it was in XML. Working with Public.Resource.org on this project was a lot of fun, and gave us the opportunity to discover the state-of-the-art (and limitations) of modern technologies such as XHTML, CSS3 and PDF (and we will discuss these details soon). We also developed a color-coded wayfinding concept that introduces an enhanced navigation system (PDF). We propose that a visual icon system be developed similar to the isotypes by Otto Neurath that influenced the National Park System icons, giving new meaning to the landscape of America’s Operating System.
Give A Little, Get A Little
Posted May 8 2009
The 2009 Rural Design Collective Mentoring Program (RDC) is about to begin - and I am thrilled to announce that we will be part of the One Laptop Per Child Contributors Program (OLPC). Six laptops were sent to Point B Studio by the OLPC as a matching donation to the six that were donated to the local communities near Sixes, Oregon by the RDC over the past two years. We're going to fill them with public domain books from the Internet Archive Children's Library and share them with kids!
The Rural Design Collective
Posted June 3 2008
I am launching my own initiative called the Rural Design Collective - RDC, for short -
It is a mentoring program with a local focus designed to help motivated people begin a career on the Internet.
It is just in the planning stages, and it will take awhile to flesh out because I will be doing it in tandem with my other projects (which helped shape it - more on that later),
but you can watch this space for details.
The Most Useful Page on the Internet
Posted February 23 2008
Not long ago in my web travels, I was searching for a sheet of handwriting paper - the kind kids use
to practice penmanship and cursive writing on - and to my surprise I could not find a single blank sheet to download and print-on-demand.
I found a lot of practice sheets that were part of elaborate lesson plans and loads of flashy "learning" games - but all I wanted was the DIY sheet (I should have made it myself, but I was in a hurry that particular day).
Lo and behold, I took five minutes out of my day today to create what might possibly be the most useful - and usable -
page on the Internet. Without further ado, here it is saved as a PDF
- guaranteed to work in any browser -
and an open source .ai version to boot.
The Internet Archive BookMobile
Posted December 22 2007
It has been a great year. I have been doing meaningful work, and to top it off - I spent the past couple of months as the Internet Archive Bookmobilist.
It was a fun experience which helped me become much more involved in my local community. I also published my first public domain books!
Both are based on projects with my son - the first is the The Amazing Sixes Solar-Powered Pumpkin People and the second is the
The Head Start Critter Construction Book. It is quite liberating to design, produce, bind and distribute your own book
on location (especially when you use a gasoline-powered generator!).
Life In Interesting Times
Posted August 25 2007
I have been working on several interesting projects - one just went live: 24-7 - a DIY Video Summit, a conference exploring the transformation of dynamic visual media. Through this project, I discovered many contemporary video artists (which rekindled my interest in some of my long-time personal favs), and collaborated remotely with some very talented people. In other news, I am excited to be a part of Open Library, which involves another amazing group of people, and gives me an opportunity to work with the Internet Archive (which, for me, is cool beyond words). And speaking of cool beyond words, there are some new things underway at Point B Studio that are keeping me busy ... one thing is for certain: life is interesting!
2007 Webby Honoree
Posted April 18 2007
The Memory Palace Project was chosen as an Official Honoree in this year's Webby Awards in the NetArt category.
I was thrilled by the news - and have been fortunate to work with a great group of photographers who were interested in doing something new and different (of course, now that Google just released My Maps, you can create your own map, too!).
Development continues on eSPG v2.0 as a result of that work, although progress has been slow due to a very exciting project(s) that I have been invited to participate in.
