We're pleased to announce the launch of the Drupal newsletter, put together by Robin Monks. The Drupal newsletter will be a monthly publication covering the latest Drupal news. Subscribe here if you wish to receive the latest Drupal news by e-mail (or to manage your subscription).

We have been offered one full-page ad in the Free Software Magazine, a free magazine for the free software world. As such, we are calling all designers to come up with one kick-ass Drupal ad which conforms to the specifications at http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/advertise/. Just share your artwork in the comments so we can openly discuss and revise it. Finally, we'll submit the best ad for publication. Read on for more information.

It was no secret that Drupal.org's download pages were sub-optimal: we had two views, one by version and one by download type. This was a left-over from project.module's old browsing structure. And while the Drupal.org front page feature did provide easy access to the list of themes, modules and translations, that page was not particularly helpful in helping you discover interesting downloads that you didn't yet know by name.

That's why I dived into project.module and came out again with a revamped project browser. The new download page is structured both by download type and version and gives you more informative project descriptions. Furthermore, with a dash of CSS (and a couple dozen screenshots later) I added thumbnails to the Themes list. Finding a theme you like has never been easier. Each theme also has a direct link to the Drupal Theme Garden: now you can get a live demo of any theme by clicking its picture.

Dan Gillmor is a prominent journalist, author and commentator on technology in the San Francisco Bay Area (Silicon Valley), known for his technology articles in the San Jose Mercury. He recently left the San Jose Mercury to start a "grassroots journalism project", and it is finally here: it is called the Bayosphere and is powered by Drupal. Jay Campbell, Dan's Technologist, writes about why they chose Drupal.

I could have used my time productively tonight, but instead I put together a brand new stigmergicweb podcast, looking at school websites and how to improve their functionality.

I am writing this to communicate the general design, and project plan of my proposed install system. Unfortunately, to accomplish that I need to explain a fair amount of the background of how the project originated, and how it has evolved since then. This install system has been a goal I have been working towards for a while, and the plans I set into motion more than a year ago are busy reaching fruition now, and as such it is time for me to decloak the project, and follow the example of other big projects we have going on in the community at the moment by seeking more community assistance, and clearly defining the goals and requirements.

This post only aims to give a general overview of the install system. Each component will be discussed in depth in their own threads.