News and announcements

I've compiled a list of all the new modules that have been released in September. I've probably missed a couple, so if you've recently developed a contrib module please take a look at the list and give me a heads up so I can add you.

http://www.whatwoulddrupaldo.org/new-module-roundup-september

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is seeking proposals for innovative ways to shape the future of news and community. "In 2007, we will award a total of $5 million to individuals, organizations or businesses that can show their ideas will transform community life." It's important to note that their focus is on projects that contribute to physical community-building in some way.

"In a democracy that is organized by geography, the fate of every village, town, suburb and metropolis depends on citizens being able to get the news they need to run their lives and their governments. The Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge hopes to recognize transformative ideas, pilot projects, leadership initiatives and investment opportunities that will help improve the flow of journalism, information and news in the public interest."

Here's the link to the guidelines and simple application: http://newschallenge.org/

My own agenda is working with others to create various parts of a universal, democratic communications network (neither unmoderated nor moderated, but with prominence decided by random juries of people in the network). It would serve as a de facto collaborative journalism enterprise, by putting news from all different sources together and allowing connections to be made over time so that there's as good a chance as any the truth will come out. The site would let people tie proposed ideas and actions to news articles, in a larger network of "People Who Give a Damn." The premise: if everyone who cared about something actually knew about everyone else who cared, people would be able to work together to change things for the better a lot more often. I can go into this concept in roughly infinite detail with anyone who would like to.

This is an application for a Knight Brothers Foundation 21st Century News Challenge grant. In the spirit of open source, I post it here in the Drupal forum for discussion and as an example for people to pursue additional grants for the journalism, civic engagement, and physical community-building for which Drupal is so suited. Note that the grants could cover establishing sites as well as module development.

Project Category and Title * (255 characters)

News Challenge Idea: Related Items, a module for the community-oriented and open-source content management system, Drupal, to let users quickly and easily connect any piece of content (news, idea, group, event) to any other content they consider related.

Briefly describe the project for which 21st Century News Challenge funding is requested. Keep in mind the purpose is to develop physical communities when answering the following questions in your description:

What makes this idea unique? * (no more than 350 words)

As an open source extension to software created, supported, and used by a vibrant community, Related Items could be part of many other projects the Knight Brothers foundation might well fund in their own right.

This idea is unique in the scope of possible applications that its simplicity, modularity, and open source implementation make possible. Any site using Drupal, an increasingly popular choice, could easily add this module to allow users and/or staff to rapidly associate any item on the site with any other item. News articles would have related past and current articles. Forum topics, blog posts, ideas, actions, event notices, and groups' home pages, could connect to news content and vice versa, and to each other.

An updated version of Drupal on a Stick (see http://drupal.org/node/57125) is available:

http://www.ratatosk.net/software/onastick/

This release lets you run Drupal 4.7.3, Apache 2.2.3, MySQL 5.0.24a and PHP 5.1.6 from an USB memory stick on Windows (2000/XP).

You can also download the script I use to build the Drupal on a Stick distributions.