“Clip Art of the Month” for March 2010 is now up on WorldLabel’s Blog. Drawing inspiration from the new Open Clip Art Library Release, this new blog takes a look at Web 2.0 Design and what it means for clip art users.

The Web 2.0 aesthetic leaves a very distinct calling card on modern websites, and it’s important to examine why these elements can improve the internet landscape. The WorldLabel post fully explores these new features. Readers are encouraged to share their thoughts!

Visit Open Clip Art Library to sign up and learn how you can contribute!

Today marks the official launch of the StatusNet Cloud Service (SCS) Beta.

SCS allows anyone to quickly and easily generate a status update site at status.net. Users have three types of plans to choose from, when setting up: single-user, community, or private. The recent StatusNet 0.9 server software release has provided the basis for this public Beta. Fabricatorz.com was involved in the development of StatusNet Cloud Service.

A key aspect of SCS is it’s incorporation of the OStatus standard, that lets people follow each other across various social networks.

CEO and founder of StatusNet, Evan Prodromou, says this of SCS:

With StatusNet Cloud Service, we’re providing a powerful simple solution that fits the needs of individuals and organizations on both the public and private Web. StatusNet Cloud Service provides all users an unprecedented level of configuration over updates, connecting to different networks with OStatus, controlling brand and image, while allowing connections to different social networks.

To learn more about how the StatusNet Cloud Service can help you, read the Official Press Release.

The Open Clip Art Library grew from a project between Jon Phillips (of Fabricatorz) and Bryce Harrington, in early 2004. From humble beginnings, it has evolved into a massive collection of over 24,000 scalable vector images, all created by 1200+ artists from around the world.

The Open Clip Art Library is a powerful platform, through which, all work uploaded to the site is dedicated to the public through Creative Commons’ “Public Domain Dedicated”. This means that anyone can download and use the entire SVG library for any purpose, including both free and commercial works!

Among the key features to be implemented in the new OCAL site, thumbnail previews are most apparent. It has now become much easier to search and download clip art that suits any situation. The new site layout includes an updated theme that emphasizes user interaction by placing more importance on the portal to upload created work, as well as displaying selections from the ever-growing collection.

Behind the scenes, members of Fabricatorz, including, among others, Bassel Safadi, Michi, Ronaldo Barbachano, and Brad Phillips, have helped push The Open Clip Art Library onto the Aiki Framework. This new PHP + MYSQL platform allows programmers to easily create and work with content management systems from the web.

Please help support the new Open Clip Art site launch by registering (if you haven’t already) and uploading artwork of your own!.

Read the entire Announcement 2.0 here and at the Fabricatorz post.

StatusNet 0.9.0 is released and is available for immediate download from the status.net site.
This release includes the following new features and we invite the developer community to please try it and report back :

• Support for the new distributed status update standard OStatus, based on PubSubHubbub, Salmon, Webfinger, and Activity Streams.
• Support for location using the Geolocation API. Notices are (optionally) marked with lat-long information with geo microformats, and can be shown on a map.
• No fixed content size. Notice size is configurable, from 1 to unlimited number of characters. Default is still 140!
• An authorization framework, allowing different levels of users.
• A Web-based administration panel.
• A moderation system that lets site moderators sandbox, silence, or delete uncooperative users.
• A flag system that lets users flag profiles for moderator review.
• Support for OAuth authentication in the Twitter API.
• User roles system that lets the owner of the site to assign administrator and moderator roles to other users.
• A pluggable authentication system.

see the full list of features here:
A full changelog is available at StatusNet 0.9.0/Changelog.

Also, the OStatus process is underway!

OStatus lets people on different social networks follow each other. It’s transparent to your friends, colleagues and family which software or service you use. They can get your status updates on their own sites and reply, like, or re-post your updates.

OStatus isn’t a new protocol; it applies some great protocols in a natural and reasonable way to make distributed social networking possible.

The OStatus spec is a first step in this direction. We’re eager to work with other implementers to make it better, to smooth the rough edges, and to improve the overall experience.

Everyone interested is invited to join the ostatus-discuss mailing list to get this discussion moving.

Thanks to everyone who’s made these protocols work so well together. We hope that OStatus can bring these efforts one more step forward.

Here is a message from some friends of Fabricatorz at the Breizh Entropy Congress in Rennes, France. They have an open call for papers/proposals/talks on subjects related to free and open technologies:

March 10th is the deadline to send us a few words on the projects or the subject that you would like to present at Breizh Entropy Congress (Rennes, France, April 15-17 2010). After your submission, we will contact you before March 20th to tell you if it is going to be part of the schedule. The schedule with the timetable will be published on March 25th.

ANYONE can submit a proposal to Breizh Entropy Congress: students, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, artists, free software activists, tinkerers, hackers… on ANY subject related to free and open technologies. This congress
is about eclectism!

To participate, send a mail to cfp@breizh-entropy.org including the following
points:
- Format of the submission: lecture, workshop, installation, lightning talk, other…
- Title of the submission
- Name of speaker(s)/presenter(s)/artist(s)
- Language (if applicable): French/English
- Summary of the submission
- Short bio of the speaker
- Hardware/logistics requirements
- Contact e-mail and (if possible) mobile phone

The complete call for proposals is online:
http://www.breizh-entropy.org/cfp.html