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Round Two is hiring
Round Two is hiring. Please spread the word. If you're interested in applying for one of these positions, please go to http://www.roundtwo.com/contact/ and tell us more about your background and interests. Senior Programmers Round Two, a Silicon Valley startup that...
(link) [bart's blog]

Round Two launches
The site is up. Check out our announcement or the story on News.com. I've also posted a blog post here. Time go get some sleep now....
(link) [bart's blog]

So long, Spread Firefox
So long folks, it was fun for a while. I don't know where to begin in articulating reasons, so I won't try right now. Firefox is a great browser, and I have tremendous respect for Ben, Scott and some other key people that have brought us Firefox and Thunderbird, but I for one am ready for some serious fresh air.
(link) [bart's blog]

Project Of The Week: Download.com Feedback

The Download.com Feedback project is sweet, simple, and makes a difference: Join the 4600+ people who've already made Firefox one of the highest rated and most reviewed app on Download.com. Head on over to Download.com and submit your review.

Meeting Notes: 2005-03-04

More news. As part of our promise to be more open, and engage more with the sfx community, we will be posting minutes from the sfx admins weekly meetings online. So here goes... you'll be seeing these minutes posted here every week.

Decided:
- Starting right away, meeting notes will be public, posted on the site.
- A 3-part approach to moving sfx forward: (1) immediate steps we can take to keep the site fresh (see "chores" below), (2) moving to the new version of Drupal/CivicSpace ASAP (Chris & Daryl to propose a plan this week), (3) a (public) discussion about long term goals for the site, starting in a week

Chores:
We agreed that we, the admins, need to take the lead and each take on chores to make the site more fresh:
- All admings: post at least 5 comments a week, so that we participate more actively in the sfx community.
- Asa: committed to regular blog posts on the site (several times a week) and regularly promote posts by sfx members.
- Daryl: will work on image galleries moderation code.
- Chris: will create an "under construction graphic" for the download counter
- Blake: will maintain roll call spam
- Bart: will spearhead the community projects directory and showcase boxes

Update: coins project:
- Pretty much wrapped up

Discussed:
- We had a brief discussion about how we can help create a positive environment on sfx. When new members join sfx and start reading blog posts and the comments to them, it's important that they get the sense that this is a positive community. The first one or two comments to a blog post generally set the tone, so we all want to help set a positive, welcome toning, and encourage especially our most active contributors to do likewise.
(link) [bart's blog]

Meeting Notes: 2005-03-11

Meeting Summary
- Project of the week: Firefox S5 will be promoted on the homepage
- Top climber: Starting this week, Asa will start giving out a tshirt or coin each week to the top climber. This week's top climber is Topic Hunter
- 5 Featured Projects will go up in sidebar today
- Download counter: will be replaced today with "under construction", return with new counter in one week
- Rollcall: we will make some formatting changes to Rollcall over the next few days
- Blog spam: Blake will start monitoring for blog spam
- Community issues: We are hereby inviting all sfx members to use comments below these meeting notes to raise issues that they'd like us to discuss during the next week's admins meeting. We will review these comments and discuss
- Upgrading the site: we're waiting for the release of Drupal 4.6, then we'll start upgrading
- Spread Firefox planning: Chris and Bart have proposals that we will post on the site over the next few days

(continued)

(link) [bart's blog]

One admin's proposal for 6-month priorities for SFX

As part of our ongoing series of posts about the future of Spread Firefox, here's my proposal. I've sent this to the other admins previously, and we've decided that the best way to proceed is to post this, and other, proposals on the site so that everybody has a chance to comment. So please comment away!

Focus of sfx for the next 6 months:
- Move from a talk site to an action site
- Everything's centered around member-initiated projects.

Process:
- Everything we do, starting last Friday, should be about empowering
our community. Thus, we should post whatever plan we like up on sfx
asap and get community feedback on it. We should then build a roadmap
so people can see what's coming.

Homepage:
Overall: Move away from the blog-centric-ness. More like www.musicforamerica.org homepage. There should be programmed content
blocks, hopefully automatically populated. Blocks include:
(continued - click on header to read full post)
(link) [bart's blog]

Project Of The Week: Firefox S5

Each week, we will put the spotlight on a promising community project. This week, we've chosen the Firefox S5 project, a project started by Lachlan Hunt to create a promotional slideshow about Firefox using the open source S5 presentation format. Head on over to the Firefox S5 homepage to find out how you can get involved with this project. Kudos to Lachlan for his great work to spread Firefox!

If you'd like to recommend a project to be showcased here, just post a comment below, and make sure that your favorite project is listed on the Projects Directory wiki.

Hijacking Firefox
Did a Google search on Firefox and checked out the AdWords. I got served up the three ads above (your results may vary). The first one was for a site called FreeDownloadZone. The site first requires you to enter...
(link) [bart's blog]

Community Projects Directory Launches

Following up on our earlier post, we are pleased to announce the creation of the Community Projects Directory.

Check out the directory here and please add your project to the list.

In a few days we will launch a sidebar box on sfx listing 5 featured projects. Please use the comments below to nominate community projects that you think are worth of being featured.

-- bart and me.at.work
(link) [bart's blog]

test
test
(link) [bart's blog]

Posting to sfx using my blogging client
Posting to sfx using my blogging client

Big day: I'm posting to Spread Firefox using a blogging tool. At FactoryJoe's suggestion, I'm trying out MarsEdit on my Mac.

The XML RPC setting for Spread Firefox, in case you want to try this too, is http://www.spreadfirefox.com/xmlrpc.php. And you'll want to specify Drupal as the server type.
(link) [bart's blog]

Admins meeting notes

More news. As part of our promise to be more open, and engage more with the sfx community, we will be posting minutes from the sfx admins weekly meetings online. So here goes... you'll be seeing these minutes posted here every week.

Decided:
- Starting right away, meeting notes will be public, posted on the site.
- A 3-part approach to moving sfx forward: (1) immediate steps we can take to keep the site fresh (see "chores" below), (2) moving to the new version of Drupal/CivicSpace ASAP (Chris & Daryl to propose a plan this week), (3) a (public) discussion about long term goals for the site, starting in a week

Chores:
We agreed that we, the admins, need to take the lead and each take on chores to make the site more fresh:
- All admings: post at least 5 comments a week, so that we participate more actively in the sfx community.
- Asa: committed to regular blog posts on the site (several times a week) and regularly promote posts by sfx members.
- Daryl: will work on image galleries moderation code.
- Chris: will create an "under construction graphic" for the download counter
- Blake: will maintain roll call spam
- Bart: will spearhead the community projects directory and showcase boxes

Update: coins project:
- Pretty much wrapped up

Discussed:
- We had a brief discussion about how we can help create a positive environment on sfx. When new members join sfx and start reading blog posts and the comments to them, it's important that they get the sense that this is a positive community. The first one or two comments to a blog post generally set the tone, so we all want to help set a positive, welcome toning, and encourage especially our most active contributors to do likewise.
(link) [bart's blog]

Spotlighting community projects - Action, not words

Following up on constructive feedback from numerous people, including LouCypher, let's start showcasing community projects more prominently. Here's what I'm proposing we do, starting right away (eg, this weekend): - A "Featured project" on the main section of the homepage, near the top, at all times; - A new "Community Projects" box on the right sidebar, where we list 5 of the most active, or most recent, community-lead projects; - A new directory of projects where we list all SFX projects, so people can easily find community initiated projects. Here's how YOU can help: - 1. By providing feedback on this idea. Please post your comments below. or better yet... - 2. By helping me complete the initial directory listing, see below. Please post additions below. or better yet... - 3. By becoming my partner in crime to help maintain this directory, and the featured project and community projects showcase areas. Please post a comment below, indicating you're interested in helping to maintain this initiative. Partial list of projects I know about (thanks, LouCypher!): - Firefox S5 Project - GMail project - Firefox 5 minute challenge - Firefox Materials/Mozilla Materials - Letter Standardization Project - Press Blog/Rag Tag System - Mosaic Image - Firefox Team in SETI@HOME - SFX Team in Pirates@home - SFX@CP.NET - SFX Team in Predictor@home - Motor Sports Marketing Project - Mozilla Firewall - Download.com ratings projects - Firefox buttons campaign Keep spreading the Fire! -- Bart
(link) [bart's blog]

Witness the end of IE
Checked out 43 Things this morning and saw this:...
(link) [bart's blog]

Spreading Spread FIrefox

Daryl and Rafael during today's planning meeting.

The sfx admin team had a terrific planning meeting today. Daryl flew in from Tennessee and we could all make it - Chris Beard, Rafael, Asa, Chris Messina, Blake and I. We have a ton of ideas for moving Spread Firefox forward. We'll have a complete update on today's meeting briefly, and plan to engage all of you in helping us make sfx an ever more powerful vehicle for spreading Firefox.

-- Bart, on behalf of the sfx admins.
(link) [bart's blog]

Extension of the week
Love it. EggOn, the Firefox extension for making the perfect egg....
(link) [bart's blog]

Rojo invite, anyone?
I'd like to check out Rojo, so if you have an account and some extra invites, I'd appreciate one (send to bartd AT decrem DOT com). Rojo...
(link) [bart's blog]

Always complaining about something
The European Commission is complaining because Microsoft named their new version of Windows XP for the European market, the one that doesn't come bundled with the Windows Media Player, "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition". The "Reduced Media Edition" costs the...
(link) [bart's blog]

Jybe
Saw the Mozillazine posting about Jybe today, a collaboration extension for Firefox (and other browsers). Just a few days ago I was telling some friends that I really want a browse-with-me extension, and that's precisely what Jybe offers, so...
(link) [bart's blog]

How do we fix this problem?
Picture uploaded by Chris....
(link) [bart's blog]

When did webapps stop sucking?
First GMail, then Flickr. Yesterday I was looking at a demo of a web service still under development that raises the UI-richness bar for web apps even higher. Clearly ever more apps will migrate from the desktop to the browser...
(link) [bart's blog]

Attention XML
Monday: Chris Messina sends the link to http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/attentionxml">Attention XML. Tuesday: David Sifry tells me that I need to look at Attention XML. Wednesday: Brendan Eich mentions that he's really interested in Attention XML. I think I need to pay Attention....
(link) [bart's blog]

A whole new world
Had coffee with Dan Matejka today. Have to do that more often. He pointed me to The Extensions Mirror, which has a much bigger selection of extensions than Mozilla Update (500+). I played around with their search function and,...
(link) [bart's blog]

Flashgot - a strange new world
For a while now I've been trying to figure out what FlashGot is. It's the most popular extension on update.mozilla.org, with 127,000 downloads over the last week. It turns out FlashGot is a Firefox connector extension for external download managers,...
(link) [bart's blog]

Andy's preferred way of visualizing history
Here's what Andy sent me: Layout strategies...
(link) [bart's blog]

Trailblazer
Trailblazer looks like an interest concept implementation of a breadcrumbs-style view of browser history....
(link) [bart's blog]

Taking shape
Things are coming together nicely for our new venture. Looks like we'll have a name and web site up later this month and the team and focus of our services offerings are also starting to take shape. Meanwhile the crew...
(link) [bart's blog]

Same old
Got back from vacation earlier this week. Checked out sfx and noticed that we've had 15 million downloads of Firefox 1.0 and more than 2300 Firefox holiday cards were sent out. Got in the car, turned on the radio and...
(link) [bart's blog]

Same old
Got back from vacation earlier this week. Checked out sfx and noticed that we've had 15 million downloads of Firefox 1.0 and more than 2300 Firefox holiday cards were sent out. Got in the car, turned on the radio and heard a story on NPR about Firefox. New year, same level of action.
(link) [bart's blog]

Let's do that one more time
I'm about to head off on a one week vacation and just finished reading Chris' blog post. It brings back fond memories. 2004 has been a hell a year for Firefox. Let's see if we can make 2005 as successful. Best wishes and thanks to everyone who's helped spread the fire this year!
(link) [bart's blog]

New York Times Ad Changes Ready for Review

Thanks to the hard work of Chris Messina and Rob Davis, we have a new version of the list of names for the New York Times poster ready for your review.

Check out the file here and send any requests for further changes/additions to nytadcorrections@gmail.com. The deadline for submitting change requests is this Saturday, 9am PST (Christmas day for some of us).

-- Bart, on behalf of the sfx admins.
(link) [bart's blog]

Decorating Firefox
't is that time of the season to goof off. Decided it was time to decorate my Firefox a bit. Ended up installing the Doodle Plastik theme, FoxyTunes, and the Spellbound spell checker. All 3 work just great on my...
(link) [bart's mostly mozilla blog]

Happy Firefox
Daryl, Chris and I just hacked up a quick e-greetings setup for Spread Firefox. Check out the nice cards Chris has mocked and make sure to send out some cards to your friends! Bart...
(link) [bart's mostly mozilla blog]

Send out your holiday cards yet?

This holiday season, why not treat your family, friends and acquaintances to the gift of Firefox?

We've set up a simple e-greeting program and, with the help from one of our talented design-team volunteers, we've uploaded some nice Firefox greeting cards for the holidays.

Head on over to the e-greetings module, where you can send Firefox and Thunderbird greeting cards (you'll need to register with the e-greetings app and sign in, then click on the little envelope icons to send a card). You can even add your own greeting card designs (please exercise good taste!) or vote on designs submitted by other sfx members.

Or you can just click on the images below to send one of those cards. Remember to register and sign in before trying to send a card.

-- Bart, on behalf of the sfx admins.
(link) [bart's blog]

New York Time Ad Campaign Update

We'd again like to thank everyone who contributed to the New York Times ad campaign, which has been a terrific success. The ad has led to another wave of media attention and fueled hundreds of thousands of downloads. Day by day, we are taking back the web!

As people have rightly pointed out, we did make some mistakes in the frantic activity leading up to the release of the ad, and we wanted to give an update on where things stand with processing requests for changes.

So far we've received about 100 requests for changes to the poster, out of the thousands of entries. The majority of these were requests for additions of names that were not processed for a variety of reasons, including declined credit card transactions, payments that didn't come in through the campaign's donations system etc. To make sure that everyone has a chance to review the ad, we have extended the deadline to submit requests for changes until Monday, 12pm PST (please send requests for changes to nytadcorrections@gmail.com). We have also sent mail all the contributors to the campaign, offering amends to people who were unable to purchase a copy of the newspaper on Thursday because we didn't provide a timely email announcement. We are committed to doing whatever we can to make things right by the people who contributed to this campaign, and we will have a public discussion here on Spread Firefox over the next few weeks, soliciting feedback from all of you so we can do even better next time around.

Regards,

Bart, Chris, Rob, Chris, Blake, Daryl and Asa,
The Spread Firefox Crew
(link) [bart's blog]

Funny
Asa pointed this out on sfx today....
(link) [bart's mostly mozilla blog]

Growing, looking for some help
Lots of stuff going on here at MozSource. Yesterday we launched the support site and orders are trickling in. The crew in OK is doing a terrific job. Now we're getting ready to start work on a couple of Firefox...
(link) [bart's mostly mozilla blog]

Party People!

More than 8,000 people in close to 400 places all around the world are getting ready to get down and party this weekend! Make sure to check out the MozParty site if you haven't signed up yet.

Spread Firefox will be Party Central this weekend: we're inviting all partiers (well, at least one person for each party) to file blog posts about their event and upload pictures. We'll make sure to feature blogs posts about the parties here on the sfx homepage. We've set up a "Firefox 1.0 Parties" blog post category and image gallery - so start filing party reports and uploading party images!

To help with the festivities, the Mozilla Store is offering discounts on the Firefox 1.0 commemorative shirts all weekend: get your 1.0 shirts at the Store for $9.95 (+ shipping and handling) this Saturday, Sunday and Monday only.

Party on!

-- Bart, on behalf of the sfx admins.
(link) [bart's blog]

On fire
8 days, 4 million downloads. not shabby!
(link) [bart's blog]