Brandon with his son, Hudson.

We are pleased to announce that Brandon Rosage (@brosage) has joined Team Ushahidi! He comes on board as a web designer and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Brandon comes to us with loads of experience. From traditional journalism and publishing all the way to co-founding a local internet broadcast network, Brandon has been building on the web for the past seven years. In addition to that, Brandon is a huge Detroit Tigers fan and enjoys living in Olympia, WA with his wife and their 1-year-old son.

Brandon’s focus at Ushahidi will be to improve the overall design and user experience of our products. He brings a passion for “mobile first” design and as such will be a huge help as we optimize our products for mobile.

As is typical for new team members, Brandon jumped into the fray feet-first spending his first week designing and coding in a cabin in North Georgia with David Kobia, Emmanuel Kala and I… the results of which will hopefully be revealed soon!

Please join us in welcoming Brandon to the team!

Finishing up a week of hacking with some southern BBQ!

Meet “Polaroid”

For this theme, we wanted to really break from the traditional map + categories layout found in many Ushahidi deployments. Our goal was to highlight the individual report location and also create a seamless viewing experience for the full report details. We can see this theme working especially well for couple of use cases:

• A Travel Log: Having small maps associated with each report provides a nice visual for someone documenting all the places they visit on a trip.
• A City Mini-Guide: This theme would be great for someone wanting to create small city guide. Via the web or our mobile apps, you could quickly set up several points of interest along with pictures and video.

These are just a couple of use cases that came to mind but there are sure to be a zillion others that will show up too!

Live Demo

Go to http://ie.ushahidi.com/ for a live demo.

The Technical Nitty Gritty

Compared to the past two themes we released, this one has a little bit more going on under the hood:

• Lines of CSS: ~270
• Number of Images Used: 2
• Files Changed: header.php, footer.php, main.php, reports_view.php and the addition of a custom block used on the home page (polaroid_reports.php).
• Third Party Tools: Google Static Maps and Map Style API’s for individual report maps, Colorbox for the report detail modal windows.

How To Get It

Download it here! Also, it’s been added to the master branch of the platform on Github so feel free to pull it down at your convenience.

We hope you enjoy Polaroid!

Meet “Unicorn” <- because we can

The default Ushahidi theme has the classic two column layout with the map on the left and the categories on the right. With Unicorn, we decided to change things up a bit and give the map the full width of the page. It’s clean, simple and gives you a fresh-looking layout for your next deployment!

Our favorite part of the theme is how the map filters have been reworked on the home page. We’ve put them in an easily accessible drop-down menu, allowing the map to come front and center:

The Technical Nitty Gritty

Much like the previous theme we released, Unicorn implemented with relatively few changes to the core files.

• Lines of CSS: ~250
• Number of Images Used: 3
• Files Changed: header.php, footer.php, main.php

How To Get It

Download it here! Also, it’s been added to the master branch of the platform on Github so feel free to pull it down at your convenience.

We hope you enjoy Unicorn!

Photo by Brian Herbert

A few weeks ago, we talked about themes functionality within the Ushahidi Platform. One of the issues we are trying to address on that subject is the lack of working examples of themes. With that in mind, we are pleased to announce the first of four themes that will be released this month!

Meet “Bueno”, the latest theme!

We actually ported this theme to the Ushahidi Platform from the free theme by the same name that was originally made by the folks at WooThemes. Those folks have been creating beautiful WordPress themes for some time now and we’re big fans of their work. We were excited when they gave us their blessing on us porting this over to the Ushahidi platform!

The Technical Nitty Gritty

All in all, the theme was implemented using about 240 lines of CSS and 2-3 minor changes to the header and footer HTML (views). It also comes with six color scheme options: blue, brown, green, grey, purple and red. It is compatible with version 2.1 of the Ushahidi Platform.

How To Get It

Download it here! Also, it’s been added to the master branch of the platform on Github so feel free to pull it down at your convenience.

We hope you enjoy Bueno!

Themes are like clothes for your body.

Let’s continue on with this analogy… As the platform is right now, we have a wardrobe in place, but no clothing in it for people to put on! Why is this?

Reason 1: Lack of Documentation

We don’t have any theme documentation online at the moment. There really is no excuse for this.
Solution: With this blogpost, we’re making two themes docs available:

• Themes Overview
• How To Develop A Theme

Reason 2: Lack of Working Examples

As of now, there is only one theme that is readily available for the platform. And even then, it’s very simplistic and doesn’t really demonstrate the possibilities.
Solution: Starting in September, we will release one theme a week so that we can provide a default set of working examples that demonstrate the capabilities of themes. What this space for more info on that!

Reason 3: Lack of Awareness

We added themes functionality to the platform back in November of last year. Since then, we haven’t really talked much about it nor have we done anything to promote it.
Solution: We’re talking about it in this blog post! Also, In addition to releasing a theme a week in September, we also plan to run a “Theme Competition” with real rewards for the contestants. More information on that will be forth coming.

To sum up, themes functionality is powerful and we are working to do more to promote it while enabling the community to take advantage of it!

Today we are very pleased to announce the beta release of the Ushahidi Community Website! This site has been in the works for several months and couldn’t have been possible without generous support from Small World News, Konpa Group and most importantly, the talented Rob Baker.

Throughout this past year, we’ve seen a large growth in the number of groups and individuals using and building upon our platforms. With the release of version 2.0 of the Ushahidi Platform, active SwiftRiver development, the launch of Crowdmap and the new Universities 4 Ushahidi program, our community is getting even bigger. With all of this in mind, it was clear that we needed to created a place where everyone can connect, learn and explore.

Let’s take a moment and walk through the main sections of the site:

Deployments

New deployments of our platforms are popping up daily. This section is a place for community members to showcase how they’ve customized and deployed our products.

Plugins

Plugins are a great way to add extra functionality to a deployment of the Ushahidi platform. This section is a catalog of current plugins created by developers in the community as well as Ushahidi staff. Developers can list their plugins for others to download and use.

Themes

Themes allow you to easily change the look and feel of the Ushahidi platform. This section is a catalog of themes and like the plugin section, they are available for download.

Resources

We’ve written up several resources to help individuals with a variety of topics relating to our platforms.

Research

This section is a place for researchers, academics and students to collaborate, ask questions, get datasets and share their findings about the Ushahidi and SwiftRiver Platforms.

Continued Improvement

As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, we’re launching this as a beta site so things will definitely evolve over time. We want this to bring the most value to the Ushahidi Community so we’re keen to hear any ideas you have to make the site more useful to you.

In short: Thank you. Thank you for your encouragement, your questions, and for your support. Thank you for the opportunity to help you connect your community. We are humbled and grateful for everything you do with our work, and we’re ready for more.

See you over there!

This morning, at the start of the 2010 International Conference on Crisis Mapping, I’m happy to announce the launch of the Universities for Ushahidi program, a joint effort between Ushahidi and United States Institute for Peace (USIP).

In the case of Haiti, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator, Craig Fugate, publicly noted that this student-driven crisis map was the most comprehensive and up-to-date map available to the humanitarian community.

The U4U program was inspired by the remarkable role that student volunteers played in the disaster response to Haiti and Chile, where they created a live crisis map of the needs in both countries. U4U will bring students from developing countries to learn how they can use the Ushahidi platform and related tools in their own countries.

“U4U training will be run for students by students, who will work together with peacebuilding experts from USIP to identify applications of Ushahidi for their home countries,” said Patrick Meier, director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships at Ushahidi.

“We need to begin catalyzing a global network of proactive, next-generation peacebuilders who are trained in these new technologies,” said Sheldon Himelfarb, head of USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology and Peacebuilding. “U4U is an effective way to do this, and we’re delighted to be working with the Ushahidi team to launch it.”

The first group of U4U students will be selected and trained in the spring of 2011. Our website, http://u4u.ushahidi.com, will launch on November 1st with more public information about the program.

To learn more about USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology and Peacebuilding, please visit: http://www.usip.org/programs/centers/science- technology-and-peacebuilding.

Official press release: http://scr.bi/dsO4C7

Thank you,
Rob Baker

Contact:

Lauren Sucher
202/429.3822
lsucher@usip.org

Rob Baker
U4U Coordinator
robbaker@ushahidi.com
781/218.9460

Let’s pretend that the Ushahidi Platform is a house and adding any new stuff to that house would require electricity. Well, before the plugin system was in place, this house did not have any electrical outlets. Naturally, it could sometimes be a cumbersome process to add new stuff because you have to either bring your own generator or run an extension cord. With the addition of the plugin system, we’ve essentially added an electrical outlet to each room in the house. Structurally, the house hasn’t changed, but now you can easily add new stuff by “plugging-in” to whichever electrical outlet you please.

Jumping back to reality, we see the plugin system bringing several benefits:

1. Expands Development Opportunities: Developers now have greater ease and flexibility in tapping into core platform. No more extension cords and generators!
2. Less bugs in the core platform: Any time you build new functionality, you’re going to encounter bugs. The plugin system allows us to keep new functionality physically separate from the core platform and will thus reduce the amount of bugs that pop up in the platform.
3. Allows us to integrate other online tools without “reinventing the spoon”: Third party tools services can now be easily integrated without heavy customization of the core platform.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, David and I had skype video call to go over the plugin system and answer a few questions the Ushahidi Developer Community sent in. Please check it out to get more of the details.

We’ve already built a few plugins to get things rolling. Check out the growing list here: http://apps.ushahidi.com.

To learn more, check out the documentation on our wiki.

You can download the latest code on Github.

We’re really excited to see what folks can create using the new plugin system!

Shortly after we posted the original Project 4636 info graphic, a few folks involved in the project got in touch to see if we could clarify the process. There are a lot of moving parts,  many of which are constantly changing, and so the original graphic didn’t quite reflect the exact process as well as it could have. With that in mind, we worked with Josh Nesbit of Frontline SMS Medic and Nicolás di Tada of InSTEDD to make sure the graphic reflected the process as accurately as possible. The biggest update that we made is that InSTEDD’s Nuntium SMS Gateway and the Thomson Reuters Foundation Emergency Information System are now the first entities that receive and process incoming SMS’s.  Everything else is pretty much the same.

The Updated Overview

The Updated Graphic

Click the image to view the high res version.

Thanks again to Josh, Nicolás and all the Crisis Mappers for the great feedback!