Tag: open source

Posted on

Google Makes Awesome Happen – Web Fonts API

google open font apiGoogle is awesome. The company has been redefining the word — a popular exclamatory for things far less breathtaking during my adolescence — as often as it customizes its logo over the past dozen years.

This week’s Google I/O keynote fiesta brought plenty of big, exciting, game-changing announcements, but nothing more immediately exciting to me than the launch of the Google Font API (Read Google’s blogpost). Suddenly adding sleek, new fonts to any web page is as easy as visiting the Google Font Directory, copying, pasting, and voila.

There are a few key reasons why I’m so excited about this and I’ll elaborate a bit below:

  1. The fonts are all open source-licensed
  2. It works on all current browsers (cross-platform)
  3. The fonts are cool and the possibilities are endless

Continue reading “Google Makes Awesome Happen – Web Fonts API”

Posted on

Google Goes Open Source & CC for Radiohead’s ‘House of Cards’

Google is hosting open source and Creative Commons-licensed code for everyone to remix Radiohead’s latest video from In Rainbows, “House of Cards.”

“In Radiohead’s new video for ‘House of Cards,’ no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects,” according to the band’s YouTube channel.

After hearing about Radiohead’s first-of-its kind video, Google:

[A]greed with the band that it would be great to give you a deeper look into how all of this was done, and even a chance to play with the data yourself, under a license that allows remixing… You can view the video, watch a short documentary about how it was made, interact with the video in 3D, download some of the data, and download an iGoogle theme and gadget – all at http://code.google.com/radiohead.

Radiohead – ‘House of Cards’

Watch The Making of ‘House of Cards” below:
Continue reading “Google Goes Open Source & CC for Radiohead’s ‘House of Cards’”

Posted on

Open Source Gets a MacArthur Grant

Congrats to Chris Lydon’s Open Source Radio for winning a $250,000 MacArthur Fellowship!

This grant not only recognizes Open Source for its top-notch, hourlong, nightly public radio show (and internationally popular podcast, but, also “‘in support of the innovative use of internet-based tools in the production of a daily public radio program.'” Brandon of Open Source said:

[T]hey’re developing tools at Open Source that are going to be useful in the future to a lot of people. People in public radio, people in public television, people tiptoeing toward that fantastic beast we’re beginning to call “public media.”

Congrats and keep up the good work. Hopefully soon we’ll hear you not only via podcast but also on Southern California Public Radio.