The new design at www.mozillamessaging.com
First, go ahead and download Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 and check it out.
The Redesign
We started the redesign process last year with the following goals:
- Make it easy for users to download Thunderbird
- Make it easy for users to learn about Thunderbird and Mozilla Messaging
- Provide Mozilla Messaging with it’s own visual identity while maintaining the “mozilla” feel
We worked with Steven at silverorange and the team at The Royal Order — absolutely great fun to work with them.
We hope users and contributors will have a sense of familiarity with the site and also enjoy some of the imagery and illustrations. One of my favorites is the “totem pole”. Totem poles can be found in Vancouver (where we have an office) and we wanted to see a different design treatment for Thunderbird. I think it worked out well (the rocket ship and the cruise boat are fun too).
What’s Next
We have localization, more content to add, and we’re always looking to make improvements to make it easier for users to download Thunderbird. We’ll be gearing the site for the final Thunderbird 3 release so we have lots more coming.
Green collar jobs are blue collar jobs in green businesses – that is, manual labor jobs in businesses whose products and services directly improve environmental quality (Pinderhughes, 2006). Green collar jobs are located in large and small for-profit businesses, non-profit organizations, social enterprises, and public sector institutions. What unites these jobs is that all of them are associated with manual labor work that directly improves environmental quality.
Here’s more info:
We’ve been hearing about Green Collar jobs in Oakland for quite some time — because of Van Jones and the Ella Baker Center which is on 40th Street, a little over a mile from where we live. The rest of the country is going to hear more about it so might as well link to the source of the Green Collar job concepts.
There are a couple of cool energy check lists to look at:
We had a $1200 energy bill last year, about 50/50 electric to gas. Unfortunately this was an increase of 20% over last year, we increased our usage by 20% :-( However, the average energy bill for a household in the US is $1900 – $2000 a year.
Our usage was about 4500 kwh and 415 therms in 2008 and going to use this as baseline going forward.
For PG&E customers, all this information is available online.
The goal is to decrease usage and costs by 20 – 25% next year and 50% in 5 years.
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Infrastructure things we had already done:
- Energy star appliances (heater/air conditioner, dishwasher, refrigerator, washer/dryer) though our dryer is now electric versus gas
- CFLs with most of our lighting except three way lamps, led under cabinet lighting, and “candle” type lights in the living room
- Insulated floors
- Double pane windows
Things to do:
- Insulate attic and install attic fan
- Research insulation for exterior walls
- home energy audit
- Continue evaluating use of solar panels and tankless water heating
This is my Xbox avatar – rebron2000. The hair, glasses, blue polo, cargo shorts, and Keen’s are about right; and sadly, this *still* may be my signature look. I have upgraded my wardrobe in real life but thought this was fairly amusing.
In any case, if you happen to stumble on rebron2000 on Xbox live and he’s kicking your butt at Halo or whatever other games I have, it’s not me, it’s a 10 year old or one of several 10 year olds. Ha!
