Often our Language drop-down in the TIG header goes unnoticed, and many new visitors to TIG don't realize our site is available in 12 different languages. Hopefully this problem will be solved for a lot of new TIG visitors and members who would prefer to browse the site in their native language - now TIG will automatically load in whatever language your browser is set to (as long as it is one of our 12 languages).

The TIG revamp has been an ongoing project for our tech team for over a year – and this week we launched three exciting new features on the site! They are: a new improved My TIG, tags, and the TIG widget.

My TIG:
Clicking on My TIG now takes you to your Bulletin Board, where you can see what your TIG friends are doing on the site (Groups/Projects they are involved in, content they submit to the site etc), and they will similarly receive alerts about what you are involved in on the site on their Bulletin Board.
On the top right of My TIG is the 'I want to:' drop-down menu, which contains quick links to submitting content like: Panorama articles, Global Gallery submissions, TIGblog posts, resources, and e-cards.
On the left is a menu with the titles: My TIG, TIG Messenger, My Account and My Content.

Under 'My TIG' on the menu:
Link to your Bulletin Board.
Resources for You - contains suggestions of resources, or content on the site that you may be interested in based on your location and the interests you included in your profile, (ex. Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility, Climate Change, etc).
Link to your Public Profile – shows your profile as it appears to other TIG members.
Friends – a place where you can manage your friends. It shows who you are currently friends with, as well as those who have added you as a friend whom you haven't added as a friend back yet. You have the option to remove people from your friends list and remove yourself from other people's friend's lists easily.

TIG Messenger:
The new improved TIG Messenger lets you organize and keep track of TIG Messages much more easily than before. It works much more like an e-mail program, since you can mark message as read/unread, and star them for follow-up.
Inbox – You can Report inappropriate messages as before: 'Report this Message', and block people from sending you TIG Messages using 'Block this member'.
Compose – works much the same as it did before, except that you can now give your TIG messages a subject, similar to e-mails.
Send List – this lets you keep track of all the TIG messages you've sent.
Block List – lets you keep track of the members whom you've blocked from sending you TIG Messages, and allows you to un-block them.

My Account:
This section is the equivalent to 'Edit Profile' in the old My TIG – it lets you edit the information about yourself, upload your photo, link other profiles you have around the web to your TIG profile, etc.

My Content:
Submitted – this contains the content you've submitted or created (articles, images, TIGblog posts, resources, discussion threads, etc), organized by the different sections of our site: Make Connections, Take Action, Resources, Express Yourself.
Bookmarks – is a new tool that is part of our TIG widget, which you will now find on every page of the site. The TIG widget will allow you to bookmark content on the site, and the Bookmarks section will organize it for you by site sections, making it easy for you to go back and find later.
Comments I've Made– this section shows you all the comments you have left on content like TIGblogs, Panorama articles and Global Gallery submissions.
Comments to Me [Coming Soon!] – this section shows you all the comments left on your TIGblogs, Panorama articles, and Global Gallery submissions. Will be launched soon!
Involvement [Coming Soon!] – this section contains all of your memberships to things like Projects, Groups, Group TIGblogs, Events you are attending, Commitments, Petitions, Organization, etc.

Tags:
http://www.takingitglobal.org/tags/
Tags are labels for online content that make it easier to search for, and organize. They are generally simple words or phrases that help to describe any content – ranging from a blog post to a project. You will now be able to tag all the content on TIG – and you can visit the tags page (see link above) to search the site by a tag, and to see what the most popular tags are for each site section by checking out the tag clouds under each section title. Tag clouds show the most popular tags as larger than others. For a more detailed explanation of tags see the 'HELP' button beside each 'Add a tag:' text box now located on each page of the TIG site. Don't forget to start tagging content already on the site, as well as adding tags to any new content you create! Tags will help make the TakingITGlobal community much easier to navigate, as TIG members and visitors to the site will be able to search the site easily by the tags you create!

TIG widget:

The TIG widget allows you to rate, bookmark, send to a friend, and report content all over the TIG site! 'Rate this' lets you rate content up or down by clicking on the arrows depending on how interesting, informative, or inspiring the content was to you. You can rate up content that you liked, or think others would like, and rate down content that you think is less useful or interesting. Clicking on 'Bookmark' means that you will easily be able to go back to content you have bookmarked at anytime through the Bookmarks section in My TIG. 'Send to friend' lets you share TIG content with others. 'Report This' allows you to report any content that you may have found offensive, inappropriate or questionable to TIG staff.
'Rate This', 'Bookmark', and 'Send to Friend' all affect the 'score' of any piece of content on TIG. The more times content is rated up, bookmarked, or sent to a friend the higher the 'score' or quality and soon you will be able to browse the site by score or quality of content.

Check out all of these new Features and leave us some comments! If you find anything that is broken on our new features e-mail broken@takingitglobal.org.

Enjoy!

Two new tools have been added to Projects: Tasks and Testimonials.
Tasks allows you to manage the goals and accomplishments related to your project! It allows you or other members of your project to describe tasks neccessary for the completion of your project, set due dates and allows the moderators or members of your project to organize tasks into 'Incomplete' and 'Complete' lists.
Testimonials is a new section that allows members or supporters of your project to share their thoughts, comments and experiences related to their involvement in the project. These will show up on the homepage of your project.
To add these new tools to your project page, go to 'Edit Project'. Under 'Features' you will be able to choose different settings for each new tool.

This past Wednesday TakingITGlobal was honoured by the Tech Museum Awards, and won under the category of Microsoft Education Award! Two TIG staff members, Mike and Nick, were on hand to accept the award at the ceremony in San Francisco on Wednesday night. The Tech Museum (http://www.techawards.org/) recognizes and honours innovators worldwide who are applying technology for the benefit of humanity. Receiving this award is a huge honour for TakingITGlobal and we wanted to share it with the whole TIG community!

Due to a technical problem some individual TIGblog posts that were previously set to 'private' may now have become 'public'. We apologize for any inconvenience that may occur due to this technical error. Please double check that any posts that you have previously set to 'private' have not been made 'public'. Thank you!

Two Sections of our site have just been revamped and launched!
First: Our Understand the Issues section now has new content, new categories, and a new look. TakingITGlobal also has a whole team of issue editors and language coordinators, coordinated by Yue-Kiu Chan out of Toronto. Over the next few months, the new Understanding the Issues team will be improving the content, helping TIG members contribute their own ideas and resources, and helping us come up with some interface improvements, all as part of a grant from the Longview Foundation to make Understanding the Issues a more academically sound and interactive/dynamic resource. Beginning in December, we¹ll be featuring one issue per month (like we used to with Featured Themes).

All TIG members can contribute your two cents to any of the issues: ‹click on the 'Contribute New Content' button on any issue page and you¹ll be taken to a wiki where you can add/edit text or provide links to resources, which our issue editors will then add to the database.

Check it out: http://www.takingitglobal.org/understanding/

Second: Our Organizations section is new and improved! It is currently still only in BETA version, so test it out for us and if you encounter any problems please report them to broken@takingitglobal.org. [For now the new Organizations pages will not be translatable.]

Check it out here: http://www.takingitglobal.org/resources/orgs/

TakingITGlobal is looking to get involved in Second Life, potentially in a big way. In the last month, we've received the donation of an island from Starwood Resorts & Hotels (see the Aloft blog for more information), as well as an office in TechSoup's Non-Profit Commons.

We (pretty quickly) need a couple of volunteers to help us develop, maintain, and engage users in both these spaces. We want to use them to engage our members in new ways, showcase ours members' work, and engage whole new audiences. If you're interested in helping us as we step into Second Life, check out the job description at:

http://about.takingitglobal.org/d/getinvolved?view=201

Like Second Life? Help TIG!
Translated into Russian by: ashpaa

Hey guys!

So, TIG Revamp has officially started! We're going to re-do a few sections of the website, make them look prettier, and add much wanted functionality.

Here's a list of the things we're redoing:

* My TIG (this alone is huge)
* Edit Profile
* Organizations



Here's a list of the things we'll be adding:

* Super secret site-wide module
* Commitments
* Content Translations
* Tagging
* FAQs



So if you want more info, or would like to participate in the process, join our project:

http://projects.takingitglobal.org/revamp

PS: We're in need of your help to answer a few questions about MyTIG. So come and join us!

TakingItGlobal is launching a new, re-vamped e-Card section!
The e-card page has been given a fun new design, along with some great new features:
You can now create and send e-cards in multiple languages.
Also the new e-card page will store any e-cards you've received, as well as ones you've sent.
And the new e-card page will keep track of the most frequently sent e-cards, so you can see the most popular designs.

In celebration of this momentous occasion we are having an e-Card contest!
We will be giving a wireless optical mouse as a prize for the 3 members whose e-card design submissions are the most popular on our site this month.
Be sure and check out the new e-card page, while you're there you can submit your own design for the contest, and send it to your friends!

http://www.takingitglobal.org/connections/ecards/

In the month of June TakingITGlobal is celebrating the theme "Environment and Urbanization." Did you know June 5th is World Environment Day? The theme for this year is about melting glaciers - this can seriously harm our earth. Read more about the internationally recognized day here:
http://days.takingitglobal.org/15
If you are interested in artwork you'll be happy to know that we are currently looking for submissions for a new collection. Since we are focusing the month of June around the environment our collection is about "Consumerism and Pollution". Do you really need all the new goods you buy? Do you look at how long they will last or how their manufacturing and disposal might harm our environment? Submit your artistic expression of what "Consumerism and Pollution" means to you. Don't forget to select "Consumerism and Pollution" in the collections drop down menu.
http://www.takingitglobal.org/express/gallery/artists/sub_artwork.html?action=add