http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews What's on the minds of young leaders from around the globe? en-us http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/380209 Fri, 30 May 2008 15:23:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/380209 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/327287
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!

]]> Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:58:00 EST http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/327287 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/283791 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.]]> Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:38:00 EST http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/283791 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/278657 Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:50:00 EST http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/278657 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/274139 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:50:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/274139 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/261283 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/]]> Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:04:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/261283 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/240813 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 amp; 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]]> Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:09:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/240813 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/222099
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!]]> Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:19:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/222099 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/217923 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/
]]> Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:48:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/217923 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/214693 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]]> Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:45:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/214693 51.75 -1.25 51.75 -1.25 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/184063
http://www.takingitglobal.org/express/video/contest/index.html?page=watch]]> Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:59:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/184063 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/182829
Two updates for today:

1) You'll notice in the top right hand corner of your profile, if you've put any countries visited, events attended, friends, or UNESCO World Heritage sites visited, you will have a new link called "Member Map". This will dynamically generate a map of all those places for each TIG member!

Here's mine as an example.

2) You can now, on your profile, click the name of a UNESCO World Heritage site, and see information about it along with all the other TIG Members who've visited! In the past we didn't have the rights to display this information, but now UNESCO has provided it openly with attribution so this new feature is born :)

Here's an example: The Red Square in Moscow]]> Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:58:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/182829 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/180325 my post last month -- now, on My TIG, you'll now see a new link under your Friends box to "Friends' Latest". This feed, which you can subscribe to in dozens of different ways, lets you connect to the latest content on TIG posted by all your friends! On Firefox and IE7, you can click on this link and you'll get help subscribing to them!

Also, in case you didn't notice it before - you can now choose the type of blogs you want to see on the homepage - latest, popular, or featured!
]]> Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:27:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/180325 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/172471 Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:03:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/172471 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/167157
"The Net Generation" means people ages 12 - 29 in other words, people who grew up with interactive technology: the Internet, mobile phones, music downloading, etc. You know who you are!

So we want you to create a 2 to 5 minute video clip of what you think best describes the definition of your generation. For example, what do you value (having a cool job, being creative/innovative, the ability to multi-task like mad, the openness/awareness the Internet provides, etc.) the most about your life and opportunities that your parents maybe missed out on? You can submit videos to one of three categories:

1. What is your ideal customer experience?
2. What do you look for in a workplace?
3. What should people know about your generation?

Go crazy with it - you can make a music video, a short film, animation, a commercial - whatever. We want to see what you come up with! 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes will be given out in each of the three categories. Prizes include digital video cameras, digital cameras and web cams.

For more information and to enter the contest visit:
http://www.takingitglobal.org/express/video/contest

Hurry . the contest deadline is April 6th 2007. Pass this message along to your friends who like to create videos!
]]> Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:16:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/167157 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/76061
On Thursday December 14th TakingITGlobal is hosting a Live Chat. We'd like to hear from people who have been involved with TakingITGlobal for a long time and from those who have just found out about us recently. We hope that a lot of people will made time in their busy schedules to take part. We're going to host the chat during two time periods - so select which time period works best for you: from 10:00am to 11:30am EST and from 4:00pm to 5:30pm EST.

To be reminded of the chat a day before and an hour before the chat starts, send an email to:
chat_reminder-subscribe@groups.takingitglobal.org

We would like to talk about TakingITGlobal and how what we are doing is making an impact in people's lives, and how we can improve. Questions we'd like to ask our members include:
What are some of the challenges facing young people today?
What are some of the most pressing issues in global development?
How can TakingITGlobal contribute?

We hope this chat will really help us to find out more about what our members see as TakingITGlobal's strengths and weaknesses, as well as being quite interesting and fun!

The link to the live chat will be available on December 14th through the main spotlight on our homepage and through this site:
http://www.takingitglobal.org/livechat

Hope to see you there!!]]> Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:27:00 EST http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/76061 51.75 -1.25 51.75 -1.25 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/44153
Categories are used in the site for:
- interests in your profile
- all the categories in the resource section
-searching content on the site


You may find that some of your content is a little uncategorized. If this is the case, you can go into your content and recategorize it.

The new categories are:

Arts Media
Culture Identity
Environment Urbanization
Health Wellness
Human Rights Equity
Learning Education
Peace, Conflict Governance
Technology Innovation
Work Economics

The new Understand the Issues section will also be based off this.

Be patient, there may be a few bugs on the site until this gets resolved.

Thanks!]]> Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:07:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/44153 51.75 -1.25 51.75 -1.25 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/44025 مرحبا جميعا:

لقد قام فريق TIGالعربي بإعداد استبيان للحصول على آراء ومقترحات الأعضاء الناطقين باللغة العربية لمساعدتنا في تطوير الموقع العربي.
لذا نأمل منكم الإجابة على الاستبيان وإرساله إلى العنوان التالي: arabic@takingitglobal.org

يمكنك أن تحصل على الاستبيان هنا:
http://www.takingitglobal.org/resources/toolkits/view.htlm?ToolkitID=831


شكرا لتعاونكم ونأمل أن تصلنا ردودكم قريبا.

مع تحيات

فريقTIG العربي

ملاحظة: إذا كنت ترغب أن تحصل على نسخة للاستبيان باللغة الانجليزية، فالرجاء أن ترسل لنا على arabic@takingitglobal.org

]]> Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:54:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/44025 51.75 -1.25 51.75 -1.25 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/38678 As of 11pm EST the new discussion boards have been live on TIG.

For the past 2 days I've been importing the data from the old discussion boards to the new one; which is why the boards were down yestarday for the entire day, and today after 5pm. This project has been in production for more than a month (not counting design and html implementation!), so I'm pretty proud of announcing its launch.

So here they are: http://discussv5.takingitglobal.org

They still need some fine-tuning, which I'm hoping I can finish by tomorrow, but overall they are ready to be used! Although, be aware that its on BETA mode, so there are chances of things going wrong, and pages nt behaving properly. I ask for your patience and even more your co-operation in trying to help us finish this project!

So TIGgers, if you have a problem with our new boards, follow one of these two steps:

Email us at: broken [at] takingitglobal [dot] org

OR

Report it! http://www.takingitglobal.org/members/bugs.html

Including this info:

1) A link to the page you encountered the problem
2) As much detail explaining what you were doing at the time of the error
3) Your TIG username!

enjoy!

]]> Thu, 18 May 2006 23:53:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/38678 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/36106 1) Alerts

This is something that we have been working on for awhile. Alerts (through your Alerts tab in "Edit Profile") allows you to customize several types of alerts that you can get to your "My TIG" tab, or to your mobile device. For regular TIG members, we only support about 50 cell providers, it sends an e-mail instead.

Coming next: Content Alerts - notifications when your friends post content (blog, gallery, panorama)

http://www.takingitglobal.org/members/editprofile.html?section=alerts

2) Friends

I improved the Friends feature, which has its own Tab now in Edit Profile. You can see who's listed you as a friend that you haven't listed, and also you can turn off other people adding you as friends who aren't your friends. (a bit wordy) :)

http://www.takingitglobal.org/members/editprofile.html?section=friends

3) Project Wiki

Project pages now have the ability to have a custom page created (with any name), which team members can edit. Almost like a mini-CMS, currently limited to just one page. This is essentially a primitive version of a "wiki", a user-editable page. (but these aren't fully USER editable, only project team members)

4) Creative Commons

Gallery and Panorama now allow users to select Creative Commons licenses as part of the submission and edit process. These licenses (learn more) let people decide how their work can be used by others. Items on TIG that use these licenses will show a logo and link to license info (example:
http://gallery.takingitglobal.org/mfurdyk/15423 - bottom )

5) Books (Profile, Blogs)

This is a bit of an older feature, but something many people might not have noticed. The books that people have been adding to their profile (almost 2000 so far) are now linked together, so when you click on a book, you can see other TIG members who have read it, blog about it, and see prices for Amazon.ca/com, and some random global library availablility (I was bored one weekend...) :P A good example:
ttp://www.takingitglobal.org/members/book.html?ISBN=0385504209

6) Coming Soon: Tagclouds

You've probably seen them around the Internet. Visual representations of word popularity! We'll add our own in Blogs and maybe in other sections to help people see what topics on 'hot' lately based on words used. The problem is that because our site is so multilingual it's a bit difficult to sort through. You can see a preview here:

[preview coming soon]

Maybe we'll be one of the first sites with an arabic tagcloud! :)
]]> Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:00:00 EST http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/36106 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/34735
Also, we will have soon have new Discusssion Boards!!! We're on the planning/drafting stage, but you can post your suggestions and/or comments here.

So, to our new features list:

-TIG Groups Subscription Set: if you send an email to mygroupname-settings@groups.takingitglobal.org, an replace 'mygroupname' with any group you are subscribed to, you will receive an email that will give you information related to your subscription for that group, like what email is subscribed to that group, what are your Digest settings, and if you are subscribed as a TIG Member.

-Shorter URLs for Organization Listing pages. For example, the new organization link for the United Nations organization page is: http://orgs.takingitglobal.org/183.

-Calendar for Financial Opportunities (link)

-We brought back the 'Project Notification' box. You can now get an email every time someone posts a document, progress report, photo, etc for any project you are interested in.

-Events Map (link)
-Moderated Messages for Group Blogs.
-Multiple image upload for Events.

If you want to report a bug, please click here. ]]> Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:56:00 EST http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/34735 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/29782
The latest two: Organizations Add page, and Professional Opportunities Add page.

The cool thing about these, is that they look cool like the rest of v5, and they are user friendly.

These last part, pages being user friendly is a personal vendetta against pages that make it impossible for the user to do insert any content into tig.

A lot of the old pages in TIG did not have proper error checking, most of them were not translatable into other languages, they were slow and not pretty.

While not all of the TIG pages were like this, since TIG is developed by more than once person = hence more than one coding style, the v5 development team has tried to implement the same system for ALL the forms in this site.

So, now you have proper error checking, errors are translatable, they are very clear with big orange boxes and orange highlights, and they look like the section they belong in.

Of course, I'm sure there are some bugs with the forms, I mean after all, our development team is made of 3 developers. So while I'm pretty proud of what we've acomplish, I also know that things will not always work as expected, there will always be bugs...

So its up the you to report those litle kinks that need fixing. You can do so here: bugs @ takingitglobal . org

-Yaz
]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:57:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/29782 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/28621
Please let us know if you find any problems or bugs with these parts of the site, and we hope you're enjoying V5!]]> Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:39:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/28621 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667 http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/26778
We spent much of 2004 re-developing the site in ways the average user didn't notice, to support translation of all site structure into an infinite number of languages (so far 5 are launched). This year's redevelopment has been focused not just on the visual experience but also on integrating personalization technology.

We've started to make use of this through the new "My TIG" tab you'll notice along the header of the site. This new page will feature content you've recently viewed and posted, give you easy access to manage your TakingITGlobal content, and will also provide you with real-time notifications of content posted by your friends or other TIG members you choose.

Over the next few months, you'll see more enhancements across the site, but for now, I'm sure you'll agree that overall, the experience on TakingITGlobal.org has been vastly improved!
]]> Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:37:00 EDT http://www.tigblog.org/group/tignews/post/26778 43.6666667 -79.4166667 43.6666667 -79.4166667