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Welcome Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles readers

A belated post that our humble project was mentioned in a cover story in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles on September 28th, 2010. Thanks to writer Jonah Lowenfeld, a very patient interviewer. In his article, “The Ten Commandments of social networking” Jonah felt the Open Siddur Project exemplified the eighth commandment:

[No.] 8. . . . → Read More: Welcome Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles readers

Openness, remixability, and free culture

In an insightful blog post on eJewish Philanthropy — which you should read if you haven’t already — Russel Neiss writes “[w]hile we have had many illuminating conversations since our presentation [at the JFNA General Assembly], the questions and feedback we have received overwhelmingly surrounds the first value of “Open, Discoverable and Accessible.”” He refers . . . → Read More: Openness, remixability, and free culture

From the Jacob Freedman archives: Color-Coded Prayerbook Devised by Rabbi

In our project history, I explain how Rabbi Jacob Freedman’s Polychrome Historical Haggadah was a major inspiration behind my vision for an open siddur project. While researching it’s history I was so pleased to discover that the haggadah Rabbi Freedman managed to self-publish in 1974 to rave reviews, was really only a proof-of-concept for his . . . → Read More: From the Jacob Freedman archives: Color-Coded Prayerbook Devised by Rabbi

Development Status (08/15/2010)

Hello friends,

Check out our progress! This development status update chronicles progress on the Open Siddur made since our last update, February 15, 2010.

If you’d like to get news of Open Siddur Project development as it occurs, make sure to follow @opensiddur at Twitter, or join the opensiddur-announce email list. We also recommend following . . . → Read More: Development Status (08/15/2010)

NewCAJE 1: Post-conference thoughts and appeal to technologists

Last week, I attended the first NewCAJE conference for Jewish educators and the young professionals retreat that followed. I met a lot of good people who chose an often under-appreciated profession; all of them dedicated to what they do: teaching the next generation of young Jews what it means to be Jewish. In recent days, . . . → Read More: NewCAJE 1: Post-conference thoughts and appeal to technologists

Radio 613: An interview with Aharon Varady on Open Source Judaism

Welcome Radio 613 listeners. It was my joy to be interviewed by co-hosts Avi & Malcah on CFRC Kingston 101.9FM last Thursday afternoon. In case you missed it, Avi just posted audio of the show to the radio613 webpage.

Go ahead and listen. I have some follow up thoughts on the interview below.

The opinions . . . → Read More: Radio 613: An interview with Aharon Varady on Open Source Judaism

How you and your students can help build the Jewish library of the future (NewCAJE 1)

This post links to both the audio and slides from my talk at the 2010 NewCAJE, a conference for Jewish educators currently taking place at Gann Academy in Waltham, MA. My talk was in the first session and the crowd was small, but, thanks to the powers of the Internet and my small digital audio . . . → Read More: How you and your students can help build the Jewish library of the future (NewCAJE 1)

A Demonstration of our Transliteration Engine

Part of our project of digitizing Jewish liturgy is to provide a resource to convert the consonants and vowels of Hebrew into any other script. Ultimately this will be a standard feature in the web application we are building to help folk craft their own siddur, machzor, bentscher or other useful prayer book. Our lead . . . → Read More: A Demonstration of our Transliteration Engine

Some thoughts on how Jewish nonprofits can improve the world and themselves with open source

The following is the unedited text of the speech I read at the Future of Jewish Non Profit Summit. There’s a for-fee video of the speech at Fora.tv.  You can also listen to this audio recording. Efraim and I have made many of these points before, so if you’re so inclined check out more of . . . → Read More: Some thoughts on how Jewish nonprofits can improve the world and themselves with open source

Unicode Compliant and Free/Libre Open Source Licensed Hebrew Fonts

Open Source and Unicode Hebrew Font comparison

“Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems.”[1] The importance of sharing documents with Unicode 4.0+ compliant Hebrew fonts was underlined for us in early 2010, after the liturgy of a popular siddur was contributed to the Open Siddur Project . . . → Read More: Unicode Compliant and Free/Libre Open Source Licensed Hebrew Fonts

A Pushka-appeal

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