The Knight News Challenge recently extended its online submission deadline to December 15th to attract a broader applicant pool, particularly targeting software developers and entrepreneurs. The fourth annual Knight News Challenge (www.newschallenge.org), sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, awards up to $5 million a year for innovative uses of digital technology aimed at helping to transform news and information sharing. The competition is currently accepting applications and previous winners have included several members of the Drupal community.

Berliner.de is a social network focused on Berlin. Berliner.de is for all Berliners and all other citizens of the world who are mad for Berlin or are eager to become so. On Berliner.de, users are able to add new content or comment and rate other people's contributions. They can make new friends, upload pictures, send messages, subscribe to interesting topics or just stroll around the vast amount of existing bits and pieces regarding Berlin on the site. The most important things going on in a user's network are presented in a newsfeed.

The users are backed up by an editorial department that is checking, finalizing and publishing all public contributions.

Berliner.de was developed by the long-established company BerlinOnline that runs (among other portals) Berlin.de, the official website of Germany’s capital, Berlin. Involved in the development of Berliner.de were (among others) Drupal community members fl3a and ambo.

The core technical bae of Berliner.de is built on Drupal 6 using many additional modules. These include the obligatory CCK, Views, ImageCache, Pathauto and Rules.

3281d Consulting is very pleased to announce that a new era on drupal.org has begun: Drupal distributions (also known as "installation profiles") can now be automatically packaged with Drupal core and all of their required dependencies. When you download the distribution, you just unpack it into a web root directory, visit install.php, and you're done. This should vastly lower the barriers to getting a new Drupal site up and running. Please read on if you've ever considered installing a Drupal distribution or if you maintain one on drupal.org.

If you maintain an installation profile, be sure to read the How to package a profile on drupal.org handbook page before you try to use the new system.

The Open Magazine is a new current affairs/entertainment weekly magazine available on magazine stands in India. The magazine was launched in the first quarter of 2009.

The publisher of Open Magazine, Open Media Pvt. Ltd. wanted a web presence for its magazine. It selected Srijan Technologies, a content management specialist company based out of New Delhi, India to construct the website. Srijan's responsibility was to build the website from scratch and host it. Site design was done by Itu Chaudhuri Design.

Srijan Technologies used Drupal 6. Development took place over a period of approximately 4 months and the Open website was released to the public in July 2009.

Currently the website shows all the content that appears in the print version of the magazine online for free. The website also contains some exclusive web content that is not present in the print version. The website is substantially updated once a week though web exclusive content is updated more frequently to keep the site "fresh."

The purpose of this case study is to introduce all significant (mostly technical) aspects of the website from Srijan's perspective. Feedback and comments are requested.

Earlier this month, the Executive Office of the President of the United States of America relaunched their website, Whitehouse.gov, using Drupal. This week three members of the White House new media team presented at the Washington, DC Drupal users group. New media director Macon Phillips, deputy director of technology David Cole, and creative director Nik Lo Bue talked about their use of Drupal.

In this video, Macon Phillips addresses how they want to create opportunities for citizens to participate in their government. David Cole talks about why they wanted to change their technology platform, what they actually built, and where they are going with that new platform. Nik Lo Bue addresses how he wanted to use an amazing brand experience to visually communicate with citizens using Drupal.