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Update 3/21/2010: the open source project Ushahidi has had some good press lately about its role in the Hatian and Chilean earthquake relief efforts, mapping the crisis and response with text-messages.
25 January 2010 | Grazie Amici
After six years of publication, SocialDesignZine is shutting down. The blog on social design was set up inspire and provoke a discussion among Italian designer and beyond.
The founders maintained an aggressive publication schedule (nearly daily!), hosted offline typographic tours, published two beautiful books of selected posts and comments, an exhibition, and a publication on civic branding and design culminating in the Più Design Può conference in May 2009. Unfortunately, though the SDZ site receives a good amount of traffic, an active community of commenters never really materialized and the daily maintenance had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Still, it’s a high note to end on.
I had the great pleasure of meeting the site’s publishers Gianni Sinni and Andrea Rauch at the conference in Florence and was impressed with the depth of their politics and the ease at which they integrated their civic commitment with their studio practice. Now that they are free of the daily publication schedule, I look forward to seeing what new endeavors they develop. Grazie a Andrea e Gianni.
Computer games designed to teach about social issues like public health, the environment, human rights and poverty. A very mixed bag here, but an interesting, emerging space to watch. (via)
