gibbsBlog

Gibbs Studios wishes you and your family a very joyful holiday season and a happy new year!

When neighbors help neighbors in emergencies, there’s reason to celebrate. That is why every U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has declared March as Red Cross Month.

President George W. Bush said in this year’s proclamation,

“We are grateful for the tireless work of the volunteers and staff of the American Red Cross. During this month, we pay tribute to this remarkable organization…”

Learn more about our fabulous client: Concord Area, NH Red Cross »

Celebrated every year on March 8, International Women’s Day (IWD) is the global day connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential. IWD celebrates the collective power of women past, present and future.

From Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director, UNFPA, “The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, “Ending impunity for violence against women,” calls for stronger commitment and action. The widespread impunity that exists today not only encourages further abuses and suffering. It also sends the signal that male violence against women is acceptable or normal. It is not. Together, we can and must do more to prevent violence against women, provide services to survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are punished.”

Watch World Education’s slideshow on Educating Girls and Women: Inspiring Imagination and Ingenuity around the Globe.

Learn More about International Women’s Day:

- International Women’s Day
- United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
- United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Concepting and producing creative for broadcast, web, radio, brand identity, sound design, and music composition is what they do.

Researching each project to reveal the intricate balance that communicates to the intellect and entertains the soul is how they do it.

Being insanely passionate, mostly grounded with bouts of mad laughter when something truly hits is why they do it.

Cabin 46 Studios has produced creative work for Converse, Killington Radio, Microsoft, Nike and many more.

They are located in the rolling hills of Burlington, Vermont and are available to travel worldwide at a moment’s notice.

Learn more: www.cabin46.com

The US and Canadian governments agreed on legislation which goes into effect this year that changes the dates when these countries switch to and away from Daylight Savings Time (DST). DST begins earlier (March 11 instead of April 1) and ends later (November 4 versus October 28) than it has before.

This change has implications for anyone who communicates to US/Canadian employees. It’s easy enough to change ordinary clocks, but computers, PDAs, and many other devices that keep time will need to be either adjusted or patched.

Peter Moeykens, computer programmer extraordinaire and Shawna’s husband, had this to say, “Actually, this could hit America fairly hard. For some technology companies, my guess is that it will have a larger impact than the Y2K problem due to it’s subtle nature and lack of visibility.”

Related Articles:
NPR: Daylight-Saving Change Is Latest Tech Worry
New York Times: Time Change a ‘Mini-Y2K’ in Tech Terms

From Jakob Nielsen, UseIt.com:

“The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be. Since my first attempt in 1996, I have compiled many top-10 lists of the biggest mistakes in Web design. See links to all these lists at the bottom of this article. This article presents the highlights: the very worst mistakes of Web design.”

Top 10 Web Design Mistakes - Updated for 2007

1. Bad search
2. PDF files for online reading
3. Not changing the color of visited links
4. Non-scannable text
5. Fixed font size
6. Page titles with low search engine visibility
7. Anything that looks like an advertisement
8. Violating design conventions
9. Opening new browser windows
10. Not answering users’ question

Jakob Nielsen has been called “the guru of Web page usability” (The New York Times).

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Until 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer.

Dr. Nielsen founded the “discount usability engineering” movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation.

Read the full article on UseIt.com »

The annual International AIDS Candlelight Memorial, a program of the Global Health Council, is one of the largest and oldest grassroots mobilization campaigns for HIV/AIDS awareness in the world. The Candlelight Memorial occurs on the third Sunday of every May and is led by volunteer coordinators who host memorials for their communities worldwide. Now in its 24th year, the Candlelight is meant to honor all those who have been affected by the AIDS pandemic.

But the Candlelight is much more than just a memorial. It’s also an opportunity to educate about HIV/AIDS, influence local and national policy makers, and create community dialogue about prevention, care, and treatment for the disease. It’s an occasion for coordinators to improve their community mobilization skills, partner with other organizations and professionals in their field, and find unity within a global coalition of AIDS activists.

In 2006, over 900 Candlelight coordinators planned memorials in 110 countries, reaching tens of thousands of people. The Global Health Council works with international partners to recruit and counsel community Candlelight coordinators. The Candlelight began in 1983 in the United States, at a time when little was known about HIV. Today, an estimated 25 million people have died as a result of AIDS and 40 million are currently estimated to be infected with the disease.

Learn more: www.candlelightmemorial.org

PMC Press Release
January 22, 2007

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Save the Children Norway, with funds from the Norwegian government, has announced that it will provide Population Media Center (PMC) with $2.4 million for a four-year, social content radio serial drama project in Ethiopia.

The drama will be created using the Sabido methodology, a highly effective entertainment education technique that PMC has implemented in thirteen countries worldwide. The serial drama will address issues relating to reproductive health. The project also involves production of a radio talk show for youth with phone ins from listeners; production of various print material on reproductive health; and capacity building programs for journalists, playwrights, religious leaders, women leaders, youth associations, and reproductive health professionals. In addition, the project includes specialized activities for Ethiopia’s Afar and Somali Regions focused on eradicating female genital mutilation. The project will include extensive monitoring and evaluation.

This project follows a series of projects by PMC in Ethiopia . In 2004, PMC completed a project that included radio serial dramas in the major languages, Amharic (257 episodes) and Oromiffa (140 episodes). The programs addressed issues of reproductive health and women’s status, including HIV/AIDS, family planning, marriage by abduction, education of daughters, spousal communication and related issues. Approximately half of the population of Ethiopia listened to one of PMC’s radio dramas; this equates to nearly 40 million listeners. After just two and half years of broadcasting, the resulting behavior change was dramatic. For example, demand for contraceptives increased by 157%, and male listeners sought HIV tests at four times the rate of non-listeners, while female listeners sought testing at three times the rate of non-listeners.

The funding provided by Save the Children Norway will help PMC to expand upon these programs in Ethiopia and to educate millions about the importance of family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, and other related issues.

More about PMC can be found at www.populationmedia.org
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Contact
Katie Elmore
Development and Communications Manager
Tel: 802-985-8156 ext. 205
elmore@populationmedia.org

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The Population Media Center ( PMC ) is an international nonprofit organization headquartered in Shelburne, Vermont. PMC works worldwide to bring about stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world’s natural resources and to lessen the harmful impact of humanity on the earth’s environment. PMC uses entertainment broadcasting to change cultural attitudes and individual behavior with regard to health and social issues in various developing countries.

Nomination Submission Deadline - Thursday, Feb. 1

The Global Health Council’s Excellence in Media Award for Global Health is dedicated to drawing attention to health issues that have a global impact. The award honors those who have in the prior year most effectively captured the essence of a major issue in global health and conveyed it to a broad audience.

The Council welcomes Media Award submissions in the following four categories:

1. Newspaper, Magazine and Major Print Publication (NY Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, TIME Magazine)
2. Broadcast, TV and “New Media” (video, mixed media, radio and internet-based)
3. Photojournalism
4. Community Media (community, local, in-country media of all types, including newspaper, community radio and internet-based)

Read more about the Excellence in Media Award

The Medical Mission Exchange (MMEX) is pleased to announce the development of a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) map of Honduras.

This interactive map shows locations of health care facilities including medical missions within Honduras.

With the help of GISCorps we are working on similar maps for the other countries in which we are working. The map details will continue to improve as more data is added.

Launch the Honduras Map