Drupal

Our clients at Open.Michigan were just recognized with the 2011 Technical Innovation Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence by the OpenCourseWare Consortium for their courseware delivery system, known as OERbit. We wish them a sincere congratulations!

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with Acquia’s impressive Drupal Gardens service. As a designer, I’ve enjoyed the amount of theming control available through the web interface. While I do have a few wishes, it’s really hard to complain; this thing provides nearly everything you need for complete custom theming, especially if you’re willing to get a little creative.

We recently completed the first round of major development on a new courseware publishing system for Open.Michigan, the University of Michigan's contribution to the Open Education initiative. In the spirit of open education, the system is freely available for download, modification and, use by anyone interested in contributing to the Open Education Resource (OER) community—the code will soon be available through github.com. 

As far as starter themes go, the AdaptiveTheme is both flexible, robust, and has dozens of options within the admin interface for changing the layout and other site features. It also comes Skinr-ready.

However, it was lacking one minor feature,  which is usually desirable in most designs. The sticky footer.

Steve and I recently sat down with Jon Zemke of Concentrate for a lively discussion about working and living in Ann Arbor. Check out the full article, Young & Entrepreneurial: A Q&A with Switchback, for our thoughts on some of the best food in town, the appeal of Drupal and Switchback, and how Ann Arbor can attract more young entrepreneurs.

It's been a very productive summer for us at Switchback. We've recently launched several projects, with more waiting in the wings. Most notably: