The community has voted, and the votes have been tallied. The winner of Project Icon, with 35% of the votes, is Entry ID “BD,” otherwise known as Ben Dunkle. Congratulations, Ben! The runner-up was VS, otherwise known as Verena Segert, so we’ll be attaching that set to the alternate color palette that is selectable from the profile screen. As we prepare for RC1, Ben and Verena will be revising a couple of their icons so that both sets will use the same metaphors, creating the colored “on” states, and creating the larger size of each icon for use in the h2 screen headers. We are very grateful to have had the opportunity to select from so many great options, and would like to express again our appreciation for all the designers who participated in the contest. Thanks also to the more than 3700 people who completed the voting survey and took the time to weigh on on the individual icon sets.

Q.18 Which one of the sets do you think we should use as a basis for the 2.7 icons?
Icon Set	# of votes	% of votes
BD	1285	35%
VS	1080	29%
GB2	424	11%
OSD	376	10%
LS	300	8%
GB1	235	6%

The wide lead of BD and VS made it clear that voters had a clear preference for these sets.

Q.20 If you could choose a runner-up, which would you choose?
Icon Set	# of votes	% of votes
VS	916	27%
BD	647	19%
LS	522	16%
OSD	488	14%
GB2	462	14%
GB1	331	10%

Question 20 was not mandatory, so a few hundred people skipped it, but the responses we did get (3366 of them) reinforced the fact that the two most popular sets were also the most popular 2nd choices, which made the decision of the judges to go with the popular vote an easy one (take that, electoral college!).

A few of the individual icon metaphors also had a significant lead over the other choices.
Dashboard: 1333 voters (40%) chose a house as the best metaphor. We agree, so both Ben and Verena will be replacing their Dashboard icons.

Media: 2097 voters (65%) chose the combination camera + musical note icon, which was part of Ben’s set. We also really loved it, and Verena will amend her media icon to incorporate this idea.

Plugins: 1682 voters (53%) selected the outlet plug metaphor, which both Ben and Verena used in their sets.

Tools: 1581 voters (49%) liked the combination of two tools better than anything else, so Ben and Verena will try this approach.

So those are the results, and soon you’ll see the new icons coming to a 2.7 installation near you.

Need another look at the entries to remember which one you liked best? Here are some reminder images, as well as the identity of each set’s creator.

BD was Ben Dunkle, a designer, professor and artist from upstate/western New York State. In case you’ve already forgotten, Ben’s icon set is the winner of Project Icon and will become the default icon set after a few minor changes.	VS was Verena Segert, our runner-up, a designer from Germany who presented sets in both grayscale and blue. Her blue icons received more specific voter comments than the gray ones, so we’re planning the second color palette to be in shades of blue so that we can use the blue icon set.
GB was Guillaume Berry, a designer from France who submitted two sets in the same style in order to propose a couple of different metaphors. One of his sets came in third while the other came in last, but whether you only look at the higher scoring set or you combine their votes, Guillaume had the next highest percentage of votes, and many people liked the metaphors he used for various icons. In fact, given the enthusiasm of the community for Guillaume’s icons, we think a great plugin would be one that would allow the user to upload the icon set of their choice. Any volunteers?
OSD was the Open Source Design class at Parson’s in New york City, taught by Mushon Zer-Aviv and consisting of students Alexandra Zsigmond, Ed Nacional, Karen Messing, Khurram Bajwa, Leonie Leibenfrost. Teacher and students worked together to determine their metaphors and visual style.	LS was Luke Smith, a designer from Iowa who specializes in icons among his other design pursuits.

If you need to hire an icon designer any time soon, we highly recommend our Project Icon contestants, who all delivered great work in a very short timeframe. It was great to work with all of them, even for such a short assignment.

So, to sum up:

1. The winning icon sets by Ben Dunkle and Verena Segert will be incorporated into WordPress 2.7 RC1.
2. Someone should write a plugin that would allow anyone to upload a custom icon set (I bet the other contestants could be convinced to release their icon sets for such a purpose).
3. 2.7 is still trucking away, but we can always use help with patches, especially for IE6! (I know, that wasn’t in the main post, but it’s true, so hmph)

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this experiment, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And congratulations again to Ben and Verena!

Redstone Federal Credit Union has an intriguing cash back credit card offer. Its VISA Gold, Visa Platinum, and Gold MasterCard earn a 1% cash back reward on the first $5,000 in annual purchases and 2% cash back on all purchases above $5,000. There is no mention of a cap on rewards. This means that if you charge more than $10,000 in a year, you’ll come out ahead of a 1.5% cash back card.

The cashback bonus is credited annually in January. Membership is required in order to apply, as the bonus is deposited to your credit union savings account.

Redstone is one of the larger credit unions in the nation, serving over 300,000 members and having over $2 billion in assets. It primarily serves the greater Huntsville, Alabama area, but anyone can join. Membership information can be found here. (As pointed out on CB, membership in The Arc of Jackson County qualifies you, at a cost of $15.) More details about the credit cards are listed here. (Via FW)

This post is from Credit Card Watcher's Credit Card Deals Blog.

Redstone FCU Credit Card: Up to 2% Cash Back

Citigroup cardholders who haven't had their rates raised in two to three years have a surprise in store for them -- higher interest rates!

WordPress 2.7 Beta 3 has been released for your testing pleasure. Here are some of the changes since Beta 2 (over 160 changes in total):

• Numerous style improvements and refinements.
• All admin notices now go under the page title.
• PHP Notice fixes.
• Dashboard widget options now properly save.
• Menu fixes.
• New design for Quick Edit.
• Canonical feed URL fixes.
• Walker fixes.
• An update for Hello Dolly.
• Plugin installer updates.
• Numerous font updates.
• Updated login logo.
• Switch position of “Save Draft” and “Preview” buttons in publish module.
• File upload support for MS Office 2007+ file formats.
• Media upload buttons won’t show if the user doesn’t have the upload capability.
• Canonical redirects only do yes-www or no-www redirection for domains.
• Shift-click checkbox range selection improvement.
• Add New User page now separate.
• Tag suggest only suggests tags (not other taxonomy terms).
• QuickPress shows “Submit for Review” if user cannot publish.
• Private posts/pages, and password-protected posts/pages are rolled into new “Visibility” section of publish module.

If you have already installed Beta 1 or Beta 2, you can update to Beta 3 via the Tools -> Update menu. If you have problems, or if this is your first time in the 2.7 beta ring, you can download and upgrade the old fashioned way.

Get 2.7 Beta 3.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Amex has teamed with Walmart to offer a very generous deal:

Simply spend $40 or more 2 times from November 18 through December 18, 2008 at a Walmart store or at Walmart.com using your American Express card and you’ll receive a $20 statement credit. Valid purchases must not include gift cards, gift certificates or prior purchases. In order to receive the bonus, you must first enroll at this link. (Via FW)

This post is from Credit Card Watcher's Credit Card Deals Blog.

Amex Cardmembers: Get $20 When You Spend $40 Two Times at Walmart

From now until January 31, 2009, you can earn $10 cash back for every $100 you spend on New York area transit when you pay with any Bank of America Visa credit or check card. You can earn up to $100 during this promotion, but you must sign up first to begin saving.

Eligible NYC transit includes:

• NYC Subway & Buses
• Staten Island Railroad & Ferry
• Long Island Railroad & Bus
• Metro-North Railroad
• Port Authority of NY/NJ
• Independent Ferries
• Bridge & Tunnel Tolls and EZ Pass

Participation in this promo is completely free. To enroll and find complete details, see www.bankofamerica.com/transit. (Via FW)

This post is from Credit Card Watcher's Credit Card Deals Blog.

For NYC BofA Visa Cardholders: Up to $100 Back on Transit

Earlier in the beta period, we put out a call here on the development blog for designers in the WordPress community who might be interested in designing custom icons for the 2.7 admin interface. Over a dozen icon designers from around the world responded, so rather than choose just one, we decided to turn the icon design assignment into a contest so that more people could participate and the community could have a vote in what the new icons should look like.

Once we decided to go with a contest format instead of a single-designer gig, about half the original volunteers changed their minds. The remaining designers each submitted two icons (Posts, Links) in their proposed style. At this stage a couple of designers were thanked for their submissions but eliminated from the competition because their icons were considered too far afield from the WordPress visual style. The remaining designers were given feedback on the icons they had submitted and given about a week to complete the icon set for the menu as well as the list/excerpt icons that are shown on the Edit Posts screen. All but one of these designers finished a complete set, giving us five sets in total.

So now we need to choose a direction. For each of the icon sets, we’ll show you the set itself, the designer’s introduction, and some feedback from the lead developers. After you’ve reviewed all five, place your vote for the set you think has the visual style that is the most suitable for WordPress 2.7. This will be followed by additional votes on specific icons, so if you like the specific image used in one set but like the style of another, you can vote to change the metaphor for a given icon. You’ll also be able to leave general feedback throughout the voting process. When voting has concluded, we’ll review the comments and the votes, and will declare a winner.

Things to bear in mind when making your selections:
A week is not a long time to create 13 icons. The winning set will undergo a revision to be refined, and some icons may be substituted. We asked for all icons in grayscale for the contest. An “on” state and a larger size for screen headers will be designed by the winner. It seemed like too much work to have everyone do multiple states for so many icons.

Ready? Go and take the icon survey. Voting will remain open for 48 hours from the time of this post to allow people from all time zones a chance to participate before we close the survey and make a decision (since we’d like to include the new icons in Beta 3).

A Note Regarding the 2.7 Release Date:
As we approach Beta 3, bug tickets continue to be added to Trac, the pain of making things look good in IE6 continues to be felt, and the need to improve accessibility looms. If you love WordPress, are a decent coder, and want to contribute like these icon designers contributed, please consider contributing a patch to help with one of these efforts. Jump right in on current Trac tickets, or pop into the #wordpress-dev IRC channel to ask what to do.

Now through November 30, 2008, you can get $4 off your purchase of movie tickets at Fandango when you use your Discover Card. Discounts are limited to one per Discover card holder. To access this deal, you must purchase tickets through this link.

This post is from Credit Card Watcher's Credit Card Deals Blog.

$4 Discount on Movie Tickets Using Your Discover Card

A credit card for a college student can come in handy for the holidays, but it is important to remember that college student credit cards need to be used responsibly. This means avoiding impulse buy gifts. What is an impulsive purchase? Any gift you buy that you don’t plan on buying. It’s wise to create [...]

The Fed rejects a proposal that would have created a workout program for credit cardholders facing bankruptcy.