new Stan front page

[Bob Carpenter]

I revised the front page of the Stan site.

http://code.google.com/p/stan/

In the "About" section, I called out everyone by
name with a link and an affiliation. Let me know
if you're OK with this and if so, if I used the
right link.

I also added the two DOE grants and NSF grant.

I made mc.sta...@gmail.com the official email
contact and Daniel set up the gmail account to forward
to me and him.

Other suggestions are welcome, too, of course. You
can go in and edit the page using the mc.stanislaw account (we
made mc the owner and everyone else committers).

When we have the Stan and RStan release tarballs ready to go,
those will be linked under "Download" along with the Git
repository.

When we get the first model contribution, we'll have a models
page (assuming we can work out the legal details).

- Bob

[Andrew Gelman]

Should we include Malecki's pretty subway map images on the Stan main page?

[Bob Carpenter]

On 7/10/12 11:17 AM, Andrew Gelman wrote:
> Should we include Malecki's pretty subway map images on the Stan main page?

Good question. I took them off unilaterally and probably
should've consulted everyone else rather than just mumbling
something to Daniel.

I took the two subway (Gibbs, Hamiltonian)
and one highway (no-U-turn) off the page, and left
the overall Stan logo because:

1. we don't do Gibbs,

2. the no-U-turn traffic sign and Hamiltonian subway seemed
to be mixing metaphors,

3. the page looked cluttered.

As to 2, we could argue the metaphor is transportation and
add helicopers, jets, jetpacks, and wormhole spaceships
later. We could even scale down to tricycles for a beginners
edition.

I'd be happy to add the subway map for Hamiltonians back in.
That was my personal favorite of all the logos.

Or we could use both, with a tagline like:

Transfer from the Gibbs Local to the Hamiltonian
Express.

or

Get off of Gibbs and onto Hamilton.

If we get a whole bunch of logos, they'll wash out
in the noise like a race car or an EU-funded presentation's
acknowledgements page.

Any suggestions on where to put the Express on the page?
The Google Code wiki layout doesn't give you a lot of control,
but I think I can align right near any group of text in the
right-hand column.

The overall Stan logo is modeled after the MTA's logo.
As is the Hamiltonian and Gibbs, though you could argue
those are more generic.

Today's legal topic: trademark infringement.

What we really need is a coherent graphical theme if we want
to do this kind of stuff. For instance, here's an academic
site that worked with a good designer:

http://anawiki.essex.ac.uk/phrasedetectives/

He wasn't too expensive ($Ks not $10Ks) and I think he may
be available. I'd rather wait to a slicker 2.0 release
or something before getting this fancy. Also, it brings
up maintainability and extendability issues if you don't
have the designer readily available.

- Bob