Nominations for the 2009 Ursa Major Awards for the Best Anthropomorphic Art and Literature close on February 28.

Anyone may submit up to five nominations for works first published during 2009 in each of the ten categories — Motion Picture, Dramatic Short Work or Series, Novel, Short Fiction, Other Literary Work, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Fanzine, Published Illustration, and Game. It is not necessary to nominate for all categories.

Anthrocon is offering two Supersponsorship-level memberships for 2010 for "artwork, fiction, photography, and articles" in the G-to-PG-13 range.

One membership is for visual work, while another is for writings. Multiple submissions may be made in each category. All well-formatted and released entries will count for the drawing; publication preference may go to those on the theme of "Modern Stone-Age Furries."

Sponsorship drawings are a popular way to drum up con book content, while offering creative fans who can't afford the cost of sponsorship a taste of privilege.

Flash animator Tirrel (Cerberus) has created an Aztec-themed work that's worth watching. Check out the rest of his gallery while you're at it.

A team led by Russian WikiFur administrator Shnatsel have released the first beta of a furry-themed version of Linux distribution Ubuntu.

The collaboration includes a boot skin, several wallpapers by Kosh (Alexander Faolchu), icons, a Metacity themes, a GIMP splash screen, and eight sets of smilies. A full GTK+ theme and logon screen are scheduled for future builds.

A prior effort to create such a distribution — Furbuntu — appears to have stalled in 2008.

I've always been curious about what the variety of things for sale in the dealer's room at furry conventions are, so at FC 2010 I decided to get some rough numbers. I probably made some mistakes along the way, but I think it's generally reliable. It should not be assumed to apply for any other conventions except this one, this year.

Contemporary art museum Palais de Tokyo has put on an exhibition about furry fandom (translation and explanation) called "La Tanière" ("The Lair").

The artists, Alain della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita, presented a video based on furry avatars two years ago at a Second Life-oriented exhibition, "Second Night."

Initial reports suggest the depiction of the fandom is well-intentioned, but "not very accurate." However, French furry fan Timduru is working with the artists to include more authentic artwork and descriptions, and has organized a fursuiting visit for the 19th.

Conifur Northwest is pleased to announce the appointment of Matthew Romanek, aka Shandower, as the 2001 Conifur Northwest Art Show Director. Matt will be taking over the reins from Rich Chandler who did a fantastic job for the first three years of our convention before deciding to move in a different direction.

Shanda Fantasy Arts now has guidelines up for submitting art, stories and comics to four of their books. Mel. White's the accepting editor. SFA pays, so artists and writers, check it out!

I spent the better part of the weekend surfing around some of the best known artist archives on the World Wide Web. My trip ended with the Yerf archive, which is considered by some to be the premiere archive on the Internet due to its selective nature and supposedly rigid quality control standards. But after spending some time examining the Recent Uploads section on Yerf, I found myself wondering:
What makes Yerf so great? It's like a refrigerator for developing furry artists.

Just to make sure I wasn't having a knee-jerk reaction to a slow weekend of uploads I took the time to go back several weeks. The more I perused this archive the more my sense of dismay and disappointment grew. This didn't seem like an elite archive where the "best of the best" came to show us what hard work and dedication can do. This seems like a place that is very loosely administered and often used for bragging rights. I found frequent, flagrant violations of the much-touted Uploading Guidelines and a general atmosphere of "we're better than you." Not to mention artwork that, to me, falls far below the caliber the site purports to host.