Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 12, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology My iPhone 3G August 12, 2008 I once joined the “iPhone non-buyers&# group on Facebook. I swore up and down I wouldn’t get one.

Blackberry 113

Blackberry Open Source Ipod Phone 113

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 11, 2008

August 11, 2008 You’ve likely heard a lot about “ cloud computing “ And what’s true is that the sales-talk about computing in the cloud certainly makes the conceptual issues behind it, honestly, well, cloudy. Changes in the application happen without your knowledge or consent.

AJAX 134

AJAX Application Open Source Plugin 134

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 10, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Reflection and Evaluation March 10, 2008 Michele Martin, one of my fave bloggers, has a great post today on Reflective Practice.

Evaluation 111

Evaluation Reflection Open Source Journal 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 29, 2008

February 29, 2008 OK, so we all know that I have been eating my own dogfood (that is, using Linux on the desktop) for a while now. I think, actually, the problem is more about the nvidia drivers, but xrandr is very good to know about. Switching to the open-source driver ‘nv’ immediately solved the problem!

Open Source 111

Open Source Ubuntu Arts RSS 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 1, 2007

The problem of how do you fund the actual writing of content was not really addressed, and I think that is one of the harder nuts to crack. In general, it seems like most models depend on some sort of up-front funding, whether it be an investment or a grant, to fund the initial writing of a large amount of content.

Model 100

Model Content Open Business 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 14, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Tidbits February 14, 2008 These are tidbits of things I’ve gotten recently from vendors, or gotten via feeds or twitter. The problem with Google Code is that it’s *explicitly* for small projects.

Kintera 100

Kintera Open Source Wiki Open 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 24, 2007

It’s the standard “if I have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.&# I wanted to figure out how to make my product solve every problem that my clients had – or, if I couldn’t, I wanted to figure out how to build/install/integrate something that could. But, I was myopic anyway.

Open Source 100

Open Source eLearning Software Comment 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 24, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology SaaS vs. Open Source September 24, 2008 I just finished writing a post for the Idealware blog about choosing SaaS vs. Open source. at 6:45 pm » SaaS vs. Open Source » Audio Books 10.07.08

Open Source 100

Open Source Open API Software 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 4, 2007

The major problem I found with ActiveCollab wasn’t open source vs. not but the fact that it wasn’t getting updated very often. I’ll be moving from activeCollab to ProjectPier soon. { 3 comments… read them below or add one } 1 Allan Benamer 10.04.07 at 2:40 pm That’s sad.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Community Model 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 30, 2007

But my role in that context is much more around helping to solve specific problems, or educate in specific ways about technology options. { I hope that in the process of doing projects for clients, I am able to ask those deep questions, and help them ask “why&# much more often.

Open Source 100

Open Source RSS Articulate Tech 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 9, 2007

I have no problem getting just about all of my work done using Ubuntu. So I’m stuck where I don’t want to be (where lots of nonprofits are) with a data integration problem that I can’t solve right now, and likely won’t get solved for years. For some things, there are lots of relatively decent choices.

Ubuntu 100

Ubuntu Open Source Calendar Integration 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 29, 2008

January 29, 2008 I don’t exactly know where the exclamation point came from, but if you want a scarily easy CMS to install, Joomla is a place to start. Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Free and open source tool #6: Joomla!

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 14, 2007

And of course, my problem here is that my background is in science, not marketing – so I find it impossible to look at data and not see its weak points. Perhaps we’re beyond that – but I’m not sure – especially for a large number of nonprofits who haven’t yet delved much into open source waters.

Question 100

Question Open Source Sample Survey 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 3, 2009

You also ignore my argument about the 2008 security audits of Drupal that resulted in numerous vulnerability reports, but more on that later. at 8:54 pm Most of the programming problems are misuse of the well documented abstract layers. at 1:55 pm { 7 comments… read them below or add one } 1 David Strauss 04.03.09

Drupal 100

Drupal Comment Report Metrics 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 5, 2007

Shell sessions are basically not doable, unless I am amazingly patient – the 4 second latency is definitely a problem in that case. It even snowed a bit – and everything seems fine. But it didn’t stay good. About 5:00, the bandwidth hit the floor. It bounced back up a couple of times. Now, it’s at: That sucks.

Open Source 100

Open Source Technorati RSS Tech 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 9, 2007

First problem: Linux address books … suck. I used to have this great system where I used the Mac Addressbook, which would nicely sync with my cell phone. It also integrated well with Mail.app and iChat. It was great. I hate to be so blunt, but it is true, at least in comparison to the ones on the Mac. There are basically three options.

Open Source 100

Open Source Ubuntu Chad Open 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 18, 2007

Just threatening to sue, threatening to get license fees (which, for some open source projects would be a major problem) is enough to make people doubt the future of open source. Of course, the 800 pound gorilla doesn’t actually have to sue anyone. It’s all about fear, really.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Software Technorati 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 29, 2007

An older woman of color noted that a lot of the problems that open source developers were solving weren’t problems that communities faced. He wanted to know how to get his kids access to tools that were affordable for them to create and edit media.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Software Music 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 17, 2007

Given the widespread problem with phishing schemes, it’s disturbing that web apps are training users that it’s OK to give a new site your email username/password. Just like how search engines allow you to quickly find anything you want, future technologies will help you easily connect with friends from anywhere. 4 Ade 12.18.07

Web 113

Web Experiment gMail Open Source 113

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 18, 2007

I think one of the problems here is that people see spreadsheets as *just* one component of an office suite. There’s no reason that OpenOffice Calc *couldn’t* take the lead and go past Excel, especially with the socialized functionality I was talking about.

Open Source 100

Open Source Mediawiki Files Open 100

Tech Soup

APRIL 19, 2016

Ushahidi got its start in early 2008. Founder Erik Hersman and a group of fellow Kenyan bloggers were frustrated by the lack of accurate information or media coverage of the violence surrounding the 2008 Kenyan election. Ushahidi entered our legendary third NetSquared Mashup Challenge in Santa Clara, California in May 2008.

Netsquared 36

Netsquared Challenge Tech Nepal 36

Tech Soup

DECEMBER 20, 2011

At TechSoup, we’re always interested in how nonprofits cleverly solve IT problems. Getting a case management databases in use by several people and across different offices and even across different organizations is a particularly thorny problem. Can you say a bit about your process for designing and building the database?

Sharepoint 50

Sharepoint Children Database Network 50

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 21, 2007

I also ran into a weird problem with a daemon called “avahi-daemon&# which is basically the Linux implementation of “Bonjour&#. I imagine if I was wired, it would automagically work (that’s been my experience in the past.) So I had to dig out of my memory (and do some online looking) about iwconfig.

Ubuntu 100

Ubuntu Open Source Laptop Open 100

Tech Soup

MARCH 29, 2017

LABB created an Oil Spill Crisis Map in response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The organization got started when a group of Kenyan bloggers led by Erik Hersman began doing online mapping of violence reports after the 2008 Kenyan election. The name Ushahidi means "testimony" in Swahili. So much innovation.

Benefit 36

Benefit Public Develop Tools 36

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 24, 2008

June 24, 2008 I’m doing a webinar on Linux Desktops next month, and it’s making me think a lot about my own experience using Linux on the desktop, and where I think things are going. I have had varied problems , from issues of software integration, video problems, wireless issues … The list is getting very long.

Ubuntu 100

Ubuntu Open Source Software Laptop 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 28, 2006

So, can you solve my to do list problem? :-) And I’m grabbing the sunscreen already! That’s the only way I opted in setting up a magnolia account. 2 Michelle Murrain 11.30.06 at 7:40 pm Thank you Beth! That is so cool. too bad they don’t have stumbleupon included. But I’m not so sold on stumbleupon anyway.

Web 100

Web Stumbleupon Ubuntu Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 24, 2006

First, the major problem is that there are, at this point, so many of them, and although many (most?) I like the interface better, and the social part of the bookmarking is actually a lot better done (they have groups, as well as contacts.) But some comments on the whole phenomenon. Its great for lunch hours! 2 marnie webb 09.25.06

Bookmarking 100

Bookmarking Web Social API 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 10, 2006

If we adopt, in whole, or in part, the metaphors of the corporate world, whose basic fundamental goal is making a profit, and use it in the nonprofit sector, whose basic fundamental goal is making people’s lives better, does that create a problem or conflict? 4 comments… read them below or add one } 1 David Geilhufe 10.10.06

Open Source 100

Open Source Software Profit Process 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 17, 2007

Problem is, I’m not a nonprofit organization. The other potential problem for some users is that the free version limits the number of web-conference participants to 3. Have a great day, Tracey 2 admin 08.17.07 Wish I were! 3 Karel Lukas 08.17.07 at 3:02 pm Michelle, Thanks for checking out Yugma. it’s easy to set up.

Search 100

Search Web Open Source Audio 100

NTEN

FEBRUARY 8, 2011

Everything that a tech person deals with on a daily basis revolves around problem solving. Sometimes, tech people need to be reminded of the broader context in which they are operating -- that there are solutions to problems that lay outside of software. This can be a tremendous asset at the management level. Solution Based Thinking.

Leadership 94

Leadership Tech Lecture Org 94

NTEN

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

We, as nonprofit leaders, have problems to solve. Big problems. And good data management can help us solve those problems more effectively by allowing us to make better business decisions, collaborate more effectively, and engage the public and our clients in solving the problem, too. 129 have donated again in 2010.

Data 82

Data San Francisco Problem Gift 82

Tech Soup

APRIL 30, 2013

Department of Commerce (NTIA) stimulus grants in 2008 and 2009 and so it has had no government funding and has been struggling to successfully get off the ground. The Relevancy of the Internet Problem. He said that the first order of business is to address what he calls, "the relevancy of the Internet problem."

Digital 65

Digital Project San Diego Internet 65

ASU Lodestar Center

OCTOBER 14, 2011

In 2009, we conducted a broad financial overview of 70 domestic violence (DV) service providers, which was followed by a comparative financial analysis of 18 organizations in 2010. Between 2000 and 2008, this revenue mix provided stability and the opportunity to grow, due to gradual increases in overall government funding.

Research 89

Research Data California Government 89

Tech Soup

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

The Macbook Air has been around since early 2008, and frankly struggled in its first years with poor sales and technical problems. A redesigned, lower cost version came out in 2010 and it took off. The first and foremost of them was and probably still is the Apple MacBook Air.

Laptop 50

Laptop Flash Green Library 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 17, 2010

The SXSW Interactive Festival (scheduled March 11-15, 2010 in Austin, Texas) is a mega huge social media industry event. In 2008, I was honored to be on one of the few nonprofit panels on the agenda. There are over 200,000 professional artists in the US — and a bunch of them have problems the techies could help solve.

Comment 97

Comment Artist Social Media Hype 97

Amy Sample Ward

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Problems were that many survivors had no internet access, let alone electrical power, let alone computers or even computer literacy. Another problem in theory is fraud, and another problem is that many sites only included last and first names which in a mass of several hundred thousand displaced persons obviously included many duplicates.

Disaster 206

Disaster Social Media Haiti Media 206

See3

FEBRUARY 25, 2008

The biggest problem I can see right away is that they are not letting us embed the videos. on Condoleezza February 07, 2008 3:40 PM Justin Rood Reports: The State Department is defeating terrorism one “strong, engaging&# online video at a time. It’s spent roughly $350 million a year in 2007 and 2008.) I Got a Crush.

Game 40

Game Video Web YouTube 40