Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 9, 2007

July 9, 2007 So I talk a lot about both open source software, and the preciousness of one’s own data. I tout the benefits of open source software. I used to have this great system where I used the Mac Addressbook, which would nicely sync with my cell phone. First problem: Linux address books … suck.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 19, 2008

From their website: Some of the features that distinguish Hampshire from more traditional liberal arts colleges include student-designed academic concentrations; an active, collaborative, inquiry-based pedagogy; an interdisciplinary curriculum; and a narrative evaluation system. Sounds a lot like Edupunk, doesn’t it? Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 14, 2008

Trio is an integration of SugarCRM, Joomla, and a credit card payment system. This is not only cool from the perspective of the integration of two great open source web apps, but it also is a very interesting business model. The problem with Google Code is that it’s *explicitly* for small projects. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 12, 2008

There are multiple threads on multiple sites about problems with the iPhone 3G – clearly, some software fixes need to happen, and the faster they happen, the happier I’ll be. But getting them onto the iPhone, or getting them to work, is sometimes a pain. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 18, 2007

Microsoft this week has started saber-rattling against Linux and other open source projects, by suggesting that they infringe on 235 patents that they hold. 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.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 14, 2007

I’ve now seen two posts (one from David Gielhufe , and one from Lobo of CiviCRM ) suggesting that I dismissed the extremely positive results for the open source CRM tools (particularly CiviCRM) because the sample wasn’t large, or representative of the sector. To my mind, it bodes well for the open source tools.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 3, 2009

The thing that is prompting this post is the little storm about the security metric that we used to try and get a handle on the security of the 4 different systems we reviewed. You might think that comparing four different open source packages that, in essence, do pretty the same thing (in a broad sense) would be a cakc walk.

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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. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 21, 2007

More lately, I’ve been working to focusing my advising practice on helping people implement open source software (mostly server-side) in their organizations, providing advice and training. I also ran into a weird problem with a daemon called “avahi-daemon&# which is basically the Linux implementation of “Bonjour&#.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 11, 2008

It still requires the hardware and operating systems, and databases that more traditional applications that are inside your network require, but, generally, you hand off that responsibility to the folks that host your application, and access the application through the internet. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 29, 2008

With all of the amazing examples of really great free and open source software, here is an example of one that just isn’t what it should be. { I think, actually, the problem is more about the nvidia drivers, but xrandr is very good to know about. at 9:41 pm Linux desktops? 4 admin 03.01.08 5 Dustin J Mitchell 03.01.08

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 10, 2008

In many ways, we are focused on solving technology problems , or completing projects. Both reflective practice – that is the process of reflecting on what you do, and how you do it, as well as conscious, deliberate evaluation of projects, are things that are not very common in our field, nor things that are valued or encouraged.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 24, 2008

I have had varied problems , from issues of software integration, video problems, wireless issues … The list is getting very long. On the Windows side the hardware manufacturers make proprietary drivers for Windows, and very few make drivers for Linux, or open source their drivers so that Linux developers can use them.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 9, 2007

Open Office works better on Linux than on the mac, as does thunderbird and firefox For a few things (mostly system/network tools) there are some incredibly awesome options, amazingly good for free (as in beer) software, and better than software you’d pay for. I have no problem getting just about all of my work done using Ubuntu.

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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. Be Helpful.

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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. Be Helpful.

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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.

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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. What I’d really like to see though is a true, enthusiastic Open Source community get behind a “better&# spreadsheet for its own sake, not for the sake of copying Office. More formatting options. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 17, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology The search for good web conferencing August 17, 2007 I decided, perhaps rashly, that one way of exposing people to, and training people on, open source software, was by doing web conferencing.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 28, 2006

Unfortunately, the nptech world hasn’t yet caught on to the “Planet&# phenomenon of the open source world (see Planet Ubuntu Women.) These are sites that are simply aggregators of the blogs of those involved in a particular open source project (like, in this case, women involved in Ubuntu ). That is so cool.

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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

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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

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 14, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology The “Open Source Software is Free&# myth July 14, 2008 I had a startling realization a few days ago. No one would think that anyone thought that implementing open source software was without cost.

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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?) of them have open APIs (that is, they allow other software to interact with them, and grab data, or add data,) they aren’t really interoperable (see Marshall Kirkpatricks excellent post on issues regarding Yahoo and del.icio.us

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 24, 2007

Whether they implement a system, or build it, they will inevitably have the job of supporting that technology. I know, I’m a born educator, and I’m sure someone out there is saying “if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail…&# But I do think there is some validity to this approach.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 8, 2007

They struggle mightily with software, no matter whether it’s free/open source or proprietary, shrink-wrapped or custom-built, on their desktops or web-hosted, which they generally spend extraordinary amounts of time and/or money on. is it a problem that can be solved in any other ways? Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 19, 2006

So you’d still have the same problem. A company going in the other direction: Eudora is going open source (no, they are not open sourcing old Eudora code, they are changing direction to use Mozilla Thunderbird as the underlying technology.) But if you really want to have done with stuff like this, get Ubuntu.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

depends largely on two things: open standards, and open source software. which is as technically transparent and open as it hopefully will be in actuality. Open Source software and open standards are the foundations of Web 2.0. It allowed people to get involved and helped motivate. Well, Web 2.0

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Nonprofit Tech for Good

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Yes it is so much better than twitter but all tech platforms have problems and as it grows in popularity there will be more. Ghost : Many folks who have moved off Substack have gone to Ghost which is an open-source platform with similar functionality. The authors aim to “clear out the gunk in the system and move the party left.”

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