Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 15, 2012

This week, Benetech’s DIAGRAM Center has announced the release of an open source web application for creating and editing crowdsourced image descriptions in books used by students with print disabilities. DIAGRAM stands for Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials.

Images 133

Images Student Accessibility Content 133

Tech Soup

JANUARY 21, 2013

In the spirit of TechSoup's new look , we've compiled a list of resources and products from around our global network on website design, planning, and management. Available through TechSoup, Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Ultimate is a family of tools for designers building web and Windows client applications and rich media content.

Global 55

Global Design Web Resource 55

Amy Sample Ward

DECEMBER 9, 2010

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks). Who Tweets? Get the Tagline Database and Report!"

Web 117

Web Drupal Open Source Bookmarking 117

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 9, 2007

Excellent resource. 1 comment… read it below or add one } 1 Beth Kanter 10.12.07 at 11:01 am Congratulations! You deserve to be proud of this work! Freelance Switch Gavin’s Digital Diner Idealware Jon Stahl’s Journal Lifehacker LinuxChix – Be Polite.

Open Source 100

Open Source RSS Open Software 100

Amy Sample Ward

NOVEMBER 25, 2009

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks). "Open source software exists in the computer industry.

Web 105

Web Bookmarking Philanthropy Open Source 105

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 25, 2008

It leveled the playing field, so that an organization without many resources could do what at that time, required a lot of resources. I could easily argue that for the overwhelming majority of places you need an operating system, the free and open source alternatives are better (if you count the BSD core of the Mac OS.

Software 100

Software Open Source Articulate Comment 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 17, 2008

ReviewBasics is a collaborative editing and reviewing tool. It’s actually a pretty interesting resource, and worth a read. I don’t always have a lot of time to investigate them, or figure out if they are useful, but I do like to not completely ignore the ones that look interesting.

Open Source 111

Open Source Convio Benchmark RSS 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 27, 2008

I think one of the biggest mistakes that an organization can make with its website is to promise more than it can deliver – make sure that the resources to create that blog, or podcast, or photo gallery, or whatever bells and whistles that you promise on your website, are there when the website goes live.

Consultant 124

Consultant Open Source Nonprofit Websites 124

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 10, 2008

June 10, 2008 Today, someone on the progressive exchange list asked about a tool called Rapleaf. I actually thought this could be quite useful for organizations to figure out how to allocate sparse resources in the Web 2.0 What is public? But that’s not the point of this post.

Public 100

Public Widget Open Source Demographics 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 27, 2008

I do a ton of technical writing, and I have become the “documentation facilitator&# of the OpenMRS project – it is an open source medical records system, designed to serve clinics in low-resource areas (such as sub-sarahan Africa) that treat patients with HIV/AIDS. I’d like to do more of all of it.

Consultant 111

Consultant Open Source Database Tech 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 14, 2008

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. Matt Asay, blogger of all things in open source biz models, thinks Google Code may have overtaken Sourceforge. Setup of all three has a one time fee.

Kintera 100

Kintera Open Source Wiki Open 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 19, 2007

On the other hand, perhaps it means that these new, larger entities can provide services and resources that the smaller ones could not. And, it’s still clear that CRM/Fundraising software is where the money and resources are going in nonprofit software development. It doesn’t really change anything.

Open Source 100

Open Source Convio Nonprofit Hype 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 19, 2007

On the other hand, perhaps it means that these new, larger entities can provide services and resources that the smaller ones could not. And, it’s still clear that CRM/Fundraising software is where the money and resources are going in nonprofit software development. It doesn’t really change anything.

Open Source 100

Open Source Convio Nonprofit Hype 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 9, 2008

And, as Dustin pointed out in the comments to my venting post earlier, a lot of this is not the fault of open source desktop software developers. And, of course, there has been a lot of resources and money poured into server software for Linux, but not as much for tools for the desktop. This is my dilemma.

Open Source 111

Open Source Ubuntu Music Course 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 13, 2007

Of course, like all open source software, it is “free as in kittens&# – but this particular kitten is pretty grown up, and already spayed and litter trained. More adoption means more developers involved, more users helping, more resources available. Outside of the US, OpenOffice.org adoption is growing fast.

Open Source 100

Open Source License Adopt Database 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 7, 2007

NTEN is, to my mind, a critically important organization in the ecosystem that is the Nonprofit Technology field, as the convener of the gathering that anchors the community, as well as a unique and necessary multi-dimensional resource at the regional and national levels for all sorts of constituents in the nptech world.

NTEN 100

NTEN Open Source RSS Director 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 16, 2006

I’m reading this book at the same time as I’ve been working on the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative. I’m realizing that all of the justifications for why I am so into open source and free software is right here in this book! It gets chewy, for sure, but it feels like every chew is worth it.

Chapter 100

Chapter Network Open Source Wikipedia 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 19, 2007

We were talking about whether or not this certain nonprofit, who had mondo resources, should help facilitate web development for their client organizations. at 5:14 pm That’s a pretty sad story, Michelle, and interesting that it was coming from a nonprofit that based on resources shouldn’t have been thinking that way.

Open Source 100

Open Source Captivate Collaboration Technorati 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 11, 2007

I think part of the answer has to be to provide the resources for people to become better providers – whether it be to help budding accidental techies get off the ground to become great IT staff or independent consultants, or helping individual and small consulting firms learn what makes really good nonprofit support.

Open Source 100

Open Source Conversation RSS Teach 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 14, 2009

Even if they do, it takes developer time to write the code to do the integration, and that may be resources that a nonprofit doesn’t have. Trade-off – you don’t get best of breed tools for both. All of these strategies take time and resources, but of different kinds. All-in-one. Web forms from CRM vendor.

Integration 100

Integration API Drupal Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 12, 2007

IDI’s Blogger Relations has some good ideas and resources on data management – they suggest, and I agree that it is critical to managing fundraising strategy. tools , i-Lighter and Google Notebooks for managing online notes and such. .&# I wish all nonprofits understood this!

Consultant 100

Consultant Data Management Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 12, 2007

IDI’s Blogger Relations has some good ideas and resources on data management – they suggest, and I agree that it is critical to managing fundraising strategy. tools , i-Lighter and Google Notebooks for managing online notes and such. .&# I wish all nonprofits understood this!

Consultant 100

Consultant Data Management Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 27, 2007

One on Open Office, and FOSS on the Mac are forthcoming. It’s enjoyable writing them, and also writing them for a non-US audience (although I’m sure plenty of US folks take advantage of their amazing resource.) This will be my last tech blog entry until at least August 6th.

Open Source 100

Open Source Massachusetts Consultant Tech 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 13, 2007

Give me tools, like Yahoo Pipes , or other kinds of things, that help me to whittle down the information I’m taking in – make it more useful, help me find things faster and easier. It will use up server resources at some server farm which uses electricity (which means, probably burning dirty coal, or natural gas).

Channel 100

Channel Twitter Data Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 10, 2008

But should the organization as a whole put resources into a “twitter strategy&# ? I’d be really hard pressed to suggest that they spend much of their meager resources on that. I know that people are doing fantastic work around the ways in which social networks can be powerful tools. 4 James Young 04.15.08

Twitter 100

Twitter Nonprofit Demographics Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 20, 2006

The other vendors either supply their paying customers with APIs, or, in the case of civicspace, the APIs are, well, free and open, like everything else about open source. From his perspective (and mine, too) one of the big issues (as he put it, the elephant in the room) is how open APIs impacts the business model of vendors.

Web 100

Web API Open Source NTEN 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 2, 2007

I like the wide variety of resources he brings to bear – he’s introduced me to a lot of great writers and thinkers in varied areas. What I like: I hear about a lot of new things from Deborah, and she explores a lot of new tools, and asks good questions. I like the design of Ed’s blog as well.

Open Source 100

Open Source RSS Massachusetts Comment 100

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.

Search 100

Search Web Open Source Audio 100

Amy Sample Ward

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

My contribution to the panel is to provide context about the use of social media in emergency and disaster response as well as an overview of some of the tools we saw deployed last year and we may see in the future. Wikipedia was a popular resource and established as a citizen-driven information source. Citizen-Powered Response.

Disaster 206

Disaster Social Media Haiti Media 206

Tech Soup

AUGUST 9, 2011

The January 12, 2010 catastrophic earthquake in Haiti showed some of the astonishing potential for volunteer-based digital disaster relief. Online tools like Twitter , Ushahidi , Google Person Finder , CrisisMappers , and the work of nonprofit organizations like Crisis Commons. The account is managed by @KevinSage.

Disaster 61

Disaster Digital Haiti Effective 61

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 12, 2007

I’m really interested in helping technology providers get up to speed, so that the amount of support available for nonprofits using Linux (and open source in general) increases. If you are a provider, please feel free to email me if you want more info or help and support in moving forward.

Ubuntu 100

Ubuntu Technology Open Source Course 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 17, 2007

It is an internal assessment tool which helps organizations figure out what parts of their online strategy are working, and what parts might need tweaking. How does giving resources to nonprofits to help them understand how to use web stats to do internal assessment of web strategy inconsistent with choosing not to publish raw web stats?

Stats 100

Stats Web Statistics NTEN 100

Tech Soup

FEBRUARY 14, 2013

is a thin-client or shared-resource-computing. She is a favorite on TechSoup for Libraries because she is always open to new technology. For instance La Conner has been using thin clients since 2008, and recently installed an open-source integrated library system. Microsoft's Windows MultiPoint Server. 1 USB Hub.

Library 40

Library Case Study Studies Instruction 40

Tech Soup

FEBRUARY 14, 2013

is a thin-client or shared-resource-computing. She is a favorite on TechSoup for Libraries because she is always open to new technology. For instance La Conner has been using thin clients since 2008, and recently installed an open-source integrated library system. Microsoft's Windows MultiPoint Server. 1 USB Hub.

Library 40

Library Case Study Studies Instruction 40

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 6, 2007

If nonprofits want to have a good fundraising platform that they can know won’t be bought and swallowed and changed so that they’ll have to shell out more, it’s time to invest money and effort in an open source platform. We have power and options in using open source solutions. We will fill the void.

Open Source 100

Open Source Blackbaud Time Fundraising 100

VisionLink

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

Jacky was only 8 years old in 2010, when he was separated from his mother after the 2010 earthquake and forced into child slavery. Named Timoun, the Haitian Creole word for child, our solution leverages current open source software solutions and is designed to operate in low tech or bandwidth settings.

Haiti 100

Haiti Children Help Homeless 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 16, 2009

There is a Plone/Salesforce.com Integration group , that keeps working on this, and a number of organization, including ONE/Northwest , have invested huge amounts of time and resources to working on this integration. Freelance Switch Gavin’s Digital Diner Idealware Jon Stahl’s Journal Lifehacker LinuxChix – Be Polite.

Integration 100

Integration Drupal Module Open Source 100