Gavin's NpTech Timeline in SlideShare
It's The People Behind The Tags!
Steven Cliff's Notes - Saving Internet 1.0 from Web2.0 -- a response to David Wilcox's provactive post has inspired some blogosphere reactions, most noteably Nancy White who concludes "It is still about being conscious of what we are
trying to do, and then bringing together the tools that make sense both
for the people and the purpose they are serving. Which means I'm not
read to either "throw out the old tools" or "just use the new tools."
Gavin's idiosyncratic timeline of circuit riders, NTEN, and other things related to the NPTech community. This is one of several powerpoint presentations now archived in SlideShare and also included in a NpTech History wiki (anyone can join and contribute.)
Today I Cried resigns! Reactions.
Wayne Glynn's chemotherapy party photos in flickr, let's him wish him a speedy recovery.
Michael Stein (East Coast) reflects on striving for simplicity in design.
Kikono - Digg for NpTech
Kikono is the new name for NpDigg. It means antenna of an ant. Here's more about the site and the name. The two top posts of the week were about Twitter and MySpace, both Web2.0 technologies.
The post on Twitter was Kurt Voelker's twitter@nten? So, here's NTEN's response. There was much nptech blogosphere and general blogosphere buzz. Opinions about Twitter are divided. Here's a number crunching perspective on its recent growth. Tara Hunt's reflection describes Twitter's value, attraction, and benefits while Andy Carvin looks at the potential value from an ngo perspective. There are Twitter critics in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. And, if you want to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, here's the Newbie's Guide.
Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video ... from Kathy Sierra is a good reminder that attending conferences in person provides something very essential - inspiration. She also suggests strategies for encouraging your users to meet in the real world. The graphic illustrating the continnum of face-to-face interaction is interesting. One wonders where virtual words like Second Life fit on the interaction and communications axis.
The other big story in Kikono was Best Practices in MySpace pointed to by Solidariti blog. These stories are summarized and aggregated with some previous articles, posts, and resources about Nonprofits and MySpace here. A quick trip through nonprofit profiles in MySpace, one sees two different aesthetics - ugly and beautiful. I wonder which one is more effective or appropriate for MySpace culture - visual design or social design? Whatever, MySpace has over 80% of the total market of social networking site users according a recent report by hitwise, but keep in mind it represents 6.5% of Internet visits.
Blogging Advice
Tim Johnson of the I'd Rather Be Writing blog, offers some tips to Nonprofits on how to start a blog.
9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers
points out that the initial fear of blogging isn't necessarily the
writing part, but the "putting-myself-on-public-display-part." It goes
to provide strong encouraging words for new bloggers to jump in there.
I particularly like the advice about how to use the comments for
refining your point, a sort of thinking outloud and "Correct English
be-damned" point.
Charity Badges, Widgets, Virtual World Fundraising and More
Traditional offline/online fundraising techniques still, of course, work. A nice post from Heather at Aspiration about their fundraising strategy.
Extreme Email Makeover from the Campaign Monitor blog takes us through a detailed makeover of an email newsletter to help illustrate best practices for email design, layout and construction. BeaconFire Consulting asks "What Language Can Your Bulk Email Too Speak?"
Another write up about Kiva. If you want to talk about micro-lending with Kiva for a whole day, here's a Talkathon.
LinkedIn is jumping on the Charity Badge bandwagon reports the KK blog. Here's an example from Doctors Without Borders. Change.org now also sports a widget. The nonprofit tech blog's roundup on these developments.
Second Life Relay for Life for 2007 volunteer blog is gearing up for this year's event, the third one in Second Life.
ICT in the Developing World
Geekcorps Mali works to create and deploy ICT solutions that are sustainable and appropriate for Mali. Check out the articles, blog, and resources.
Tobias Eigen of the saidia.org blog suggests a Blueprint for a Nigerian Civil Society Election blog.
Britt Bravo asks us to encourage people we know working on a social impact technology project to nominate their project for Netsquared Innovation Fund Award. There are almost twenty projects on the nomination list so far from all over the world, including several from developing countries.
Open
The Icommons.org has some excellent blog posts and resources about open content that may be of interest to nonprofits. Tobias Schonwetter, discusses the analogy between copyright law and culture in many regions of the world and an interview with Anna Badimo, chairperson of LinuxChix Africa.
Here is an excellent screencast, an introduction to Linux (Ubuntu)
A post that uses the metaphor of UNIX permissions to explain open content.
FOSS, Audio and Video for Activism and Advocacy
Wiki That
A Story Pitching Wiki at TechSoup is where you can submit your article ideas to editors.
via Social Signal comes a suggestion to nonprofits to start monitoring their organization's Wikipedia entry because they often rank at or near the top of Google search results.
Leigh Blackall has some great rumblings on his Vision for Wikieducator, but goes onto explain how wikis can be a channel for bringing in content from other sources and being able to broadcast them out on RSS. (Example Wikieducator). I think wikis can be excellent tools to create a resource as a conference session handout.
Web Office
A Web Office Toolkit is a list of tools you might use if you moved all your work to web-based applications. However, be careful -- data can get lost and not everything is backed up by the provider.
White Label Social Networking Sites - Too Much?
The Social Media Today blog has a post suggesting that the social networking white lable market is as overcrowed as the portal craze of Web1.0. NTEN does a comparison on Alexa of several social networking sites. But, will you be screaming like a banshee if ...
New (to me) Nonprofit Blogs
Fairsay is the blog FairSay Limited which provides e-activism advice, tools, and organizes an annual forum for e-activism practitoners.
The Integrator is the blog from the DMA. Most recent post is "Nonprofit Navel-Grazing Syndrome"
Preservation Matters Blog is devoted to the whole topic of technology for preservation.
Hi Beth,
Thanks to the link to kk's blog.
The nptech tool category is exploding, and thanks to blogs like yours, I stay well informed.
Keep on keeping on,
Kerri Karvetski
http://www.CompanyKMedia.com
Posted by: Kerri Karvetski | March 21, 2007 at 11:17 AM