Emerging Technologies

Fab Lab and Do-It-Yourself Infrastructure Building

elliotharmon — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:54:33 GMT

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we discussed Fab Lab Jalalabad and Beer for Data, two examples of creative strategies for dealing with infrastructural challenges in Afghanistan.

If you have the time to watch it, I highly recommend this interview that Vinay Gupta conducted with Smari McCarthy. McCarthy's on-the-ground view of NGO work in Afghanistan is great. In the end, the discussion branches off into broader questions about the changing face of the NGO sector and government's role in society.

Cheers,
Elliot

When should nonprofits or libraries consider using server virtualization software?

jimlynch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:17:36 GMT

What are some criteria you recommend for nonprofits or libraries on when they should consider using server virtualization software like VMWare, Citrix XenServer, FreeVPS or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Hyper V?

Causes Leaves MySpace: Should We Care?

elliotharmon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:26:24 GMT

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we discussed Causes' decision to leave MySpace and become a Facebook-only application.

What do you think of the news?

Cheers,
Elliot

Experience with thin clients or desktop virtualization?

jimlynch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:22:41 GMT

Have you tried using thin clients or desktop virtualization? If so, could you tell us a bit about your experience?

dotProject - Using Projects, Tickets, and Gantt Charts (Part III)

matthewart — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:12:12 GMT

Crossposted from dogstar.org Nonprofits and Web 2.0 -There are some screenshots there.

I started writing about dotProject on the 28th of October. I've set up a small demo project on my localhost to demonstrate how the tool can be used to manage a project.

Any given ticket can have any number of workers assigning time to it. Each of those logs can be assigned a different cost code. That means you can track different charge levels based on the person doing the work on a single ticket.

You can set up an expected number of hours of effort on a given ticket, but the person doing the work can change the percentage of work completed on the ticket as well. That is to say, the time on a ticket doesn't necessarily match the percentage completed. This flows through to the Project View.The Project View gives you a list of the tickets in the project. This list gives you the start and finish date for a ticket. If the ticket isn't complete and you've gone beyond the end date, the ticket is flagged red. The expected duration is listed, but you need to drill down to the ticket detail if you want to see the full number of hours booked to that ticket.

A click of a mouse brings you to a Gantt chart of the project with two views. The first is the current month, the second is the full project.The chart will show you ticket dependencies if you've set them up.

The Task Log tab allows you to see the hours booked by one user or by all users with a total listed at the bottom. You can list tasks by cost code, allowing you to quickly identify how much time/money has been burned over a given time period.

dotProject makes it easy to see where you are in a project and where you've been and what is left to complete the project.

What unified communications options do you use?

BeckyW — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:05:39 GMT

Does your nonprofit have a unified communications system? Are you using an old-school phone system or have you switched to using VoIP or PBX? What about using instant messaging, online conferencing, or webinars to hold meetings? Are you using VPN to let your employees work remotely?

What has (and hasn't) worked for your organization? Do you have a great VoIP, PBX, or POTS (plain old telephone system) provider you'd like to recommend? Share your resources for creating effective communications systems in your office (and across many offices) here!

TechSoup has a new article coming out soon with discussions about how new telecommunications options are changing the way nonprofits do business. I'll post the link here once it's live.

Moo Mini-Cards

matthewart — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:51:14 GMT

Last week I ordered 100 little cards from Moo.com. The site allows you to create cards, stickers, mini-cards, and greeting cards amongst other things. I wanted the little cards for TraumaAdoption. It seems like when I'm out and about, there are people who I meet who have interest in the little site that my wife and I built in Drupal and of which I have become the defacto community manager. I ordered the cards about 10 days ago and today they arrived in a little padded mailer inside a very sturdy plastic case. The cards have a nice feel to them - the stock seems thick and has a bit of a shine. My only real complaint is the lack of ability to design the back where you lay text. Basically you have the choice of three fonts and the option to centre, justify left, or justify right. Still, the little cards weren't too expensive and each one seems like a tiny piece of art. All in all, I'm pleased and will order them again.

Responding to Online Criticism: The Air Force Approach

elliotharmon — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:23:20 GMT

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we considered the U.S. Air Force's strategy for responding to online complaints and criticism.

I'll begin this thread the same way I ended the blog post: what would happen if you began your next fundraising letter with the story of a time your nonprofit was wrong about something, and how you changed?

Have a good week,
Elliot

The Phone Test

elliotharmon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:28:56 GMT

I just published an entry to the TechSoup Blog about what I'm calling the phone test, based on a post by Laura Quinn. The idea of the phone test is that before starting any communications campaign (old media or new media), compare its impact to the impact you'd have by spending the same amount of time calling donors.

When is a social media campaign the right choice? When can it have a more substantial impact than traditional communications, and how can you gauge that impact?

Cheers,
Elliot

2 Free Webinars: Green Tech Tips from Microsoft

Anna — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:34:45 GMT

TechSoup Talks and Microsoft will be conducting two free webinars which will help you learn how to reduce the environmental impact of your information technology and how to effectively use IT to improve your organizations’ efficiency. We’ll discuss ways that greening IT can help you reduce energy, resource usage and costs. Whether you are thinking about paper reduction, online collaboration or power management on your computers, this session will provide practical tips and resources.

One webinar is best suited for small organizations with fewer than 10 PCs and <2 servers and the other is for larger organizations with more complex IT infrastructures and dedicated IT staff.

Click here to register: Both will be held on Wednesday, November 4th for 45 minutes:

Green Tech Tips from Microsoft for Small Organizations (10:00 a.m. Pacific time)

Green Tech Tips from Microsoft for Large Organizations (11:00 a.m. Pacific time)

Webinars generate great questions, many of which can't be answered in an hour. We will use this forum following the webinar to continue the discussion and address unanswered questions.

dotProject - Setting up a Project and Creating Tasks (Part II)

matthewart — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:28:32 GMT

This is crossposted from dogstar.org - Nonprofits and Web 2.0

This evening I continued to experiment with setting up a project and creating tasks using dotProject.

First observation - setting up your first task is rather confusing. The tab is buried deep.

First off, the software allows you to manage all kinds of companies. The tab set includes:

Client
Vendor
Supplier
Consultant
Government
Internal
Not Applicable

All companies are set up with the same set of attributes. Adding a company is really easy. Once a company is added it will show you that there are 0 active and archived projects.

If you click on the projects tab, you'll have the option to set one up.

A project includes:

A name
An owner
A company
A division
A start and target end date
Target budget
An actual budget (that is auto calculated)
A production and staging URL
Priority
Short name
Identifying colour
A project type
Status
Import from another project
A description

Once you have a project in place, it is time to head to the Tasks Tab. Right? WRONG. This is where things get confusing. Head back to the projects tab. Click on the project you just created. Up top you'll see the task tab.

Click "New Task"

Add a Task Name and make it active.
Add some details, dates, dependencies, and human resources
Add a description

Once you know where to add a task it is super easy.

To add hours to a task, click on its "New Log" Adding time is pretty self explanatory. You need to place a date, progress into the task and the hours worked. Your progress may not match the hours you've spent on the task. Separating the two is a good idea. You can add a description of what you achieved. You can also email your time entry. Cost codes can be entered to match the hourly rate. You can flag the task as being a problem.

The next post will be covering actually managing a project now that the initial bits are in place.

dotProject Open Sourced Project Management Suite (Part I)

matthewart — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:25:43 GMT

Crossposted from Dogstar.org - Nonprofits and Web 2.0

Project Management tools are often on my mind. I've used many different tools in development of Web systems from Bugzilla (don't use it for project management, great bug tracker, terrible planning tool), to Drupal Case Tracker, to Rally, to Unfuddle, to JIRA, to MS Project, PHProjekt. Some are open sourced and others are proprietary. They all have the same goal though - to allow you to manage and track projects from conception to deployment.

While some tools have been better than others and yet other tools have been more like trying to drive a square peg through a round hole. For example, using Bugzilla to try and manage a project start to finish proved challenging. PHProjekt lacked the feature set that was needed to effectively manage. Drupal Case Tracker was OK, but had its quirks. JIRA is really cool, but the tools that make it especially attractive are licensed.

I've been told that dotproject has a robust feature set and also includes tools that rival MS Project. So, in this blog post I'm going to run through my experiences setting dotproject up locally. Future posts will discuss the pros and cons of the package. I am a Mac user, so I'm focusing this tutorial in that direction, but the directions should work whether you use MAMP, LAMP, XAMP, or WAMP. If you are wondering what the heck these are, check out the Wikipedia Entry

Here we go...

So the first thing you need to do is download the software package here: Download here.
Fire up MAMP and click on "Open Start Page"
Click on phpMyAdmin in the menu bar at the top of the page
Click on the "databases" link in the main body of the page
At the bottom of this page is a text box that reads "create new database", type in a name for your new database and choose a "collation", I used UTF8
Create a user for the database--click on the sql tab up top and use the following command "grant all on database_name.* to user_name@localhost identified by 'password';" with no quotes and replacing database_name with the database, user_name with any name you care to put in, and password with an password you care to use
Make sure that you've unzipped the package and it is living in the htdocs folder of MAMP.
Navigate to the dotproject folder on your local host. It will throw an error, but will redirect you to the dotProject installer.
Click "Start Installation"
Enter the DB settings that you put into place earlier.
Click on "install db & write cfg" in the lower right corner of the screen.
With any luck you will get the following message:
Database successfully setup

Config file written successfully
Click on "Login and Configure the dotProject System Environment" it is not obvious. Remember the Administrator login has been set to admin with a password of passwd.
I checked off all options at this point

That is IT for setting up the software. This series will continue with observations on using the package.

Social Media and the Arts: Less Advertising, More Talking

elliotharmon — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:06:41 GMT

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we talked about performing arts organizations using social media to attract new audiences, including the San Francisco Symphony and the Anaheim Ballet.

How can nonprofits use new media to reach new audiences? The blog post focused on arts orgs, but let's open the discussion to other types of organizations too.

Happy Friday,
Elliot

Do you have experiences to share from Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live Workspace, or Zoho?

BeckyW — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:56:37 GMT

Have you used free online collaboration and document sharing tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Office Live Workspace (OLW)? What about other tools like Zoho, OpenGoo, or Writeboard? What are the differences?

How have you used these tools? Have you used them to share documents that are being edited and reviewed by multiple people? What about using them to share content for an event or conference? Do you share calendars and schedules with these?

Tell us what you think about the tools you’ve used and what you’ve liked or disliked about them.

We just wrapped up a webinar giving an overview of Microsoft Office Live Workspace but haven't (yet) conducted similar webinars on other products like this. Check out the archived recording and presentation if you're interested in learning more about OLW.

Here's one article and a previous forum discussion about online file-sharing for distributed groups, that might add to the discussion.

Share your experiences with any of these (or other) online document sharing and collaboration tools so we can learn from each other!

Cisco VOIP Pilot Program

roycelc — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:54:00 GMT

Has anyone participated in the Cisco VOIP Pilot Program? I would like advice for maximizing the $2400 spending limit. I would like to configure a system with all 24 available phones. Is that possible within the program's budget?

Looking forward to your advice!

Don Watford
Royce Learning Center
Savannah, Georgia

Setting Up OpenSource OpenX Ad Server and Embedding an Ad in Drupal

matthewart — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:31:32 GMT

Crossposted from Dogstar.org - Nonprofits and Web 2.0

OpenX is an opensource adserver with similar functionality to other ad services. The difference is that you run the service yourself and it is free if you host it yourself. I am often faced with Drupal clients who are interested in selling ad space on their sites but don't want to use a paid service, need more flexibility than the ad module available for Drupal, and don't want want to use a service like AdBrite or Google Ads. This little tutorial will show you how to install the ad server on your localhost to play around with it. First off, you need some kind of *amp stack on your computer. I personally work on a Mac, so I use MAMP. This also means that the tutorial is Mac centric.

Download the OpenX package here: http://www.openx.org/download
Change the permissions on the openx/var folder, as well as the openx/www/images folder - they need to be writable. The easiest way to this is to right click on the directories in question choose "Get Info". From there, unlock the little lock icon at the bottom of the screen, you will need to enter your admin username and password.
Fire up MAMP and click on "Open Start Page"
Click on phpMyAdmin in the menu bar at the top of the page
Click on the "databases" link in the main body of the page
At the bottom of this page is a text box that reads "create new database", type in a name for your new database and choose a "collation", I used UTF8
Create a user for the database--click on the sql tab up top and use the following command "grant all on database_name.* to user_name@localhost identified by 'password';" with no quotes and replacing database_name with the database, user_name with any name you care to put in, and password with an password you care to use
Navigate to the OpenX directory. In my case, this redirects me to: http://localhost:8888/openx/www/admin/install.php
Click Continue to go to the terms
Click on "Agree" at the bottom of the page.
OpenX will then check your system to make sure there are no issues. If all goes well there won't be any errors. Scroll to the bottom and click on "Continue"
Enter in your username, password, and database for the MySQL database that you just set up. Click Continue. An OpenX database will be created at this point. Click "Continue"
On the configuration page, touch nothing. Click "Continue"
Create an Admin Account and click "Continue"
OpenX will then install plugins. Once that is finished, click "Continue"
At this point you are done. Click "Continue"

Your ad server is up and running. The next steps that I took were to set up one campaign with one ad that would live in a Drupal block.

Click on "Add Advertiser"
Enter your Advertiser Information
Click on "Add Campaign"
For this exercise, choose a "Remnant" campaign. You don't really need to choose any options at this point. Click "Continue"
Click on "Add Banner"
Enter the name, add the image, destination, target, alt text, status, text below the image, keywords, weight, and comments. Click "Save Changes"
Click on the "Websites" link.
Add a website to advertise on.
Add a zone.
Enter the name, description, category, zone type, size, and a comment.
Add a "Targeting Channel"
Choose "Direct Selection" and make selections there (don't enter anything in banner selection")- click refresh. It will give you a new banner code. Copy it.
For the purpose of this exercise, go to your Drupal instance and go to the blocks menu admin/build/block/add and add a new block.
Paste the ad code into the block body.
Save the block and activate it. You should be displaying an ad at this point in that block.

Want to know how to use Google Maps for your organization?

BeckyW — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:53:38 GMT

Do you have data that you would like to display to your supporters visually? Maybe to show the impact your org has had in a community to your funders? Or what about demonstrating the need for more resources in a particular region where your nonprofit works?

All of these things are now possible and are getting easier-to-use and less expensive with the help of Google Maps, Google Maps API, and Google Earth.

In an upcoming article, we'll be walking through how to use these tools to visually put your organization on the map.

If you've created any maps for your org using Google apps or any other mapping software (like ESRI's ArcSoft), feel free to share your experience in this thread!

Document management system

sjcc — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:57:22 GMT

We are looking at implementing a document management system in our office. This is what I've been asking potential vendors. Any suggestions? Also, does anyone have any feedback on PaperPort, Captaris Alchemy or Questys? (I was thoroughly unimpressed with PaperPort for this type of application, but it came well recommended - by people who use it in onlyone department.)

We are expecting to start with 2 closely related departments with between 5 - 10 users. However, we would eventually expand to approximately 50 users at the main site, and would definitely want to be able to bering our outlying sites into the system at some point without having to retool the entire system, and at a reasonable cost.

The following are our functional requirements:

Upgrade path – we will be starting relatively small, in the range of 5-10 users, but need to expand this, and we will probably eventually want this to be multi-site.
Ability to handle documents in a wide variety of formats – known formats include current and prior versions of MS office, Word Perfect and Quattro Pro, pdf.
OCR capacity
Full search capability.
Ability to designate standard document types that allow specific tagging fields.
Fields that can have multiple values (eg permissions groups / individuals, category)
Either concurrent licensing, or named licensing at a very low cost; reasonable upgrade increments
Seamless interaction with the network – by preference, credentials will be picked up from Windows.
The ability to handle both individual and batch scans easily – some documents are processed one at a time, and it should be easy to just finish off the process in a minute or less by scanning and tagging the document on the spot. On the other hand, some documents come in in batch mode (eg timesheets) and we don’t want the person processing the batch to have to process each one individually. She should be able to scan them in all at once, and have the system do the bulk of the processing. And, of course, if someone has to scan a document in from other than her desk, the system should be able to pick it up easily and process / allow processing.
The ability to redact a document for sharing without changing the underlying document – but it should not be possible to “un-redact” the redacted file.
Basic collaboration support
Optional
- Versioning
- Off-site backup
- work-flow support

Thanks!

Kayza Kleinman

JCC of Greater Coney Island

your carrot and stick strategies sought

jcravens42 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:18:22 GMT

Convincing people to use new and even not-so-new online tools remains tough for me with some offices. What strategies have you used, or what circumstances do you believe need to be in place, to convince someone, or several employees, to join or post to an online discussion group, to use RSS to subscribe to updates on a web site or blog, to fill out a profile on LinkedIn, to share documents via an Intranet, or to be even REALLY daring and edit Wikipedia?

I'm not looking for generalities ("Be sure to talk in non-tech language" or "Remember to stay customer-focused", etc.). I'm looking for concrete examples of carrots and sticks ("We had five mandatory trainings and then people had their tech use evaluated in their annual performance reviews").

In return, I'll give you four virtual tons of cyber karma. Actually, I may write an article. But first, I'd really like to get a lively discussion going.

Micro-donations, crowd-sourcing, and mobile apps help nonprofits and social change

BeckyW — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:08:05 GMT

Our own Susan Tenby attended SOCAP09 last week and has a compelling new blog post up that recaps some of the important themes of the day. From conversations about the use of micro-donations to raise funds for solving problems, to using crowd-sourcing and volunteer efforts to build websites, the discussions are cutting edge and changing the way the job gets done around the world.

Have you encouraged your users and supporters to make micro-donations on behalf of some greater cause? What about crowd-sourcing for a project? Elliot blogged about the Worldwide Lexicon using crowd-sourcing to create translations of important documents and videos a couple of weeks ago. What about using text and mobile apps to reach new audiences or engage them in new ways?

Share your experiences, tactics, and fears of embracing these emerging methods of creating social change here.

Drupalcon Paris

matthewart — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:35:39 GMT

I've just returned from the latest Drupalcon - this one was in Paris. I took quite a few sets of notes and a lot of video. All of these resources are, slowly but surely, being shared on my blog. I'm tagging them all drupalconparis so they are aggregating here: http://www.dogstar.org/drupal/category/tags/drupalconparis

I hope the session videos are helpful to our community here!

Get going with LinkedIn

micheele — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:27:33 GMT

Gain visibility: Make a well-framed profile so that people want to connect with you. Remember that connecting with more profiles means easy search of your profile(business). Join business related groups and participate in the discussions. Give suggestions and get recommendations. Giving advice states that you have a professional expertise in your domain. If you have a well-framed profile on LinkedIn, you can get connected to many people and hence promote your product.

Participate in joined groups: Get alive in the joined groups by posting content in those groups, responding to the posts, connecting with different members of the group etc. This will help you make new connections. Join LinkedIn Groups which provide an opportunity to network with people from same background.

Contribute value-oriented content: Actively participate in groups, forums etc. and provide educative content to the users. The people are more likely to remember you for providing them with valuable information and would want to use your services. A business can get going only if it is done in a "smart" manner.

http://www.linkedin.com/

Has anyone heard of EcoSaverWorld?

Anna — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:54:35 GMT

I recently got some unsolicited email about a product called Eco Saver World (www.ecosaverworld.com/products.html). I was about to toss it when some phrase caught my "green" eye. When I went to check it out to find out how this new product was going to save me money as well as lower my energy usage, I was intrigued, but their website is really horrible about explaining what it is and does.

Here is what they say,"The Eco-30kw and Eco-15kw energy saver works on the 'Power Factor' principle as well as current stabilization."

Has anyone ever heard of this product or better yet, used it? Can you explain it to me? Is it legitimate?

Worldwide Lexicon and Volunteer Translation

elliotharmon — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:09:20 GMT

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we discussed Worldwide Lexicon, an ambitious new project seeking to break down language barriers throughout the Internet.

What do you think of the Universal Translator plugin? Do you have any success stories about volunteer translation?

Cheers,
Elliot

Experiences implementing a Single Sign On (SSO) solution?

alamb — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:08:39 GMT

Hello soupers,

I saw this thread about managing multiple logins, but I have a somewhat different problem. My organization would like to create a SSO experience - users would log in to their PC and be automatically authenticated to other web services like Salesforce and our Wiki.

We're looking at Atlassian Crowd and PingConnect/PingFederate. Are there other solutions out there? Were they easy to implement? Do you have experience with the two I mentioned?

Thanks,
Andrew