A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. 42 Ways Not To Make Trash. We believe No Impact Man may be the reincarnation of Too Much Coffee Man.
2. Soocial promises to manage your address book across your computers, mobile phones, even Gmail. Their demo movie uses vintage Knight Rider clips. What is it with Europeans and David Hasselhoff?
3. Facebook's new "Insider's Guide to Viral Marketing". As one wag puts it, "First they ban you from spamming your friends, then they tell you how to do it."
4. WaterSaver Technology's AQUS: Flush your toilet with waste water from your sink! Without using a bucket!
5. Blog It promises to update all your blogs from within Facebook.
6. TeachStreet. We like the concept of linking students to teachers. The Beta is limited to Seattle, which explains the beer making and How to Use Microsoft classes.
7. The Sea Level Rise Explorer uses the Google Maps terrain feature. Looks like Portland won't get too wet...
8. Salesforgle. OK, we made that up, but the integration between Salesforce.com and Google Apps shows great promise.
9. Tired of wearing the same clothes everyday? Use Rehash to swap with others -- everything from "Cute Black Top" to "Faux Snakeskin Eyeglass Case" -- rather than buying new.
10. "Rebooting America: Democracy in the 21st Century". There's still time to submit your own work for inclusion in the anthology.

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts in our blog.

1. The "Wi-Fi Detector Shirt". They claim it displays wireless signal strength with glowing, animated bars, right there on the shirt. If this actually works, it's the Coolest Thing Ever we've seen this week.
2. Sprout. Maybe you saw our Love Your Techie widget? Sprout has the potential to change the game.
3. Heather Goes Bonkers when her organization wins $1000 from America's Giving Challenge. You've got to love the enthusiasm: if they had hit for $50k, this may have been inappropriate for the office.
4. Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? Does that make McCain a Xerox Alto
5. Visualizing Information: An Introduction to Information Design. It's well designed!
6. Miriam Engelberg lost her battle with cancer, but her comics live on.
7. Seesmic. YouTube meets Twitter, eh? The company's founder describes himself as a "serial entrepreneur".
8. DeviantArt. Never mind the name -- there are only a few furries. Social networking built around art is an interesting idea, if not original: Photo.net has allowed member interaction for years.
9. Wired Magazine's infographic "The Life Cycle of a Blog Post", as featured in our blog.
10. 5min's video tutorials, including "How to Rock", and the indispensable "How to Ignore Facebook App Invites".

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. The CTC Vista Program, now matching volunteers with nonprofits. We liked Karl so much, we kept him!
2. Qiq. Stream live video from your cell phone to your friends on Twitter or Facebook. But shouldn't it be pronounced "kick"?
3. You can also personalize your cell with free endangered species ringtones from RareEarthTones. The Mexican gray wolf on my wife's phone never fails to freak out our cat.
4. <horntoot>The free API Framework Report from Idealware and NTEN.</horntoot>
5. Household Hacker. Turn your old PC into a space heater or charge your iPod with an onion and some sports drink. You know, for when you're lost in the desert with nothing but your iPod, Gatorade, and, um, an onion.
6. Scrabulous. And not just because Hasbro's trying to shut them down.
7. Sling Media. Rumor has it they're about to release an application to connect your home TV with your iPhone/iPod touch.
8. Planet Hazard. Well done, but scary. Very scary.

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. The Goodman/Hershey Eye-Q Test. Test your design knowledge. Subjective, but fun!
2. Yugma. According to NTEN Member Marc Baizman, "It's free web conferencing that just works. I use it with clients and team members all the time. No heavy client installers, and it's FREE."
3. Seth Godin. Smart AND pithy, a valuable combination.
4. Judi Sohn's description of how she works with the web.
5. Miro: Open Source "internet TV". My computer downloaded Vincent Price in The Last Man on Earth while I slept. Nice!
6. Readytalk's free online tutorials. NTENer Amy Sample Ward says they're "a great resource for nonprofits to jump on board with great new media tools like podcasts!"
7. Care2's "A Procrastinator's Guide to Year-End Fundraising".

As part of NTEN's Member Appreciation Month, the November issue of NTEN Connect will be compiled from Member submissions, which are beginning to flow in.

Amy Sample Ward, Communications and Learning Associate for the Meyer Memorial Trust, says,

"Readytalks's free online tutorials are a great resource for nonprofits to jump on board with great new media tools like podcasts!"

Marc Baizman, Project Manager for NPower NY, offers two suggestions:

• Yugma: "It's free web conferencing that just works. I use it with clients and team members all the time. No heavy client installers, and it's FREE."
• Jing: "Screencasting for the rest of us. Instead of writing long documents that no one reads, I do a 5 minute jing and it's done. Time limited (5 min max) and only in beta, but seems to work very well."

Finally, Dr. Jerry Field, of the Illinois Institute of Technology, thinks that many IT professionals may be closer to earning a degree than they might think:

"Many IT professionals may not have completed their bachelor degree and would like to do so. IT professionals have a number of certifications and may qualify for this [IIT] special program."

You can start the process with an e-mail to Dr. Field.

Send submissions of your own to editor@nten.org.

 

I came across an interesting report from the IBM Global Innovation Outlook project today.

If you've been exploring new media a lot, it's full of things you probably already know, but somehow, they articulate it better. If you're just getting into all this new media/web2.0 hoopla, it's a very well written primer about the possibilities and limitations and just what kind of organization you need to be to make it all work well.

There are several little gems in the report that I would like to explore more, but the thing that stuck with me most after an initial read was the importance of authenticity. It stayed with me, because it's one of my core values, and NTEN's as well:

• We strive to be authentic and honest in all of our communications so our community knows that we say what we mean forthrightly, and mean what we say.

        AND

• We are accountable to you and to your needs and strive to engage, listen, and be responsive to you, our members, in all that we do.

These are the two parts to getting the authenticity thing right:

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. Dataplace! Take government data, mash it up, create something new.
2. Many Eyes. Now that's some crazy data visualization.
3. INOM's paper, "Successful Technology Use in Small Grassroots Nonprofits".
4. Gene McKenna's SEO satire, "What if Google had to design their user interface for Google?" Funny, but true?
5. Michelle Martin's thinking. Read her post "Culture of Training vs. Culture of Learning".
6. Common Craft's Paperworks videos. For some reason, this reminds us of the old Sesame Street Typewriter Guy character -- and that's a good thing: simple, yet effective.
7. AideRSS. Another RSS reader? Ah, but this one has a ranking system.
8. Outside the box thinking. The LAFD appears to be using Twitter as a way to communicate about the ongoing wildfires. If you build it, they will find new ways to use it.

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. Faceforce. Even the name is a mash-up -- and probably better than "Salesface".
2. The new presentation feature in Google Docs. May the power of collaboration save us from boring slideshows.
3. "Successful Technology Use in Small Grassroots Nonprofits."
4. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation's exemplary use of RSS feeds to keep people up to date on their available grants.
5. nTag: Creepy privacy threat or potentially cool?
6. Wesabe's Data Bill of Rights and News.com's impassioned support for it.

The Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management at the University of San Francisco released a new report this week, "Successful Technology Use in Small Grassroots Nonprofits." (PDF Download)

One quote from a nonprofit ED really struck me. When asked how the organization paid for technology, the response was:

By hook or by crook. We haven't budgeted for it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. But it is so important. A lot of people come to our website and it could be so strong...[Laughs] We will lay someone off. There's a lot to unpack in that statement.

On the one hand, I see this quote, and a lot of the report, as a call to the foundation community to help nonprofits invest in their infrastructure. We can't do our work without the appropriate tools, but no one -- individual donors included -- wants to pay for it.

On the other hand, I can't believe that anyone wouldn't budget for technology. If you know me at all, you know that I love to hate Dr. Phil. So to borrow one of his phrases, "You have to name it to claim it!" How does an organization expect to raise funds for technology when it's not even a part of the budget?

This week, I ran across oodles of great content online that I was never able to blog about. I kept them open all week in Firefox tabs, thinking that I would blog them all any minute now, but that never happened. Instead, I'll just list them here and let you make of them what you will:

• My four year old knows bad marketing. I'm always amazed how much my two year old teaches me. I think Katya nails it right on the head here.
• Culture of Training vs. Culture of Learning. Michelle Martin is wicked smart and this post is a really good one for any leader looking to build an organization that values learning.
• Social Media Adoption: The line between individual/personal and organizational. I'm going to jump in as an individual person, too, Beth. But you knew that, because I stole that slide from you!
• Quicksilver Demo by Nicholas Jitkoff. If you're an Mac OS X user, or are search-obsessed, this is pretty fascinating stuff, even when Nicholas isn't the best public speaker. Plus, follow the video to its source and find hundreds of other Google TechTalks. They are pretty awesome!