JonCamfieldBlog

Drupal by itself is pretty powerful, but where it really shines is when you start plugging in the modules which have been developed for it. There are hundreds (if not thousands), and the first mistake I made on my first Drupal install was to just start clicking away before I'd learned the ropes. Luckily, this is what sandbox installs are made from, so a few database drops and folder deletions later I could start from scratch (again).

To get this all working, I now present you with the modules I activated or installed for the map project:

Core Optional modules enabled

• Blog/BlogAPI (if you want blog entries, and to enable usage of third party tools like the Flock Browser as blog-writing clients)
• Taxonomy (This may or may not be actually "optional"
• Profile (If you want user profiles)
• Menu (Handy for working with your menus / user experience)

Modules downloaded and installed

• Location - (Location, Gmap, Gmap location, Gmap Views Integration -- you can't have a map without locations and a map provider)
• Event (if you want the Map points to also have start/end dates or (separately?) provide calendar info)

Advanced modules (do these later!)

• Node Import (if you have CSVs of events to batch-import)
• Views (Views, Views RSS, Views Theme Wizard, Views UI -- more about views and panels later)
• Location Views -- you can't have a map without this stuff!)
• Image (if you want users to attach photos)
• Panels (panel pages, mini panels, panel nodes, views panels)
• CCK (Fieldgroup, Text, Option Widgets; only if you want to add and filter on custom fields outside of what the above modules provide - try it without first; K.I.S.S.)

Some General Drupal Modules (Which I just think are useful)

• Adsense (basic) (make money through Google Ads)
• Google analytics (track pageviews)
• Share (easy javascript applet that makes it easy for visitors to copy content to their Facebook / social bookmarking / etc. sites)
• Spam (Great tool for detecting and managing spam)
• Captcha (Used to be the best tool to filter out spammers, still helps, but annoys many users
• Community Tags; Tagadelic (Fun tagging tools)

After installing all those, you'll have to do a bit of initial work - setting up your domain's Gmap API Key and Analytics settings, default GMap preferences (autozoom, and open the info window when a marker is clicked, in my case). Make sure you click through the administration-by-module page and at least peek into the settings for all these modules to give you an idea of what can and can't be tweaked from the module settings page. Captcha requires you to upload some fonts to work well, and needs access to a decent image library (usually not a problem). Spam needs some tweaking.

This is a good time to take a short jaunt through all of Drupal, post some content, play and learn about URL shortcuts, menus, and blocks, and how they work together on your pages. You might also check out a few of the different Drupal themes (many good themes are available for free), and generally get your feet wet in Drupal. I for example added the Google Translate applet (as a block) so that any page could be translated through Google's Translation tool.

Posted by Jon at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is my "journal" of work in creating a user-modifiable map of the Global Youth Service Day events taking place around the world. The goal was to create a map that staff non-techies could manage, non-techie youth and organizations from around the world could add to, and still (a) work and (b) be friendly to the techies managing it, allowing for mass import and so on.

The GYSD Map in progress!

This is the first part of a series of entries (four or five probably). This first one covers the overview and core software I'm using, and some discussion of why I've chosen what I have. The next entry will cover modules and initial configuration work.

This guide is going to be a bit on the techie side, and I presume at least a bit of Drupal and webhosting experience when going through it, but nothing you can't google for help on from the community. As a caveat, I'm also relatively new to drupal, this is only my third foray into the more complex worlds it offers.

I'm writing it down all in one place because almost every step I took fulfilled my 5 minute documentation rule (http://www.joncamfield.com/blog/2008/08/my_5_minute_rule_for_documenta.html), and because mapping is just darned useful as a visualization tool. I don't think it's totally unreasonable for any nonprofit to reproduce my steps and get their own map, but having a techie on hand would certainly help.

Continue reading "How I made a map for Global Youth Service Day 2009" »

Posted by Jon at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CropScience.org has a great paper on the potential use of social media and Internet access for rural farmers. What sets it apart from most Social Media for Development writings is that is takes a serious look at what must be in place for a project of this scope to work.

It compares farmers in Uganda and Australia, which is less ridiculous than it sounds. The Australian farmers - with training and a significantly higher support network (from government regulations all the way to average numbers of computers/100 people;

There are many technical links in the chain needed to connect a rural person to the Internet, and no-one takes responsibility for all of them. A lack of access may be caused by problems with the national or local telecommunications infrastructure, the ISP, the computer or the software being used (Easdown 1999). In rural Australia this is enough to put farmers off using the Internet, but it can be a major headache for Internet project managers in Africa. [...] A promising alternative for some rural communities in Africa is the use of mobile telephony to access the Internet (Gerster and Zimmerman 2003). In Uganda the mobile phone services of MTN are widespread even in remote rural areas, and in many African countries the number of mobile subscribers exceeds those linked to the fixed network. Innovative African projects such as Foodnet in Uganda have made use of this to develop an online system using mobile telephony for farmers to access price information via messages (SMS) and information on commodity prices can easily be sent via teletext.

The authors hit on key elements of ICT-for-ag (and, really, any ICT4D/Poverty alleviation project), suggesting the costs and complications of Internet access, the time and skills needed, gender roles, and the need for social support networks, and naturally the lower level infrastructural needs:

For the Internet to be an effective means for farmers to access useful information three complementary things need to be in place. Government policies are needed to support and develop physical Internet access in rural areas. Farmers need to be skilled and supported in learning how to use the Internet and contextualizing its information, and institutions need to produce information in forms that are compatible with the way that farmers learn.

With all this hassle - why even bother?

The nature of social media and online tools provide a great match with the context-specific, experiential learning needs of farmers in ways that traditional 1-way media and Training&Visits/T&V ag extension efforts fall short of. If created in a social space and as part of a larger ag info ecosystem, it can provide a great tool:

The Internet will be of most use to cropping farmers when providers of agricultural information use it less like a library and more like an interactive field day. It is not its scarcity but the local contextualization of information that makes it valuable for farmers. The huge volume of information available on the Internet is of less value to farmers than the opportunities for interactivity with others that it provides to help make local sense of that information.

...But it's not going to be as easy as setting up a ning or drupal site and calling it a day.

Posted by Jon at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week's Technology Salon was on information sharing and ways to use social media and peer-generated content in international development. Less of a lecture and more of a roundtable discussion, lots of interesting ideas were floated, from using Peace Corps volunteers as on-the-ground information resources to running contests for ways to use technology in development scenarios.

The most interesting part however was hearing back from veterans in the field on their views of the challenges faced in information sharing among contractors competing for RFPs based on their internal expertise and knowledge, and limiting effects that might have on their participation as well as potentially increased participation by smaller contract organizations looking to get a foot in the door.

I believe the biggest challenge (beyond access and literacy) in social media and development is connecting the entrepreneurs doing exciting work on the ground - generating innovative approaches and best practices that could be scaled or re-applied in other situations - with the large development agencies and contracting organizations. The large players have the capacity to build the sharing sites and to connect people to them, but will inevitably focus on their employees and partners, and not the most valuable sources of information - the NGOs and beneficiaries on the ground.

Posted by Jon at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ning, if you haven't heard of it, is a roll-your-own "web 2.0" platform, where you can combine blogs, videos, forums, and so on in seconds in a web interface. It's like a constrained, but amazingly easy to use social content management system. What's better is that it has impressive open-source hooks in, if you want to go down that route, you can access and build upon your site's code and data structure. It's free for it's basic my community name . ning.com, and beyond that you start paying fees for custom names and services.

There's some great ning sites - I like The Our World Community which focuses on sustainable business for example. This past week has brought together a vibrant community for a different cause - Hurricane information sharing and volunteer work at http://gustav08.ning.com/, the brainchild of Andy Carvin, and it's sister site http://www.gustavwiki.com/.

These efforts also underline powerful roles for online volunteers - people unable to travel but still interested in helping out in meaningful ways, which is fantastic.

Posted by Jon at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This quirky animation compares social media to ice cream to explain the value of basic customer generated content (uin the form of tagging, rating and comments). It does two things - makes you hungry for ice cream, and understand the need to enable your website guests to leave feedback.

(I found this on Richie Zamor's excellent site)

Posted by Jon at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Note to techies - this article is intended for the nonprofit crowd and as such is basically an introduction to RSS. There's a few interesting things at the end (RSS->animated gif via feedburner, Yahoo Pipes, and MIT/Google's Exhibit tool).

The Web 2.0 revolution has democratized huge swaths of online technology, making it easier for people who didn't grow up taking computer apart and programming games from themselves out of instructions from 3-2-1 Contact magazine article to contribute to online websites via easy-to-update blogs, wikis, and so on. These are all fantastic tools, mostly free and open. You can also read my overall guide to open source tools for non-profits to get situated in some terminology and theory.

There's one technology embedded in almost all of these systems that lets you track updates, news, events, even changes to a wiki page. These updates can pop up on your desktop, appear in most email clients (but not Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 supports RSS however!), appear in your web browser, and even get embedded on your web page.

This is my favorite web magic, and it's called RSS - Real Simple Syndication. Anywhere you see this symbol, there's some RSS involved.

Keep reading to learn more about the why and how of RSS for nonprofits!

Continue reading "RSS is my favorite web magic" »

Posted by Jon at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The always-amusing XKCD webcomic illustrates the secret dream on the OLPC project in encouraging children to learn and, in doing so, learn programming:

Posted by Jon at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, Twitter launched one person from their normal Internet life to getting news on the California-regional LAist and valleywag blogs, CNet, a top-rated digg story, a google search term all to herself, fan-created artwork, and a skyrocketing number of followers inside Twitter. In three hours, with one twitter.

Read that again. Three hours, and a message that fit in under 140 characters. If there was ever an idea that was "Made to Stick", (pardon -- deep apologies, really -- for the truly tasteless pun.)

What created this success?

Some things we can learn from - it was relevant to very current events, it was personal and engaging, and funny. While not all messages can or should be funny, pulling out an emotion helps.

A rundown of the event, the C|net article, and a more serious VentureBeat story on the power of flickr.

Let me share the "message" that, stuck er... was so popular to propel the twitterer via a massive viral spread to Internet fame:

I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room!

Yes, that one deeply personal update about bad timing at an OB/Gyn put MissRFTC on the Internet Map. If only we all could create such a ... compelling message.

Posted by Jon at 02:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm sure you're tired of hearing me talk about twitter as an innovative and easy tool for outreach and engagement. So listen instead to Amy Gahran and her conversation with the Mars Phoenix rover - via twitter:

This is one of the smartest uses of Twitter for public outreach I’ve ever seen — giving folks a sense of a personal connection to this high-tech mission to find water (and signs of life) on Mars. (Some members of the Phoenix team are also blogging.) I especially like that Mars Phoenix is replying to questions sent in by its Twitter friends (like me).

Makes it all seem so much less… alien!

Posted by Jon at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While few of the concepts at the 2.0 nonprofit conference were hardly new to me (Use twitter! uh, ok.); it was good to see where other nonprofits were and what the nonprofit leaders in the space were doing, and what the lessons they had learned were.

Again, trying not to sound snooty here, but the lessons weren't very "new" either, but the way they phrased them were -- instead of speaking about crowdsourcing, peer-production and open source/sharing, the presenters framed the same general concepts in communications and strategy language like message control (it's dead), reader-focused theories of change, stakeholders/champions, voice and vision, and so on. This gives me more relevant vocabulary to use to champion the full-sharing concepts when I speak with nonprofits.

Read on for my run-down and links to even more event notes!

Continue reading "2.0 NonProfit Conference wrap-up and notes" »

Posted by Jon at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

No, not the OLPC, but here's a good story about a guy who's been MS-free for a year.

Posted by Jon at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Would you like an Ubuntu to go?

TG: Will you be coming out with a tailored version of Ubuntu for the ultraportable sector?

MS We're announcing it in the first week of June. It's called the Netbook Remix. We're working with Intel, which produces chips custom-made for this sector.

Though they're working closely with Intel; with any luck a "lightweight" version of Ubuntu would also be a natural fit for the OLPC (and perhaps Intel's Classmate?). Naturally, the OLPC community already has Ubuntu and other Linux versions and/or window managers running on the XO-1, but further developer support on creating an ULPC/4PC desktop system that can compete feature-to-feature with Windows could be a great asset for the anti-XP/MS/Closed source crowd.

Would you like an Ubuntu to go?

The interview reveals two insightful pieces of how the power of community has shaped both Canonical as a business and Ubuntu as a Linux desktop. First is Canonicals "rather unusual way of picking" their original employees:

I simply read a large amount of correspondence between the developers on one of the projects that is key to the way we do Ubuntu, the Debian project. It's amazing how much jumps out in terms of the way people think, the depth of their experience. So open source is not only a great way to develop your own talent and skills, but it's also a great way to get a job, and a great way to go looking for people.

An innovative way to find and pre-screen for the exact style and skillset you are looking for. The details of the deal with Dell are a fantastic vision of the strength of a community to focus on a feature and push for it:

We found out about it after it was a fait accompli. [Dell are] very much a numbers-driven company. They asked their users what they wanted to see. They had a lot of data and that data pointed to us. That was a little unsettling, because we didn't have a relationship. But it was a significant step up in our corporate profile. It will be very interesting to see what we're able to do with companies like Dell, which are aimed at a wider audience. That's my number one challenge: how to make the Linux desktop something that you want to keep on your computer.

Both good ideas to keep in mind for the OLPC community as we face changes and/or outright removal of Sugar, the move to a closed-source XP-based OS, and the general change of the guard at 1CC.

Posted by Jon at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Somehow, this is exactly like what I expect it should look like:

Courtesy of Nexus's Facebook plugin

All I can say is wow.

Posted by Jon at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Global Youth Service Day will be brought to you in live Twitter form with event updates (and locations, to broadcast on TwitterVision.com) throughout the day.

I'm using Swotter to push out the events we have in our Google Spreadsheet (exported to a more SMS-length-friendly format), which is also driving our GYSD-US Map (warning: VERY resource heavy Simile/Exhibit Map Mashup). I love technology that likes to talk together!

It's pushing the events straight through the API, and then a combination of TweetScan and TwitterFeeds are retweeting any #gysd tagged tweets, which was my original gysd/twitter plan

So... we'll see how it goes...

GYSDEvents on Twitter

Posted by Jon at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So coming up on 25th-28th of April is the 20th annual Global Youth Service Day, and I'm trying to see if I can do something fun with Twitter; like having youth from around the world send short SMS updates about their projects. I'm looking at various ways to include others without risking problems of needing to monitor the account for inappropriate content and so forth, so SMS-style JOIN GYSDs, #tags, TwitterMail, and so on.

In researching these options I've been looking at other event and automated Twitters; where you have things like the Bonnaroo twitter with lots of activity, and the SXSW twitter with lots of followers, so their "with others" pages is rich, but all of one update "from" the SXSW account.

Nothing nothing nothing, all the way down

I applaud WMATA for having a twitter feed, but how about you remove the constant stream of EVERYTHING IS OK announcements and replace it with one update after the most recent interruption clears? You might get more than 5 followers then...

Posted by Jon at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I predicted in January that Facebook would "hit its limit. I predict some more ad snafus a la Beacon, and the 3rd party apps become overwhelming and all-too-reminiscent of MySpace.", and today the Sillicon Alley Insider predicts a Facebook decline:

For some early users, the thrill is gone. Our campus correspondent described how Facebook lost its appeal as soon as it tried to become everything to everyone, and we've seen evidence of declining usage in Comscore stats. The result has been less usage from the once-core user base.

For some geriatric users (a.k.a., us), the thrill has never really been there. Having been raised on email and IM, it's hard to get in the habit of visiting a specific site to figure out what everyone's up to, especially when email accompanies us wherever we go.

The company has yet to figure out a truly compelling business model. [...]

Most importantly, the "walled garden" social networking model--a single site that retains all your information and relationships and forces you to do most of your business inside it--could be analogous to the 1990s AOL: Amazing industry leader for the first few years, ossified, flawed model for the rest of time.

The Alley recommend reviving a better Beacon as a compelling ad-revenue based business model, but Facebook will have to tread lightly with that, and any privacy invasive technology to avoid annoying the userbase. It's not time for the I-told-you-sos yet; though. Fb could still find some key ways to win over its diverse user groups and become a "killer app" -- or at least a new approach to the old "portal" style dashboard webpages, updated and improved as a node for other web 2.0 traffic (I already pipe my blog entries into its notes system and my twitters into my Facebook Status updates, for example).

Posted by Jon at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's increasing buzz on using Twitter for non-profit goals; from the familiar sources of Idealist, NetSquared and of course Beth Kanter. It seems mostly cautious and curious at this point.

I say: why not Twitter? Now, there are of course levels of twittering and integration of twittering into your non-profit's business, and there may or may not be reasons to bother with creating and maintaining an active twitter "community," depending on your projects and audiences.

However, if you have an RSS feed of your organization's news; why not take a few minutes and set it up to also pipe into Twitter? You've immediately created a basic "mobile" strategy where people can sign up to receive news blurbs through SMS, enabled another path for people to get your updates, and it took almost no time, requires almost zero maintenance, and is free -- how can you beat that?

Of course, I'm just trying to make my Twitter-on-the-rise prediction for 08 come true, but I wrote late last year about the simple utility of Twitter as part of my overall "Write Once, Post Everywhere" (WOPE?) strategy.

Update: Nate Ritter has made a specific case for Twitter in disaster/emergency response, but also compiled some good ideas about integrating twitter as an outreach tool with other existing web 2.0 type services like flickr. Read more

Posted by Jon at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Engadget is reporting that Microsoft has posted a formal offer to buy Yahoo (and by proxy, flickr, del.icio.us, and steer the development of Flock (...into the ground).

Google, step up your game

Microsoft has a history (hotmail, mostly, excluded) of destroying the web startups it touches by trying to subsume them into their platforms. I wonder how fast I can move all my flickr photos to Picasaweb? I wonder if I can get a refund of my pro account?

Posted by Jon at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You normally don't expect such staid bodies as the OECD to go and start talking about Web 2.0 and user-created content (or "UCC" in their terminology), but then they go and create a huge report doing just that (Via DG):

This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwide communication, and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are the new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts? What are the associated challenges? Is there a government role, and what form could it take?

While it's not as groundbreaking or waxing-visionary as Benkler in Wealth of Networks, it is interesting to see how OECD is perceiving peer production:

User-created content is already an important economic phenomenon despite it originally being largely non-commercial. The spread of UCC and the amount of attention devoted to it by users appears to be a significant disruptive force for how content is created and consumed and for traditional content suppliers. This disruption creates both opportunities and challenges for established market participants and their strategies.

The OECD as one should expect ties it back to innovation policies, and doesn't shy away from talking about copyright and fair use:

The rapid rise of UCC is raising new questions for users, business and policymakers. Digital content policy issues are grouped under six headings: i) enhancing R&D, innovation and technology; ii) developing a competitive, non-discriminatory policy framework; iii) enhancing the infrastructure; iv) shaping business and regulatory environments; v) governments as producers and users of content and vi) better measurement.

[...]In the regulatory environment important questions relate to intellectual property rights and UCC: how to define “fair use� and other copyright exceptions, what are the effects of copyright on new sources of creativity, and how does IPR shape the coexistence of market and non-market creation and distribution of content. In addition, there are questions concerning the copyright liability of UCC platforms hosting potentially unauthorised content, and the impacts of digital rights management.

Of particular interest, the OECD seems to support a strong fair use doctrine; "For example, copyright issues arise when users post unaltered third party content on UCC platforms without authorisation" (emphasis mine) -- meaning that altered content; content with value-added creativity by the users, mashups, and the like, would not be copyright issues in this context. Score one for the OECD!

Posted by Jon at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few predictions for what we'll see online in 2008:

Facebook hits its limit. I predict some more ad snafus a la Beacon, and the 3rd party apps become overwhelming and all-too-reminiscent of MySpace. NB: The AdBlock Plus Extension and AdBlock Element Hider can block most FaceBook ads, and there's a GreaseMonkey script to reset MySpace pages to the default template.

Twitter is on the rise. Microblogging in general will increase, and someone will add in more community and meta-organizational features to it. There's a lot of 3rd party activity around Twitter to add in location awareness, tagging, and so on, so maybe Twitter, Inc. will take the hint. Also, with improved community/groups tools, lots of people figure out that Twitter's a fast way to have a mobile communications strategy, which will be much more important as iPhones and other web-capable phones are useful and popular enough to expand past the blackberry crowd.

Single Sign On gets closer OpenID has been quietly gaining steam, and will continue to do so. If Google and Yahoo decide to place nice, there's a big win. Microsoft will get pissy about this, but it might already be too late. Integration in general will become key. Evidentially, other people are thinking the same thing.

Social Bookmarking grows up Del.icio.us style and digg/stumbleupon style bookmarking sharing sites morph and follow my Twitter predictions; adding more social/community and organizational tools. They may even get mashed together.

GeoLocation is the new tag cloud 2007 saw everyone adding geolocation to their sites (Flickr Mappr, Google Maps API interfaces turning up everywhere, multiple FaceBook "where I've been" vanity maps, Twitter location tools...) with increasingly easy integration tools, adding mapping to anything remotely geographic will be in 2008 what adding tables and animated "email me" and construction-man graphics to your index.html was in 1998.

A new peer production site will show up Wikipedia and its ilk will continue going strong, but there's an increasing convergence of easy to use tools that enable users to collaboratively build information stores. It just takes one to hit a market ripe for user-generated content to really do well. My prediction? Education, spurred on by a need to support the implementation and follow-through lacking OLPC project and a global workforce that's been trapped doing creating and turning in make-work homework can now easily mobilize to add to global knowledge store.

Microsoft does dumb things in a quest to drive more people to buy Vista. This could include locking out non-Vista users to certain ActiveX driven webpages and/or their MS Office Online. Most of these will backfire and hopefully push more people to Apple and Linux. OK, so that one's almost a given. Update Microsoft's Office Service Pack 3 disables legacy file formats. Way to start the year, Bill.

Google buys Yahoo OK, that's a long shot, but it'd be awfully interesting, since Yahoo woke up to web 2.0 and made some strategic purchases (Flickr, del.icio.us...) and has done some great work with the Flock browser. I can only imagine Google getting a little territorial here. We're all in deep trouble if Google ever turns evil.

Also check out Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker predictions

Posted by Jon at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

A recent thread of emails over on the 501 Tech Club DC email list brought more Web 2.0 resources to light. So in the spirit of sharing:

NetworkForGood has an excellent set of short articles on using social sites for fundraising.

http://www.cmswire.com/ Offers news on content management

http://www.squidoo.com/org20 Squidoo posts a list of top non-profits using innovative technologies; "These are organizations that give their volunteers and members a voice and get out of the way. They're pros at mobilizing awareness online. They're experimentors. Innovators. On a mission. They're fearless."

Beth Kanter has a good blog on web 2.0. Similarly, check out Contentious.com. There's some year-end roundups of Tech and social change links and , and the Zen of Non Profit Tech has a good year-end roundup too.

Posted by Jon at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Change.org has a wonderful mashup of 501 c 3 nonprofits arranged on a Google Map, as an example of a Good Idea (tm) for Google Maps usage. You can start at Exhibit to begin creating your own mashup code!

Posted by Jon at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A quick rundown of my recent posts looking at the value of using Open Source in combination with Web 2.0 tools for non-profits / NGOs and the like:

The Power of Open - an introduction to the economic background knowledge important to discuss how Web 2.0 and Open Source work (also discusses what Web 2.0 and Open Source mean).

Twitter - A sidetrack to peek at a new Web 2.0 service.

Web 2.0 101 - How Web 2.0 can work for you.

Popular Web 2.0 Sites - a quick overview of the current landscape of Web 2.0 sites useful to nonprofits.

Open Source Software - Desktop software that's created by global teams of volunteers.

A Better Browser - The fantastic marriage of Open Source and Web 2.0

A Better Browser II - Even more cool things you can do

Write Once, Post Everywhere - A close look at how Open Source and Web 2.0 can drastically reduce workload.

Open Source and Web 2.0 - How you can use Open Source software to run your website with built-in Web 2.0 goodness.

Posted by Jon at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In an earlier post I took you through some of my favorite desktop F/LOSS projects, and I've blathered on about the Flock browser separately. If you really want to embrace the social web, though, you should bring some of it home to your organization. Hosting your own blogs is a start, be it a stream of current news and events or as a discussion or soapbox for your CEO or media relations people. Wikis are powerful collaborative tools for both your internal staff projects as well as collaborative, evolving documents you work on with your constituents. Wikipedia runs on open source software called MediaWiki, which you can download for free and get running in under an hour (less on Linux systems, it can be a bit tricky with Windows servers). There are more open source blog options than I'd care to even begin to list, and which one you chose in the end will depend on how you plan to use it.

Before jumping head on and installing all these pieces individually (and without some customization, requiring separate logins for each separate piece), you should also consider a more fundamental change in your website -- moving to a Content Management System, or CMS. There are two very popular F/LOSS CMS systems out there today, Joomla and Drupal. Drupal constantly amazes me with its ease of use, but Joomla seems to be easier to conform to your existing web design, whereas Drupal is hard-headed about its concept-based layout. I've seen many amazing Drupal sites, and since they're both a breeze to get running with install wizards that will have you playing in the CMS in seconds (really), why not try both? If you don't want to install both, you can also look at OpenSourceCMS.com, which runs these and many many more, giving anyone access to go in and fool around (they automatically reset every hour).

These CMS systems can integrate many popular tools, and/or have versions of them built in, allowing you to have a single-sign-on for all of your various web 2.0 applications. Drupal and Joomla especially are designed with sharing and integration in mind, so they naturally work well with other web 2.0 sites by sending out and importing RSS feeds, plugging in at the API level with Google Maps, Flickr, and so on, often by downloading freely available plugin tools, created by a global team of volunteers working together to share their tools. As an extra bonus, most of the geek types working on these systems are also obsessed by following best practices and web standards, giving you cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility, even with mobile/cell phone browsers with a little work, and accessibility built in.

CMS systems also empower your staff to edit their own web pages instead of having to go through IT for each forgotten comma. They include easy to use editors, ranging from simple text to foll-on WYSIWYG interfaces. The degree of design freedom varies among the different CMSes, but remember that more freedom risks less cohesiveness in the overall site design.

Here's a few sites done using Joomla and/or Drupal, to give you a taste of the power built in to the systems -- these aren't hodgepodges of tinkerer code, but enterprise-class systems:

Development Seed

The World Bank's Buzz Monitor

ServiceVote

Of course, you can shell out the big bucks for custom software or commercial CMS tools, but you run the risk of that company going under and taking their software with them. With FLOSS, you will always have the source available -- this means never getting locked out or left behind, and always being able to go your own way and hire a different firm to modify the code, but you don't have one big company to call to add a new feature in (kinda). FLOSS is created by a global network of interested volunteers and requires additions to also be freely shared, so you can often find other people working on the same problems you might be encountering.

Remember, It's not good because it's free, it's free because it's good!

Posted by Jon at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been dancing around how open source software, strong standards, and the various web 2.0 technologies actually help your organization out. So let me show a few examples. This blog entry, and in fact all joncamfield.com/blog entries get written once, here at this website. From there, my blog software (Movable Type, tho any good blogging tool or CMS site will do this automagically) creates multiple views of the entry -- as part of a monthly archive, a topic-based archive, and the current blogs on the home page of JonCamfield.com. But that's just the beginning. It also publishes an RSS feed of the story, which itself is read ~2000 times each month through dedicated RSS readers embedded in web browsers, Google's "Reader" and Google Desktop, Thunderbird's RSS reader, and who knows what other feed-readers. I intentionally have stuck it into different places on the Internet. It pipes straight into my Facebook Notes and appears on my profile's news feed to my friends. Using an intermediate site called TwitterFeed, I import it into my Twitter account, and using an embedded RSS reader, it also shows up in my profile on servenet.org.

That's a lot of exposure for a one-time cost to write each article and an initial cost in time to set up the connections. It's this kind of multiplier effect that strategic, appropriate application of information and communication technologies can have, and indeed is one of the best, lowest-cost promises of "web 2.0"

Posted by Jon at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hopefully you're enjoying Flock now. If you already had accounts on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and/or del.icio.us, you've seen how amazingly easy it is to integrate those tools so that your friends updates just pop up automagically in the "People" sidebar (you can also update your Twitter/Facebook status, and check to see if you have any special notifications from these sites at the same time!). If you write for or have a blog, did you check out the feather-pen button which lets you set up multiple blogs so that you can submit stories straight from your browser? The Web Clipboard is the tool that got me to switch from Firefox to Flock (they're based off the same code, Flock just has some optimizations for web 2.0 tools). The Clipboard lets you drag and drop web images from sites to blogs to emails and more. Mac users may be less impressed with a lot of these tools, as Mac does a better job at integrating these tools already, but Windows users may need to make sure they're not drooling into their keyboards to much.

Did you notice the inline spellchecking? The ability to surf using tabbed browsing? And don't forget, you can also use addons that expand your power - sort tables inside your browser, block *all* advertisements, and more. I created a list of great firefox / flock extensions you can start with.

Do your part - use the flock buttons to promote Flock and tell your friends about it!

Posted by Jon at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The problem I face most often when trying to show someone a new powerful open source tool is that they just can't believe that the things I tell them are possible. Microsoft has had such a vice grip on the everyday computer experience that it's akin to telling someone that while they've been walking their whole life, it's actually possible for them -- for anyone -- to leap up and start flying like Superman. At the end of the day, it's just not within our conceptual limits to get that that's possible without seeing it and experiencing it.

That's why I implore you to take a moment and go download Flock right now, go through the installation process (you'll need administrative privileges, but they're working on fixing that!), and give it a twirl. Come back later, once you've learned to fly.

Posted by Jon at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you hadn't noticed, I now have a Twitter account which you can follow, have SMSed to your cell phone, and so on. I wrote a longer entry talking about what Twitter is and can be. It's basically microblogging providing interoperability between IM, cell phones, and the web - which, if you think about it, is ridiculously powerful.

Posted by Jon at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you think back to the opening Econ 101 entry, I ran through network effects, transaction costs, rivalrous and excludable goods, and their inverse, anti-rival goods, which combine the efforts of many in an ever-building and evolving structure where rule is the more the merrier - something, while not new to the world, but dramatically facilitated by modern information and communication technology. The promise of current projects is that nothing good is ever lost, and everything suboptimal or counter-productive will in time get smoothed over and fixed. It's something that only the growing body of scientific knowledge has historically been able to achieve with its standards on sharing and reproducable experimentation forcing honesty on the system.

So far we've been talking about this sharing in terms of websites and tools non-profits (or really, anyone with a good cause) can use, but many of these tools are themselves built with programs that were themselves created by volunteers over time, and indeed are still in the process of evolution. Software that is built (often by volunteers) in order to be shared freely is called Open Source. This is a simplification of the wealth of different "flavors" that open source can take; I might as well be saying "ice cream is great" -- but is chocolate better that moose tracks? Blue Bell brand or Ben and Jerry's? As with ice cream, there are different concepts and theories leading to different styles and licensing of open source software. In general, however, the open source licenses grant you as a user increased rights, as opposed to traditional licenses which act to restrict your freedom. If you want to know more about open source flavors, I recommend starting by reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which compares the development techniques of open source to the more commonly encountered closed source, and then checking out OpenSource.org for an overview.

It's initially hard to wrap your head around, but with thousands upon thousands of dedicated geeks, combined with the long-term evolutionary power of sharing, some amazing open source products are available. Not one but two fully functional office suites, providing word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software and more (custom diagrams, clip art, ....) have been produced, one, OpenOffice which runs on Windows and Mac as well as Linux. Linux is an entire operating system, as capable as (really, moreso than) Windows or Linux, which is open source. It's popular as a server software, running strongly on less powerful machines with higher stability and security, but is also available customized for the desktop.

Even if you're not yet ready to jump into the deep end, there are many open source tools which work on the unfortunately all-to-commonly encountered Windows desktop. You can escape the trap of Internet Explorer (IE), whose latest version has cribbed all its improvements from the Mozilla line of browsers (Firefox being the most well known) -- tabbed browsing, good pop up blocking and more have been available to Firefox users since the late 90s, and only now in 2007 has IE gotten around to implementing it. Firefox and it's cousin, Flock, deserve their own full post to explore their incredible potential at marrying web 2.0 technologies and improving their functionality.

Have friends on multiple Internet Messenger programs? Have to run MSN, Yahoo, gChat, and AIM all at the same time? There's a program called pidgin which can combine all of those memory-intensive and computer-hogging programs into one simple and functional IM client.

Upgrading to the latest Microsoft Office too expensive for too little benefit? OpenOffice lets you read and write Microsoft Office files, as well as the Open Document Format, a format that's gaining steam as a standard for many government agencies tired of being locked into Microsoft's proprietary format.

You can fly through the universe with Celestia, edit photos with the gnu Image Manipulation Program, or create 3D images and movies with Blender3D.

This is quite literally only the tip of the iceberg. I highly recommend checking out the OpenDisc for a greater sampling of open source projects. While you're at it, breeze by PortableApps.com to download an entire desktop suite to your USB thumbdrive so you can always carry around your new favorite Firefox browser to random seedy international cybercafes and never worry about having some insecure IE toolbar stealing your private information!

The next big entry will move from your desktop to your web server, and talk about how you can use OSS software to install blogs, wikis, photo galleries, entire soup-to-nuts content management systems and more for your organization.

Posted by Jon at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

So far we've really been pushing the underlying concepts, with a few tips to actual websites, examples, and tools. Without further ado, I'd now like to jump in to a snapshot of the current cloudscape of tools. As I mentioned in my first post in this series, I want to be an almanac giving general advice on weather patterns more than a tour guide pointing out landscape features. The landscape changes so rapidly in the world of web 2.0 technologies that describing the landscape might as well be seeing shapes in clouds, the fickle winds of funding and popularity changes the scenery just too rapidly.

That caveat being beaten to a pulp, here's a quick list of popular websites providing web 2.0 features and tools. This is as close to a "dummies' guide" as you'll get.

Wikipedia

Does your cause have a page on Wikipedia? If not, create one (check out the editing guidelines and play in the "sandbox" if you're new to Wikipedia). If it does, who's maintaining it? Is there anything you can contribute? Remember that Wikipedia is an informational resource, not an advertising media.

Blogger / blogspot...

These (and other) sites provide an easy on-ramp to creating a blog. They can be hosted at these sites or embedded into your own website with a little elbow-grease. They're a great starting place to see if your organization has the bandwidth to write blog entries at a reasonable rate.

Flickr / Picasa Web

Flickr is a hugely popular tool to upload and share photos. It integrates with popular blog software, provides RSS streams of your latest photos, and much more. Picasa is a Google-supported site which is connected to their photo management tool by the same name. You can encourage your