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	<title>Techcafeteria Blog &#187; software</title>
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		<title>Talking Databases For A Change</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/12/01/talking-databases-for-a-change/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/12/01/talking-databases-for-a-change/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:47:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nten]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=898</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<a href="http://www.nten.org">NTEN</a>'s new issue of <a href="http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=90086">Change</a> is out and I got a chance to sound off to <a href="http://www.idealware.org">Idealware</a>'s Chris Bernard about the dream of "one database to rule them all" -- doing all of your organization's Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) in a single system.  My interview is on page 22, but the whole issue is a dream for NPO's struggling with wrangling information. ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><a href="http://www.nten.org"><span class="caps">NTEN</span></a>&#8217;s new issue of <a href="http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=90086">Change</a> is out and I got a chance to sound off to <a href="http://www.idealware.org">Idealware</a>&#8217;s Chris Bernard about the dream of &#8220;one database to rule them all&#8221;&#8212;doing all of your organization&#8217;s Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) in a single system.  My interview is on page 22, but the whole issue is a dream for <span class="caps">NPO</span>&#8217;s struggling with wrangling information.</p>

	<p>Suggestion: use a big monitor to view this.  Change is a great magazine, but the Bluetoad viewer is somewhat tough to use on small screens.</p>

	<p><a href="http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=90086"><span class="caps">NTEN </span>Change, Issue 4</a><strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/02/28/media-and-mediums/" rel="bookmark" title="February 28, 2009">Media and Mediums</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/15/a-sane-proposal-regarding-climate-change/" rel="bookmark" title="October 15, 2009">A Sane Proposal Regarding Climate Change</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/05/23/nten-connected/" rel="bookmark" title="May 23, 2007"><span class="caps">NTEN </span>Connected</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/23/get-ready-for-a-sea-change-in-nonprofit-assessment-metrics/" rel="bookmark" title="December 23, 2009">Get Ready For A Sea Change In Nonprofit Assessment Metrics</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/01/19/what-ive-been-up-to/" rel="bookmark" title="January 19, 2008">What I&#8217;ve been up to</a></li><br />
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		<title>Talking NPTech in Marin</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/11/04/talking-nptech-in-marin/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/11/04/talking-nptech-in-marin/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:55:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[virtualization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=890</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday I joined my frequent collaborators <a href="http://johnkenyon.typepad.com/">John Kenyon</a> and <a href="http://susantenby.com/#6ce/twitter">Susan Tenby</a> at the <a href="http://www.cvnl.org/eventdetails.aspx?EventId=2351">Marin Nonprofit Conference</a>, where we presented a 90 minute panel on nptech]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><div style="width:425px" id="__ss_10016105"> <object id="__sse10016105" width="425" height="355"> <param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2011npoyouhavetoomanyservers-petercampbell-111103182406-phpapp01&#38;stripped_title=2011-npo-you-have-too-many-servers-peter-campbell&#38;userName=peterscampbell" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/> <embed name="__sse10016105" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2011npoyouhavetoomanyservers-petercampbell-111103182406-phpapp01&#38;stripped_title=2011-npo-you-have-too-many-servers-peter-campbell&#38;userName=peterscampbell" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed> </object>  </div></p>

	<p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Yesterday I joined my frequent collaborators <a href="http://johnkenyon.typepad.com/">John Kenyon</a> and <a href="http://susantenby.com/#6ce/twitter">Susan Tenby</a> at the <a href="http://www.cvnl.org/eventdetails.aspx?EventId=2351">Marin Nonprofit Conference</a>, where we presented a 90 minute panel on nptech, from servers to tweets. John deftly dished out the web strategy while Susan flooded us with expert advice on how to avoid social media pitfalls. I opened up the session with my thesis: You have too many servers, even if you have just one&#8221;. I made the case that larger orgs can reduce with virtualization tech and smaller orgs should be moving to the cloud. The crowd in Marin was mostly from smaller orgs, so I focused the talk more on the cloud option, and that&#8217;s where I got all of the conversation going. My goal with the slides was to do a semi &#8220;ignite&#8221;, given that I only had 25 minutes and I value the Q&#038;A over the talking head time.</span><strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/putting-the-tech-back-in-nonprofit-technology/" rel="bookmark" title="April 22, 2010">Putting The Tech Back In Nonprofit Technology</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/02/11/the-sky-is-calling/" rel="bookmark" title="February 11, 2009">The Sky is Calling</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/03/29/where-ill-be-at-the-10-ntc/" rel="bookmark" title="March 29, 2010">Where I&#8217;ll Be At The 10 <span class="caps">NTC</span></a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/26/the-evolution-of-the-nten-tech-track/" rel="bookmark" title="July 26, 2011">The Evolution Of The <span class="caps">NTEN </span>Tech Track</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/03/10/both-sides-now/" rel="bookmark" title="March 10, 2009">Both Sides Now</a></li><br />
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		<title>The Evolution Of The NTEN Tech Track</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/26/the-evolution-of-the-nten-tech-track/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/26/the-evolution-of-the-nten-tech-track/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:41:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[12ntc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ntctech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=856</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My friends in the <a href="http://nten.org">Nonprofit Technology Network</a> know that I have been championing a resurgence in plain old tech talk at <a href="http://nten.org/ntc">NTEN's annual conference</a> for a few years now. While "technology" is part of the organizations name, it's seemed to translate to "social media" for the last few years, to the point in 2009/10 that it seemed like the social media focus of NTEN might overwhelm the nonprofit one -- the NTEN conference was trending on Twitter and more and more social media mavens were referencing "NTC" along with "<a href="http://sxsw.com/">SXSW</a>". Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of staff and consultants that deal with servers, routers, wireless, Windows and virtualization at nonprofit oprgs were finding little of interest in the NTC session list.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/NTEN-Logo.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-858" title="NTEN Logo" src="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/NTEN-Logo.png" alt="" width="240" height="102" /></a>My friends in the <a href="http://nten.org">Nonprofit Technology Network</a> know that I have been championing a resurgence in plain old tech talk at <a href="http://nten.org/ntc"><span class="caps">NTEN</span>&#8217;s annual conference</a> for a few years now. While &#8220;technology&#8221; is part of the organizations name, it&#8217;s seemed to translate to &#8220;social media&#8221; for the last few years, to the point in 2009/10 that it seemed like the social media focus of <span class="caps">NTEN</span> might overwhelm the nonprofit one&#8212;the <span class="caps">NTEN</span> conference was trending on Twitter and more and more social media mavens were referencing &#8220;NTC&#8221; along with &#8220;<a href="http://sxsw.com/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span></a>&#8220;. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of staff and consultants that deal with servers, routers, wireless, Windows and virtualization at nonprofit oprgs were finding little of interest in the <span class="caps">NTC</span> session list.</p>

	<p>So, in 2010, a group of us put together the first &#8220;<a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/putting-tech-back-nonprofit-technology">tech tracK</a>&#8220;. A subtrack of the <span class="caps">IT </span>Staff track of sessions, it included topics like Wireless Computing, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Budgeting, and Change Management&#8212;the core things that IT staff are dealing with these days. The mini-track was conceived as a peer learning and community building subtrack. We eschewed Powerpoints and daises for a more informal discussion format, mining the attendees for both issues to discuss and expertise to share. It was a great success: five high-rated sessions with good attendance and a stated appreciation for the takeaways provided. In 2011, the Tech track was back (even though I didn&#8217;t attend that year) and was also a success.</p>

	<p>So the <a href="http://www.nten.org/ntc/planning">2012 <span class="caps">NTC</span> planning is well underway</a>, and I&#8217;m declaring the ultimate victory. There will be no Tech Track this year. Instead, the <span class="caps">IT </span>Staff track definition has been narrowed to this:<br />
<blockquote><span class="caps">IT </span>Staff: This track is for staff and consultants who manage and support technology infrastructure. This is a resource-sharing track for all nonprofit techies, no matter how you arrived at your role, looking to share success stories, challenges, voice concerns, and glean wisdom from each other.</blockquote><br />
To my mind, this is how it always should have been&#8212;a fifth of the sessions dedicated to those of us who toil in the IT trenches, providing the tools, systems and platforms that enable mission-focused endeavors.</p>

	<p>So now&#8217;s the time for you to speak up&#8212;if you&#8217;ve taken on the challenge of supporting your org&#8217;s use of technology, what do you need help with? What do you want to see on the 2012 <span class="caps">NTC</span> session list that you can bring to your <span class="caps">CEO</span> and say &#8220;send me to San Francisco, because this is information we need to know?&#8221; <span class="caps">NTEN</span> is seeking submissions for session topics. You can submit one without committing to present on it. The goal is to hear about what interests you, and they&#8217;ll match up the session submissions with speakers and/or facilitators later on. So, have at it! <a href="http://www.nten.org/node/add/ntc-session">Click here to submit your sessions</a>.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/putting-the-tech-back-in-nonprofit-technology/" rel="bookmark" title="April 22, 2010">Putting The Tech Back In Nonprofit Technology</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/03/28/ntc-wrap-up/" rel="bookmark" title="March 28, 2011"><span class="caps">NTC </span>Wrap-up</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/01/31/why-i-wont-be-at-ntc-and-why-you-should-be/" rel="bookmark" title="January 31, 2011">Why I Won&#8217;t Be At <span class="caps">NTC </span>(And Why You Should Be)</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/03/29/where-ill-be-at-the-10-ntc/" rel="bookmark" title="March 29, 2010">Where I&#8217;ll Be At The 10 <span class="caps">NTC</span></a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/05/02/ntc-just-past-and-future/" rel="bookmark" title="May 2, 2009"><span class="caps">NTC </span>(Just) Past and Future</a></li><br />
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		<title>One Size Fits</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/21/one-size-fits/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/21/one-size-fits/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:18:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=849</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion/id444303913?mt=12">Mac OSX Lion</a> came out today, and it sports a lot of new features cribbed from IOS, the iPhone/iPad operating system.  Steve Jobs has pretty much decided that <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/steve-jobs-proclaims-the-post-pc-era-has-arrived/4701">the days of the PC are waning</a>, and we want a mobile OS everywhere we go. He said that a year ago, and Microsoft was listening: reports are that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx">Windows 8 will be one operating system</a> (that <a href="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/06/20/windows8too.jpg">looks a lot like the boxy new Windows Mobile 7</a>) for all platforms.  I imagine that I'll be running to Linux soon...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/scary-windows-8-intro-.jpg"><img src="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/scary-windows-8-intro--300x168.jpg" alt="" title="scary-windows-8-intro-" width="300" height="168" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-850" /></a></p>

	<p>Here&#8217;s a rant aimed at Apple and Microsoft.</p>

	<p><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion/id444303913?mt=12">Mac <span class="caps">OSX </span>Lion</a> came out today, and it sports a lot of new features cribbed from <span class="caps">IOS</span>, the iPhone/iPad operating system.  Steve Jobs has pretty much decided that <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/steve-jobs-proclaims-the-post-pc-era-has-arrived/4701">the days of the PC are waning</a>, and we want a mobile OS everywhere we go. He said that a year ago, and Microsoft was listening. Reports are that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx">Windows 8 will be one operating system</a> (that <a href="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/06/20/windows8too.jpg">looks a lot like the boxy new Windows Mobile 7</a>) for all platforms.  I imagine that I&#8217;ll be running to Linux soon&#8230;</p>

	<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong: I&#8217;m a fan of convergence. I like <a href="http://www.hbogo.com">watching TV on my laptop</a> and I appreciate the ability to do email on <a href="http://www.htc.com/us/products/sensation4g-tmobile">my phone</a>. I anticipate that, within a year, I&#8217;ll be commuting with a tablet (I&#8217;m waiting for the Android technology to mature a bit). But what&#8217;s wrong with letting the tools go with their strengths?</p>

	<p>This is almost the reverse error that Microsoft made with <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/jasonlan/WindowsLiveWriter/WindowsMobile6WhatsNewandWhatsCool_11908/image%7B0%7D%5B3%5D.png">the first Windows mobile</a>, an OS for phones that had a start button, Programs folder and dropdown task list. And zero usability.  Microsoft thought the same thing they&#8217;re thinking today: one size fits all; our users want standardization, and are willing to sacrifice usability in order to get the same interface on every device. <span class="caps">WRONG</span>. Users want tools that are good at getting jobs done.  Neutering the PC, or making the phone too obtuse to navigate, in order to standardize the interface is more like servicing your branding needs at your customers expense.</p>

	<p>Of course, what concerns me more about these moves are the fundamental differences between the sophisticated computer OSes (Windows 7, Snow Leopard) and the mobile OSes.  Mobile OSes are, somewhat justifiably, rigid.  You can&#8217;t offer the same level of customization on a low-powered, small screen device that you can on a powerful PC or laptop.  Apple, of course, has taken this a step further by tightly controlling the flow of content via iTunes.  And taking the additional, controversial step of censoring the content available via iTunes and the app store. While most of us (I think) aren&#8217;t upset by a vendor-imposed restriction on pornography, Apple has also <a href="http://www.taoofnews.com/2010/04/apple-censors-hit-pulitzer-prize-winning-cartoons-whos-next.html">censored Pulitzer-prize winning political cartoonists</a>, <a href="http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/apples_controlling_instincts_c.php">adaptations of classic literature</a>, and <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5700063/apple-bans-android-magazine-from-the-app-store">magazines about competing products</a>. We now have an <a href="http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/">app store for MacOS</a> and <a href="http://www.winrumors.com/windows-8-windows-app-store-screenshots-leak/">one for Windows</a> under development, and Microsoft has looked, once again, like an <a href="http://prosenjit23.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/microsoft-copies-appleyet-again/">Apple-wannabee</a> with their recent product moves.</p>

	<p>So are we moving into an era where our major computing tools providers have graduated to content managers and censors?  It sure looks that way. There&#8217;s a lot of easy money to be made&#8212;as Apple&#8217;s string of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/20/apple-profits-up-iphone-sales">record-breaking profit</a> quarters will attest&#8212;in taking the computing out of computing, and turning convergence into simply entertainment-delivery, while user content creation tools and environments get the back seat at the drive-in.  I&#8217;m not happy with the trend.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/hearts-and-mobiles/" rel="bookmark" title="April 22, 2010">Hearts and Mobiles</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/11/20/small-footprints-robotic-and-otherwise/" rel="bookmark" title="November 20, 2008">Small Footprints, Robotic and Otherwise</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/09/26/smartphone-follies/" rel="bookmark" title="September 26, 2008">Smartphone Follies</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/06/28/smartphone-talk/" rel="bookmark" title="June 28, 2009">Smartphone Talk</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/10/22/state-of-the-smartphone/" rel="bookmark" title="October 22, 2007">State of the Smart(phone)</a></li><br />
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		<title>Why Google+ Will Succeed Where Wave And Buzz Failed</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/13/why-google-will-succeed-where-wave-and-buzz-failed/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/13/why-google-will-succeed-where-wave-and-buzz-failed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:00:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=845</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<a href="http://geofflivingston.com/">Geoff Livingston</a> of NPTech Strategic consulting firm <a href="http://www.zoeticamedia.com/">Zoetica</a> held a little contest yesterday, and I won a copy of <a href="http://geofflivingston.com/fifth-estate/">his book</a>.  The challenge? Explain, convincingly, why Google's latest attempt at social networking, <a href="http://plus.google.com">Google+</a>, is not just a shiny object.  Or why it is one. I chose the former, here's my winning post:]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><a href="http://geofflivingston.com/">Geoff Livingston</a> of NPTech Strategic consulting firm <a href="http://www.zoeticamedia.com/">Zoetica</a> held a little contest yesterday, and I won a copy of <a href="http://geofflivingston.com/fifth-estate/">his book</a>.  The challenge? Explain, convincingly, why Google&#8217;s latest attempt at social networking, <a href="http://plus.google.com">Google+</a>, is not just a shiny object.  Or why it is one. I chose the former, here&#8217;s my winning post:</p>

	<p>Here&#8217;s my take on why, after the shininess fades, Google+ will still be an active social network.</p>

	<p>First, they&#8217;ve learned from mistakes, theirs and others. They learned a lot from the failed Wave and Buzz projects, making privacy front and center; doing uncharacteristically flashy UI design (even stealing one of the Apple guys to do it); and not being too heavy-handed in the rollout. They are leveraging the Google App ecosystem, as Buzz tried to, but this seems like a cleaner and more serious effort&#8212;instead of just pasting a social network onto GMail, they&#8217;re incorporating apps like Picasa into it. Those of us already drinking the Google Koolaid (and they say that Google Apps is a high priority) will find it very useful (as opposed to redundant, as Buzz largely was).</p>

	<p>The biggest lesson they learned was to not let people stream pollute as easily as they could on Buzz. I maintain that Buzz is a great platform for communications. It&#8217;s the ultimate cross between a blog and blog comments that could foster great conversations and raise the art of information sharing, if we didn&#8217;t have to wade through 20,000 redundant tweets to get to the good stuff. Google opened a floodgate of noise there, and too many users&#8212;including very good friends of mine&#8212;were happy to add to the din.</p>

	<p>Second, they&#8217;ve created something compelling. It out-Facebook&#8217;s Facebook for interpersonal sharing and it can stretch to Twitter functionality. What&#8217;s powerful here is that, unlike Facebook, where targeting subsets of your friends requires advanced knowledge of the platform and a lot of patience, this interface makes it easy to either have an intimate chat or broadcast info widely. It&#8217;s easy to follow strangers that I&#8217;m not really interested in conversing with, at the same time that I can have deep talks with my close friends. They really got it right with Circles&#8212;friend/follower management on FB and Twitter is ridiculously kludgy in comparison. So, unlike Wave, which was too obtuse, and unlike Buzz, which wasn&#8217;t compelling, this is elegant and compelling. It wins people over.</p>

	<p>Third, they&#8217;ve nailed <span class="caps">SEO</span>. The early adopters are raving about the hits it&#8217;s generating and the great statistics available. That&#8217;s going to be a more sticky draw than the shininess.</p>

	<p>Most of all, they&#8217;ve emulated the cool Facebook stuff while shedding all of the annoyances. You can friend strangers here without over-sharing with them. You can +1 a commercial entity (or <span class="caps">NPO</span>) without inviting them to flood your stream with ads. You can tell your best friend something without sharing it with your mom. And that&#8217;s all easy; there&#8217;s no complicated help screen or multi-level privacy settings to contend with. It just works.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/21/why-google-buzz-should-be-your-blog/" rel="bookmark" title="February 21, 2010">Why Google Buzz Should Be Your Blog</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/the-buzz-factor/" rel="bookmark" title="April 22, 2010">The Buzz Factor</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/25/why-i-dont-like-facebook/" rel="bookmark" title="April 25, 2010">Why I Don&#8217;t &#8220;Like&#8221; Facebook</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/15/googles-creepy-profiles/" rel="bookmark" title="February 15, 2010">Google&#8217;s Creepy Profiles</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/11/17/shlock-and-oh-facebooks-social-dysfunction/" rel="bookmark" title="November 17, 2007">Shlock and Oh! Facebook&#8217;s social dysfunction</a></li><br />
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		<title>Putting The Tech Back In Nonprofit Technology</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/putting-the-tech-back-in-nonprofit-technology/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/putting-the-tech-back-in-nonprofit-technology/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:10:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[10ntc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Retail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[virtualization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=665</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We're all back from the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where nine of the ten Idealware bloggers congregated, along with some 1,440 of our peers in the nptech community. What a gas! NTC, as we call the conference, is what high school would have been like if everyone had been a member of the popular clique. The combination of peer education and celebration of our common interest in saving the world with heart and technology make for an exuberant occasion. And I can't say enough about the awe and appreciation I have for Holly, Anna, Annaliese, Brett, Sarah and Karl, and the amazing event that they recreate year after year for us.

But, enough gushing.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><img style="float: left; padding: 5px 10px 5px 5px;" src="http://www.idealware.org/sites/idealware.org/files/images/nten_logo.gif" alt="" />We&#8217;re all back  from the <a href="http://nten.org/ntc">Nonprofit Technology Conference</a>,  where nine of the ten Idealware bloggers congregated, along with some  1,440 of our peers in the nptech community. What a gas! <span class="caps">NTC</span>, as we call  the conference, is what high school would have been like if everyone had  been a member of the popular clique.  The combination of peer education  and celebration of our common interest in saving the world with heart  and technology make for an exuberant occasion. And I can&#8217;t say enough  about the awe and appreciation I have for <a href="http://www.nten.org/Staff">Holly, Anna, Annaliese, Brett,  Sarah and Karl</a>, and the amazing event that they recreate year after  year for us.</p>

	<p>But, enough gushing. One of my (many) rants regards  my concern that, although the biggest group of people that we call  &#8220;nptechies&#8221; are the ones who support technology in their organizations,  our biggest nptech conferences focus heavily on social media and the web  (<a href="http://nten.org/ntc"><span class="caps">NTC</span></a>,  <a href="http://www.netsquared.org/">Netsquared</a>, and now <a href="http://sxsw.com/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span></a>). It is  true that the advent of social media and the interactive web is  spawning a revolution in the way that we do advocacy and fundraising.  But there is no less of a revolution in our server rooms, where <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2008/11/lean-green-virtualized-machine.html">virtualization</a>,  <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/11/cloud-computing-and-taming-desktop.html">cloud  computing</a> and <a href="http://mobileactive.org/">wireless devices</a> are  changing the entire way that we manage and deliver applications.</p>

	<p>Our  System Administrators, Support Specialists and <a href="http://www.nphd.org/home/accidental-techies/">Accidental  Techies</a> need to share in the peer support that can inform their  efforts and help them feel more connected, both to their missions and  the broader community. This year, in deference to a throat getting  hoarse from ranting, I took a first stab at addressing this gap.</p>

	<p><strong>The  Tech Track</strong></p>

	<p>The tech track was conceived as a six  session &#8220;mini&#8221; track; five of the proposed sessions made the cut. The  topics went from the basics to the broad overview:<br />
<ul></p>
	<p><li><a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetails&#038;ses_key=da29ceb2-f2b0-452c-a1a9-92b172f8e8cb">Tech  Track 1:</a> Working Without a Wire (But With a Net): Dealing with  Wireless Networks, Laptops, and Cell Phones</li><br />
<li><a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetails&#038;ses_key=05c67e40-ec13-45a1-a0ac-ef63939f1e8d">Tech  Track 2:</a> Proper Plumbing: Virtualization and Networking  Technologies</li><br />
<li><a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetails&#038;ses_key=3140015b-7cf0-4f70-97d1-4c44c70003b0">Tech  Track 3:</a> Earth to Cloud: When, Why and How to Outsource  Applications</li><br />
<li><a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetails&#038;ses_key=8356a755-0f42-422d-bcdc-f49f3fa02c2c">Tech  Track 4:</a> Budget vs Benefits: Providing Top Class Technology in  Constrained Resource Environments</li><br />
<li><a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetails&#038;ses_key=cc5f3108-06b7-467f-993d-b7fa9e127b29">Tech  Track 5:</a> Articulating Tech: How to Win Friends and Influence  Luddites.</li><br />
</ul></p>
	<p>Joining me in these sessions were  fellow blogger <a href="http://www.idealware.org/users/johanna-bates">Johanna  Bates</a> of <a href="http://openissue.com/">OpenIssue</a>, <a href="http://www.citidc.com/detail/person.cfm?person_id=208">Matt  Eshleman</a> of <a href="http://www.citidc.com"><span class="caps">CITIDC</span></a>, <a href="http://www.arc.org/content/view/39/">Tracy Kronzak</a> of <a href="http://www.arc.org">Applied  Research Center</a>, <a href="http://www.nten.org/node/7570">John Merritt</a> of the <a href="http://ymca.org/">San Diego <span class="caps">YMCA</span></a>,  <a href="http://zenofnptech.org/about-me">Michelle Murrain</a> of <a href="http://openissue.com/">OpenIssue</a>,  <a href="http://blogs.nwf.org/.a/6a00d8341ca02253ef011570e5330b970c-800wi">Michael  Sola</a> of <a href="http://www.nwf.org/">National Wildlife Federation</a> and <a href="https://www.philaculture.org/about/staff/thomas-taylor">Thomas  Taylor</a> of the <a href="https://www.philaculture.org/">Greater Philadelphia  Cultural Alliance</a>.</p>

	<p><strong>Subject Matter</strong></p>

	<p>Instead  of doing the usual Powerpoint presentations and talking to the crowd,  we pulled the chairs into circles for these sessions and put the session  agenda up for grabs, asking each group what issues, related to the  session topic, were foremost in their minds. The conversation was rich,  and served as a healthy catalogue of the challenges facing nonprofit  technology practitioners.  Some highlights:<br />
<ul></p>
	<p><li>Supporting  remote laptop use in a western state with very little wireless bandwidth  available</li><br />
<li>Securing our networks while making network data  accessible on mobile devices</li><br />
<li>Supporting use of and crafting  fair policies to address the boom in mobile devices</li><br />
<li>Understanding  the risks and benefits of virtualizing servers and desktops</li><br />
<li>Knowing  how and when to virtualize, and how <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network">Storage  Area Networks</a> fit in the big picture</li><br />
<li>Weighing the risk  of cloud computing, which also entails weighing the risks of our  non-cloud networks</li><br />
<li>Knowing what to ask a cloud provider to  insure that data is safe, even in the case of the provider going out of  business</li><br />
<li>Assessing the cost of owned vs service-provided  applications</li><br />
<li>Assessing the readiness of Cloud Computing, and  moving large, complex server rooms to the cloud</li><br />
<li>Chickens and  eggs: what to do when IT is asked to budget, but is not part of the  planning process prior?</li><br />
<li>What strategies can be applied to  provide good technology with limited budgets?</li><br />
<li>What tools and  resources are available to help with the budgeting process?</li><br />
<li>How  can we engage our users when we roll out new technology?</li><br />
<li>How  do we get them to attend training?</li><br />
</ul></p>
	<p>Next week,  I&#8217;ll follow this up with some of the answers we came up with for these  questions.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/26/the-evolution-of-the-nten-tech-track/" rel="bookmark" title="July 26, 2011">The Evolution Of The <span class="caps">NTEN </span>Tech Track</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/02/11/the-sky-is-calling/" rel="bookmark" title="February 11, 2009">The Sky is Calling</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/03/29/where-ill-be-at-the-10-ntc/" rel="bookmark" title="March 29, 2010">Where I&#8217;ll Be At The 10 <span class="caps">NTC</span></a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/01/31/why-i-wont-be-at-ntc-and-why-you-should-be/" rel="bookmark" title="January 31, 2011">Why I Won&#8217;t Be At <span class="caps">NTC </span>(And Why You Should Be)</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/03/28/ntc-wrap-up/" rel="bookmark" title="March 28, 2011"><span class="caps">NTC </span>Wrap-up</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 3.814 ms --></p>
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		<title>Adventures In Web Site Migration</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/adventures-in-web-site-migration/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/adventures-in-web-site-migration/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:04:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=662</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I recently took on the project of migrating the Idealware articles and blog from their old homes on Idealware's prior web site and Google's Blogger service to our shiny, new, Drupal-based home. This was an interesting data-migration challenge. The Idealware articles were static HTML web pages that needed to be put in Drupal's content database. And there is no utility that imports Blogger blogs to Drupal. Both projects required research and creativity.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><img style="float: left; padding-right: 5px;" src="http://www.idealware.org/sites/idealware.org/files/images/drupal-blogger.jpg" alt="" />I recently took on the  project of migrating the Idealware articles and blog from their old  homes on <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20051124083708/http://www.idealware.org/">Idealware&#8217;s  prior web site</a> and Google&#8217;s <a href="http://www.blogger.com/home">Blogger</a> service to our  shiny, new, <a href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a><del>based home.  This was an  interesting data</del>migration challenge. The Idealware articles were static  <span class="caps">HTML</span> web pages that needed to be put in Drupal&#8217;s content database. And  there is no utility that imports Blogger blogs to Drupal.  Both projects  required research and creativity.</p>

	<p>The first step in any data  migration project is to determine if automating the task will be more  work than just doing it by hand.  Idealware has about 220 articles  published; cutting and pasting the text into Drupal, and then cleaning  up the formatting, would be a grueling project for someone.  On the  other hand, automating the process was not a slam dunk.  Database data  is easier to write conversion processes for than free form text.  <span class="caps">HTML </span> is somewhere in the middle, with <span class="caps">HTML</span> codes that identify sections, but  lots of free form data as well.</p>

	<p><strong>Converting <span class="caps">HTML </span>Articles with  Regular Expressions</strong></p>

	<p>My toolkit (of choice) for this project  was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed">Sed, the Unix Stream  Editor</a>, and a generic installation of Drupal.  Sed does <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/06/regular-expression-magic.html">regular  expression</a> searching and replacing. So I wrote a script that:<br />
<ol></p>
	<p><li>Deleted  lines with <span class="caps">HTML</span> tags that we didn&#8217;t need;</li><br />
<li>stored data between  title and body tags;</li><br />
<li>and converted those items to <span class="caps">SQL</span> code that  would insert the title and article text into my Drupal database.</li><br />
</ol></p>
	<p>This  was the best I could do: other standardized information, such as author  and publishing date, was not standardized in the text, so I left  calling those out for a clean-up phase that the Idealware staff took on.  The project was a success, in it that it took less than two days to  complete the conversion.  It was never going to be an easy one.</p>

	<p>Without  going too far, the sed command to delete, say, a &#8220;META&#8221; tag is:</p>

	<p>/<meta/d</p>

	<p>That says to search for a literal &#8220;less than&#8221; bracket (the  forward slash implies literal) and the text meta and delete any line  that contains it. A tricky part of the cleanup was to make sure that my  search phrases weren&#8217;t ones that might also match article text.</p>

	<p>Once  I&#8217;d stripped the file down to just the data between the &#8220;title&#8221; and  &#8220;body&#8221; tags, I issued this command:</p>

	<p>s/.*<body>(.*)</body>/insert  into articles (title, body) values (&#8216;1&#8217;, &#8216;2&#8217;);/</p>

	<p>This searches  for the text between <span class="caps">HTML </span>&#8220;title&#8221; tags, storing it in variable 1, then  the text between &#8220;body&#8221; tags, storing it in variable 2, then substitutes  the variable data into a simple <span class="caps">SQL</span> insert statement in the replacement  string.  Iterating a script with all of the clean-up commands,  culminating in that last command, gave me a text file that could be  imported into the Drupal database. The remaining cleanup was done in  Drupal&#8217;s <span class="caps">WYSIWYG</span> interface.</p>

	<p><strong>Blog Conversion</strong></p>

	<p>As I  said, there is no such thing as a program or module that converts a  Blogger Blog into Drupal format.  And our circumstance was further  complicated by the fact that the Idealware Blog was in Blogger&#8217;s legacy  &#8220;FTP&#8221; format, so the conversion options available were further limited.</p>

	<p>There is an <a href="http://drupalmodules.com/module/wordpress-import">excellent  module for converting WordPress blogs to Drupal</a>, and there were  options for converting a legacy Blogger blog to WordPress.  So, then the  question was, how well will the blog survive a double conversion?  The  answer was: very well! I challenge any of you to identify the one post  that didn&#8217;t come through with every word and picture intact.</p>

	<p>I had  a good start for this, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jmsaunders">Matthew Saunders</a> at the <a href="http://dogstar.org/drupal/">Nonprofits and Web 2.0 Blog</a> posted <a href="http://dogstar.org/drupal/content/importing-blogger-content-drupal-using-wordpress">this  excellent guide</a>.  If you have a current Blogger blog to migrate,  every step here will work.  My problem was that the Idealware blog was  in the old <a href="http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/topic.py?hl=en&#038;topic=12460">&#8220;FTP&#8221;  format</a>. Google has announced that blogs in their original  publishing format must be converted by May 1st.  While this fact had  little or no relationship to the web site move to Drupal, it&#8217;s  convenient that we made the move well in advance of that.</p>

	<p>To  prep, I installed current, vanilla copies of WordPress and Drupal at <a href="http://techcafeteria.com">techcafeteria.com</a>.  I tracked down <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-blog-converters-appengine/">Google&#8217;s  free blog converters</a>. While there is no WP to Drupal converter,  most other formats are covered, and I just used their web-based Blogger  to WordPress tool to convert the exported Idealware blog to WP format.   The conversion process prompted me to create accounts for each author.</p>

	<p>To get from WordPress to Drupal, I installed above-mentioned  WordPress-import module. As with the first import, this one also  prompted me to create the authors&#8217; Drupal accounts.  It also had an  option to store all images locally (which required rights to create a  public-writeable folder on the Drupal server). Again, this worked very  well.</p>

	<p>With my test completed, I set about doing it all over  again on the new Idealware blog.  Here I had a little less flexibility.   I had administrative rights in Drupal, but I didn&#8217;t have access to the  server.  Two challenges: The server&#8217;s file upload limit (set in both  Drupal and <span class="caps">PHP</span>&#8217;s initialization file) was set to a smaller size than my  WordPress import file.  I got around this by importing it in by  individual blogger, making sure to include all current and former  Idealware bloggers.  The second issue was in creating a folder for the  images, which I asked our host and designer at <a href="http://Digital-loom.com">Digital  Loom.com</a> to do for me.</p>

	<p><strong>Cleanup!</strong></p>

	<p>The final  challenge was even stickier&#8212;the posts came across, but the URLs were  in a different format than the old Blogger URLs This was a problem for  the articles as well. How many sites do you think link to Idealware  content out there?  For this, I begged for enough server access to write  and run a <span class="caps">PHP</span> script that renamed the current URLs to their former  names&#8212;a half-successful effort, as Drupal had dramatically renamed a  bunch of them.  The remainder we manually altered.</p>

	<p>All told,  about two hours research time, three or four hours conversion (over a  number of days) and more for the clean-up, as I wasted a lot of time  trying to come up with a pure <span class="caps">SQL</span> command to do the <span class="caps">URL</span> renaming, only  to eventually determine that it couldn&#8217;t be done without some scripting.    A fun project, though, but I&#8217;d call it a success.</p>

	<p>I hope this  helps you out if you ever find yourself faced with a similar challenge.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/06/18/regular-expression-magic/" rel="bookmark" title="June 18, 2009">Regular (Expression) Magic</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/04/14/more-rss-tools-sharing-feeds/" rel="bookmark" title="April 14, 2009">More <span class="caps">RSS </span>Tools: Sharing Feeds</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/05/20/welcome/" rel="bookmark" title="May 20, 2005">Welcome!</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/05/18/instant-open-api-with-rails-20/" rel="bookmark" title="May 18, 2007">Instant Open <span class="caps">API</span> with Rails 2.0</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/05/09/wanna-play-with-openid/" rel="bookmark" title="May 9, 2007">Wanna play with OpenID?</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 11.357 ms --></p>
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		<title>NPO Evaluation, IE6, Still Waters for Wave</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/23/npo-evaluation-ie6-still-waters-for-wave/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/23/npo-evaluation-ie6-still-waters-for-wave/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:25:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open APIs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=618</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here are a few updates topics I've posted on in the last few months
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p>[Oops! Forgot to publish this Idealware post from late January&#8230;]</p>

	<p>Here are a few updates topics I&#8217;ve posted on in the last few months:</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/12/won-you-let-me-take-you-on-sea-change.html">Nonprofit Assessment</a></strong></p>

	<p><a href="http://www.philanthropyaction.com/documents/Worst_Way_to_Pick_A_Charity_Dec_1_2009.pdf">The announcement</a> that <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/">GuideStar</a>, <a href="http://www.charitynavigator.org/">Charity Navigator</a> and others would be moving away from the 990 form as their primary source for assessing nonprofit performance raised a lot of interesting questions, such as &#8220;How will assessments of outcomes be standardized in a way that is not too subjective?&#8221; and &#8220;What will be required of nonprofits in order to make those assessments?&#8221; We&#8217;ll have a chance to get some preliminary answers to those questions on February 4th, when <span class="caps">NTEN</span> will sponsor a <a href="http://nten.org/events/webinar/2010/02/04/overhead-dead-future-nonprofit-assessment-and-reporting">phone-in panel discussion</a> with representatives of GuideStar and Charity Navigator, as well as members of the nonprofit community. The panel will be hosted by Sean Stannard-Stockton of <a href="http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/">Tactical Philanthropy</a>, and will include:</p>

	<p><ul><li>Bob Ottenhoff of <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/">Guidestar</a></li><br />
<li>Ken Berger of <a href="http://www.charitynavigator.org/">Charity Navigator</a></li><br />
<li>Lucy Bernholtz of <a href="http://www.blueprintrd.com/">Blueprint R &#38; D</a></li><br />
<li>Christine Egger of <a href="http://socialactions.com/">Social Actions</a></li><br />
<li>David Geilhufe of <a href="http://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml">NetSuite</a></li><br />
<li>and host Holly Ross of <a href="http://nten.org/"><span class="caps">NTEN</span></a>.</li></ul></p>

	<p>I&#8217;ll be participating as well. You can learn more and <a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/EWEB/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=NoFeeReg&#38;site=nten&#38;action=Add&#38;evt_key=730eae0f-2b73-4375-82b2-e9880dcbdeff&#38;egp_evt_key=730eae0f-2b73-4375-82b2-e9880dcbdeff&#38;evt_title=The+Overhead+Question+The+Future+of+Nonprofit+Assessment+and+Reporting">register for the free</a> event with <span class="caps">NTEN</span>.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/08/case-against-internet-explorer-6.html">The Half-Life of Internet Explorer 6</a></strong></p>

	<p>It&#8217;s been quite a few weeks as far as headlines go, with a <a href="http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main&#38;s_src=RSG000000000&#38;s_subsrc=RCO_FrontPagePanel">humanitarian crisis in haiti</a>; a <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20100119/NEWS15/100119075/1318/Brown-defeats-Coakley-in-Mass.-race">dramatic election in Massachusetts</a>; A <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-jacobs/prop-8-on-trial-justice-a_b_432268.html">trial to determine if California gay marriage-banning proposition is, in fact, discriminatory</a>; high profile <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/tdevyGyCiJY/ken-burns-documentar.html">shakeups in late night television</a> and word of the <a href="http://pictureisunrelated.com/2009/11/28/the-snuggie-2-0/">Snuggie, version 2</a> all competing for our attention. An additional, fascinating story is unfolding with <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html">Google&#8217;s announcement that they might pull their business out of China</a> in light of a massive cybercrime against critics of the Chinese regime that, from all appearances, was either <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/technology/20cyber.html">performed or sanctioned by the Chinese government</a>.  There&#8217;s been a lot of speculation about <a href="http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/01/13/four-possible-explanations-for-googles-big-china-move/">Google&#8217;s motives</a> for such a dramatic move, and I fall in the camp that says, whatever their motives, it&#8217;s refreshing to see a gigantic U.S. corporation factor ethics into a business decision, even if it&#8217;s unclear exactly what the complete motivations are.</p>

	<p>As my colleague Steve Backman <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2010/01/browser-security-and-choices.html">fully explains here</a>, here&#8217;s been some fallout from this story for Microsoft. First, like Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft operates a <a href="http://www.bing.com/?mkt=zh-CN">search engine in China</a> and submits to the Chinese governments censoring filters. They&#8217;ve kept mum on their feelings about the cyber-attack. Google&#8217;s analysis of that attack reveals that GMail accounts were hacked and other breaches occurred via <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/01/14/google-china-attack-anatomy/">security holes in Internet Explorer</a>, versions six and up, that allow a hacker to upload programs and take control of a user&#8217;s PC.  As this information came to light, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8465038.stm">France and Germany both issued advisories</a> to their citizens that switching to a browser other than Internet Explorer would be prudent. In response, Microsoft has issued a statement recommending that everyone upgrade from Internet Explorer version 6 to version 8, the current release.  What Microsoft doesn&#8217;t mention is that the security flaw exists in versions seven and eight as well as six, so upgrading won&#8217;t protect you from the threat, although they just <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222400136">released a patch</a> that hopefully will.</p>

	<p>So, while their reasoning is suspect, it&#8217;s nice to see that Microsoft has finally joined the campaign to remove this old, insecure and incompatible with web standards browser.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/11/wave-impressions.html">Google Wave: Still Waters</a></strong></p>

	<p>I have kept Google Wave open in a tab in my browser since the day my account was opened, subscribed to about 15 waves, some of them quite well populated.  I haven&#8217;t seen an update to any of these waves since January 12th, and it was really only one wave that&#8217;s gotten any updates at all in the past month.  I can&#8217;t give away the invites I have to offer. The conclusion I&#8217;m drawing is that, if Google doesn&#8217;t do something to make the Wave experience more compelling, it&#8217;s going to go the way of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CpaOYRi8D4">Simply Red B-Side</a> and fade from memory.  As I&#8217;ve said, there is real potential here for something that puts telecommunication, document creation and data mining on a converged platform, and that would be new.  But, in it&#8217;s current state, it&#8217;s a difficult to use substitute for a sophisticated Wiki.  And, while Google was hyping this, <a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/whats-new.jsp">Confluence</a> released a new version of their excellent (free for nonprofits) enterprise Wiki that can incorporate (like Wave) Google gadgets.  That makes me want to pack up my surfboard.<br />
<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/17/nptech-lineup-details/" rel="bookmark" title="January 17, 2010">NPTech Lineup Details</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/08/is-google-wave-a-tidal-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="September 8, 2009">Is Google Wave a Tidal Wave?</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/07/wave-impressions/" rel="bookmark" title="December 7, 2009">Wave Impressions</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/29/wont-you-let-me-take-you-on-a-sea-change/" rel="bookmark" title="December 29, 2009">Won&#8217;t You Let me Take You On A Sea Change?</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/16/swept-up-in-a-google-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="September 16, 2009">Swept Up in a Google wave</a></li><br />
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		<title>NPTech Lineup Details</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/17/nptech-lineup-details/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/17/nptech-lineup-details/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:34:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Green Computing]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=545</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Details have come in for two exciting events in February:

]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p>Details have come in for two exciting events in February:</p>

	<p>On Thursday, February 4th, at 11:00 am Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern, don&#8217;t miss <a href="http://nten.org/events/webinar/2010/02/04/overhead-dead-future-nonprofit-assessment-and-reporting"><strong>The Overhead Question: The Future of Nonprofit Assessment and Reporting</strong></a>. This panel discussion with represenatives from <a href="http://www.charitynavigator.org/">Charity Navigator</a> and <a href="http://www.charitynavigator.org/">Guidestar</a> will cover all of the questions I&#8217;ve been <a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/29/wont-you-let-me-take-you-on-a-sea-change/">blogging about here</a>. Join me with moderator <span>Sean Stannard-Stockton of <a href="http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/">Tactical Philanthropy, </a></span><a href="http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/"><span>Bob Ottenhoff of </span></a><a href="http://www2.guidestar.org/">Guidestar, </a>Lucy Bernholtz of <a href="http://www.blueprintrd.com/">Blueprint R &#038; D</a>, Christine Egger of <a href="http://socialactions.com/">Social Actions</a>, David Geilhufe of <a href="http://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml">NetSuite</a><span>, and host Holly Ross of <a href="http://nten.org"><span class="caps">NTEN</span></a>. </span><span><a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/EWEB/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=NoFeeReg&#038;site=nten&#038;action=Add&#038;evt_key=730eae0f-2b73-4375-82b2-e9880dcbdeff&#038;egp_evt_key=730eae0f-2b73-4375-82b2-e9880dcbdeff&#038;evt_title=The+Overhead+Question+The+Future+of+Nonprofit+Assessment+and+Reporting">Free registration is here.<br />
</a></span></p>

	<p>And on Wednesday, February 10th, from 10:00 to 2:00 Pacific (1:00 to 5:00 Eastern), <a href="http://nten.org"><span class="caps">NTEN</span></a> and the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2025105">Green <span class="caps">IT </span>Consortium</a> are putting on the first <a href="http://nten.org/events/webinar/2010/02/10/greening-your-nonprofit%E2%80%99s-it-%E2%80%93-how-save-environment-and-money">Greening Your <span class="caps">IT </span>Virtual Conference</a>. With a plenary by Joseph Khunaysir of <a href="http://www.jolera.com/Pages/ClickIT.aspx">Jolera Inc.</a> and six tactical sessions explaining how your org can benefit yourselves and the earth, including the one I&#8217;m co-presenting with Matt Eshleman of <a href="http://www.citidc.org/"><span class="caps">CITIDC</span></a> on Server Virtualization.&#160; Registration is $120, and it looks well worth it.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/13/the-nptech-lineup/" rel="bookmark" title="January 13, 2010">The NPTech Lineup</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/23/npo-evaluation-ie6-still-waters-for-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="February 23, 2010"><span class="caps">NPO </span>Evaluation, <span class="caps">IE6</span>, Still Waters for Wave</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/08/10/my-full-nptech-dance-card/" rel="bookmark" title="August 10, 2009">My Full NPTech Dance Card</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/08/10/nten-crm-best-practices-webinar-on-tuesday/" rel="bookmark" title="August 10, 2007"><span class="caps">NTEN CRM </span>Best Practices Webinar on Tuesday</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/08/19/administrivia/" rel="bookmark" title="August 19, 2011">Administrivia</a></li><br />
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		<title>Things You Might Not Know About&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/04/things-you-might-not-know-about/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/04/things-you-might-not-know-about/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:47:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=530</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[...or you might. I find that, in a 25 year IT career that has always included a percentage of tech support, human nature is to use the features of an application that we know about, and only go looking for new features when a clearly defined need for one arises.  In that scenario, some great functionality might be hiding in plain sight.  Here are a few of my favorite "not very well-hidden" secrets. ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p>...or you might. I find that, in a 25 year IT career that has always included a percentage of tech support, human nature is to use the features of an application that we know about, and only go looking for new features when a clearly defined need for one arises.  In that scenario, some great functionality might be hiding in plain sight.  Here are a few of my favorite &#8220;not very well-hidden&#8221; secrets. Share yours in the comments.</p>

	<p><strong>Google Search Filtering</strong></p>

	<p><img style="float:left;padding-right:10px;padding-bottom:10px" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SzI8tOT25PI/AAAAAAAAAJM/GD3vxjEqLk0/google%20options%201.png?imgmax=800" alt="google options 1.png" border="0" width="200" height="97" /><br />
Have you ever clicked the <img style="float:right;padding-left:10px" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SzJHzNmNu1I/AAAAAAAAAJU/QKV46PKXpLY/google%20options%202.png?imgmax=800" alt="google options 2.png" border="0" width="125" height="449" /> &#8220;Show Options&#8221; link on your results page?  Do a search for whatever interests you and try it (it&#8217;s located right under the Google logo).  This will add a left navigation bar with some very useful filtering options. Of note, you can narrow to a trendy real-time search buy clicking on &#8220;Latest&#8221; under &#8220;Any Time&#8221;; choose a date range,filter out the pages that you&#8217;ve seen, or haven&#8217;t seen yet &#8211; how useful is that for finding that page that you googled last week but didn&#8217;t save? The funny thing is that Google has an &#8220;Advanced Search&#8221; screen, which, of course, can do many things that this bar can&#8217;t (such as searching for public domain media).</p>

	<p><strong>Microsoft Outlook Shortcuts</strong></p>

	<p>If you use Outlook, you know how simple it is to find your mail and calendar.  Other common folders are conveniently placed in your default view.  <img style="float:right;margin:5px"src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SzjJvyZNvvI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/W-ZalUxn0w4/Outlook%20shortcuts%201.png?imgmax=800" alt="Outlook shortcuts 1.png" border="0" width="200" height="96" />But if you&#8217;re the slightest bit of a power user, or you work in an environment where users share mailbox folders or use Exchange&#8217;s Public Folders, than keeping track of all of those folders can get a bit tedious. <img style="float:left;margin:5px" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SzjLKUIWKOI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/Df5iKHMId0k/Outlook%20Shortcuts%202.png?imgmax=800" alt="Outlook Shortcuts 2.png" border="0" width="192" height="234" />That&#8217;s what the Shortcut view is for.  Buried below the Mail, Calendar and Task buttons, you can move it up to the visible button list by right-clicking on the bar area (in the lower-left hand corner of Outlook 2003 or 2007&#8217;s screen) and choosing &#8220;Navigation Pane Options&#8221;.  Highlight &#8220;Shortcuts&#8221; and then click &#8220;Move up&#8221; enough times to get it in one of the first four positions.  Click OK, then click on the &#8220;Shortcuts&#8221; bar.  From here, you can add new shortcuts and, optionally, arrange them in shortcut groups. You can rename the shortcuts with more meaningful titles, so that, if, say, you&#8217;re monitoring a norther user&#8217;s inbox, you can give it their name instead of having two folders named &#8220;Inbox&#8221;. One tip: to add shortcuts to a group, right-click on the group title and add from there.</p>

	<p><strong>Facebook Friend Lists</strong></p>

	<p>Nothing makes Facebook more manageable than Friends Lists, and, with the new security changes, this is more true than ever.  If you&#8217;re like me, your connections on Facebook span every facet of your life, from family to childhood friends to co-workers.  Wouldn&#8217;t it be useful to be able to send links and messages to all of your co-workers but not your friends, or vice-versa? Click on &#8220;Friends&#8221; from the Facebook menu, then all connections.  If you&#8217;ve become a fan of a page or two, you&#8217;ll see that Facebook has already created two lists for you: Friends and Pages.  To make more, scroll through your connection list and click to &#8220;Add to List&#8221; option to the right.  You can create new lists from there, and add friends to multiple lists.</p>

	<p><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SzQSJc1rkSI/AAAAAAAAAJo/HmPNRQG-CQI/facebook%20friends.png?imgmax=800" alt="facebook friends.png" border="0" width="440" height="107" /></p>

	<p>When you share a link, note, video or whatever, you can choose which list to send it to by clicking on the lock icon next to the &#8220;Share&#8221; button and choosing &#8220;Customize&#8221;.</p>

	<p><strong>There Are More</strong></p>

	<p>Did you know about these features? Are there other ones that you use that make your use of popular applications and web sites much more manageable?  Leave a comment and let us know.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/02/25/tweaking-twitter/" rel="bookmark" title="February 25, 2009">Tweaking Twitter</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/07/09/useful-tools-and-tips/" rel="bookmark" title="July 9, 2009">Useful Tools and Tips</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/15/googles-creepy-profiles/" rel="bookmark" title="February 15, 2010">Google&#8217;s Creepy Profiles</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/05/18/void-rage-unable-to-muster-facebook-anger/" rel="bookmark" title="May 18, 2010">Void Rage: Unable to Muster Facebook Anger</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/11/26/about-that-google-phone/" rel="bookmark" title="November 26, 2008">About that Google Phone</a></li><br />
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		<title>Wave Impressions</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/07/wave-impressions/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/07/wave-impressions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:45:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=492</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A few months ago, I <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/08/is-google-wave-tidal-wave.html">blogged a bit about Google Wave</a>, and <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/09/swept-up-in-google-wave.html">how it might live up to the hype</a> of being the successor to email.  Now that I've had a month or so to play with it, I wanted to share my initial reactions.  Short story: Google Wave is an odd duck, that takes getting used to. As it is today, it is not that revolutionary -- in fact, it's kind of redundant. The jury is still out.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><div style="float:left;margin-right:10px"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/Sw1LLr0RtDI/AAAAAAAAAIM/gZEYf2tg2DA/Wave%20logo.png?imgmax=800" alt="Wave logo.png" border="0" width="148" height="37" /></div> A few months ago, I <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/08/is-google-wave-tidal-wave.html">blogged a bit about Google Wave</a>, and <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/09/swept-up-in-google-wave.html">how it might live up to the hype</a> of being the successor to email.&#160; Now that I&#8217;ve had a month or so to play with it, I wanted to share my initial reactions.&#160; Short story: Google Wave is an odd duck, that takes getting used to. As it is today, it is not that revolutionary&#8212;in fact, it&#8217;s kind of redundant. The jury is still out.</p>

	<p><p><strong>Awkwardness</strong><p></p>

	<p>To put Wave in perspective, I clearly remember my first exposure to email.&#160; I bought my first computer in 1987: a <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3101/3139630402_a10f86132b.jpg">Compaq &#8220;portable&#8221;</a>. The thing weighed about 60 pounds, sported a tiny green on black screen, and had two 5 and 1/4 inch floppy drives for applications and storage).&#160; Along with the PC, I got a <a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2052/2470888829_fe0e8d97ac.jpg">1200 <span class="caps">BPS</span> modem</a>, which allowed me o dial up local <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system">bulletin boards</a>.&#160; And, as I poked around, I discovered the 1987 version of email: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_editor">the line editor</a>.</p>

	<p>On those early BBSes, emails were sent by typing one line (80 characters, max) of text and hitting &#8220;enter&#8221;.&#160; Once &#8220;enter&#8221; was pressed, that line was sent to the <span class="caps">BBS</span>.&#160; No correcting typos, no rewriting the sentence.&#160; It was a lot like early typewriters, before they added the ability to strike out previously submitted text.</p>

	<p>But, regardless of the primitive editing capabilities, email was a revelation.&#160; It was a new medium; a form of communication that, while far more awkward than telephone communications, was much more immediate than postal mail.&#160; And it wasn&#8217;t long before more sophisticated interfaces and editors made their way to the bulletin boards.</p>

	<p>Google Wave is also, at this point, awkward. To use it, you have to be somewhat self-confident right from the start, as others are potentially watching every letter that you type.&#160; And while it&#8217;s clear that the ability to co-edit and converse about a document in the same place is powerful, it&#8217;s messy.&#160; Even if you get over the sprawling nature of the conversations, which are only minimally better than&#160; what you would get with ten to twenty-five people all conversing in one Word document, the lack of navigational tools within each wave is a real weakness.</p>

	<p><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/Sw1KeJ5E22I/AAAAAAAAAII/j-Fyao3pblo/wave%20example.png?imgmax=800" alt="wave example.png" border="0" width="500" height="775" /></p>

	<p><strong>Redundant?</strong></p>

	<p>I&#8217;m particularly aware of these faults because I just installed and began using <a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/">Confluence</a>, a sophisticated, enterprise Wiki (free for nonprofits) at my organization. While we&#8217;ve been told that Wave is the successor to email, <a href="http://www.docs.google.com">Google Docs</a> and, possibly, <a href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx">Sharepoint</a>, I have to say that Confluence does pretty much all of those things and is far more capable.&#160; All wikis, at their heart, offer collaborative editing, but the good ones also allow for conversations, plug-ins and automation, just as Google Wave promises.&#160; But with a wiki, the canvas is large enough and the tools are there to organize and manage the work and conversation.&#160; With Wave, it&#8217;s awfully cramped, and somewhat primitive in comparison.</p>

	<p><strong>Too early to tell?</strong></p>

	<p>Of course, we&#8217;re looking at a preview.&#160; The two things that possibly differentiate Wave from a solid wiki are the &#8220;inbox&#8221; metaphor and the automation capabilities. Waves can come to you, like email, and anyone who has tried to move a group from an email list to a web forum knows how powerful that can be. And Wave&#8217;s real potential is in how the &#8220;bots&#8221;, server-side components that can interact with the people communicating and collaborating, will integrate the development and conversation with existing data sources.&#160; It&#8217;s still hard to see all of that in this nascent stage.&#160; Until then, it&#8217;s a bit chicken and egg.</p>

	<p><strong>Wave starting points</strong></p>

	<p>There are lots of good Wave resources popping up, but the best, hands down, is <a href="http://completewaveguide.com/">Gina Trapini&#8217;s Complete Guide</a>, available online for free and in book form soon. <a href="http://smarterware.org/">Gina&#8217;s blog</a> is a must read for people who find the types of things I write about interesting.</p>

	<p>Once you&#8217;re on wave, you&#8217;ll want to find Waves to join, and exactly how you do that is anything but obvious.&#160; the trick is to search for a term &#8220;such as &#8220;nonprofit&#8221; or &#8220;fundraising&#8221; and add the phrase &#8220;with:public&#8221;. A good nonprofit wave to start with is titled, appropriately, &#8220;The Nonprofit Technology Wave&#8221;.</p>

	<p><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SxPkS6_uh0I/AAAAAAAAAIc/iXqnlMHHcD4/Wave%20search.png?imgmax=800" alt="Wave search.png" border="0" width="500" height="190" /></p>

	<p>If you haven&#8217;t gotten a Wave invite and want to, now is the time to query your Twitter and Facebook friends, because invites are being offered and we&#8217;ve passed the initial &#8220;gimme&#8221; stage.&#160; In fact, I have ten or more to share (I&#8217;m peterscampbell on most social networks and at Google&#8217;s email service).<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/08/is-google-wave-a-tidal-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="September 8, 2009">Is Google Wave a Tidal Wave?</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/04/03/more-rss-tools-managing-content-with-pipes/" rel="bookmark" title="April 3, 2009">More <span class="caps">RSS </span>Tools: Managing Content with Pipes</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/16/swept-up-in-a-google-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="September 16, 2009">Swept Up in a Google wave</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/29/wont-you-let-me-take-you-on-a-sea-change/" rel="bookmark" title="December 29, 2009">Won&#8217;t You Let me Take You On A Sea Change?</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/08/27/evaluating-wikis/" rel="bookmark" title="August 27, 2009">Evaluating Wikis</a></li><br />
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		<title>The Idealware Research Fund</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/03/the-idealware-research-fund/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/03/the-idealware-research-fund/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:37:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=483</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Fans of this blog are likely fans of the other site I blog at, Idealware.  So you already know that Idealware offers a rich, valuable service to the nonprofit community with it's reports, webinars, trainings and programs that help nonprofits make smart decisions about software.  One of the big challenges that Idealware faces is to maintain a high level of independence for their reporting.  If your goal is to be the Consumer reports of nonprofit software, and you need funding in order to do that, you also need to be very careful about how you receive that funding, in order to make sure that no bias creeps through to your reporting. Laura Quinn, Idealware's founder and primary force, has come up with a few clever models for eliminating such bias, but today she unleashed a more sustainable approach to funding that will greatly simplify the process.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-484" title="Idealware Logo" src="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Screen-shot-2009-12-03-at-7.24.53-PM.png" alt="Idealware Logo" width="164" height="41" />Fans of this blog are likely fans of the other site I blog at, <a title="Candid Reviews and Information about Nonprofit Software" href="http://www.idealware.org">Idealware</a>.&#160; So you already know that Idealware offers a rich, valuable service to the nonprofit community with it&#8217;s <a href="http://www.idealware.org/articles/">reports</a>, <a href="http://www.idealware.org/online_seminars/">webinars</a>, <a href="http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/mntp-sf">trainings</a> and programs that help nonprofits make smart decisions about software.&#160; One of the big challenges that Idealware faces is to maintain a high level of independence for their reporting.&#160; If your goal is to be the <a href="http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm">Consumer Reports</a> of nonprofit software, and you need funding in order to do that, you also need to be very careful about how you receive that funding, in order to make sure that no bias creeps through to your reporting. Laura Quinn, Idealware&#8217;s founder and primary force, has come up with a few clever models for eliminating such bias, but today she unleashed a more sustainable approach to funding that will greatly simplify the process.</p>

	<p><a href="http://www.idealware.org/IdealwareResearchFund.php">The Idealware Research Fund</a> will provide basic, pooled funding for the great work that Idealware does, keeping it independent, unbiased, and resourced to provide the critical insight that smooths the stormy waters when we embark on big and small technology projects. The fund was kicked off today with a goal of raising $15,000 by December 31st.&#160; Please let people know about Idealware&#8217;s work and this opportunity to support them, and consider supporting them yourself, if you can afford to.</p>

	<p>Note that my self-interest is minimal here.&#160; I&#8217;m an unpaid, volunteer blogger at Idealware and will remain such.&#160; I have been paid (via <a href="http://www.techsoup.org">Techsoup</a>) for a couple of articles I&#8217;ve written.&#160; But my support and pitch here is based solely on my belief that Idealware does great, effective work and needs our support.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/09/18/here-there-and-idealware/" rel="bookmark" title="September 18, 2008">Here, There and Idealware</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/10/06/from-zero-to-sixty-what-type-of-project-management-tool-is-appropriate/" rel="bookmark" title="October 6, 2008">From Zero to Sixty: What type of Project Management tool is appropriate?</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/06/20/saving-pbs-from-what-when-a-lack-of-bias-isnt-enough/" rel="bookmark" title="June 20, 2005">Saving <span class="caps">PBS</span>?  From what?  When a lack of bias isn&#8217;t enough</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/07/14/paving-the-road-a-shared-outcomes-success-story/" rel="bookmark" title="July 14, 2009">Paving the Road &#8211; a Shared Outcomes Success Story</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/06/06/should-non-profits-seed-software-development/" rel="bookmark" title="June 6, 2007">Should Non-profits Seed Software Development?</a></li><br />
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		<title>Microsoft&#8217;s Secret Giveaway</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/24/microsofts-secret-giveaway/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/24/microsofts-secret-giveaway/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:02:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=467</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes it feels like the bane of my existence is my <a href="http://i00.twenga.com/phones/digital-telephone/nortel-networks-meridian-m3901-entry-p_22448vb.png">office phone</a>.  It's so bad that I rarely answer it, preferring to forward it to <a href="http://www.google.com/voice">Google Voice</a> where I can peruse the <a href="http://glencampbell.name/2009/09/08/the-best-google-voice-transcript-ever/">barely readable transcripts</a> just well enough to filter out the 90% cold sales calls I receive.  So what a pleasure it was to answer my desk phone on Thursday and have an illuminating conversation with my Microsoft Licensing representative.  He called to tell me that I own some awesome benefits that come with my <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/faq.aspx">Software Assurance</a> program.  I'm betting that I'm not the only one who was clueless about these benefits.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><div style="float:left"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SwGkbHH9SAI/AAAAAAAAAHw/1AhX_jxQ4U8/Screen%20shot%202009-11-16%20at%2011.13.06%20AM.png?imgmax=800" alt="Screen shot 2009-11-16 at 11.13.06 AM.png" border="0" width="295" height="33" /></div><br />
Sometimes it feels like the bane of my existence is my <a href="http://i00.twenga.com/phones/digital-telephone/nortel-networks-meridian-m3901-entry-p_22448vb.png">office phone</a>.  It&#8217;s so bad that I rarely answer it, preferring to forward it to <a href="http://www.google.com/voice">Google Voice</a> where I can peruse the <a href="http://glencampbell.name/2009/09/08/the-best-google-voice-transcript-ever/">barely readable transcripts</a> just well enough to filter out the 90% cold sales calls I receive.  So what a pleasure it was to answer my desk phone on Thursday and have an illuminating conversation with my Microsoft Licensing representative.  He called to tell me that I own some awesome benefits that come with my <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/faq.aspx">Software Assurance</a> program.  I&#8217;m betting that I&#8217;m not the only one who was clueless about these benefits.</p>

	<p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/mla/select.aspx">Microsoft Licensing</a>, as you know, is the little-known tenth <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%28Dante%29">circle of hell</a>.  It&#8217;s a conceptual labyrinth of terms and conditions that was likely conceived by a team of the writers of the original &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner">Prisoner</a>&#8221; series with the advice of contract attorneys that graduated from law school 30 years ago and have never since seen the light of day.</p>

	<p>Software Assurance is the tax we pay on our MicroSoft purchases that allows us to upgrade to the newest versions without paying upgrade fees (as long as we&#8217;ve paid our software assurance fees, of course).  I assume that this is of interest to Idealware readers because most of us pick up a lot of our MS software from <a href="http://www.techsoup.org/stock/Default.asp">Techsoup Stock</a>, and the Techsoup Stock donations come with Software Assurance, not without.</p>

	<p>But <a href="http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/4/MS_Buys_Evil.html">Microsoft isn&#8217;t evil</a>; they&#8217;re just bureaucratic, and every now and then a few smart people step up out of the morass and do things that I appreciate.  These Software Assurance benefits include:</p>

	<p><div style="margin-left:20px"><strong>The Microsoft <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/home-use-program.aspx">Home Use Program</a></strong> provides staff with ridiculously steep discounts on <span class="caps">MS </span>Office.  Register this benefit, and the allowed number of users (which I&#8217;m unclear as to how they calculate) at your company can purchase <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/fx101674121033.aspx"><span class="caps">MS </span>Office 2007 Ultimate Edition</a> (or <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/MAC/default.mspx">Office 2008 for Mac</a>) for $9.95.  That&#8217;s not a trial edition, and it&#8217;s the opposite of crippled&#8212;Ultimate is the &#8220;everything but the kitchen sink&#8221; edition and it comes with a license key.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://business.microsoftelearning.com/">Microsoft ELearning</a></strong> is a series of online classes in standard MS products like Word and Excel, and Server products like <span class="caps">MS SQL </span>Server or Windows 2003.  I did note that the list of available classes that my rep sent me looked a little behind the times; no 2008 or 2010 products covered, but many of us aren&#8217;t on the bleeding edge anyway.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx">Microsoft Technet</a></strong> gives you access to forums and experts, as well as evaluation copies of new technologies.  For example, as I write this, I just learned that I can pick up Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 betas via my <span class="caps">MSDN</span> or Technet subscriptions to try.</p>

	<p>And the <strong><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/office-multi-language-pack.aspx">Office Multi-Language Packs</a></strong> let you deploy office in additional languages.<br />
</div></p>

	<p>This isn&#8217;t fluff.  We&#8217;ve been paying full price for Office at home (more than we do at work) and I&#8217;ve purchased E-Training on MS products and an <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718661.aspx"><span class="caps">MSDN</span> subscription</a> (fairly equivalent to Technet) because I had no idea that I already owned them. It makes me feel much better about what seemed like a pre-emptive insurance program that makes me commit to the next version of MS products before I&#8217;m ready to make that commitment, at times.</p>

	<p>Of course, this is smart business for Microsoft.  With Google announcing that their <a href="http://news.softpedia.com/news/Docs-to-Be-a-Real-Alternative-to-Microsoft-Office-by-Next-Year-Google-Says-127027.shtml">Google Apps offering will be on a feature par with Office within a year</a>, and <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice</a> under active development as a pretty comparable alternative, you don&#8217;t want your business customers to get too comfortable with those free alternatives at home.  It&#8217;s just surprising to me that, for years, this was buried in the small print section of eOpen, and not broadcast widely.  So I&#8217;m doing MS a favor and blowing the horn on this one.</p>

	<p>To access these benefits, log onto <a href="https://eopen.microsoft.com">eOpen</a> (which I hope you&#8217;re using to manage MS licenses!) and once you&#8217;ve signed in and clicked &#8220;unhide licenses&#8221;, find your last Techsoup order (or a similar large purchase) and open it up.  The very first link in the license detail should be &#8220;Start and Manage your Software Assurance Benefits&#8221;.  Clicking on that will pop you to a paragraph that includes a link to the &#8220;Software Assurance Benefits Management Tool&#8221;. Click on that to get the benefits. The more MS software you&#8217;ve bought, the more tedious this will be: there are benefits associated with each Software Assurance purchase, so you&#8217;ll need to register this way for every relevant order. But it sure beats paying for these things at Best Buy!</p>


	<p><strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/07/23/why-sharepoint-scares-me/" rel="bookmark" title="July 23, 2009">Why SharePoint Scares Me</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/02/11/the-sky-is-calling/" rel="bookmark" title="February 11, 2009">The Sky is Calling</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/10/22/hacking-my-exchange-data-onto-my-new-g1/" rel="bookmark" title="October 22, 2008">Hacking my Exchange Data onto my New G1</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/05/13/saas-and-security/" rel="bookmark" title="May 13, 2009">SaaS and Security</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/02/06/colossus-vs-cloud-an-email-system-showdown/" rel="bookmark" title="February 6, 2009">Colossus vs. Cloud &#8211; an Email System Showdown</a></li><br />
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		<title>Why Geeks (like Me) Promote Transparency</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/18/why-geeks-like-me-promote-transparency/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/18/why-geeks-like-me-promote-transparency/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:51:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open APIs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=463</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week, <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/11/security-and-privacy-in-web-20-world.html">I shared a lengthy piece</a> that could be summed up as:

"in a world where everyone can broadcast anything, there is no privacy, so transparency is your best defense." 

(Mind you, we'd be dropping a number of nuanced points to do that!) 

Transparency, it turns out, has been a bit of <a href="http://my.socialactions.com/profiles/blogs/social-actions-and-open-data">a meme in nonprofit blogging circles lately</a>. I was particularly excited by <a href="http://ext337.org/in-process/being-a-context-provider-in-a-data-rich-world">this post</a> by <a href="http://www.netsquared.org/about/team#Marnie">Marnie Webb</a>, one of the many CEO's at the uber-resource provider and support organization <a href="http://home.techsoup.org/pages/default.aspx">Techsoup Global</a>.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><div style="text-align:center"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SvT4vhjA6HI/AAAAAAAAAHo/a69Vj06LO2Q/Mizukurage.jpg?imgmax=800" alt="Mizukurage.jpg" border="0" width="500" height="333" /><br />
Public Domain image by <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mizukurage.jpg">Takada</a></div><br />
</p>

	<p>Last week, <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/11/security-and-privacy-in-web-20-world.html">I shared a lengthy piece</a> that could be summed up as:</p>

	<p>&#8220;in a world where everyone can broadcast anything, there is no privacy, so transparency is your best defense.&#8221;</p>

	<p>(Mind you, we&#8217;d be dropping a number of nuanced points to do that!)</p>

	<p>Transparency, it turns out, has been a bit of <a href="http://my.socialactions.com/profiles/blogs/social-actions-and-open-data">a meme in nonprofit blogging circles lately</a>. I was particularly excited by <a href="http://ext337.org/in-process/being-a-context-provider-in-a-data-rich-world">this post</a> by <a href="http://www.netsquared.org/about/team#Marnie">Marnie Webb</a>, one of the many <span class="caps">CEO</span>&#8217;s at the uber-resource provider and support organization <a href="http://home.techsoup.org/pages/default.aspx">Techsoup Global</a>.</p>

	<p>Marnie makes a series of points:</p>

	<p><div style="margin-left:20px">Meaningful shared data, like the Miles Per Gallon ratings on new car stickers or the calorie counts on food packaging help us make better choices;</p>

	<p>But not all data is as easy to interpret;</p>

	<p>Nonprofits have continually been challenged to quantify the conditions that their missions address;</p>

	<p>Shared knowledge and metrics will facilitate far better dialog and solutions than our individual efforts have;</p>

	<p>The web is a great vehicle for sharing, analyzing and reporting on data;</p>

	<p>Therefore, the nonprofit sector should start defining and adopting common data formats that support shared analysis and reporting.<br />
</div></p>

	<p>I&#8217;ve <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/05/road-to-shared-outcomes.html">made the case before</a> for shared outcomes reporting, which is a big piece of this. Sharing and transparency aren&#8217;t traditional approaches to our work.  Historically, we&#8217;ve siloed our efforts, even to the point where membership-based organizations are guarded about sharing with other members.</p>

	<p>The reason that technologists like Marnie and I end up jumping on this bandwagon is that the tech industry has modeled the disfunction of a siloed approach better than most. early computing was an exercise in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance">cognitive dissonance</a>. If you regularly used <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3">Lotus 123</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect">Wordperfect</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase">dBase</a> (three of the most popular business applications circa 1989) on your MS-DOS PC, then hitting &#8220;<a href="http://www.trwyatt.com/146In07.htm">/</a>&#8220;, <a href="http://www.techadvice.com/apps/WP51/WordPerfect51_main.htm">F7</a> or &#8220;<a href="http://lynnbob.com/bob/articles/dBaseIIIPlusReview.htm">.</a>&#8221; were the things you needed to know in order to close those applications respectively. For most of my career, I stuck with PCs for home use because I needed compatibility with work, and the Mac operating system, prior to <span class="caps">OSX</span>, just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Exchange">couldn&#8217;t easily provide that</a>.</p>

	<p>The tech industry has slowly and painfully progressed towards a model that competes on the sales and services level, but cooperates on the platform side.  Applications, across manufacturers and computing platforms, function with similar menus and command sequences.  Data formats are more commonly shared. Options are available for saving in popular, often competitive formats (as in Word&#8217;s &#8220;Save As&#8221; offering Wordperfect and Lotus formats). The underlying protocols that fuel modern operating systems and applications are far more standardized.  Windows, Linux and MacOS all use the same technologies to <a href="http://www.gracion.com/server/whatldap.html">manage users and directories</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Suite">network systems and communicate</a> with the world.  Microsoft, Google, Apple and others in the software world are embracing open standards and interoperability.  This makes me, the customer, much less of an innocent bystander who is constantly sniped by their competitive strategies.</p>

	<p>So how does this translate to our social service, advocacy and educational organizations? Far too often, we frame cooperation as the antithesis to competition. That&#8217;s a common, but crippling mistake. The two can and do coexist in almost every corner of our lives. We need to adopt a &#8220;<a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/42/messages/1052.html">rising tide</a>&#8221; philosophy that values the work that we can all do together over the work that we do alone, and have some faith that the sustainable model is an open, collaborative one. Looking at each opportunity to collaborate from the perspective of how it will enhance our ability to accomplish our public-serving goals.  And trusting that this won&#8217;t result in the similarly-focused <span class="caps">NGO</span> down the street siphoning off our grants or constituents.</p>

	<p>As Marnie is proposing, we need to start discussing and developing data standards that will enable us to interoperate on the level where we can articulate and quantify the needs that our mission-focused organizations address.  By jointly assessing and learning from the wealth of information that we, as a community of practice collect, we can be far more effective.  We need to use that data to determine our key strategies and best practices. And we have to understand that, as long as we&#8217;re treating information as competitive data; as long as we&#8217;re keeping it close to our vests and looking at our peers as strictly competitors, the fallout of this cold war is landing on the people that we&#8217;re trying to serve. We owe it to them to be better stewards of the information that lifts them out of their disadvantaged conditions. <strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/07/14/paving-the-road-a-shared-outcomes-success-story/" rel="bookmark" title="July 14, 2009">Paving the Road &#8211; a Shared Outcomes Success Story</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/23/get-ready-for-a-sea-change-in-nonprofit-assessment-metrics/" rel="bookmark" title="December 23, 2009">Get Ready For A Sea Change In Nonprofit Assessment Metrics</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/03/24/ntc08-part-2-in-honor-of-marnie-webb/" rel="bookmark" title="March 24, 2008"><span class="caps">NTC08 </span>Part 2: In Honor of Marnie Webb</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/10/security-and-privacy-in-a-web-2-0-world/" rel="bookmark" title="November 10, 2009">Security and Privacy in a Web 2.0 World</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/06/06/should-non-profits-seed-software-development/" rel="bookmark" title="June 6, 2007">Should Non-profits Seed Software Development?</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 7.680 ms --></p>
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		<title>Security and Privacy in a Web 2.0 World</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/10/security-and-privacy-in-a-web-2-0-world/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/10/security-and-privacy-in-a-web-2-0-world/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:50:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=455</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Social media is casual media. <a href="http://legaltech.law.com/my_weblog/2009/09/avvocating-a-new-era-of-transparency.html">The Web 2.0 approach</a> is to present a true face to the world, one that interacts with the public and allows for individuals, with individual tastes and opinions, to share organizational information online.  So a strict rule book and mandated wording for your talking points are not going to work. 
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><div style="float: left;padding-right: 10px"><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SuW5HEzm8KI/AAAAAAAAAHA/WnfQVy0c8k4/Screen%20shot%202009-10-26%20at%207.52.12%20AM.png?imgmax=800" alt="A Tweet from Beth" border="0" width="250" height="104" /></div><p>Yes, we do Twitter requests! </p></p>

	<p>To break down that tweet a bit, <a href="http://twitter.com/kanter/">kanter</a> is the well-known <a href="http://api.ning.com/files/jbaar29oQX6PB21U5Q3LvnWNHJA38Nj15t6n-XSG-jA_/11013435.bin?width=183&#38;height=183&#38;crop=1%3A1">Beth Kanter</a> of <a href="http://beth.typepad.com/">Beth&#8217;s blog</a>.  <a href="http://twitter.com/pearlbear/">pearlbear</a> is former Idealware blogger and current contributor <a href="http://www.idealware.org/bios/mmurrain.php">Michelle Murrain</a>, and Beth asked us, in <a href="http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/10/ant-trails-autumn-and-placement-of-fences.html">the referenced blog post</a>, to dive a bit into internet security and how it contrasts with internet privacy concerns. <a href="http://zenofnptech.org/2009/10/security-and-privacy-in-a-web-2-0-world.html">Michelle&#8217;s response</a>, offers excellent and concise definitions of security and privacy as they apply to the web, and then sums up with a key distinction: security is a set of tools for protecting systems and information. The sensitivity of that data (and need for privacy) is a matter of policy. So the next question is, once you have your security systems and policies in place, what happens when the the policies are breached?</p>

	<p><strong>Craft a Policy that Minimizes Violations</strong></p>

	<p>Social media is casual media. <a href="http://legaltech.law.com/my_weblog/2009/09/avvocating-a-new-era-of-transparency.html">The Web 2.0 approach</a> is to present a true face to the world, one that interacts with the public and allows for individuals, with individual tastes and opinions, to share organizational information online.  So a strict rule book and mandated wording for your talking points are not going to work.</p>

	<p>Your online constituents expect your staff to have a shared understanding of your organization&#8217;s mission and objectives.  But they also expect the <span class="caps">CEO</span>, the Marketing Assistant and the volunteer Receptionists to have real names (and real pictures on their profiles); their own online voices; and interests they share that go beyond the corporate script. It&#8217;s not a matter of venturing too far out of the water&#8212;in fact, that could be as much of a problem as staying too close to the prepared scripts.  But the tone that works is the one of a human being sharing their commitment and excitement about the work that they (and you) do.</p>

	<p>Expect that the message will reflect individual interpretations and biases. Manage the messaging to the key points, and make clear the areas that shouldn&#8217;t be discussed in public. <a href="http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2009/9/9/build-your-own-dashboard-to-monitor-your-nonprofits-brand.html">Monitor the discussion</a>, and proactively mentor (as opposed to chastising) staff who stray in ways that violate the policy, or seem capable of doing so.</p>


	<p><strong>The Case for Transparency</strong></p>

	<p>Transparency assumes that multiple voices are being heard; that honest opinions are being shared, and that organizations aren&#8217;t sweeping the negative issues under the virtual rug.  Admittedly, it&#8217;s a scary idea that your staff, your constituents, and your clients should all be free to represent you. The best practice of corporate communications, for many years, was to run all messaging through Marketing/Communications experts and tightly control what was said.  I see two big reasons for doing otherwise:</p>

	<p><li>We no longer have a controlled media.</li></p>

	<p>Controlled messaging worked when opening your own TV or Radio Station was prohibitively expensive.  Today, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.yelp.com/">Yelp</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_blogging">Video Blogs</a> are <span class="caps">TV </span>Stations.  Twitter and Facebook Status are radio stations.  The investment cost to speak your mind to a public audience has just about vanished.</p>

	<p><li>We make more mistakes by under-communicating than we do by over-communicating. </li></p>

	<p>Is the importance of hiding something worth the cost of looking like you have something to hide? At the peak of the dot com boom, I hired someone onto my staff at about $10k more (annually) than current staff in similar roles were making.  An HR clerk accidentally sent the offer letter to my entire staff.  The fallout was that I had meaningful talks about compensation with each of my staff; made them aware that they were getting market (or better) in a rapidly changing market, and that we were keeping pace on anniversary dates. Prior to the breach, a few of my staff had been wrongly convinced that they were underpaid in their positions. The incident only strengthened the trust between us.</p>

	<p><strong>The Good, the Bad, and the Messenger</strong></p>

	<p>Your blog should allow comments, and&#8212;short of spam, personal attacks and incivility&#8212;shouldn&#8217;t be censored. A few years ago, a former employee of my (former) org managed to register the .com extension of our domain name and put up a web site criticizing us. While the site didn&#8217;t get a lot of hits, he did manage to find other departed staff with axes to grind, and his online forum was about a 50-50 mix of people trashing us and others defending. After about a month, he went in and deleted the 50% of forum messages that spoke up for our organization, leaving the now one-sided, negative conversation intact.  And that was the end of his forum; nobody ever posted there again.</p>

	<p>There were some interesting lessons here for us. He had a lot of inside knowledge that he shared, with no concern or allegiance to our policy.  And he was motivated and well-resourced to use the web to attack us, But, in the end, we didn&#8217;t see any negative impact on our organization.  The truth was, it was easy to separate his bias from his &#8220;inside scoops&#8221;, and hard to paint us in a very negative light, because the skeletons that he let out of our closet were a lot like anybody else&#8217;s.</p>

	<p>What this proves is that message delivery accounts for the messenger. Good and bad tweets and blog posts about your organization will be weighed by the position and credibility of the tweeter or blogger.</p>

	<p><strong>Transparency and Constituent Data Breaches</strong></p>

	<p>Two years ago, a number of nonprofits were faced with a difficult decision when a <a href="http://www.nptimes.com/07Nov/npt-071106-1.html">popular hosted eCRM service was compromised</a>, and account information for donors was stolen by one or more hackers.  Thankfully, this wasn&#8217;t credit card information, but it included login details, and I&#8217;m sure that we all know people who use the same password for their online giving as they do for other web sites, such as, perhaps, their online banking.  This was a serious breach, and there was a certain amount of disclosure from the nonprofits to their constituents that was mandated.</p>

	<p><a href="http://www.nonprofittechblog.org/suggested-guidelines-for-nonprofit-disclosure-of-security-breaches">Strident voices</a> in the community called for full disclosure, urging affected nonprofits to put a warning on the home page of their web sites.  Many of the organizations settled for alerting every donor that was potentially compromised via phone and/or email, determining that their unaffected constituents might not be clear on how the breach happened or what the risks were, and would simply take the home page warning as a suggestion to not donate online.</p>

	<p>To frame this as a black and white issue, demanding that it be treated with no discretion, is extreme. The seriousness and threat that resulted from this particular breach was not a simple thing to quantify or explain. So it boils down to a number of factors:</p>

	<p><ul><li><strong>Scope</strong>: If all or most of your supporters are at risk, or the number at risk is in the six figure range, it&#8217;s probably more responsible, in the name of protecting them, to broadcast the alert widely. If, as in the case above, those impacted are the ones donate online, then that&#8217;s probably not close to the amount that would fully warrant broad disclosure, as even <a href="http://www.nonprofittechblog.org/suggested-guidelines-for-nonprofit-disclosure-of-security-breaches">the strident voice pointed out</a>.</p>

	<p></li><li><strong>Risk</strong>: Will your constituents understand that the notice is informational, and not an admission of guilt or irresponsibility in handling their sensitive data? Alternatively, if this becomes public knowledge, would your lack of transparency look like an admission of guilt? You should be comfortable with your decision, and able to explain it.</li></p>

	<p><li><strong>Consistency</strong>: Some nonprofits have more responsibility to model transparency than others. If the <a href="http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/">Sunlight Foundation</a> was one of the organizations impacted, it&#8217;s a no-brainer. <a href="http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/">Salvation Army?</a> Transparency isn&#8217;t referenced on <a href="http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-arrays/B6F3F4DF3150F5B585257434004C177D?openDocument&#38;charset=utf-8">their &#8220;Positions&#8221; page</a>.</li></p>

	<p><li><strong>Courtesy</strong>: Some constituencies are more savvy about this type of thing than others. If the affected constituents have all been notified, and they represent a small portion of the donor base, it&#8217;s questionable whether scaring your supporters in the name of openness is really warranted.</li></ul></p>

	<p>Since alternate exposure, in the press or community, is likely to occur, the priority is to have a consistent policy about how and when you broadcast information about security breaches. Denying that something has had happened in any public forum would be irresponsible and unethical, and most likely come right back at you. Not being able to explain why you chose not to publicize it on your website could also have damaging consequences. Erring on the side of alerting and protecting those impacted by security breaches is the better way to go, but the final choice has to weigh in all of the risks and factors.</p>

	<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>

	<p>All of my examples assume you&#8217;re doing the right things.  You have justifiable reasons for doing things that might be considered provocative. Your overall efforts are mission-focused. And the reasons for privacy regarding certain information are that it needs to be private (client medical records, for example); it supports your mission-based objectives by being private, and/or it respects the privacy of people close to the information.</p>

	<p>No matter how well we protect our data, the walls are much thinner than they used to be. Any unfortunate tweet can &#8220;go viral&#8221;. We can&#8217;t put a lock on our information that will truly secure it. So it&#8217;s important to manage communications with an understanding that information will be shared. Protect your overall reputation, and don&#8217;t sweat the minor slips that reveal, mostly, that you&#8217;re not a paragon of perfection, maybe, but a group of human beings, struggling to make a difference under the usual conditions.<br />
<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/18/why-geeks-like-me-promote-transparency/" rel="bookmark" title="November 18, 2009">Why Geeks (like Me) Promote Transparency</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/07/06/who-owns-my-content/" rel="bookmark" title="July 6, 2005">Who owns my content?</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/08/13/pop-quiz-pci-compliance/" rel="bookmark" title="August 13, 2009">Pop Quiz: <span class="caps">PCI </span>Compliance</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/25/why-i-dont-like-facebook/" rel="bookmark" title="April 25, 2010">Why I Don&#8217;t &#8220;Like&#8221; Facebook</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2008/11/29/complying-with-data-security-regulation/" rel="bookmark" title="November 29, 2008">Complying with Data Security Regulation</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 9.244 ms --></p>
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		<title>Drupal 101: Look and Feel</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/03/drupal-101-look-and-feel/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/03/drupal-101-look-and-feel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:40:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=451</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I'm wrapping up the Drupal 101 series with some talk about Drupal themes, and some additional info on topics that we've already covered. The goal of these posts is to give new Drupal administrators an idea about how Drupal works, and some pointers to the key add-ons and resources in the broad Drupal ecosystem.  For reference' sake, we started with <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101.html">an intro</a>, moved on to <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101-more-on-modules.html">Modules</a>, and then covered <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101-navigation.html">navigation</a>.  So, now that we have a functional web site, what does it look like?]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/Ss6G_BVbtrI/AAAAAAAAAGE/knjBRx7UO_s/drupal.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal.png" border="0" width="264" height="84" />I&#8217;m wrapping up the Drupal 101 series with some talk about Drupal themes, and some additional info on topics that we&#8217;ve already covered. The goal of these posts is to give new Drupal administrators an idea about how Drupal works, and some pointers to the key add-ons and resources in the broad Drupal ecosystem.  For reference&#8217; sake, we started with <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101.html">an intro</a>, moved on to <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101-more-on-modules.html">Modules</a>, and then covered <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101-navigation.html">navigation</a>.  So, now that we have a functional web site, what does it look like?</p>

	<p><strong>Getting Themes</strong></p>

	<p>Drupal comes with five or six themes to choose from, and, if you use them, then your site will look very, um, <a href="http://themegarden.org/drupal6/?q=node&#38;theme=marvin">uninspired</a>.  This might not be a problem if your goal is not to impress your visitors, but simply provide information or functionality, but, if you&#8217;re putting up a website for your organization, you want one that stands out from the crowd. So you have two choices: you can find a better, less common theme, or you can customize one of the default themes.</p>

	<p>The first place to go is to <a href="http://themegarden.org/drupal6/?q=node&#38;theme=Amor_Azul">Drupal Theme Garden</a>.  This is where many Drupal theme designers share their work.  Here, you can either find a theme to use (or customize for your use), or get a good idea about the types of things you can do with your theme.</p>

	<p><div style="text-align:center"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/St8dgRTJRZI/AAAAAAAAAGs/YXXqWC3E63k/themegarden.png?imgmax=800" alt="themegarden.png" border="0" width="450" height="253" /></div></p>

	<p><strong>Customizing Themes</strong></p>

	<p><table><tr><td><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/St8g5Ln4RXI/AAAAAAAAAGw/9QsFy-Afckk/drupal_theme_options.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal_theme_options.png" border="0" width="200" height="268" /></td><br />
<td>From the Administration menu, you can modify any theme&#8217;s main text elements, deciding whether or not to display your site&#8217;s mission or slogan, name or logo.  And you can replace the default &#8220;droplet&#8221; logo with your own logo (a no-brainer!). Assuming that you&#8217;ve started with a theme that you really like, this might be enough.  But, if you want to do more serious customizations, such as moving the logo to the center of your header or changing the site colors, you&#8217;re going to need basic web 4.0 programming skills and, most likely, some level of comfort with the <span class="caps">PHP</span> scripting language.</td></tr></table></p>

	<p>Most themes consist of one or more style sheets, a number of &#8220;tpl&#8221; files with <span class="caps">PHP</span>/HTML code laying out various page elements, such as blocks, footers and sidebars, and one called <em>page.tpl.php</em> that establishes the overall page layout. The main styles are usually stored in <em>styles.css</em>, and you can make a lot of changes to your site&#8217;s appearance here, modifying default background colors and images, placing and resizing content.</p>

	<p>If that&#8217;s not enough, most customizations can be done using WordPress&#8217;s internal macros and functions, meaning that you won&#8217;t have to worry about assigning variables or what goes into the foreach loops. WordPress has simple commands that you can insert into a page to loop through your posts and display them or list your categories in the sidebar. A nice breakdown of the WordPress functions can be <a href="http://www.wpexplorer.com/wordpress-theme-building-cheat-sheet.html">found at WpExplorer.com</a>.</p>

	<p><table><tr><td>If you do modify the stylesheets and templates, make sure that you are storing your themes in sites/default folder and that you&#8217;re properly backing up whenever you do an upgrade.  If you modify theme files in the main themes folder, and then upgrade to, say, a Drupal security fix, your modifications will be overwritten. In general, themes remain functional from dot release to dot release (e.g., what worked for Drupal 6.1 still works in 6.9), but the Drupal maintainers often make dramatic changes in number versions, so don&#8217;t assume that your theme in Drupal 6.9 will not be messed up if you upgrade to Drupal 7 (<a href="http://geshan.blogspot.com/2009/08/drupal-7-features-to-watch-out-for.html">coming soon</a>).</td><td style="width: 195;text-align:center"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/St8kdmi4KPI/AAAAAAAAAG0/VozqKssTvNk/drupal_css.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal_css.png" border="0" width="175" height="153" /></td></tr></table></p>

	<p><strong>More Installation Options</strong></p>

	<p>In the first Drupal 101 post, I mentioned <a href="http://www.web-hostingreview.com/fantastico-installer/">Fantastico</a>, a two-click installer for Drupal available on most hosting services that use the cPanel site management interface. I subsequently ran into <a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-best-freeware-to-do-an-easy-wordpress-auto-install-n/">this useful article</a> about<a href="http://www.elefanteinstaller.com/"> Elefante</a> and <a href="http://www.simplescripts.com/">Simplescripts</a>.  These are packages that you can use to install a variety of popular open source applications, including Drupal.</p>

	<p>In addition to application installers, there are other options for installing Drupal:</p>

	<p><div style="padding-left: 20px;padding-right:20px">Customized Drupal installations like <a href="http://openatrium.com/">Open Atrium</a> and <a href="http://acquia.com/downloads">Acquia</a> come with more modules and functionality.</p>

	<p>There&#8217;s been some development and discussion about <a href="http://drupal.org/project/the_base">Installation Profiles</a>, a Drupal add-on functionality that lets you define additional installation details, such as module defaults and inclusion of additional modules and data for distributing custom Drupal installations.<br />
</div><br />
<strong>Conclusion</strong></p>

	<p>What I hope this Drupal 101 series has done is to offer some context and guidance for people new to Drupal who are about to give it a try, and some backing to my initial proposition that Drupal&#8217;s strength is it&#8217;s flexibility.  Along the way, I&#8217;ve received tweets asking &#8220;Why Drupal?&#8221; and my answer is that Drupal isn&#8217;t the only <span class="caps">CMS</span> out there, or necessarily the best one for your web site.  There are a huge variety of commercial and <a href="http://www.cmsmatrix.org/">open source options</a>. In fact, my personal website runs on a combination of <a href="http://www.madebyfrog.com/">Frog <span class="caps">CMS</span></a> and <a href="http://www.wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>, because I wanted a simple tool for integrating <span class="caps">RSS</span> feeds, which Frog provides, and a powerful blogging platform.  On the other hand, last week the White House <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/view/?hl=en#stream/user%2F05927546952203087715%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fstarred">ditched their commercial <span class="caps">CMS</span> for Drupal</a>. So this series might also inspire you to look elsewhere, particularly if a more traditional, tree-structured content management interface will work better for you than Drupal&#8217;s layout by association model.  Whichever way you go, we suffer more from a surfeit of good options than a lack of same.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/12/drupal-101/" rel="bookmark" title="October 12, 2009">Drupal 101</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/21/drupal-101-more-on-modules/" rel="bookmark" title="October 21, 2009">Drupal 101: More on Modules</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/27/drupal-101-navigation/" rel="bookmark" title="October 27, 2009">Drupal 101: Navigation</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/06/15/nptech-phase-2/" rel="bookmark" title="June 15, 2005">NPTech Phase 2</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2007/05/09/wanna-play-with-openid/" rel="bookmark" title="May 9, 2007">Wanna play with OpenID?</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 7.664 ms --></p>
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		<title>Drupal 101: Navigation</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/27/drupal-101-navigation/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/27/drupal-101-navigation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:12:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=444</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here's the third in a series of posts on getting started with Drupal, the popular open source content management system.  The <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101.html">short intro</a> and <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101-more-on-modules.html">discussion on modules</a> are best read first. Today we'll look at site structure, and how menus, blocks and taxonomies can make your site navigable for your visitors. ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/Ss6G_BVbtrI/AAAAAAAAAGE/knjBRx7UO_s/drupal.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal.png" border="0" width="264" height="84" />Here&#8217;s the third in a series of posts on getting started with Drupal, the popular open source content management system.  The <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101.html">short intro</a> and <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101-more-on-modules.html">discussion on modules</a> are best read first. Today we&#8217;ll look at site structure, and how menus, blocks and taxonomies can make your site navigable for your visitors.</p>

	<p><h3>Menus</h3>Drupal has a simple and flexible tool for creating and managing menus. You can check/uncheck standard functions; assign them to regions (left sidebar, right sidebar, header, footer, etc.); and easily create new items.</p>

	<p>By default, Drupal offers three <strong>menus</strong> that you can add to your site:</p>

	<p><table><tr><td rowspan="4"style="padding-right: 5px"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/StSPyOq5FLI/AAAAAAAAAGM/6UdfT5JOHJk/drupal_navigation.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal_navigation.png" border="0" width="180" height="202" /></td><td style="padding-bottom: 10px"><strong>Navigation</strong> &#8211; The main menu is dynamic. It displays items based on the visitor&#8217;s role and state of authentication.  For example, an unauthenticated user might see a &#8220;Login&#8221; menu item, while an authenticated user would see &#8220;logout&#8221;. An authenticated user who is also a site manager would see the Administer menu. This menu is usually placed in a sidebar, next to the main content</td></tr></p>

	<p><tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;padding-left: 5px"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/StXgMGgxu5I/AAAAAAAAAGY/xflNqScbzR8/drupal_primary-links.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal_primary-links.png" border="0" width="300" height="36" /></td></tr></p>

	<p><tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px"><strong>Primary Links</strong> &#8211; This is often the menu for the main content areas, e.g. Home, Blog, Calendar, About.  Primarily links are usually placed in a site&#8217;s header.</td></tr></p>

	<p><tr><td><strong>Secondary Links</strong> can be used for less popular pages, but ones that you want to have available, such as site maps, privacy notices, and contact links.</td></tr></table></p>

	<p>You can assign a menu item to any particular piece of content, or to a collection of items by content type. Drupal assigns numbers to individual items.  The basic content type is called a node, so the default first page of a web site would be at <em>http://your-site.org/node/1</em>.  If you create a blog, the first post would be at <em>http://your-site.org/blog/1</em>.</p>

	<p><div style="margin-left: 25px;width:90%;background-color:#ccc"><strong>Tip</strong>: Be sure that the <strong>Path Module</strong> is enabled. Path lets you can rename items with friendlier names than, say, <em>site/node/113</em>.</div><br />
</p>

	<p>Say you wanted <em>blog/1</em> to be your front page, but you also wanted something easier to remember to appear in the address bar, you could rename it &#8220;home&#8221;, so that people could browse directly to the site at <em>http://your-site.org/home</em>.  They would see, in the center of the home page, that first blog entry.  Drupal&#8217;s general settings allow you to identify your home page; renaming a numeric page simply makes it friendlier for your users.</p>

	<p>If, instead, you simply wanted the whole blog to be the home page, then you would skip the numbers, and not bother with a rename, as linking the front page to <em>http://your-site.org/blog</em> would accomplish that.</p>

	<p>Drupal&#8217;s real power comes in when you realize that, with the <span class="caps">CCK</span> module, you can make your own content types, and that can be very easy.  A press release will have a similar format to a blog item (title, content).  So you can create a type called press_release and link a page to it: <em>http://your-site.org/press_release</em>.  All new press releases that you post to the site from Create Content/Press Release will appear there.</p>

	<p><h3>Blocks</h3><strong>Blocks</strong> are boxes that can be placed on one or more pages or associated with one or more content types.  They usually appear in the left or right sidebars. Strategically associating blocks with particular content can be a subtler way o offer navigational aids.  For example, you might want to have a block with current open positions appear on your &#8220;About&#8221; page, but not necessarily with your blog.  Or you might not want the job listings to appear on pages describing your services, instead featuring a &#8220;Donate Now&#8221; box.  This flexibility allows you to align content in ways that make sense for the different audiences with varying interests that your site will attract.</p>

	<p><h3>Taxonomies</h3>All of the above is fine for sites without a lot of content.  But, once you have a library of blog entries, press releases and documents to share, you&#8217;ll want to give your visitors a way to find what they&#8217;re looking for that doesn&#8217;t involve inordinate amounts of scrolling.  Search is a no-brainer, but even more important is to organize your content with meaningful labels.  For this, use the <strong>Taxonomy</strong> module.</p>

	<p><table><tr><td style="width:55%%"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/StZxBEfgkNI/AAAAAAAAAGg/ZX1WnbB811Q/drupal_taxonomy_terms.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal_taxonomy_terms.png" border="0" width="220" height="390" /></td><td style="width: 50px"></td><br />
<td style="margin-left:25px"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/StZxUSvCwBI/AAAAAAAAAGk/mSsJtRy0W6E/drupal_taxonomy_block.png?imgmax=800" alt="drupal_taxonomy_block.png" border="0" width="151" height="194" /></td></tr></table></p>

	<p>Taxonomies allow you to tag or classify your content using hierarchal terminology.  For example, if your <span class="caps">NPO</span> serves the homeless, you might have papers on poverty and employment, descriptions of available shelters and programs, job opportunities, and much more.  You can break this content down into meaningful categories, then assign sub-terms in each category.  Once the taxonomy is in place, you can assign menu items to terms in your taxonomy, thus aggregating all of the relevant content on a single page.  You can set up menu blocks for the sub-terms and assign each block to it&#8217;s category page. The result is a content rich, drill down web site.</p>

	<p>That&#8217;s it for navigation.  Next week, we&#8217;ll talk about Themes and ways you can make your Drupal site distinctive. <strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/21/drupal-101-more-on-modules/" rel="bookmark" title="October 21, 2009">Drupal 101: More on Modules</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/12/drupal-101/" rel="bookmark" title="October 12, 2009">Drupal 101</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/03/drupal-101-look-and-feel/" rel="bookmark" title="November 3, 2009">Drupal 101: Look and Feel</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/03/24/more-rss-tools-web-site-integration/" rel="bookmark" title="March 24, 2009">More <span class="caps">RSS </span>Tools: Web Site Integration</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/04/09/more-rss-tools-using-google-reader-for-research-and-sharing/" rel="bookmark" title="April 9, 2009">More <span class="caps">RSS </span>Tools: Using Google Reader for Research and Sharing</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 9.842 ms --></p>
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		<title>Drupal 101: More on Modules</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/21/drupal-101-more-on-modules/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/21/drupal-101-more-on-modules/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:26:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[ecommerce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=439</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week, <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101.html">I kicked off this series</a> on setting up a basic web site with <a href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a>, the popular open source <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system">Content Management System</a>. This week we're going to take a closer look at Modules, the Drupal add-ons that can extend your web site's functionality. One of the great things about Drupal is that it is a popular application with a large developer community working with and around it.  So there are <a href="http://drupal.org/project/modules">about a thousand modules</a> that you can use to extend Drupal, covering everything from document management to payment processing. The good news: there's probably one that supports the functionality that you want to add to your web site. Bad news: needle in a haystack?]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/Ss6G_BVbtrI/AAAAAAAAAGE/knjBRx7UO_s/drupal.png?imgmax=800" border="0" alt="drupal.png" width="264" height="84" /><br />
Last week, <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/10/drupal-101.html">I kicked off this series</a> on setting up a basic web site with <a href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a>, the popular open source <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system">Content Management System</a>. This week we&#8217;re going to take a closer look at Modules, the Drupal add-ons that can extend your web site&#8217;s functionality. One of the great things about Drupal is that it is a popular application with a large developer community working with and around it.  So there are <a href="http://drupal.org/project/modules">about a thousand modules</a> that you can use to extend Drupal, covering everything from document management to payment processing. The good news: there&#8217;s probably one that supports the functionality that you want to add to your web site. Bad news: needle in a haystack?</p>

	<p>A potentially easier way to add extra functionality to Drupal is to download a customized version, such as <a href="http://civicrm.org/">CiviCRM</a> or <a href="http://openatrium.com/">Open Atrium</a>.  We&#8217;ll discuss those options later in the Drupal 101 series.</p>

	<p><strong>Core Modules</strong></p>

	<p>Drupal comes with a number of built-in modules that you can optionally enable.  Some are obviously useful, others not so much. Here are some notes on the ones that you might not initially know that you need:<br />
<div style="margin-left:25px">Primary content types like <strong>blog</strong>, <strong>forum</strong> and <strong>book</strong> offer different modules for user input.  They can be combined, or you can pick one for a simple site. Since the differences between, say , a blog (individual journal that people can comment on) and a forum (topical posts that people can reply to) are less distinct than they are in other <span class="caps">CMS</span>&#8217;s, you might want to pick one or two primary content types and then supplement them with more distinctive ones, such as polls or profiles.</p>

	<p>Enabling <strong>contact</strong> allows your users to send private messages to each other on the site, as well as allowing you to set up site-wide contact forms.</p>

	<p><strong>OpenID</strong> allows your users more flexibility and control as to how they log into your site. I can&#8217;t see a good reason not to enable this on a public site. Since more and more people have profiles on social networking sites and Google, tools like <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php">Facebook Connect</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/overview?hl=en">Google Friend Connect</a> should be considered as well.</p>

	<p>By default, Drupal asks new users for a name and email, but not much else.  With the <strong>Profiles</strong> module, you can create custom fields and allow your users to share information much as they would on a social network.</p>

	<p><strong>Taxonomy</strong> is also recommended, and I&#8217;ll talk more about that next week.</p>

	<p><strong>Throttle</strong> should be used on any high-traffic site to improve performance.</p>

	<p>Use <strong>Trigger</strong> if you want to set up alerting and automation on your site.</div><br />
<strong>Add-on modules, must haves:</strong><br />
<div style="margin-left:25px"><strong><a href="http://drupal.org/project/cck"><span class="caps">CCK</span></a> (Content Construction Kit) </strong></p>

	<p>More than some <span class="caps">CMS</span>&#8217;s, Drupal is a content-centric system.  It doesn&#8217;t simply manage content, but the web interface is structured around the content it manages: content types, content metadata (taxonomies), content sources (RSS feeds). Out of the virtual box, Drupal has content types like blog entries, pages and stories.  Each content type has a data entry form associated with it. So, if you create a number of stories, and you want to read them all, then you can browse to the page &#8220;story&#8221; and they&#8217;ll all be listed there.  <span class="caps">CCK</span> helps you create additional content types and use a fairly robust form-builder to customize the screens.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://drupal.org/project/views">Views</a></strong></p>

	<p>The Views module lets you customize the appearance and functionality of many of Drupal&#8217;s standard screens, and to add your own.  Unlike <span class="caps">CCK</span>, which is limited to the default layout of content types, Views lets you seriously customize the interface.  One easy reason to install Views is in order to take advantage of the Calendar view, which gives you not only a full page, graphical calendar to add events to and display, but also sidebar calendar widgets and upcoming event lists.</p>

	<p><p style="font-style:italic">Here&#8217;s a tip: setting up the calendar view is reasonably tedious.  The best write-up explaining it (for Drupal 6) is here: <a href="http://drupal.org/node/326061#comment-1077193">http://drupal.org/node/326061</a>.  Drupal&#8217;s documentation is okay, but this is step-by-step.  It does miss one step, though, which is to add the &#8220;Event Date &#8211; From date&#8221; and &#8220;Event Date &#8211; To date&#8221; to the Fields listing (with friendlier titles, like &#8220;From&#8221; and &#8220;To&#8221;). Otherwise, calendar items show on the day they were submitted instead of the day that they are occurring.</p></p>

	<p><p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/Ss6A0yv7lEI/AAAAAAAAAGA/fMZ79wS3dSk/calendar_view.png?imgmax=800" border="0" alt="calendar_view.png" width="300" height="354" /></p></p>

	<p>There&#8217;s a good case to be made that these two modules should be folded into Drupal&#8217;s base package, because, in addition to providing very powerful customization features to the core product, there are a whole slew of additional modules that require their presence.  If you plan to install a number of modules and/or customize your site, these are pretty much pre-requisites, so just grab and install them.</p>

	<p><strong>Contenders:</strong><br />
<div style="margin-left:25px"><strong><a href="http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg"><span class="caps">WYSIWYG </span>Editors</a></strong></p>

	<p>What-You-See-Is-What-You Get, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format">Rich Text Format</a> (RTE) editors transform Drupal&#8217;s default data input boxes into flexible editors with Word-like toolbars. The <span class="caps">WSYIWYG</span> module lets you install the editor of your choice. I&#8217;ve done well with <a href="http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor"><span class="caps">FCK</span>Editor</a> (recently rebranded <a href="http://ckeditor.com/">CKEditor</a>, thank you!). The <a href="http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg"><span class="caps">WYSIWYG</span> module</a> lets you work with multiple <span class="caps">RTE</span> packages and strategically assign them to different fields and content types. Most <span class="caps">RTE</span> editors are very configurable, but note that, in addition to installing the modules, you need to install the editors themselves, so follow the instructions carefully.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://drupal.org/project/og">Organic Groups</a></strong></p>

	<p>If you&#8217;re building a community site, with hopes of having lots of interactive, social features, Organic Groups gives you the flexibility to not only create all sorts of groups and affiliations on your own, but let your users create their own groups as well, much like Facebook does.  For an interactive site, this is essential.</p>

	<p><strong>E-Commerce/Donations</strong></p>

	<p>Many modules are available for either integrating with <a href="http://drupal.org/project/ec_authorize_net">Authorize.net</a> or <a href="http://drupal.org/project/simple_paypal">Paypal</a>, or setting up your own e-commerce site. The aptly named <a href="http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce">e-Commerce</a> module and <a href="http://drupal.org/project/ubercart">Ubercart</a> are among the better known and supported options.</div><br />
Drupal fans: what modules do you recommend? Which do you install first? Leave your recommendations in the comments.</p>

	<p>Next week, we&#8217;ll talk about menus, blocks and taxonomies: Drupal 101: Navigation.</div><strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/27/drupal-101-navigation/" rel="bookmark" title="October 27, 2009">Drupal 101: Navigation</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/03/drupal-101-look-and-feel/" rel="bookmark" title="November 3, 2009">Drupal 101: Look and Feel</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/12/drupal-101/" rel="bookmark" title="October 12, 2009">Drupal 101</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/04/22/adventures-in-web-site-migration/" rel="bookmark" title="April 22, 2010">Adventures In Web Site Migration</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/01/04/things-you-might-not-know-about/" rel="bookmark" title="January 4, 2010">Things You Might Not Know About&#8230;</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 8.407 ms --></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Drupal 101</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/12/drupal-101/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/12/drupal-101/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:24:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[ecommerce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=392</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I've been doing a lot of work with the open source content management system <a href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a> lately, and thought I'd share some thoughts on how to get a new site up and running. Drupal, you might recall, got high ratings in <a href="http://www.idealware.org/comparing_os_cms/download.php">Idealware's March '09 report comparing open source content management systems</a>. Despite it's popularity, <a href="http://robozen.com/technology/drupal-sucks/">there are some detractors</a> who make good points, but I find Drupal to be flexible, powerful and customizable enough to meet a lot of my web development needs. ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p>I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of work with the open source content management system <a href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a> lately, and thought I&#8217;d share some thoughts on how to get a new site up and running. Drupal, you might recall, got high ratings in <a href="http://www.idealware.org/comparing_os_cms/download.php">Idealware&#8217;s March &#8216;09 report comparing open source content management systems</a>. Despite it&#8217;s popularity, <a href="http://robozen.com/technology/drupal-sucks/">there are some detractors</a> who make good points, but I find Drupal to be flexible, powerful and customizable enough to meet a lot of my web development needs.</p>

	<p>While you can put together a very sophisticated online community and/or website with it, you can also use it for pretty simple things. For example, the <a href="http://nptech.info/">nptech aggregator at nptech,info</a> uses Drupal&#8217;s excellent <span class="caps">RSS</span> aggregation functions extensively, and not much else. No blog, no forums.  But, having installed and tried standalone <span class="caps">RSS</span> aggregators like <a href="http://gregarius.net/">Gregarius</a>, it became clear that Drupal was just as good an aggregator and, if desired, much, much more. Similarly, when co-workers were looking for a site to share documents with optional commenting (to replace an <span class="caps">FTP</span> repository), Drupal was a good choice to support a simple task without locking out growth possibilities.</p>

	<p><strong>Installation</strong></p>

	<p>Installing Drupal can be a three click process or a unix command line nightmare, depending on your circumstances.  These days, there are simple options.  If you are using a web host, check to see if your site management console is the popular <a href="http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpanelwhm/">CPanel</a>, and, if so, if it includes the <a href="http://www.netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php">Fantastico</a> utility. Fantastico offers automated installs for many popular open source CMSes, blogs and utilities.</p>

	<p>Absent Fantastico, your host might have something similar, or you can download the Drupal source and follow the instructions. Required skills include the ability to modify text files, change file and folder permissions, and create a <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/">MySQL</a> database. At a minimum, <span class="caps">FTP</span> access to your server, or a good, web-based file manager, will be required.</p>

	<p>If you&#8217;re installing on your own server, things to be aware of are that you&#8217;ll need to have <a href="http://php.net"><span class="caps">PHP</span></a>, MySQL and a decent web server, such as <a href="http://ww.apache.org">Apache</a> installed (these are generally installed by default on Linux, but not on Windows). If you use Linux, consumer-focused Linux variants like <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu</a> and <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora</a> will have current versions of these applications, properly configured. More robust Linux distributions, like <a href="http://www.redhat.com/rhel/">Redhat Enterprise</a>, sometimes suffer from their cautious approach by including software versions that are obsolete.  I&#8217;m a big fan of <a href="http://www.centos.org/">Centos,</a> the free version of Red Hat Enterprise, but I&#8217;m frustrated that it comes with an older, insecure version of <span class="caps">PHP</span> and only very annoying ways to remedy that.</p>

	<p><strong>Up and Running</strong></p>

	<p>Once installed, Drupal advises you to configure and customize your web site.  There are some key decisions to be made, and the success of the configuration process will be better assured if you have a solid idea as to what your web site is going to be used for.  With that clearly defined, you can configure the functionality, metadata, site structure, and look and feel of your web site.</p>

	<p><ol><li><strong>Install and enable Modules</strong>. Which of the core modules (the ones included in the Drupal pacckage) need to be enabled, and what additional modules are required in order to build your site?  This is the first place I go.</li></p>

	<p><li><strong>Define the site Taxonomy</strong>.  While you can build a site without a taxonomy, you should only do so for a simple site.  A well structured taxonomy helps you make your site navigable; enhances searching; and provides a great tool for pyramid-style content management, with broad topics on one level and the ability to refine and dig deeper intuitively built into the site.</li></p>

	<p><li><strong>Structure your site with Blocks</strong>. You can define blocks, assign them to regions on a page (such as the sidebars or header) and restrict them to certain pages.  On the theory that a good web site navigates the user through the site intelligently, based on what they click, the ability to dynamically highlight different content on different pages is one of Drupal&#8217;s real strengths.</li></p>

	<p><li><strong>Theme your web site</strong>.  Don&#8217;t settle for the default themes&#8212;there are hundreds (or thousands) to choose from.  Go to <a href="http://themegarden.org/drupal6/">Drupal Theme Garden</a> and find one that meets your needs, then tweak it.  You can do a lot with a good theme and the built in thee design tools, or, if you&#8217;re a web developer, you can modify your themes <span class="caps">PHP</span> and <span class="caps">CSS</span> to create something completely unique.  Just be sure that you followed the installation suggestions as to where to store themes and modules so that they won&#8217;t get overwritten by an upgrade.</li></ol></p>

	<p>This just brushes the surface, so I&#8217;ll do some deeper dives into Drupal configuration over the next few weeks.<br />
<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/11/03/drupal-101-look-and-feel/" rel="bookmark" title="November 3, 2009">Drupal 101: Look and Feel</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/21/drupal-101-more-on-modules/" rel="bookmark" title="October 21, 2009">Drupal 101: More on Modules</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/10/27/drupal-101-navigation/" rel="bookmark" title="October 27, 2009">Drupal 101: Navigation</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/03/24/more-rss-tools-web-site-integration/" rel="bookmark" title="March 24, 2009">More <span class="caps">RSS </span>Tools: Web Site Integration</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/01/27/bit-by-bitly/" rel="bookmark" title="January 27, 2009">Bit by Bitly!</a></li><br />
</ul><!-- Similar Posts took 8.141 ms --></p>
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		<title>Is Google Wave a Tidal Wave?</title>
		<link>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/08/is-google-wave-a-tidal-wave/</link>
		<comments>http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/08/is-google-wave-a-tidal-wave/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:45:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Campbell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[email]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idealware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nptech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open APIs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techcafeteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=310</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Google is on a fishing expedition to see if we're willing to take web-surfing to a whole new level.  My colleague <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/06/google-wave-what-might-email-look-like.html">Steve Backman introduced us to Google Wave</a> a few months ago. I attended a developer's preview at <a href="http://home.techsoup.org/pages/default.aspx">Techsoup</a> Headquarters last week, and I have some additional thoughts to share.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[	<p><div style="text-align:center"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_koCkQHyc58k/SpiRjfTbcEI/AAAAAAAAAFg/xXp-rLR9IJM/800px-Hokusai21_great-wave.jpg?imgmax=800" alt="800px-Hokusai21_great-wave.jpg" border="0" width="450" height="306" /><br />
&#8220;The Great Wave off Kanagawa&#8221; by <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Hokusai21_great-wave.jpg&#038;imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hokusai21_great-wave.jpg&#038;usg=__bqIKPOdHPjYs2SdnxF1e6_yt1_Y=&#038;h=2110&#038;w=3100&#038;sz=1729&#038;hl=en&#038;start=86&#038;sig2=QGPwVT8AYTVL2BAnD90kpg&#038;um=1&#038;tbnid=rjajg1rkY-g1qM:&#038;tbnh=102&#038;tbnw=150&#038;prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwave%26imgtbs%3Dr%26as_st%3Dy%26ndsp%3D20%26as_rights%3D%28cc_publicdomain%257Ccc_attribute%257Ccc_sharealike%257Ccc_noncommercial%257Ccc_nonderived%29%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26start%3D80%26um%3D1&#038;ei=75CYSrafNI6otgOPxbiNAg">Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)</a>.</div></p>

	<p>Google is on a fishing expedition to see if we&#8217;re willing to take web-surfing to a whole new level.&#160; My colleague <a href="http://www.idealware.org/blog/2009/06/google-wave-what-might-email-look-like.html">Steve Backman introduced us to Google Wave</a> a few months ago. I attended a developer&#8217;s preview at <a href="http://home.techsoup.org/pages/default.aspx">Techsoup</a> Headquarters last week, and I have some additional thoughts to share.</p>

	<p>Google&#8217;s introduction of Wave is nothing if not ambitious.&#160; As opposed to saying &#8220;We have a new web mashup tool&#8221; or &#8220;We&#8217;ve taken multimedia email to a new level&#8221;, they&#8217;re pitching Wave as nothing less than the successor to email.&#160; My question, after seeing the demo, is &#8220;Is that an outrageous claim, or a way too modest one?&#8221;.</p>

	<p>The early version of Google Wave I saw looked a lot like <a href="http://mail.google.com/">Gmail</a>, with a folder list on the left and &#8220;wave&#8221; list next to it. Unlike Gmail, a third pane to the right included an area where you can compose waves, so Wave is three-columner to Gmail&#8217;s two.</p>

	<p>A wave is a collaborative document that can be updated by numerous people in real-time.&#160; This means that, if we&#8217;re both working in the same wave, you can see what I&#8217;m typing, letter by letter, as I can see what you add. This makes <a href="http://www.twitter.com/">Twitter</a> seem like the new snail mail. It&#8217;s a pretty powerful step for collaborative technology. But it&#8217;s also quite a cultural change for those of us who appreciate computer-based communications for the incorporated spell-check and the ability to edit and finalize drafted messages before we send them.</p>

	<p>Waves can include text, photos, film clips, forms, and any active content that could go into a <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices?hl=en">Google Gadget</a>. If you check out <a href="http://www.google.com/ig">iGoogle</a>, Google&#8217;s personal portal page, you can see the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?hl=en&#038;root=/ig&#038;igtab=Tools&#038;dpos=top">wide assortment of gadgets</a> that are available and imagine how you would use them&#8212;or things like them&#8212;in a collaborative document. News feeds, polls, games, utilities, and the list goes on.</p>

	<p>You share waves with any other wave users that you choose to share with.&#160; User-level security is being written into the platform, so that you can share waves as read-only or only share certain content in waves with particular people.</p>

	<p>Given these two tidbits, it occurred to me that each wave was far more like a little <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extranet">Extranet</a> than an email message. This is why I think Google&#8217;s being kind of coy when they call it an email killer &#8211; it&#8217;s a <a href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx">Sharepoin</a>t killer.&#160; It&#8217;s possibly a <a href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a> (or fill in your favorite <span class="caps">CMS</span> here) killer.&#160; It&#8217;s certainly an evolution of <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/">Google Apps</a>, with pretty much all of that functionality rolled into a model that, instead of saying &#8220;I have a document, spreadsheet or website to share&#8221; says &#8220;I want to share, and, once we&#8217;re sharing, we can share websites, spreadsheets, documents and whatever&#8221;.&#160; Put another way, Google Apps is an information management tool with some collaborative and communication features.&#160; Google Wave is a communications platform with a rich set of information management tools. It&#8217;s Google Docs inverted.</p>

	<p>So, Google Wave has the potential to be very disruptive technology, as long as people:<br />
<ul></p>
	<p><li>Adopt it; </li><br />
<li>Feel comfortable with it; and</li><br />
<li>Trust Google.</li><br />
</ul></p>

	<p>Next week, I&#8217;ll spend a little time on the gotcha&#8217;s &#8211; please add your thoughts and concerns in the comments.<strong>Similar Posts:</strong><ul class="similar-posts"><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/12/07/wave-impressions/" rel="bookmark" title="December 7, 2009">Wave Impressions</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/09/16/swept-up-in-a-google-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="September 16, 2009">Swept Up in a Google wave</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/02/23/npo-evaluation-ie6-still-waters-for-wave/" rel="bookmark" title="February 23, 2010"><span class="caps">NPO </span>Evaluation, <span class="caps">IE6</span>, Still Waters for Wave</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2011/07/13/why-google-will-succeed-where-wave-and-buzz-failed/" rel="bookmark" title="July 13, 2011">Why Google+ Will Succeed Where Wave And Buzz Failed</a></li></p>

	<p><li><a href="http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2009/08/27/evaluating-wikis/" rel="bookmark" title="August 27, 2009">Evaluating Wikis</a></li><br />
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