Blogs

O'Reilly has a terrific series of books that might be of interest to nonprofits trying to leverage new web technologies. I thought I'd list some of them here (you can collect the whole set on the O'Reilly site). This list demonstrates two additional things. The first is easy: if you're not acquainted with Google Books, this'll get you there fast -- just click on some of the titles below.

The second is not quite as simple, but it's a hack worth knowing about. To generate the following list, I first searched Google Books for "inpublisher:O'Reilly hacks" -- you can try it right here. Then, I highlighted a bunch of the results. You need to use FireFox for this, because the next step is to "View Selection Source" from the context menu. Then you just Control-C to copy the HTML, paste it into a web page template or blog posting window, edit the living crap out of it, and you get something like this...

Amazon Hacks by Paul Bausch - 2003 - 302 pages Page 20 - O'Reilly O'Reilly ... [ More results from this book ]

Google Hacks by Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest - Computers - 2004 - 443 pages Page xx - Andrew is the author of Word Hacks, also published by O'Reilly. He developed and maintains the custom Word template and VBA macros used by all the O'Reilly ... [ More results from this book ]

Firefox Hacks: Tips & Tools for Next-Generation Web Browsing by Nigel McFarlane - Computers - 2005 - 377 pages Page ii - Linux Desktop Hacks Test Driving Linux Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide XML Hacks Flash Out of the Box Knoppix Hacks Talk Is Cheap Windows XP ... [ More results from this book ]

Podcasting Hacks by Jack Herrington - Computers - 2005 - 453 pages Page 266 - Then you get an associate ID that you tack onto the end of any Amazon ... Amazon provides several formatting options, including the usual text links. ... [ More results from this book ]

PDF Hacks by Sid Steward - Computers - 2004 - 296 pages Page - ... .comicatalog select the book, and follow the “Examples

Here's Robert Scoble (via my flickr stream) saying a few words during the Global Voices London Summit.  He refers to that moment in a post about netsquared titled Making the World a Better Place Through Your Browser.  And, here's an article from OpenDemocracy briefly touching on that moment.

Not sure as I write this if it will be the 50th post here on this article, but chancing it. PNN Online had a nice piece yesterday on the new site...

TechSoup NetSquared, the project to increase nonprofit effectiveness through Web-based social tools, has added a case study section to its website. "Net2 in Action" highlights more than 30 real-life examples of nonprofits using this new breed of Web-based technologies to tackle issues such as reaching and mobilizing constituencies.

Similar to their corporate counterparts, nonprofits are discovering that they can increase their effectiveness while maintaining lower operating costs by utilizing Web-based and open source tools. These innovative tools are meeting the fundraising, grassroots mobilization, volunteer engagement, and issue awareness needs of many organizations.

We had some more case studies added this week by our fabulous Net2Builders Paul T., Emily W. and "Vlogine".  Check 'em out:

Word of Blog

Moving Ideas

Pambazuka News

Grameen Foundation USA

Civic Space

And looking through the NetSquared news aggregator, here are a few gems that folks tagged with "net 2" in del.icio.us  that stood out for me:

The Walker Art Center Blogs

How Wikis Are Changing Our View of the World, an article from CNET

Tsunami-inspired FSF Award Focuses on Humanity an article from Tectonic

I use the net2 tag to bookmark

• nonprofit related blogs
• blog entries that I think are interesting related to nonprofits
• websites and blogs about new technologies which will help with keeping nonprofits current

I tag alot of these nonprofit blogs/websites to see how many nonprofits are using these technologies.

Maybe I see alot of organizations using these technologies. Would I include all of these in case studies? No, I wouldn't. In order for it to be a netsquared project, it needs to be different. Is an organization using more than one of these technologies? What is their purpose in using them? I ask myself questions like this.

http://dataplace.org/ is a free web-based GIS tool for getting all kinds of data about any given area of the US down to the census tract.

Pix from the December Net Tuesday are now on Flickr:

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/net2/

The next Net Tuesday will be held on January 10, 2006. It iwill be back at Varnish in San Francisco (location of our first event!):

I'm really happy to tell you that we've finally nailed down a location, Hotel Nikko San Francisco, and new date, May 8 and 9, 2006 for the TechSoup NetSquared Conference. For those of you who had already saved our old dates (April 26/27), I apologize for the change - we couldn't find a good venue on those dates.

 So, please save the new date, May 8 and 9, and please plan to come! It'll be a great conference.

For more information, see our Conference section.

A while back I wrote about Remember the Milk and Ta-da lists and lamented the fact that there wasn't an easy way to get the content onto a website.  Of course, because they don't offer it, it doesn't mean that it can't be done.

Stowe Boyd points out  that you both products produce RSS feeds.  Those feeds can be run through a service, like FeedDigest. The result?  A bit of javascript that you can place onto your website.  Why is that nice?  It means you can track a list and use the functionality of the services (easy to add items, sharing and -- in the case of Remember the Milk -- an ability to add a due date and other levels of information to the item and the list) but have that list appear on a website.  An easy way to show what you are working on in your organization.  It seems like this could be especially nice when working on a project with volunteers.

I've been working head down for so long that I've forgotten to pull up and look around.  My aggregator's groaning with the weight of items I want to share via the net2 tag. I'll tell the truth: I've been head down because I've been suffering from a little doubt.

We started this with, well, if you've been around for a while you remember the first version of this site. And in the labs here, we've been working hard to make our vision real -- a community coming together to share knowledge, build solutions and connect with one another.  As I look around, it feels like it's starting to happen.