Resource Roundup 5/31

Writing Tools: Just Add Inspiration (Beaconfire Wire)
A look at software that aids writing quality - such as tools that generate tag clouds from your text and analyze the grade level of your writing

Four Lessons for Organizational Blogs (INFluence)
Some great, tactical advice on organizational blogging from ForumOne

Building a Widget Response Network (Technically Speaking)
An interesting proposal for a network for widgets which would allow a network to deploy a campaign virtually instantaneously

Wikis in Plain English (CommonCraft)
From the folks who brought us the popular "RSS in Plain English" video, here's a similarly useful and engaging look at Wikis

Make Communication Tools Simple and Ubiquitous (How To Change the World)
A thought piece on the key ingredients that are necessary to ensure communication and social networking tools are widely used

Using Google Docs and Spreadsheets for Online Collaboration (Wild Apricot Blog)
An interesting how-to on using Google Docs and Spreadsheets to collaborate with people in real time.

Skypecasting For Beginners - Free Audio Conferencing For Up To 100 Participants (Robin Good)
Detailed directions on how to setup a skypecast - an audio conference - using skype, which is a great conference call possibility especially if you have a number of participants outside the US.

7 Ways to Send HUGE Files (Mashable)
A roundup of methods that let you send files of more than 500MB (as well as more rationally large files, presumably)

Using Partimage to Clone Hard Disks (pittman.ws)
A detailed how-to on replicating (ghosting) hard drives with Partimage, an open source alternative to Norton Ghost

Google and Salesforce Team Up (Tate Hausman)
Rumor has it that Google and Salesforce are teaming up to create an integrated tool suite. Tate Hausman describes what that might mean for nonprofits.

Facebook's New Open Platform (Fortune)
Facebook opens up it's platform to allow anyone to create their own FaceBook widget.

New articles: Constituent Management Extravaganza!

It’s a constituent management extravaganza! This month, our new articles offer two different lenses on the issues of constituent tracking. First up, with have the first of a two part series from the ever insightful Paul Hagen: In Search of CRM Part 1: Understanding Constituents and Processes. This article summarizes how you can get a good handle on the constituents and processes you’ll need to support with a Constituent Relationship Management system. In the second part, coming next month, he’ll talk about how to use this information to look for a CRM technology solution that will work for you.

We’ve also got a great constituent tracking article for small organizations: Tales of River Databases: Tracking Constituents in Small and Mid-Sized Organizations. This was a fun article to write. Working with the River Network, who generously funded the article, we spoke to a series of organizations that work for the protection and conservation of US lakes and rivers about their constituent database situation and needs, and wrote up a summary of the best practices and a few case studies that speak to the needs of these smaller organizations.

Resource Roundup 5/21

5 Free Online Video Editing Sites Reviewed (ExtremeTech)
Useful reviews of five free online tools that allow you to do basic video editing - such as scene transitions, cuts, splices, loops, audio overlays.

New Media Case Studies (Media Trust)
A great collection of case studies of how organizations are using Web 2.0 technologies.

Online Fundraising Tactics: What Works? (TechSoup)
M&R Strategies provides a quantitative comparison of various fundraising strategies, including multiple appeal campaigns, deadline driven campaigns, matching gifts, and dollar goals.

Nonprofit Success with Salesforce (Salesforce Developer Wiki)
A how-to guide summarizing how Salesforce.org can work for nonprofits.

Beyond Message Boards - Ideas for the New Communities (CommonCraft)
A thoughtful laundry-list of technology tools that can be used to help build community.

Virtual Collaboration: If You Can't Work Side-by-Side (How to Save the World)
A detailed look at the pros and cons of using various tools for long distance collaboration

An Introduction to KM (CIO)
Great high level overview of the concepts behind KM - as an organizational concept in addition to a software construct

Falling for Facebook (Social Signal)
A detailed look at what Facebook is, and why it might be useful to you

Designing Inward Out
A blog documenting the design and build of a website for America's Rivers, using Convio's platform

Useful online fundraising tools for nonprofits (Cool and Conscientious)
Paul Lamb's Top 11 online ways to raise money for your nonprofit without going to a foundation, spamming your friends, or hiring an uber geek

Why do email newsletters? (ICT Hub Knowledgebase)
A good basic overview of why email newsletters are worth considering for almost every organization

Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education (PoducateMe)
An online book covering everything you need to know about creating a podcast. It targets educational audiences, but is applicable to others as well.

The New Google Analytics

Well, wouldn't you know it: pretty much as soon as we publish a Few Good Tools article about web analytics packages, Google launches their complete interface redesign of Google Analytics. A Google staffer offers a comprehensive overview of the redesign on his blog.

Not that it changes much about what I would have said about Analytics. I'd just be even more glowing. I have to admit that the old Analytics was pretty and shiny and seemed like it *ought* to be telling you a lot of stuff, but I always found it hard to drill down to exactly what I was hoping to see. I've just started to play around with the new Analytics, but it feels amazingly more intuitive. In fact, it feels like it has much more information than it used to.... though perhaps it's just easier to access that information.

The interface design was led by Jeffrey Venn, one of the founding fathers of website interface design. You can tell. The interface is a fantastic example of giving people a high level view (with substance but not overwhelming) and allowing them to drill down where needed. You can customize your view if you want, but you don't have to customize to get something pretty useful. It really shows the difference between useful and the merely nifty.

And how's this for intuitive: I had tried to setup conversion goals in the old Analytics, to measure eNews signup and donations. I didn't have a lot of time to play around with them, and I never got them to show me anything at all. But magically, with this new release, they've just started working by themselves. So that's a huge plus for the new Analytics: a number of people have mentioned trouble with that feature, but now it appears to be within the reach of mere mortals.

Resource Roundup 5/11

10 Skype tips for the Advanced (I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate blog)
As the title would imply, some practical Skype tips for advanced users

Making the Most of Netvibes for Learning, Advocacy, Marketing and Customer Service (Bamboo Project Blog)
A rich description of Netvibes - an online "start" page you can use to manage news feeds, tasks, calendars, etc - and how it could be useful to nonprofits.

10 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Blogs and Bloggers to Support Their Cause (Rory Gale Diary)
Useful advice on how to work the blogosphere for PR purposes

Online Video Marketing: Ten Ways You Can Use YouTube To Promote Your Online Content (Robin Good)
Practical advice on using YouTube to promote your online videos

Guide to Shooting, Editing, and Publishing Online Videos (MakeInternetTV)
A fabulous step-by-step guide to everything you need to know in order to make and publish videos online

Online PDF Conversion Tools: A Mini-Guide (Kollabora)
A roundup of tools that allow you to convert any document into a PDF file

Prepping and Posting your Video to the Web (NEFilm)
A great summary of what you should consider when posting a video to the web, how to prep your vidoe, and when you might want to use a less well-known site - like blip.tv or Ourmedia - as opposed to YouTube.

Museums Join the Tagging Movement (NYTimes)
An interesting article about the Smithsonian's intiative to ask website visitors to tag works of art, and the successful - and idiosyncratic - tags it generated.

Why Shiny <> Useful (WorldChanging)
Ethan Zucherman of GlobalVoices discusses how we can get distracted by shiny internet features(I've been calling this niftiness) and lose our focus on the useful

Joomla vs. Drupal (Communicopia)
An interesting comparison of Joomla to Drupal, which adds some additional points and perspectives to our own comparison

Bridging the Innovation Divide: New Report

PolicyLink and BCT Partners have a released a great new report: Bridging the Innovation Divide: An Agenda for Disseminating Technology Innovations within the Nonprofit Sector

The report hasn't received a lot of attention in the NPTech realm, but it should: it's a must-read for anyone provide technology support to nonprofits. The authors present a well-articulated argument and framework for helping small organizations access the innovations available through technology. There's also twelve interesting case studies, showing how programs in Neighborhood Information Systems, E-Advocacy, Internet-based Microenterprise Support, and Community Technology Access have made real differences in how nonprofits achieve their mission.

Go read it. Tell your friends.