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News for June 2002

27 June 2002

The Medium is Not the Literacy
	In The Medium is Not the Literacy, Jamie McKenzie disects the term "digital literacy" and offers a broader perspective on education and new technologies. Posted: 6/27/02; 10:00:32 AM #

Building Creative Communities Partnerships
	Building Creative Communities Partnerships describes the work of a conference happening in the next few days in New Orleans, devoted to the sustainability of arts organizations. Posted: 6/27/02; 10:00:16 AM #

Bad Customer Service Email
	Leslie O'Flahavan and Marilynne Rudick look at the common mistakes of customer service email, all of which apply to how nonprofit organizations respond to their constituents. Posted: 6/27/02; 10:00:01 AM #

Campaign to encourage schoolchildren to give and volunteer
	An English campaign to encourage schoolchildren to give and volunteer targets the 57% of kids who say they would like to do more. I like this sort of thing, but I wonder if it carries over into career choices or if it perpetuates the idea that we leave our values behind at work. Posted: 6/27/02; 9:59:45 AM #

6th Annual Technology Conference Themes
	The 6th Annual Technology Conference on the use of new technology in social work and allied disciplines is still accepting abstracts for presentations. The conference is in August, 2002 at the University of South Carolina. Posted: 6/27/02; 9:59:15 AM #

26 June 2002

Hollering into Cyberspace
	In Hollering into Cyberspace, Allie Gottlieb looks at online petition sites and concludes that there is a high correlation between lowering the effort involved in activism and lowering its resulting effectiveness. Posted: 6/26/02; 3:00:16 PM #

Internet founders worry about controls

At this week's Internet Society meeting, the people who founded the Internet and others worried about the controls being places by government and business. In particular, they identify assymetrical bandwidth and other technical controls as leading to the erosion of democratic values and innovation. They speak strongly in favor of open standards and protocols. As the nonprofit sector transfers more and more of its work online, are they listening? Posted: 6/26/02; 2:59:59 PM #

Deep Linking
	The American Library Association has a great collection of annotated links about deep linking. Personally, I fall into the school of thought that says the links to my content are actually more valuable to me than my content itself is. Posted: 6/26/02; 2:59:43 PM #

21 June 2002

Ghana's Digital Dilemma
	In Ghana's Digital Dilemma, Pascal Zachary looks at the range of challenges and solutions faced by people tackling the digital divide in West Africa. Posted: 6/21/02; 10:08:28 AM #

Indymedia NL ordered to remove links
	In a blow to independent media and another absurd hit on the essential building block of the Internet, a Dutch judge has ordered Indymedia NL to remove even indirect links to instructions for disabling trains intended for anti-nuclear activists. Posted: 6/21/02; 10:08:10 AM #

EFF Privacy Game
	The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released the Carabella Game to help people learn about privacy and other online rights. Posted: 6/21/02; 10:01:57 AM #

19 June 2002

NPR Linking Policy
	What nonsense! This is like saying I can't give you the address of a business without their permission and is completely antithetical to the entire nature of the web. National Public Radio has a linking policy that says that I need to get written permission before I point to them, including the preceding link to their linking request form, I presume. Posted: 6/19/02; 6:49:09 PM #

SSRC IT and Global Security Resources
	The Social Science Research Council maintains a superb set of annotated links on the subject of resources and publications related to Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security. Posted: 6/19/02; 2:09:53 PM #

Dot Org Registry Proposals
	The Dot Org Registry Proposals are in. Look carefully at the commercial connections. They are insidious. Posted: 6/19/02; 2:09:32 PM #

18 June 2002

Patently Absurd
	In Patently Absurd, Gary Reback describes how IBM threatened Sun Microsystems with an intellectually bankrupt, but disturbingly effective, legal threat. Does anyone doubt that intellectual property rights that have run amok will be used against nonprofits, particularly ones that threaten business interests? Posted: 6/18/02; 9:54:50 AM #

Libraries versus publishers
	Here is just one example of the use of intellectual property laws against nonprofit goals: The battle over access to online books. Posted: 6/18/02; 9:54:23 AM #

16 June 2002

Competition for the .org domain registry
	The .org domain name registry will be transfered to a nonprofit organization this year. Of course the question is, will it really? Posted: 6/16/02; 10:32:32 AM #

RFP to digitize congressional postal mail
	I find this totally fascinating. After previously conveying their opinion that postal mail has more influence than email, the U.S. House of representatives now wants to digitize their postal mail (PDF file) before it gets to their office. Posted: 6/16/02; 10:32:07 AM #

13 June 2002

Managing Enterprise Content
	In Managing Enterprise Content (PDF), John Purcell gives an excellent general overview to the concept and importance of content management. He covers all the core elements of content workflow and distribution and the document can serve as a good starting point for learning about typical CMS feature sets. Posted: 6/13/02; 11:30:51 AM #

How to Revive a 'Zombie' CMS
	Content Management Systems are designed, among other things, to make it easier to keep a web site up to date. In How to Revive a Zombie Content Management System, Australian consultant James Robertson offers his advice for what to do when it fails to achieve that goal. Posted: 6/13/02; 11:30:39 AM #

12 June 2002

The evolving nature of the public domain
	Nonprofit organizations have a lot at stake in the current intellectual property debates. In our own local paper (The Seattle Times) Sarah Lai Stirland explores the evolving nature of the public domain. Posted: 6/12/02; 11:12:09 AM #

scaling up miscommunication in email
	In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Young looks at the potential for miscommunication in email. Posted: 6/12/02; 11:11:57 AM #

8 June 2002

Open Source Intelligence
	In Open Source Intelligence, Felix Stalder and Jesse Hirch look at application of the collaborative principles of open source software to the development of knowledge bases instead of code. I don't think there is enough to go on here yet, but it's intriguing. Posted: 6/8/02; 5:43:35 PM #

Managing Think Tanks
	Managing Think Tanks: A Practical Guide for Maturing Organizations, by Raymond J. Struyk , is available in its entirety online. It's a really practical book on managing a thinking environment, with chapters on teams, quality control, and communication of results. Posted: 6/8/02; 5:43:13 PM #

Engineering for Impact
	Engineering for Impact is a "new networking tool for engineers interested in tackling the design challenges posed by under-served communities around the world". It is essentially an online database of contacts and links that allow engineers to make connections with opportunities for participation in socially motivated engineering projects. Posted: 6/8/02; 5:42:20 PM #

Examination of 100 Open Source Projects
	The nonprofit world is trying to understand how to make open source software work for it. I'm convinced that the interest is valuable, but sometimes naive. Sandeep Krsihnamurthy's Examination of 100 Open Source Projects should help focus our efforts a bit. Posted: 6/8/02; 5:41:52 PM #

Setting Up A Technology Use Policy
	Technological change is a process of managing risks. The Nonprofit Risk Management Center offers some tips for setting up a technology use policy that addresses some of those risks. Posted: 6/8/02; 5:41:18 PM #

7 June 2002

Toward Interoperabile Digital Libraries

On the Internet, it seems we are all librarians. At the very least we maintain bookmarks and folders, but if we have a web site, we are often in the digital library business. My regular readers will know how much I champion the cause of interoperability, so Howard Besser's article on Moving from Isolated Digital Collections to Interoperable Digital Libraries will understand how important this is. Having just had a very frustrating experience trying to build some very simple interoperability between Nonprofit Online News and another information source, this issue is very much on my mind. Posted: 6/7/02; 1:34:22 PM #

Contentbank.org
	Although it's a bit riddled with popups and plugins, Contentbank.org looks like a well conceived web application designed to increase the amount of content that is of use to low income and underserved communities. In fairness, some of the whizbang features are there to support people of moderate literacy with use of the site. Posted: 6/7/02; 1:34:04 PM #

A Plan of One's Own
	The Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers has made their their new 44-page booklet, A Plan of One's Own (PDF file), on philanthropic giving among women, available as a free download. Posted: 6/7/02; 1:33:41 PM #

Wilson's 29 item checklist for web site promotion
	Ralph Wilson offers 29 tips to promote a web site and (finally) we are starting to see email strategies. They don't get top billing, but this is progress. Posted: 6/7/02; 1:33:14 PM #

5 June 2002

Scientists hope to download some insight into online interac
	In Science News, Bruce Bower surveys the surveys of Internet usage and community in an article subtitled "Scientists hope to download some insight into online interactions". Posted: 6/5/02; 10:01:04 AM #

Procurement policy and competition and security in software
	Procurement policy and competition and security in software markets is an open letter to the U.S. government about the use of government purchasing power to improve competition and security in software markets. Posted: 6/5/02; 10:00:47 AM #

Taiwan to move to open source software
	The government of Taiwan has announced a major initiative toward open source software. Posted: 6/5/02; 10:00:30 AM #

Review of 2002 GEO Conference
	Todd Cohen reviews the plenaries of the 2002 GEO Conference, with a particular emphasis on the knowledge sharing goals shared by the conference attendees. Posted: 6/5/02; 10:00:09 AM #

4 June 2002

J R R Tolkien was an information architect
	Like many of us, Gerry McGovern is rereading Lord of the Rings. He observes that J R R Tolkien was an information architect. Posted: 6/4/02; 11:41:22 AM #

Techfoundation announce first 12 grants
	The TechFoundation has announced its first 12 grants. I would love to know what the grants were actually for! Posted: 6/4/02; 11:41:09 AM #

The E-Writing Bulletin
	Leslie O'Flahavan offers some nice tips in the back issues of her E-Writing Bulletin, especially her ideas about composing effective email messages. Posted: 6/4/02; 11:40:53 AM #