Google has just extended their wildly successful Gmail initiative into the worlds of instant messaging and “voice over Internet protocol” (i.e. Internet telephony) via GoogleTalk, a free communications client that supports both IM and voice calls. I haven’t tried calling with it yet, but I’ve been using it for IM, and I’m pretty impressed. Nice interface, simpler than Trillian (my other IM client), and it’s cross-client and cross-platform compatible. You do need a Gmail account to use GoogleTalk–if you don’t have one, you can be invited by a current user, or you can sign up via your mobile phone (U.S. only). One downside is that GoogleTalk replicates the Gmail notifier function, which wreaks havoc on my Internet connection. You can disable the notifications, but it took me a few days to realize that GoogleTalk was the source of the problem. But with that glitch cleared up, it’s been great. I’m sure the other IM players and folks like Skype (which has never worked well for me) and Vonage are paying close attention.

Following up on Tim’s recent post that linked to a great article on PDFs, here’s some good advice from Jakob Nielsen on linking to PDFs and other non-web documents:

Because users frequently close document windows, the best guidelines for linking to non-Web documents are:

1. Open non-Web documents in a new browser window.
2. Warn users in advance that a new window will appear.
3. Remove the browser chrome (such as the Back button) from the new window.

All these guidelines stem from the same underlying phenomenon: the non-Web documents are native PC formats.
These formats have their own applications, each of which gives users a
set of commands and navigation options that are completely different
than the ones for browsing websites.

One of my favorite resources for knowledge and inspiration in my never-ending pursuit to design the perfectly standards-compliant XHTML/CSS2 site,has just been redesigned.   AListApart.com (ALA) 4.0, designed by Jason Santa Maria is a real showcase of, not just attractive, clean, design (which is a discussion for another time), but also of what’s under the hood, and in the tank.  In this regard, Jason had backup from Eric Meyer, who wrote the CSS and Dan Benjamin who designed the custom CMS  (using Ruby On Rails).

So here’s a question: Do you have to build your own CMS to get one that will deliver compliant, accessible code?  I know that some CMS vendors have addressed accessibility concerns in their products (though not in the back-end), but are there any out there that were built from the ground up with a focus on producing clean and lean XHTML code?  It’s more than just forcing users of the CMS to add alt tags on the images they upload.  It’s serving pages that don’t add 60KB of useless code to a page built from, what started out as, a fully compliant template. 

With the code of a page playing such a huge part in accessibility, search engine optimization, load time, cross browser compatibility, reliability, flexibility, and ease of maintenance, it strikes me that this is an area in need of some attention.

Anyway…off my soapbox and back to ALA:  There’s a good (albeit short) interview with Jason on All That Malarkey, and some thoughts from Jeffrey Zeldman on the new design.

OT: As long as you’re there, check out this article on PDF accessibility.

Here are the slides from a presentation I gave to my colleagues at Beaconfire a few weeks ago on Why Nonprofits Should Care About Blogs. (PDF, 327 KB)

�?�Content Management System (CMS) selection and implementation projects out here! We seem to be having more than our fair share of these types of projects recently. It meant that many of us at Beaconfire had the opportunity to sit through multiple CMS demos from many vendors in the mid-market space.

It is usually the mid-market space that gets a lot of attention from us since many of our clients find their �??best fit�?� solutions in that space on the basis of functional and/or financial considerations. So, without boring you to tears about every single vendor we saw and what we thought about each one of them, here are some general trends that we noticed:

1. Many others CMS analysts have also noticed this and mentioned this one �?? there seems to be healthy interest among all vendors in increasing the usability of the tools. This is also aided by the fact that browser capabilities are also growing. So, many vendors are able to do things like emulating the desktop look and feel from within a browser, a feat that was unimaginable a couple of years ago.
2. CMS tools are growing �?� and growing very well if I might add. Vendors seem to be placing their bets on beefing up their functionality and technical strength just so that they can attract some of those larger clients. The net result is that even the not-so-Fortune-500-yet clients (read organizations large and small) get to reap the benefits of this.
3. Mid-market vendors are talking about large CMS implementations that are migrating from the enterprise CMS products to their own products. This seems to be the trend with all of the mid-market vendors, though I do wonder if we would get a different report if we spoke to some of the enterprise CMS vendors.

All in all, we are quite pleased with what we see here. There seems to a healthy growth trend and an even healthier competitive tendency among vendors (yes, I do savor the latter! ;-)).

After sitting through myriad demos, I do have one suggestion for all vendors �?? your CMS products are in 2005 (or thereabouts), but your demo sites seem to be stuck in 1998. Can you please put some time and effort into updating those demo sites?

The New Politics Institute recently released The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere, a report written by liberal bloggers Chris Bowers of MyDD and Matt Stoller of The Blogging of the President.  Their bottom line?

While progressives may have a marked advantage in overall
blogosphere discourse, it could also be argued that conservatives are
taking a decisive lead in the sort of targeted blogging that will
provide them with real, tangible benefits in the 2005-2006 elections
and beyond.
…
To a certain extent, this is likely the result of
several large progressive blogs offering quick and easy ways to take
part in large communities, a phenomenon that is not found nearly as
often in the conservative online world. Whatever the cause, though,
this is a serious problem that progressives must confront. If
they do not invest time, energy and resources building a local blog
infrastructure superior to that currently possessed by conservatives,
the comparative advantage of progressives�?? overall traffic lead will be
significantly reduced. [Emphasis theirs]

Obviously, the authors have a very clear and straightforward political perspective.  But whether or not you share that perspective, the report’s a stimulating read on the state of political blogs and highly recommended for anyone interested in how blogs are affecting the political sphere.  (And in a very user-friendly touch, the report’s available in HTML and PDF versions.)

Hat tip to Beth Kanter for pointing me to Patrick O’Heffernan’s discussion of the report on SocialEdge.

This week, several of us at Beaconfire have been helping an organization set up a new RSS feed to syndicate their site’s content. We’ve been setting up a number of these feeds in recent months, and we often help the organization compose a page that describes what an RSS feed is, how it benefits them, and how to subscribe. Each time, I’m disheartened by how such an incredibly useful technology remains so terribly unfriendly for many users.

Chief among my gripes is the unfriendly name. "RSS" isn’t terribly self-describing. There isn’t even consensus of the acronym’s meaning. It’s either "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary," depending on who you ask. I much prefer the terms "Web Feed" or "Site Feed" but neither seem to be gaining much traction.

The unfriendliness is exacerbated by the diversity of ways that site owners and bloggers present the RSS feeds on their pages. Button styles and wording vary even though all buttons generally all indicate serve the same purpose. Some sites display an orange "RSS" button or badge. Other buttons say "XML" or "Atom." Some simply say "syndicate this site"  or "subscribe." There are even services that can help you create different subscribe button looks and wording.

The only convention seems to be that many of the buttons are orange. The wide variety of presentations is clear in this list of feed presentations and types collected by Blogger Molly E. Holzschlag.

In spite of these challenges, RSS Feeds�?�err�?�Web Feeds�?�are an extremely easy way for organizations to extend the reach of their content. But nonprofit publishers do need to keep in mind that it’s not always equally easy for their constituents to use them — at least right now. Clear, short, and straightforward instructions for visitors are a first step.

Tags are a way to reference and organize Web content in such a way that 1) frees you from the headache of maintaining bookmarks or other hierarchical tools, 2) allows you to tap into the collective wisdom of other people’s tags while sharing your tags in return, and 3) complements the online search strategies you’re already using.

Marnie Webb’s done some very useful writing on tags and their relevance for nonprofits.  I particularly like this metaphor:

So, typically you walk into a library to find
books on a subject and a search of the catalog sends you all over. You
go to Russion lit, history, biography all to find books about a
Soviet-era topic. But what if�?�

You walk into the library
with a stack of post-it notes and write �??Stalin�?� on the notes and stick
them on the books you want, no matter where they are. Someone else
comes in and sticks �??1942�?� on the spines of all books written in 1942.
And so on.

Now, future users can go to the card catalog and
use the formal taxonomy. Or they can see a list of the post-it note
words. If they want, the library will, and this is the real magic,
rearrange itself according to the post-it notes.

That�??s how I�??ve settled on introducing tagging.

So when you’re looking for nonprofit technology resources online, try an "nptech" search on one of these sites.  And if you come across a technology-related resource that you think might be interest to other nonprofit professionals, tag it "nptech" so the rest of us can find it as well.

Ever looked at a section of a website and thought, “That’s a great color–I wonder what it is?” TakeColor is a cool little tool that’ll answer that question. It’s freeware that will tell you the color value of any pixel in a variety of formats (HTML, RGB, HEX, etc.) The latest version is 8.0, which you can download from a variety of sites.

Learn more about Beaconfire’s bloggers:

(more…)

I set up this site a few weeks ago, but it’s been a busy summer, and we’re just now beginning to take it seriously. It still feels like an experiment, but we do expect it to serve a few specific purposes:

• Knowledge-Sharing: Beaconfire’s grown a lot in the past year, and it’s becoming more important to find efficient ways to share knowledge among the staff. We’ve used staff-wide email, the company intranet, and a wiki, and we’ll continue to use those tools in a variety of ways. But they all have serious shortcomings–poor search capability, lack of archives, difficult to use–and we expect that the blog is going to be a better space to capture, store and share knowledge.
• Conversations with Clients and Colleagues: Another major weakness of the other communication tools noted above is that they’re almost entirely internal to our company. There’s no effective way to open up conversations on those platforms with our clients and colleagues, but those are often the people we most want to involve in these discussions. A blog makes that possible, not only because these conversations are taking place in a public, archived, searchable space, but also because our clients and colleagues will be able to comment and join in the conversations directly.
• Blowing Our Own Horn: We’re really proud of the work we do with leading nonprofits across the country (and we’re proud of the work they do, too), and we’d like to spread the word. We sometimes put out press releases noting milestones in major projects, but those can take a lot of time and effort to produce, and there are plenty of accomplishments we’d like to note that somehow never clear the press-release hurdle. We think a blog will be an easier and more effective way to let folks know what we’re up to.

But that’s just for starters–this is a work in progress, and I’m excited to see what will happen that we haven’t even thought of yet. I’ve been actively blogging elsewhere for about 8 months, and I’ve been astounded by the ability of the platform to open up conversations, create connections among people and organizations, and spark ideas and creative thinking. I fully expect the same things to happen here for Beaconfire.