I’ve been seeing demos of this technology posted around the ‘net for a while now, but Microsoft’s announcement of their new “Surface” technology brings it a lot closer to a consumer market. I initially wanted to post this simply because I thought this technology was really cool, but in thinking about it more I couldn’t help thinking about how this may affect web site designs in the future.

The technology, in a nutshell (see the videos below for a larger bowl of nuts), is a way to allow people to interact directly with “objects” on a table-top computer screen. The new advancement that makes this exciting is “multi-touch” (the ability to touch an object in several places at once, or to touch and interact with multiple objects at once.

As I watch the demos of purchasing and paying for meals at restaurants, sorting and arranging photos, and using maps, I start thinking about how on-line shopping carts, community networking sites, and even the concept of a web site itself could be affected by this kind of technology.

We have already had to adjust how we think about planning and building websites to use newer, dynamic, web technologies. How much further will this re-tooling have to go when users are demanding the ability to remix an entire website to their liking. OK, so that’s pretty extreme and arguably not something that will necessarily result in a friendly user experience, but what about this:

Take a search result of action alerts, draw a circle with your finger around several of the results to group them together by keyword or tag, and then drag them all to where your Wi-Fi phone is sitting on the table-top. The results are automatically cused to create a “related” RSS feed to your phone based on those results. Go to another site and do the same thing. Then call up your contact list on the table-top (pulled from your phone, still just sitting there on the table, not even plugged in to anything) and send your new RSS feed (or selected items from it) to selected people from your contact list.

We’re probably talking about at least 5 years before this stuff is priced for even first-adopter users; currently pricing of around $10,000, and functionality is geared toward businesses like Hotels, Restaurants, and Casinos. I’ve no doubt, though, that some form of this will be in general use in homes as soon as it’s affordable.

Take a look at the videos — Especially the third video on the Microsoft Surface site about paying for meals at a restaurant — and you’ll see what I mean. In this paradigm, devices like phones, PDAs, laptops, credit cards, and even web pages, become simple buckets to move things to and from. The ability to do this simply by placing the objects on the table is what makes it all so amazing.

I guess a big question is, will people want to browse the web on a table-top, or is the vertical screen we all use already going to stay with us? And don’t let’s even start with accessibility issues with these devices! A lot of cool potential, but a lot of potential pitfalls as well. Isn’t that how it usually is?

Jefferson Han:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RPwaUp4gepU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY

Microsoft Official Site:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Popular Mechanics behind the scenes look:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

With the National Spelling Bee happening right now in DC, I thought it might be a good day to talk about some tools you can use to make copywriting easier and better. Of course, none of the tools mentioned here will do your writing for you, but they will help you see what’s going on with your own writing habits.

The first is a tool that I use on almost every piece of user-facing copy I write: the Web Frequency Indexer by Georgetown Linguistics. Just drop your copy into the text box, choose how to sort, and submit the form and you’ll see how many times you used each word. It’s handy to see when you might need to think of a few more synonyms for “great” and to make sure your organization’s keywords are mentioned frequently enough. The one thing it can’t do is associate similar words, so you’ll have to manually add counts of “donor” and “donors.” But it’s still among my most frequented bookmarks, particularly when I’m writing a multi-email campaign and various drafts and segments are starting to blend together.

Word clouds are also becoming pretty popular as a way to visualize high frequency terms. Snapshirts has a generator that parses a given URL, which can be handy if you’re looking at search engine optimization for your site. Tagcrowd is similar, with a cloud visualizer that lets you set a few options and gives you the code to paste it on your own site – a Pollster.com reader did clouds for the first Democratic and Republican Presidential debates. For more visual people, word and tag clouds can be a helpful way to see what your copy is focusing on.

Lastly, I still make use of Microsoft Word’s own readability statistics, which appears after a grammar check. Every client audience is different in terms of expected writing complexity, but in general, most experts recommend staying close to the 6th-9th grade level. The grammar check also gives you a count of characters per word and words per sentence, which can tell you if your writing is punchy enough to get their attention or if it might be too circuitous for the web.

There are dozens more useful tools out there to help you write better, but I think I’ll close with a paean to that tool that those of us who didn’t complete in the national spelling bee likely couldn’t write without: the spellchecker.

There was a nice feature story in the Washington Post metro section on neighborhood listservs — Offering Both the Nice and the Nasty, E-Mail Lists Surge in Usage. The reporter cited Pew studies which have found that more than half of all Internet users are subscribed to one or more lists, up from just about a third in 2001. The reporter also noted that listservs were displacing traditional communications vehicles such as the home owner association newsletter and the community center bulletin board.

These findings didn’t surprise us here at Beaconfire, we play close attention to how nonprofit professionals use listservs. What did catch our eye was the size of some of the neighborhood lists. More than 2,000 subscribed to the Chevy Chase listserv, more than 5,000 subscribed to the Cleveland Park listserv. Those are big numbers!

OK, these are affluent neighborhoods in the nation’s capital — but you can bet that similar lists have popped up all across the country.

The thing about listservs is that they attract the outspoken and engaged residents of the neighborhood. For any nonprofit sufficiently local to legitimately participate in the lists, they offer rich opportunities to engage the community in the organization’s work, dispel rumors, and promote events and services. They also offer an opportunity for an overzealous staffer to make a pest out of themselves or inadvertanly brand a good cause as an unwelcome spammer in the eyes of the community.

Local homeless shelters, foodbanks, thrift stores, and park watchdogs should sign up immediately!

Blogs have long been great advocacy tools, but thanks to widgets they are the hot new fundraisers. So far we (at Beaconfire) have worked on two widget campaigns and have been keeping track of a few others; here are a few things we�??ve learned:

Bloggers read blogs so if your organization does not have a blog, it may be worth it to set one up. There is no quick and easy way to reach bloggers and gain their trust. We found that the earlier you initiate a �??Blogger Relations�?� outreach, the better. There may also be bloggers laying dormant on your listserve, don�??t be afraid to ask if they are there!

If you are not sure where to find bloggers that care about your issues, your site stats can yield some leads. Review the list of search engines and sites that refer visitors to your site; chances are they are coming from blogs or news source that bloggers use. If your site stats are too cumbersome, Technorati is also good place to start.

As flattering as it is to have BlogRaisers as far away as England, to keep them happy you will need to be able to process donations in multiple currencies. If you can�??t, state that clearly on the campaign�??s landing page.

Keep in mind that MySpace and some other sites restrict the use of some widgets, so try to create an alternative to your widget. Looking for widgets? Six Degrees, ChipIn, Kintera, Convio, GetActive and SpringWidgets are good starts. Happy BlogRaising!

Step right up! Place your bids on this fine movie poster, 90% of the proceeds go to Beaconfire client and (generally fine folks) the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation! No need to click over to eBay and navigate through their system, you can place your bid right here on Beaconfire’s blog!

That’s right — online auction powerhouse eBay has jumped into the widget game, making it possible for anyone with a blog or website page to run eBay transactions right off their website. That’s a fundraising opportunity for nonprofits, many of which have struggled to alert their supporters to their auctions. It’s also a PR opportunity for the clever ones. Offer something provocative for sale and see if the blogosphere buzzes about it!

Of course, this new service debuted today, so it’s all potential and no track record. But, it’s another piece of evidence that regular folks with websites can do a lot more for the nonprofit organizations they support than click yes on canned action alert language or punch their credit card into a donation form.

Hat tip to Techcrunch for breaking this interesting news.