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When I was in college, one of my most difficult classes was scenic painting. Not only did it mean trudging into class at 8:00 am (the only class with that distinction in my five years of school), the professor would amble around behind us as we were painting and, if were looked like we were stopping to ponder our work thus far, shout "Paint faster!"

While it had the effect of giving the class a sort of sweatshop feel, the practical reason for his argument was that the faster you painted, the more work you could do, and the more money you could make in a year.

Today, who among us doesn’t wish we had more time? My available time at the office for blogging is limited, so any tool I can find that lets me blog more efficiently is one that I’ll latch on to. Here are five ways I’m able to get posts done faster, so I can blog with less time or churn out more posts in a week:

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Editor’s note: each week, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week’s question: What online innovations do you predict in 2008?

Ali, Marketing Consultant: In a word, I’d say synchronization.  Users are increasingly being stretched across different social platforms, multiple email addresses and sources for information.  Though I don’t have what “it” is, I think it’s going to be a better tool to get all your online needs met at a one-stop shop.

Tim, Functional Consultant: I see the next year as one where we will see widespread changes in both the devices that people are able to use the view web, as well as the interfaces we are able to create for them to do so.  I think that we’ll have to be even more vigilant to ensure that these new interfaces continue to be inclusive of all audiences.  Our users, more and more often, are going to be accessing our sites through wireless handheld devices (phones are already in much wider use for this in other countries) and figuring out how this increased and widened access to our sites intersects with out desire to try and do even more with the same sites, will be a great challenge.

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: I’ll predict that in 2008, we’ll see more integration between CRMs and social networks. Convio has a one-way Facebook integration module already – the next step is to see two-way integration between data sources - we’re starting to see some networks become a mini-internet of their own, but with far more personalized content. We’ll also hopefully see SocNets open up a lot more (on which OpenSocial is a start) and we’ll start to see NPOs and companies assuming that people will have a social network presence when launching campaigns.

Ken, Software Engineer: My prediction is that Microsoft’s Silverlight will gain momentum and will become a technology of choice for create rich internet and smart client apps.

Join us next week when we do a survey of lessons learned from the online campaigns the Presidential candidates are running.

I’ve always been a big fan of Facebook Causes. I’ve written about the potential for non-profits, features that I’d like to see in future upgrades, and compared it to its contemporaries. Now, I’ve been eagerly following the Causes Giving Challenge. The Challenge, sponsored by the Case Foundation, gives organizations an additional financial incentive to jumpstart their Facebook organizing.

The contest basically works like this: organizations start a new cause, and every day the cause that received the most donors gets $1,000 from Case (in addition to whatever they bring in via Facebook). In addition, at the end of the the challenge, which runs until February 1, the organizations that get the most total unique donors get larger prizes totaling $200,000.

The campaign gets a good writeup in the New York Times:

“Philanthropy shouldn’t be defined as a bunch of rich people writing big checks,” said Jean Case, who founded the Case Foundation with her husband, Steve, founder of America Online. “Small amounts of money given by large numbers of individuals can be combined to do great things.”

“We’ve always asked how we can leverage our resources to engage a larger population, how can we get the most Americans involved in charitable giving and action,” Ms. Case said.

Some thoughts on why this is a big deal for giving via social networks below the fold…

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I’m excited on behalf of all of us here at Beaconfire to welcome Alison (Ali) Cherry as our new Online Campaigns & Marketing Director. 

Ali will provide executive-level consulting for our Online Campaigns & Marketing clients, expanding the level and depth of services we offer to our current clients and engaging new clients and projects.

Most recently, Ali was Director of Strategic Marketing at Grassroots Enterprise, working with nonprofits, trade associations and corporate clients to develop and implement innovative online communications strategies, including social media and Web 2.0. Prior to that, Ali worked with the National Partnership for Women & Families and YWCA Domestic Violence Services in Utica, New York.  Ali has a BA from Hamilton College and is completing her MBA at the University of Maryland.

Even more impressively, Ali completed the 109th Boston Marathon and was recently a member of a co-ed ice hockey team! We’re thrilled to have her experience and enthusiasm on our team!

Editor’s note: each week, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week’s question: What do you use as your primary internet browser, and why?

Amy, Functional Consultant: I use firefox almost exclusively for browsing.  I used to do considerably more CSS design work and came to love the dev toolbar extensions it offers.  (Taylor wrote a great blog piece about FF extensions).  When do I not use firefox? Only in instances where an online application such as outlook web access or the VPN refuses to function in anything other than IE.

Michael, Principal Consultant: I use FF. Reasons are simple – great plug-ins that are constantly improving, UI is smart and highly usable, custom keys & mousestrokes are fab.

Miro, Software Engineer: Inspecting layouts/CSS: Ffox. Everything else: IE(7). Why? Cause it just feels faster, especially spawning whole new windows. And I love Bill Gates. W3 standards? IE is it’s own standard.

Lynn, Principal Consultant: Firefox!

Taylor, Software Engineer: I use Firefox as much as possible:

• I rely heavily on many FF add-ons, mainly for debugging purposes (see my blog: My Firefox Extension Favorites)
• I protest IE for not following W3 web standards, which in turn makes my life as a developer much more complicated
• I think text among other things appear sharper in FF

Tim, Functional Consultant: I use Firefox because of all the addons that that I use to troubleshoot HTML/CSS layouts.  No need to mention them, Taylor already posted about them all.  While I am really pretty happy with IE7, it’s lack of addons and still sub-par support for HTML standards mean I have to stick with FireFox and just open IE (along with Safari and Opera) to test layouts and use the few online applications that won’t work in FireFox.  I have great hopes for IE8 and also am hoping the the next version of FireFox manages to gobble up fewer of my computers precious resources.

Andrew, Project Manager: I used to use FF, but after three separate clients told me that their office, and users, use Internet Explorer, I switched. Some developers and designers focus on FF and forget that most clients primarily use IE, and this can cause problems interfacing between them.

Marissa, Functional Consultant: I primarily use Firefox:

• For all the reasons Tim stated – It is way dreamier than IE for troubleshooting layout issues.
• For all the reasons Tim stated – Plugins I can’t live without.
• Because I’ve had a long-standing love affair with tabbed browsing – Yes, I know it’s in IE7 now, but for me, it’s too little, too late.
• Firefox just seems less annoying than IE.

Jeff, Principal Consultant: FF for me. Mostly the same reasons Marissa said: Tabbed browsing, since I keep an average of 20-40 windows open at a time. Regarding IE, I still haven’t upgraded to v7 since back in the day you could only have 1 version of IE and didn’t want to be stuck with a one I didn’t like. Given that my choices are IE6 and FF, there is no choice.

Kristin, Project Manager: Firefox, because it has cooler plugins and was the first one to come out with tabbed browsing.

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: I use IE7 because I like to view the web the way the average user sees it. That said, I do install a few add-ins that give me some Firefox functionality – in particular, IE7Pro which has AdBlock, crash recovery, and mouse gestures, among other features. Plus I like IE7’s tabs better.

Cara, Project Manager: Firefox – switched when my IE browser stopped allowing me to fill out forms – stayed with Firefox mostly for speed and add-ins.

Kate, Administrative Assistant: I use Firefox, largely because it remembers who I am and what my passwords are without me having to think about it. I’m considering about switching back to Safari though, because I’ve experienced some wonkiness with Firefox at home lately. Also, my husband insists that Safari’s far better, and he’s the official tech guy in our home, and usually right about these things.

Erika, Operations Manager: I use Explorer, mostly because it was the default the last time my computer was updated.  I imagine that the majority of the people who use computers do the same…they never bother to change whatever the default was when they got their computer.  It would be interesting to know what the differences are between “technical” people (those who use internet technology in their work) and non technical people in terms of whether they change the default browser.  Does the majority of the population even know about Firefox and Opera?

At home, I use Firefox on the Mac.  I love Firefox, but it doesn’t always perform well on the Mac, especially when it comes to forms and drop-down menus.  That can be rather frustrating.

Mark, Functional Consultant: I use FF, namely out of habit, for the add-ons and the warm fuzzy feeling of using community developed open source software. Features such as tabbed browsing, password manager and live bookmarks got me hooked on the FF. I stuck around for such cool add-ons as mouse gestures, firebug and forecast fox. Though I admit to almost getting sick from using tab effect (this one does a rotate animation when you toggle between tabs) due to the animation! In my opinion, mouse gesturing should become a standard feature of future browsers of all flavors. I also think of FF as one of the best examples of how the open source ideology can drive software innovation and create better products. After all, the development of IE 7 was all about keeping pace with the innovations and great features created with FF. On the downside, FF is a memory hog at times and has crashed on my machine at times for no apparent reason, though likely due to add-ons or some as yet unaddressed bug.

I do like IE 7 as well, but really haven’t spent the time to get used to the major changes in the interface and controls, so it feels less comfortable. Also, the effort involved in migrating data over from my current fav (FF) is a barrier to me in using it more - though there is likely some tool to make this easier. It does seem in general that this version of IE is converging more on w3c and HTML standards, but I’m sure there’s a ways to go. I’m also annoyed that there are still so many IE only applications on the Web using active x controls, and hope that MS moves its handling of client-side applications to plug-ins that aren’t dependent on the browser type. Maybe Silverlight will take them further down that road.

Of course, when building sites and campaigns, Beaconfire configures and tests for all major browsers, including several generations of Internet Explorer,  Firefox, Safari, Opera, and others, based on visitor statistics. Be sure to stop by next week to find what innovations Beaconfire staff are predicting for 2008.

An important and highly useful evaluation framework for APIs is now available from Idealware — Getting Your Systems Talking: A Framework to Evaluate APIs and Data Exchange Features.

The API Framework includes an Excel evaluation tool you can use.

The creation of the framework was a collaborative effort led by Paul Hagen and Laura Quinn in partnership with NTEN. Beaconfire was the underwriting sponsor for the report and my colleagues Jeff and Alan were contributors.

APIs are all the rage … and for good reason. They represent a powerful and flexible approach to data exchange between systems. As we know from our own experiences, not all APIs are created equal. How do you assess if the API of a system you have is robust enough for your needs? How do you compare one against another? What’s important to focus on in these evaluations.

What Paul and Laura have put together with input from thought leaders across the sector is a highly useful framework for evaluating APIs. As Laura writes in the introduction:

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to evaluate data integration features. Some packages allow tremendous flexibility, some only allow a particular, prescribed method of data integration, while others don’t support any access to data at all. One may be powerful but completely undocumented (and thus nearly impossible to use), while another may provide access to only a tiny portion of the data that’s desirable or lack the scalability or security necessary in a robust system.

The framework for evaluation provides assessment criteria in six key areas:

• The APIs documentation
• API’s technology openness
• Security & privacy of the API
• Performance criteria (SLAs, managing traffic spikes, etc)
• API support — both from the vendor and the community
• Robust of API access and functionality

The report and rubric are a great contribution. Thanks to Paul, Laura, Jeff and all the contributors for this seminal effort.

This week, Wikipedia commemorates its seventh birthday:

Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com, and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list. Wikipedia’s policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its initial months, and was similar to Nupedia’s earlier "nonbiased" policy. Otherwise, there were relatively few rules initially and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and search engine indexing. It grew to approximately 20,000 articles, and 18 language editions, by the end of 2001. By late 2002 it had reached 26 language editions, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the closing stages 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former’s servers went down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia.

Of course, it’s up to you whether or not you believe this - we’ve written several posts debating the general veracity of Wikipedia. But regardless of whether you view it as a tool for serious research or not, it’s undeniable that Wikipedia has made a splash. Its entries are among the top Google results for multinational corporations and presidential candidates, become so popular that it had to ban Congress from editing their own entries, and, according to Alexa, was the eight most visited website in the world (as well as the only non-profit in the top ten).

It’s spawned countless spinoffs, from the purposely amusing Uncyclopedia to the unintentionally funny Conservapedia. It’s even been "honored" by Stephan Colbert as the root of wikiality.

So happy seventh birthday, Wikipedia - may you continue on for another seven years to help us win trivia bets, laugh at Onion headlines, and edit our own entries to gloss over our flaws.

The new year always brings another round of conferences to keep our eye on. If you’re going to one of these events, let us know. We’d love to meet up!

• NTC - Nonprofit Technology Conference - March 19-21 in New Orleans
• SXSW - Interactive - South by Southwest - March 7-11 in Austin, TX

There had been a lot of talk in my household, especially in the weeks leading up to the holidays, about the potential merits and downfalls of the new Amazon Kindle. For those of you who haven’t heard, this is the most recent wireless reading device to hit the streets. You know, a way to read all of your books without having to carry all of your books around. My Cousin Adam had been seriously contemplating the purchasing said device, but didn’t know if it would be $400 well spent. So we looked into it some, and I’m here to let you know what we came up with. (more…)

Last week, we kicked off a new project with Academy Health. We’re redesigning their main Web site.  Over the next several months, we’ll be defining a more intuitive information architecture, designing a fresh look and feel, developing the site in a new content management system, and integrating it with their member management system.