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.

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.

Remember when your email address, when given to a campaign or non-profit, was considered private? Even groups that engage in list swaps with their snail mail lists wouldn’t think of doing the same with their email – the most they might consider is sending an appeal pitching a colleague or ally, but the list remains firmly in their hands.

Unfortunately, one political campaign has gone a step worse than a swap: they’ve put your email address up for grabs by the repo man. According to an article in the politico:

When John McCain’s presidential campaign all but went broke, it borrowed money from its bank using its fundraising list as collateral.

Problem: McCain’s own privacy policy promises donors he won’t sell their information.

That seems to put the Republican senator’s campaign in a pickle; either it pledged to its bank proceeds from something it can’t sell, or it offered to violate its own promise to donors.[h/t: Daily Kos]

The McCain privacy policy is pretty clear here, and it’s not too different from what most organizations have:

We will not sell your personal information. John McCain 2008, will not sell your information to third parties or any commercial entities.

Will this make McCain an accessory to spam? I discuss what value these addresses could have, and why this kind of practice is extremely dangerous, below the fold…

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Editor’s note: as a new feature, we’re doing a weekly 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, we asked what people thought was the most influential web 2.0 site of 2007 – here are their answers:

Michael, Principal Consultant: What Web 2.0 category had 15% of Internet users engaged yesterday? What 2.0 revolutionary medium has Seniors, Boomers, GenX-ers, Millenials, Right Wing, Left Wing, Centrists and outright wackos using it? My vote for 2007 Most Influential Web 2.0 Site goes to YouTube.[...]

Tim, Functional Consultant: Facebook for three reasons: It successfully bridged the gap between the rockers and kiddies on MySpace and the fine upstanding professionals on LinkedIn, they had a huge jump in registered users in the past year…and everybody says so, and that’s a huge part of web 2.0.[...]

Mark, Functional Consultant: Flickr is one of the most useful Web 2.0 sites out there. While YouTube may be its more glamorous headline grabbing cousin, Flickr is more useful to more people as the taking and sharing of digital photos is much more pervasive than video.[...]

Milo, Marketing Consultant: Niche social networks: in a world of media fragmentation and long tails, it only makes sense that impersonal behemoths like MySpace and Facebook will lose ground to a smaller, more intimate and focused online communities — like the soon-to-come Shoe Tube — where users can more easily find others who share their passions.[...]

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: Social news sites, and Digg in particular. As I’ve noted previously, social news sites let you pick your own like-minded editor and are becoming a necessary commodity in a McNews world.

Brad, Client Manager: I’d like to suggest the widest influence wasn’t a particular site, but a type of site: the RSS aggregator, which not only makes user-contributed content much easier to manage and access, it also puts the user in editorial control…The power of 2.0 isn’t simply in content generation, but in content distribution.[...]

Kate, Administrative Assistant: I would suggest Facebook, because it’s very accessible to the masses. Also, there’s very little that will be more tangibly influential to the younger generation than their friends telling them when something’s cool.[...]

Eric, Senior Consultant: Yahoo! Groups. In 2007, listservs reached a big milestone: more than half of all Internet users now subscribe to at least one listserv, up from about one in three in 2001. Not only that, email that goes viral has more real world influence that the hot topic du jour at the web 2.0 hype leader du jour. That’s because older adults are much more likely to actually act on their opinions…and older Internet users disproportionately favor email for staying in touch over newfangled web 2.0 alternatives.[...] [for more, read Eric's report on Listserv use for nonprofits (pdf) -ed]

Amy, Functional Consultant: I’d have to 2^nd Kate’s nomination of Facebook – great minds and all of that. It’s most important to me because it’s helped me re-connect with family and friends who I haven’t seen in 10+ years.

Jennifer, Project Manager: The growing popularity of user reviews and ratings on products and services offers great promise for engaging the lowest common denominator…We believe it more when we hear it from our peers. From Netflix to Angie’s List, this Web 2.0 feature has had increasing influence on the American consumer in 2007, and offers great promise in 2008 for influencing consumers of nonprofit resources, services and ideas.[...]

Erika, Operations Manager: I would vote for Facebook as well… One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most about setting up my own page has been being contacted by people I haven’t heard from in a very long time, simply because they found me on Facebook. [...]

There were also submissions for less-heralded, but also important user-generated content sites like KittenWar and StuffOnMyMutt. Some answers were longer than we had room for – read full responses below the fold. And be sure to stop by next week to find out about the browser preferences of the Beaconfire team.

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A few months back, I wrote a post linking to an AP story that suggested that some domain name registrars were using search queries to snatch up domain names that were about to be purchased. It seems that the suspicions discussed in the story were founded.

Earlier this evening, a story on Digg declared that Network Solutions was registering any domain name that was users searched for using their link to the WHOIS database. The comments provided copious examples of this practice, none of which are really appropriate to repeat here. I read the methodology described in the original linked post, and tried to duplicate it myself.

See how it turned out, and why you should be careful, after the jump…

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Elections are taxing. On the candidates, who end up saying goofy stuff, on the voters, who get figuratively buried in direct mail and robocalls, and on the campaign staff, who are so busy working on the campaign up to the election that they often forget that they’ll be unemployed starting the day after. But this year, it could be our email boxes that are strained to the point of breaking.

I’m subscribed to the list of all three major Democratic candidates. Since the new year began, I’ve received no less than 4 messages from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Barack Obama, and his surrogates have sent me 3 messages. But the king of bacn award goes to the Edwards camp, who sent me 9 messages since the 1^st, including 3 on the 6^th. They also sent me 20 messages in the month of December, compared to 9 for Clinton and 14 for Obama.

Where’s the point of diminishing returns? At what point does one more message break the camel’s back (or at least Gmail’s server)? I explore this question below the fold…

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With the Iowa Caucuses today, I thought it might be good to do a quick roundup of interesting tools that the Presidential Candidates have put together to get out the vote. As happened in 2004, many of these tools will probably trickle into the non-profit sector over the coming year, as we see what works and what doesn’t.

First, I’ve got to say that I love Mitt Romney’s Varitalk. I remember when Snakes on a Plane used this same technology to put together calls from Samuel L. Jackson – my office spent several good hours sending calls to each other. Now you can have robo-Mitt call your friends, address them by name and holiday of choice, and tell them why he’s right for their most important issue, along with a reminder to vote in their own state. It also shows on caller ID as being from a phone number of your choice, and Mitt mentions that it comes from you.

Of course, there’s potential for abuse in applications like this, but that’s going to be true in any voter-generated content application – it’s really no more risky than a simple "Tell a Friend" form. I did find it odd, though, that there was such a limited selection of names Mitt could say. While I’m not surprised that "John Brian" wasn’t in his repertoire, I was saddened that he couldn’t call "Marissa" or "Taylor" by name, and I guess referring to the other guys in the field as "my opponent" has left him unable to say "Rudy" or "Duncan." Seems pretty closed-minded for a guy named "Mitt" who named his son "Tagg" (neither of which he can say, incidentally). But I did appreciate the option to make a contribution and get a real call, or at least a better robo-call (I didn’t make a donation to find out – I’m pretty sure I need my $25 more than Mitt).

Two more big things that impressed me, and a bunch more that I don’t have room to review in depth, below the fold…

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The words are evil and insidious. But at one point we all hear them.

The Web site is down!

It is especially bad when someone else notices this before you do. We�??re often left wondering: How long has our site been like this? Why hasn�??t our host called us? Why does the Internet hate me?

There are some free tools out there that may not be able to prevent your Web site from going down, but at least alert you when it does.

One of my favorite tools is Montastic.com. Signing up is fast and easy, and the interface is super-simple. You can monitor up to 100 sites with a free account. You can get alerts via email when your site goes down, or monitor your sites in an RSS Feed. Leave the Green Page up, and you will always be informed of the status of all your sites. And the site is just funny (with option buttons such as �??save�?� and �??save not�?�).

Slightly more complex, but also data-rich and informative, is Mon.itor.us. Sign up, and you can monitor sites, compare site up-time, get detailed reports, and receive email alerts when your site goes down. Mon.itor.us is not as easy to use at Montastic, but the reporting is more robust. And since both services are free, it certainly doesn�??t hurt to use both to monitor your sites.