As a new mom, I’ve been reading a lot of books/magazines/pamphlets inside diaper boxes/Web sites that emphasize the importance of establishing a routine with your baby. With me, they are preaching to the choir. There are few people that appreciate the importance of routine more than I do. And when it comes to work, my routine relies on the computer – but not just any computer. My computer. With my desktop icons arranged just so, my Firefox plug-ins in place, my calendar events color-coded, emails sorted by project, and tasks neatly tagged and arranged in Outlook, I’ve spent the last three years with my computer creating an work-efficiency powerhouse.

Give me my computer! Photo provided by elblogazo under Flickr Creative Commons License

So a few weeks ago I started bawling like a baby about to cut a tooth when my computer began its slow ascent into computer heaven. It wouldn’t go quietly – one day it would work, the next day it wouldn’t. For weeks I bounced between machines at work, at home, even at my father-in-law’s house. And even when it finally took its last breath, I was still a few weeks away from getting new a computer, so I continued doing a shuffle between various work and home machines. In the past few weeks, I have worked quasi-regularly on seven different computers. Some stayed in my comfort zone (like my blazing fast home desktop), and some were well out of it (like the backup of the backup laptop here in the office).

I had a hard time coping those first few weeks of the great computer shuffle. But I found my own personal pacifier: the “cloud”. If I was going to move from computer to computer, I needed to start moving the basis of my operations from the thick client of a hard drive to the thin client of the Internet.

It was hard at first, but I managed, and even became comfortable, working with online services. Am I a permanent cloud-hopper? No. But I feel I can weather the crisis of a broken computer in stride now.

Here’s a look at some of the services I used:

• Microsoft Outlook Web Access – There was simply no getting around this one. I needed to check my email and update my calendar. It was nearly unbearable, but I made it through. I got by managing email and calendar, but I simply could not organize my tasks within this paltry interface.
• Remember the Milk – RTM is my lovey – now that I have it, I can’t live without it, and I take it with me everywhere. Where Outlook Web Access failed in my task organization, RTM picked up the slack and then some, so much so, that I’ve stuck with RTM. RTM allows me to quickly enter, tag, schedule, and search all my tasks.
• Meebo – Nothing was more frustrating than installing and reinstalling instant messaging clients, sometimes having my buddy list carry over, sometimes not. Meebo came to my rescue. I logged in once, and there was my full buddy list. Meebo did a great job when I was in need. But in the end, I just missed too many IMs as the client just sat in dozens of Firefox tabs I had open.
• Google Docs – While I had MS Office on every computer I used during this time, I never knew from one day to the next which version it would have, or whether I could use it to connect to our network. So any document I had to look at during this time, as long as it wasn’t super-secret or sensitive, found its way into my Google Docs. Additionally, I did not have access to OnTime, a tool we use for Bug tracking here at Beaconfire. So instead, I would use a Google Spreadsheet for bug tracking. It wasn’t ideal, but it got the job done.

For the first time in a while (or perhaps ever), my husband asked me for some ideas for a Web site. Excited to offer my professional advice, I started spouting ideas. “And then, to top it all off,” I said with a gleam in my eye, “you can make a widget.”

“A what?” he said?

“You know, “ I said, “A widget.”

But he didn’t know. I had ventured into that underworld of web jargon.

Most of us were introduced to the widget in our fourth grade math class: If one person at a factory can make 30 widgets in an hour, how many widgets can a factory that employs 3 people make in the course of a standard work day.

To those of us in the web business, a widget is a kind of mini-web application that can be easily distributed to any Web site. If you’ve got a petition campaign, and you can give your blog some code so that the campaign appears on their Web site, then you’ve got a widget.

But if our fourth grade widget factory can make 720 widgets in a day, it takes just a little bit longer for web developers to make just one. One mistake common mistake when it comes to widget design and development it to toss the widget aside as I kind of “mini-me” to the Web site, and assume it does not need much more in the way of design or development than the original application. But its tiny size can sometimes be a huge hurdle. Here are some things to consider when making a widget:

• Widgets come in all shapes and sizes. Make sure actions can fit in the space that a widget allows.
• Since your widget is a minified version of your larger web application, make sure you shrink any necessary elements (such as your logo).
• Put tracking in place so you can tell who your best promoters are.
• Widgets aren’t magical – if you want people to use your widget, you have to promote it.

Don’t treat your widget like an afterthought. If you put the time and effort into its layout, design, and functionality, you’ll have increased your reach faster than it takes three employees to make 500 widgets!

R.I.P. IE6

Those of us who build websites for a living have been waiting to see the door hit Internet Explorer 6 on its way out for a very long time now. It could be that the day long awaited is right around the corner.  And it may be that that is a very big corner, and that there are traffic cops making us walk really, really slow.

My wish to see the end of this seriously out-dated browser is not purely selfish, though there is definitely a good amount of frustration I’ll be happy to do away with. Every time I have to create a separate stylesheet to control IE6’s idiotic treatment of width+margins+padding (the box model, for those in the know) I sigh and dream of a day when all browsers display identical HTML in identical ways. I want to use the more sophisticated transparency properties of 24-bit PNG graphics without having to add buggy JavaScript so that IE6 will display the transparency instead of an ugly grey box. I’d love to be able to use more sophisticated CSS3 (2 even!) to style elements without having to add all kinds of classes and ids to them. Cleaner HTML: faster to load, faster to code, easier to maintain. All kinds of better!

So that’s the selfish part. There is another part of me that knows many hours spent on a website design project goes toward simply fixing things that “break” in IE6. It’s not uncommon that, at the end of a typical site build, clients have paid a few thousand dollars just to get IE6 to show the site exactly the same as newer versions of IE or Firefox do.

For all of us, life without IE6 would be an improvement. So why are people still using it? There are a few reasons, really. First, some people are using computers they’ve had for years and have just never felt the need (or known how) to upgrade their browser. Maybe they are on dial-up modems and tying up the line for an hour or so while the new browser downloads is just not worth it.

Second, there are users who are prevented from upgrading by their IT departments. It may be that their organization relies on applications developed years ago using short-sighted programming techniques targeted specifically for what was then the best browser on the market. Allowing users of systems like these to upgrade may require a substantial investment to re-engineer those applications.

Third, there are those who just don’t care.

As someone who is concerned with the usability of the web and who wants websites we build to be usable for everyone, I have to be concerned about all three of those types of IE6 users. Ok, more the first two groups than the last ;)  Here is where things get tricky. I’m no longer talking about “looks exactly like” I’m talking about “is usable.” I want all users of the sites we build to be able to find what they are looking for, engage with the organization in all the ways that they want, and to feel that they are getting the same, complete experience out of a website that any other user of that website does.

It’s not just me either. Microsoft Australia has a campaign in which you can send sour milk to your friends who are still using IE6 to equate using nine-year-old browser to the risks of drinking milk the same age. The information on the site claims that IE8 detects malware and phishing 85% and 83% of the time, respectively, making it one of the most secure browsers available today. While its comparisons to other new browsers from Firefox to Opera may be disputed by makers of those browsers, that it is safer to browse the internet using IE8 than IE6 is beyond dispute.

As websites continue to get more sophisticated and we ask more and more of designers and developers, the need to be able to use current technologies and solutions is becoming more and more important.  HTML5 is on its way (sloooowly), and CSS3 is pretty much here.  All indications are that IE9 will support the new standards in a way that it never seemed Microsoft was terribly interested in before.  It will have to…the others are forging ahead daily and Opera, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox will likely get there first.

Keep your fingers crossed!

I’m into tech. But as I confessed in yesterday’s reflection, there are few pieces of tech I do not possess. One was a Twitter account.

But after NTC, that all changed.

I’ve sung variations on a theme of Twitter detractors: Who has the time for all this; Is anyone really so important that we need to know what they are doing all the time; The 140 character limit is destroying the English language.

But I was thoroughly impressed with the use of Twitter at NTC. Tweeters took notes, asked questions, and gave feedback during the sessions. This was extremely useful to the presenters. And you could get many of the highlights of panels you were not able to attend (check out the tweets of the Data, Data Everywhere panel). And as a presenter, I was able to easily response to post-presentation questions and load a few URLs.

So now I’ve jumped on board the Twitter express. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay on, but while I’m here, you can follow me at @mjgoldsmith.

Beautiful fonts are one of the holy grails of Web Design.  Along with CSS-based equal height columns, better support for image transparency, browsers that all display pages the same (or at the very least the death of IE6), and a vending machine stocking drinks with higher caffeine content than Mountain Dew, the ability to use any font we want in a page design would make us (mostly) very happy indeed.

There is something to be said for sticking with a fairly limited set of fonts for the main content of your site.  After all, people actually have to read what we write and our usual set of fonts are nicely readable for the most part.  But when it comes to headlines we may want to use something a bit more elegant than Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Georgia.

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As the New Year begins and resolutions to quit smoking proliferate, Beaconfire is pleased to be working with the The American Legacy Foundation and their smoking cessation program – BecomeAnEX.org. The EX campaign is about re-learning your life without cigarettes and the EX site plays an important role in helping smokers learn their triggers and then maximize support from family, friends and the community of users at the EX community.

Recently, Beaconfire helped Legacy revitalize their website and migrate their users from Ning to the Elgg social networking software solution. Read more after the jump. (more…)

The future is here, and its name is Wave.

Not really… but the much anticipated Google Wave has arrived in “preview” mode. When Google says “preview,” they mean “we can’t call it beta yet”, and it’s available through a limited number of invitations to people who are willing to deal with lots of bugs in order to get an early peek at this tool.

The idea behind Wave is that email has been around, mostly unchanged, for a long time – so Wave purports to be what email would have been if it were developed using today’s technology and for today’s web user. Not everyone feels that Google’s description of Wave is accurate, however. Daniel Tenner blogged recently that Wave is not communications 2.0 at all, saying:

“Is Wave the next Twitter? Nope. Is it the next Facebook? Nope. Is it going to replace Instant Messengers? Possibly, in some circumstances, but not any time soon.. I believe this is partly Google’s fault: they released Wave to geeks and hackers and social media folks first. But Wave is not a geek/hacker tool, or a social media tool, it’s a corporate tool that solves work problems (more on that later). On the other hand, they never claimed it would be a Facebook replacement or a Twitter killer.”

Confused yet? Check out a new collaborative user manual, read Lifehacker’s introduction, or Google’s hefty hour-long demo (below), and you’ll have a good idea of what it’s all about.

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Much has changed since humanity acknowledged the word knowledge and started to classify the various subject matters into categories and taxonomies of learned disciplines.
The definition of knowledge is outside the scope of this article because of simple reasons. I am not as qualified as the university professors, or librarians who pour their blood, toil, trouble, and tears into the understanding of knowledge and wisdom.

What I do know about is what knowledge is online. Since Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Yes. He was knighted.) created the World Wide Web to link documents together on the then nascent Internet, knowledge became more than monolithic documents or books that were linked loosely via citations and references. Instead of specifying in APA, MLA, Chicago, or Turabian style where the source of a particular knowledge was, one could directly link it using something called “HyperText”, or what some know as “Hyper Text Markup Language”. Today, all websites that you see online are built with a combination of HTML, some JavaScript, and possibly some Flash or Java.
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A couple of months ago, I was frustrated with several academic journal websites which did not have the necessities of web 2.0 sharing features which can make their site useful to the new generation of scholars.  The suggestions I gave centered around adding “share this” or “add this” functionality that would allow site visitors to add a link to their delicious bookmarks, share it with their friends on facebook or twitter, or possibly send to a friend via email.

These changes are institutional and my message mostly fell on deaf ears. One did get back to me and asked if I could help them as part of their student volunteer staff. We’ll cover that in another article.

The problem of adding such functionality is that it can be a chore if the content itself is not ready for sharing. For example, PDFs are never good material to link to on facebook, because they won’t create a nice looking story feed item. Pages that don’t have images won’t look nice either. Apart from cosmetic errors which can be a hurdle to success in implementing these simple tools, time and effort are always a problem for busy organizations.

There is an easy solution provided by wibiya. They offer a way for anyone that publishes content to add an interactive web 2.0 toolbar which sits at the bottom of your webpage no matter where a user is on your site. Similar to the “Start” bar in Windows and the “Apple” bar in Mac OS, this utility is very useful.
Although it integrates with Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and any website well, the best feature I believe is in it’s ability to create a Facebook community.

What does Wibiya say about itself?

“Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars.
Our platform offers a one-stop solution for integrating, managing and tracking third-party applications.

Currently we offer a fixed set of tools such as creating a blog community via facebook connect,
enabling twitter alerts on your blog and enabling post navigation but there is a lot to wait for as we will be adding more and more application through time.”

I hope you have time to evaluate if this is a useful tool for your organization. It could save you more time and money than you expect.

Announced last year, Facebook Connect heralded an architectural shift for Facebook developers, away from the thousands of insipidly cute notification apps and toward a sophisticated way of wiring up full-fledged websites with social actions.  Here’s the proposition: your web developer adds a bit of javascript to your website and you can allow users to post your website actions to their walls, or update their status, or many of the other actions they would take directly within Facebook.

The real power of the system becomes evident when you “connect” profile information on your site with Facebook, allowing information to flow through to your site with a button click instead of a lengthy sign-up form.   The barrier-of-entry for all aspects of user profiling is reduced — people that wouldn’t bother to sign up for an account on your site at all can still be served personalized information and tracked demographically, and people who would sign-up get their information pre-populated and connected to their social network of choice (assuming that’s Facebook, of course).  In a way, it’s similar to the effect that Amazon Payments or PayPal has in merchandising and micropayments — people are more likely to actually check-out with their cart if they can use a name they trust and don’t have to type in their name, address and credit card information over and over again.

The benefits to all parties seemed pretty clear: the user experiences simplified profile management, Facebook serves as a defacto “social action” engine and drives traffic back to its site,  and your website gets data it may not have had otherwise.  But things aren’t that simple.  For instance, who owns the information about the profile that Facebook provided to your website? What exactly can you store from Facebook, and at what point is that data part of your site’s profile and not the users’ Facebook profile?

It’s not a trivial point.  It turns out that even major site Digg.com, the example site Facebook shows a screenshot of as a Connect site in it’s Facebook Connect announcement post,  didn’t know where the line was.  As the writers at AllFacebook.com point out, the Facebook TOS are muddy: different rules about what data can be stored and cached under different circumstances; conditions for people removing or disconnecting from your app; frequent changes due to new functionality and occasionally, public outcry.  Compound that with the fact that it’s near impossible for Facebook to police the requirements among the many sites using Connect, and there is a lot of confusion between what a Connected website wants to do, should do, and can get away with doing.

As websites link up with Facebook Connect more and more, the lesson for prospective integrators is to plan for the implications of the TOS on your data collection and make sure you aren’t left in the lurch if it doesn’t match up with Facebook’s rules.  A decent back-up plan includes OpenSocial, Twitter and maybe a little bit of praying.

Microsoft’s mash-up engine Popfly died a quiet and unlamented death last week.  Very few people seemed to even know it existed, but based on its colorful, icon-layered interface , its few visitors probably got the impression that it was some kind of Flash game creator – which it was, if you replace “Flash” with “Silverlight”, just like Microsoft would like you to do.

But the editorial emphasis on cheap “my first game” entries on the site’s homepage belied its underlying strength as a mash-up platform.  Think of it as a system with the fluent routing of Yahoo’s Pipes but with the component architecture of traditional programming languages, all wrapped up in the gloss of  Silverlight technology.  Popfly users had the capability to take up components prebuilt by hard-core programmers as data sources – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr – and use them as building blocks in Popfly’s visual editor to create powerful, integrated apps with a modern look.  Except they didn’t – they made Pong clones.

So the world won’t be crying for Popfly, but it’s hard to wonder if the same fate isn’t in store for other mash-up systems – was it Popfly’s candy colored wrapping or the hands-off visual programming mash-up idea itself that doesn’t have legs?

SXSW Panel Picker Page: “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0“

Kiva has been connecting donors with low income entrepreneurs since 2005. Their model of microlending has proven meaningful, effective (they have a current repayment rate of 98.7%), and popular (over $80 million in loans have been made so far). They’ve been such a game-changer in the nonprofit fundraising space that we want to bring Kiva together with other national nonprofits at SXSW Interactive 2010 to talk about the future of online fundraising.

Kiva creates a one-to-one relationship between donor and recipient. Donors know exactly where their money is at all times and can see the tangible effects of their dollars – if desired, they can completely avoid a general fund, symbolic gift, or representative success story. It’s also a gift that keeps on giving – as recipients pay back their loans, donors can reinvest in new ones.

One question that both traditional nonprofits and startups are facing is whether this model poses a threat to the status quo of fundraising appeals. Will donors demand more accountability for each dollar? Will they expect a personal relationship with the end beneficiaries? How do the principles of Kiva apply to advocacy-based organizations?

If “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit” is chosen for SXSW’s program, Skylar Woodward of Kiva, Ian Haisley of OptINnow, and others will tackle these questions in a vibrant conversation moderated by Beaconfire’s own Michael Cervino.

SXSW wants to know what you think about the panel idea before setting the program.
Does this topic sound intriguing? If so, drop a comment and place your vote on the panel picker page: “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0.“

The question one finds asking themselves before taking any task of considerable effort is  whether they really want to do it. This past weekend, I exerted some effort to get myself from Washington D.C. to Cambridge, MA to attend a conference. The topic of discussion was Elgg. What is Elgg and why did I go to Cambridge? Read on and discover why.

Last week, it was brought to my attention that Elgg–an open source Social Networking Platform–was holding a conference on Social Media for Education, and a more specific conference on Elgg. I know and understand the needs of Education that the promise of Social Media can bring. I was very glad someone decided to bring people together to talk about it. Since it was on Friday and I was at work that day, I couldn’t make it. Thankfully, I did make the second conference on Saturday.

At ElggCamp Boston 2009, I was able to see the need for the "Social Networking Platform".Speakers made it very clear that Elgg was not for the person that needed to put up a generic social network to link people together. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter do that just fine.

The iPhone is arguably the most advanced piece of technology commonly found in people’s hands these days. It has a GPS to tell you where you are. It has a phone to let you communicate with people. It has a multi-touch LCD screen that lets the user use the device with no more and no less than one button. The iPhone is a computer … with the Internet. Ten years ago, try to imagine describing to someone what an iPhone does and they’d think that you were talking Sci-Fi. Well, folks, as much as people like to deny it, Science Fiction becomes reality every day in our world.

Jules Verne could see us going to the moon, and John F. Kennedy  actually pushed our country to do it. Star Trek could see us using tri-corders, and Motorola created it as the first cell phone. In my opinion, the iPhone, it’s market of applications, and growing user base is the best way to gain access to and interact with information. It also helps you get in touch with people, but I think face to face is the best way to interface with other humans.

Over the course of my trip to New York City this weekend, I realized exactly how valuable my iPhone is. When I got off my bus at 31st Street and 7th Avenue, I wanted to use my gym membership at the sports club. I went online on my iPhone, looked up the nearest 24 hour gym in their network, and copied and pasted the address into the Google Maps application. In about 2 minutes, I was on my way. After I arrived and couldn’t get into the side of the building which was advertised, I looked up the phone number online, gave them a call and got in. That’s convenience.

The sports club’s web site is not optimized for the iPhone, but since the built-in Safari Browser is a full-fledged browser, I was able to navigate with some effort and get what I needed. If the web site was actually created for the iPhone, it would have saved me some time from zooming in and out, panning left and right to get around. If they had an "app" for that, I might have been able to log into it with my account and it would have been geo-location aware of where I was and tell me the nearest branches of the club. Why don’t they create an "app for that"?

This is all possible and contradictory to popular belief, the functionality that I just described doesn’t have to be developed as an iPhone Application. Much of the functionality can be created in HTML as a web application and placed on the Internet. Google has done a great job by making all of their applications as iPhone friendly "webapps" which behave like iPhone applications.

Recently, some plugins have been released to make your WordPress blog iPhone friendly. Available at Brave New Code, the WPTouch Mobile Theme and Plugin for WordPress takes your standard WordPress blog and makes it look, feel, and behave as an iPhone application with nice transitions.

Static Content Sites

Many organizations have also released informational web sites in a handy, iPhone friendly format. Their sole purpose is to disseminate information. Web Apps such as the Athens Tourist Guide :  and Pocket Cambridge : are basically lists and tables of static HTML that look nice on an iPhone or an iTouch. Do you have information that can be useful to iPhone users? There are some really easy ways to get it out there.

1. iWebKit – “Iwebkit is the revolutionnairy kit used to create high quality iPhone and iPod  touch websites in a few minutes and is based on an LGPL license. In the first 4 months of it’s existance the pack has greatly evolved from a basic idea to a project that has reached worldwide fame!”

2. iUI – It has the following

1. Create Navigational Menus and iPhone interfaces from standard HTML
2. Use or knowledge of JavaScript is not required to create basic iPhone pages
3. Ability to handle phone orientation changes
4. Provide a more "iPhone-like" experience to Web apps (on or off the iPhone)

Dynamic Content Sites

Do you have programming ability or resources which you can utilize to push out your content from your organizational and institutional databases? You can probably use the aforementioned tools in conjunction with dynamic server side languages, but you might want to look into the following options to make your life easy.

1. ComponentOne iPhone Studio – ComponentOne’s studio is a rich set of ASP.NET Server Controls which is beyond compare when it comes to giving you a competitive advantage in creating dynamic applications fast. Some of the included server controls are : Calendar, ViewPort, CoverFlow ( Like the iTunes record browser ), and MultiView ( like the Photo explorer in the iPhone Camera application ).

2. iWebKit for Grails – This plugin provides integration with iWebkit, a powerful User Interface Library for Safari development on iPhone. By using this plugin, the grail developer will have an iphone web app skeleton (CSS and javascript) but also a extended tag library helping in creating iphone web pages in an easy,clean and fast way. If you are a Java developer or your company has them, and have gotten the hang of Groovy, this might be the path for you.

3. iUI with Asp.NET – iUI is very simple and some people have taken some steps to create their own integration for ASP.NET and iUI. This page points you to some third party resources which may be helpful for you in creating dynamic iUI applications.

Possible Scenarios and Tips

How can you capitalize on the iPhone and iTouch user? Here are some ideas which may work out for you.

1. If you have a Calendar of events, you can add iCalendar format links which can let users download the event data and add it to their iPhone Calendar.

2. If you have a location or event search which requires an address or a zip code, you can use W3C’s Geolocation API which is supported by the built-in Safari browser on iPhones.

3. If you have a member’s only directory, you can create an interface which can list people’s information as well as publish their contact info in the vCard format so that they can add it to their contact lists.

This morning, I read an email with an interesting question from my colleague Jo:

I don’t get this.

http://summerofsocialgood.com/

It looks like this is a huge, well-funded, well-organized program.  It also shows that someone (say… Mashable) is really, really invested in showing that you can do fundraising with social media.

But aren’t they going about it backwards?  I thought “social media for social good” meant rallying people on social media who care about your particular cause, not rallying people who care a lot about social media and then challenging them to support “social good” in general…

They’ve got the big name organizations, but the campaign’s not about them at all.  Or am I missing something?

Very astute question. What is going on here? What is Summer for Social Good really about?

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Confession time. When I started designing for the web nearly 14 years ago, I pretty much made it all up as I went along. Brave souls all, we ventured out bravely into the wilderness, hoped for the best and called our mistakes “lessons learned”. Most of us survived to tell the tale, emerging stronger, smarter and a little more acclimated to this brave new world. Others just grew gills, but that’s a story for another time.

As the web industry has matured, it fascinates me that processes and best practices have developed to the degree that all of us are singing a similar song, even though we may not have all gotten the same memo. Working in the web these days feels like spending time on the Galapagos Islands. Evolving to fit our environment, we have somehow still retained the elements that make us all unique without sacrificing forward progress and growth. I always knew Darwin was a designer at heart.

So combining the passion I have for design with my desire to share what I have learned the hard way about the ways of the web, on occasion I stick my hand in the lion’s mouth and go talk to people about it.

Sharing the stage at OneWorld.net’s Web Design for Non Profits workshop with Mckenzine Lock (Senior Communications Manager, Communications and Outreach at Women Thrive Worldwide) and Shirley Sexton (Director of Interactive Marketing & Fundraising at See3 Communications) was further proof that we have learned how to speak the same language without sacrificing our own point of view. Exploring the challenges facing non profits on the web these days, we tackled the same subject from 3 different angles: as a designer who creates visual environments to support an organization’s complex ecosystem, a client who just survived a redesign rooted in best practices, and a marketing evangelist who lives and breathes this stuff every day.

And wouldn’t you know, without comparing notes or peeking at the other’s presentation ahead of time, we shared a cohesive message with our audience. Amazingly, we empowered these non profit professionals in their pursuit of a great new website for their organization, transformed their ability to achieve their goals, and left them excited to take their mission to a larger audience online.

Ain’t evolution fun? Check out my presentation here and tell us what you think!

Online video has become an increasingly popular tool used by non-profits to raise awareness. If you’re using video online and need some inspiration, or just want to see what others are doing, take a look at these non-profits who are educating and getting people involved through the use of video.

Interactive Campaigns

These campaigns encourage visitors to get involved by recording and contributing their own videos or photos:

• 24 Hours for Darfur has collected over 900 personal video appeals from celebrities, politicians, Darfurians, and citizens around the world. The campaign aims to strengthen Darfur advocacy and enable individuals to send their appeals to political leaders.
• Witness.org – The Hub is an interactive community for human rights, where you can upload your own content or watch, comment on and share content from others. They also provide a great Video Advocacy Toolkit.
• Stand Up 2 Cancer asked visitors to “Submit your own picture or video and tell the world what you stand for! Cancer affects all of us, what are you standing for?” and used the submissions to create this video.

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Take a look down at the bottom of this post.  See all those little icons?  You may know what they are for, you may not, but they are a feature that now appear on most blogs and an increasing number of Web sites.  The idea is that you can click one of those icons and, by doing so, submit a link to this post to the associated social networking site.  Why would you want to do this?  If you don’t know the answer to that question then I would suggest that there is no reason at all to do so.  But if the question you are pondering on is whether you should add these kinds of links to your Web site or blog, then by all means read on.

These icons are not merely shortcuts to the sites that the represent, they actually perform an action associated with the function of that site.  As such, they are more like little applications than links, per se.  I’d say that there are three main reasons to put an application-like shortcut to anything, social network or otherwise, on your website:

1. To give your visitors a quicker way to accomplish something they already do
2. To demonstrate that you are the kind of site that does this sort of thing
3. To educate your users and try to get them to start doing something about which didn’t already know

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I was having a conversation the other day with a friend of mine about “robots that tweet for you” when I mentioned that our company Beaconfire Consulting had successfully mastered the art of Tweeting without actually Tweeting. Please note that I didn’t say “robots that sweep for you”, but then again, someone is probably working on that in Japan or the MIT Media Lab.

For better or for worse, since the global tipping point of Twitter was reached, everyone wants to be part of the action. If Twitter hasn’t come across your online radar, it’s probably because you are living under the proverbial rock and are a Luddite battling online reality. On second thought, if you are on the internet reading this blog post, then you probably aren’t a Luddite, just a Twitter Luddite. That’s ok. The Twitter sphere of knowledge is small and can be transferred from one person to another in usually a few sentences similar to the 140 character tweets.

Below, I’ve elaborated substantially to show you that there is a way that individuals and organizations can use this tool to keep their relationships better informed. I recognize that the audience for our blog here at Beaconfire  mostly consists of individuals in the non-profit industry. This knowledge however can be used by most anyone in any industry which uses the internet to interact with their customers, clients, constituents, or partners. Businesses and Governments, please utilize this knowledge wisely and don’t be evil. (That means you Google!)

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For everyone who attended the HRA-NCA annual conference today, this is where you download the handouts for the above presentation:

• Full presentation (PDF)
• Glossary of Web 2.0 terms (PDF)
• Examples of organizations using social media (PDF)
• Association Global Services – Social Networking & Associations Survey results (PDF)
• Principled Innovation – Association Social Technologies (PDF)
• The Economist – Serious Business: Web 2.0 Goes Corporate (PDF)
• Facetime – Greynets in the Enterptise (PDF)
• Interivew with Dr. Brent Coker, University of Melbourne (mp3)

Bonus link for visiting the BFWire:  Laurel Papworth’s terrific roundup of social media policies available online.

Edited Friday, May 15 to add:

Check out another great list of social media policy resources from Wild Apricot and an interview on this topic with business relationship expert David Nour in the crowdsourced May 2009 issue of Associations Now.