Group items tagged

Everything is better in Cuba! (Except the internet..) until now that is.

It's amazing how often these countries try to limit the use of the internet. This article explains why China might be altering the services provided by GMAIL and also explains how they are doing so. By investigating these types of circumstances perhaps we could gain a better insight as to why they would do this and also let us be able to take this information and relate it with out foreign affairs missions.

This article shows how we are beginning to use social media in our everyday lifes. It isnt just youth but older people are now using social media sites more and more

Google helps out non profits with more than just free internet services.  They also offer grants to help with technology usage.

In today's world, we live our lives on the internet. We communicate, learn, find loved ones, get our news and buy products all online. But, 90% of volunteering happens offline.  Traditional offline volunteering has a lot of hoops to jump through.

This article outlines 3 initiatives for open gov.from president government (transparency,collaboration,participation) but also takes an extensive look at the use of government websites overall

A link to a weekly quiz to gather opinions about issues going on around the world. A cool example of how easily globalization can happen with the use of the internet. A short time ago people didn't know what was going on around the world, now they can gain information and contribute to discussion!

The Cautious Patient Foundation is dedicated to minimizing the amount of people that die per year from medical error. Here, an organization that shares CPF's values can apply and recieve grants that help patients and healthcare providers to communicate better by using technology. This is an excellent example of NPO's using the internet to spread the word about their mission and gain funding

This report indicates what trends dominate older users of social media. The main argument here is whether or not using social media to interact with NPO volunteeers and clients is worthwhile. The research indicates that it is a worthwhile endeavor. The important thing to bear in mind as far as older users are concerned, is making organizational web sites extremely accessible and user-friendly.

I think to a certain extent it is important to incorporate new social media into npo's its a easier way to reach out to volunteers and clients, its mostly about how you as a supervisor manage the usage from your employees.

Despite the outstanding growth of places like Facebook and Twitter, the majority of information on the internet is still shared via e-mail. Crafting a newsletter for your organization remains to be the easiest way to get in touch with contributors and other interested parties. The age discrepancy has to be something to overcome, and in that sense, e-mail still covers the largest percentage of users worldwide. As a young person, it may be hard to remove yourself from the Twitter and Facebook dominated world, but more times than not the old ways still work the best.

This strikes me as another press release. While interesting, I'd generally avoid linking to private company press releases, unless there's some clear innovation involved. A press release from Pew about a recent Internet study, or a Berkman Center release regarding recent research is OK. A private company press release should be viewed cautiously.

"The argument for the internet being a wild, wild West of geriatric porn and kitten antics and Twitter wars is a good one, but there is at least some sense of an overarching "etiquette" when it comes to navigating the web and social media. Speaker John Boehner broke one of the rules tenuously keeping the web from descending into anarchy and goatse .gifs by adding his own editorial stance to a re-tweet concerning health care law......."

Although this article speaks mainly about protecting yourself on a network I think it applied very well with this class. It offers many good tips and points as to precautions to take to protect yourself. These precautions are important to consider especially if any work at your non-profit or public place of employment can be completed outside of work at at perhaps a local "hot-spot". This leads me to wonder how safe the new cellphone hot-spots are.

That's the downside of internet improvement...there is no hope for privacy currently. So many people never hear about these little gadget improvements but they should be news...

Part 2 of a Website Health Check.  Worth a look as a quick way to identify possible improvements to an organization's website.

This is a very disturbing truth about social media that you would think people are aware of , but are they?

This article was good at showing the different ways blogging can inflict cost. You can choose the method which matches your flexibility to pay. $12000 annually will still be more than some can afford to pay. Carrying a full-time employee to manage the blog is the bulk of the cost so some may consider adding this as a responsibility to someone capable in the organization in the interim.