I had the privilege of presenting with Rachel Beer (founding partner of Beautiful World) and Leah Williams (Recently Head of Communications at Women’s Resource Centre and now at Breast Cancer Care) at the event – Engage and Connect with Social Media held in London at the Window (a wonderful venue and a fabulous lunch provided [...]

Better late than never, a quick look back at 2009 and a ramble in to some of my goals for the year ahead. (apologies for those who expected a short post!).
I rarely make resolutions or goals, but this year have taken a moment to reflect and map out some simple aims for the year [...]

An open letter from Andy Clarke detailing how a popstars vibrant website excludes so many from accessing the content. An eye opener for all website owners, includes screenshots and guidance to make the site better for all. Read the article – ‘Dear Taylor Swift‘.

Amy Sample Ward shares an example of how Greenpeace International uses social media, data, calls to action and community with an in-depth look at their Facebook page. Read the article – Greenpeace: An example in connecting with your supporters.

Alison Smith, shares her experiences from a recent event and questions ‘What will it take take for Deaf and Disabled people to be a real part of so called Digital Britain?’. Event organisers take note. Hello Digital : Digital Disaster.

Today is Blog Action Day.  Bloggers across the world, will all be tackling the same subject today – Climate Change.
I’m not going to write about anything about the ‘big things’ connected with climate change, I’ll let our Governments and the big companies deal with that issue. Instead, my contribution is just a little ramble on [...]

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and is the reason my blog is in the pink for the coming weeks ahead!
Bloggers and website designers like myself are joining in with awareness raising across the globe by turning their sites pink for the month. You can find out more at Pink For October. (If you turn [...]

Gear Up for Giving from the Case Foundation, is providing a series of social media tutorials throughout the month to help nonprofits understand how to use tools and techniques to raise awareness, create action and also to bring new supporters and donors to their cause.
As part of the programme for the month ahead, organisations can [...]

Joe Solomon shares his and others responses with a collaborative conversational article over on the Netsquared blog – ‘Jaded About Social Media For Change? – Let’s Talk About It!‘

Head over to Beth’s blog where Beth Kanter shares some great examples of nonprofit organisations who are using twitter, resources to help get you started and the post includes a slideshare presentation by Laura Lee Dooley on Why Twitter Matters. View the article – Nonprofits That Tweet: Roundup of lists, resources, and examples.

Recently an event was held WxWM (West by West Midlands) which brought together a wide range of people coming together to network, discuss the web and social media.  One of the talks during the event was from Andy Mabbett who spoke about web accessibility and delivered an enthusiastic and vibrant overview aimed at content administrators [...]

Many charities are reaping the benefits and the value of using a mix of different media can reach out to supporters and help to raise awareness of their work. Earlier in the week, I read and mentioned Allan Benamers’ thought inspiring post on Build a Nonprofit’s Technology Assets from the Ground Up which starts at [...]

Allan Benamer shares an excellent first part of a two part posting on how nonprofits should have a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when it comes to implementing technology, starting at the baseline of your organisations mission and climbing up the pyramid of techonology needs.  Essential reading for small nonprofits, head over to – Build a Nonprofit’s [...]

An article on Third Sector website shares insights from at a recent social media conference raising awareness that by focussing too much on social media such as Twitter, Flickr, blogging and podcasts for campaigns and marketing, it could exclude people with visual or hearing impairments as well as those who have no access to the [...]

Amy Sample Ward, the vibrant Community Builder for Netsquared, shares her slides and notes from the first in a series of ‘Storytelling & Social Media’ series from NTEN and TechSoup Global webinars.  See the slides and the full post at ‘Building Blocks of Social Media – Webinar Slides and Notes‘.

Henny Swan explores and shares some useful insights of the risks and opportunities for disabled and older users accessing social networks across devices. Read more at Is it time for social networks to grow up?

Still undecided if your organisation should start to blog or not? John Haydon shares an excellent list of the benefits of blogging at 22 Ways A Blog Can Rock Your Non-Profit’s Social Media Campaign.

Find local government consultations and plans hard to understand?  Read how a group of bloggers have innovated by turning the Big City Plan for Birmingham into plain English so that residents can easily understand, feedback and comment on the plan.  Head over to Parboo’s weblog to read Talking about the Big City Plan…

The Accessify website, a popular resource for web accessibility tools and software has had a makeover. Head over to the fresh new site to see the new features and resources available helping make the web a better place for all.

The 2nd Social Innovation Camp took place in December. Head over to the site to see a 15 minute round up video of the event, meet the people who took part and see the evolving ideas that were developed to help with social change and to help make a difference.

Justgiving has become the first UK online fundraising platform enabling anyone visiting the Justgiving website to be able to use PayPal, to make a donation. Read more about the developments which will help boost and enhance online donations to charities over at the Justgiving blog.

‘New Potentials for ICT in Rural Areas’ is a downloadable publication that shares fascinating case studies including those from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It provides insights into how Web 2.0 solutions offer people and communities in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange.
Read the full background article and download the publication from [...]

Tech-Savvy Communications: A Toolkit for Nonprofits is a downloadable guide to developing and delivering an effective message for your nonprofit.  Released by NPower Seattle, and downloadable from TechSoup, the kit contains worksheets, tips and resources to help.

Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit over on the Wild Apricot Blog highlights how you can benefit from guidelines to support your organisations online voice, including a great reference list of links to help you get started.

Amy Sample Ward who works with NetSquared helping non-profits get the most out of technology, is setting up Net Tuesdays in London, bringing together social changemakers of all kinds to discuss social media with the first one starting on November 4th. I hope that we can see lots of Net Tuesdays springing up across [...]

Today is Blog Action Day – a day where thousands of bloggers across the world commit to write on the same topic with the aim of creating awareness around that issue. The topic this year is Poverty.
I work with a wide range of organisations on their communications, branding and websites. When working together on [...]

Integration of social media reporting working alongside mainstream media, with Reuters hosting an event with the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown discussing the current economic crisis. Christian Payne and Mike Atherton were given unprecedented access to the event and asked to utilise social media apps in order to facilitate conversations around the day. Qik, Twitter, [...]

Matthew Saunders has posted a useful introductory article outlining the media available to share your organisation’s stories along with tips on how to get started.  Head over to his blog and read the full article Story Telling, Web 2.0, and Non-profits.

Information overload is one area of my work that is a constant. In the past recent weeks, I took some time away from the desk and computer with a pencil and big sheet of paper in hand. I hadn’t intended on blogging about it, but a recent message on one of my social networks [...]

Regular readers will have noted a drastic colour change today on my blog.
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From politicians, to the public, to the press, it is a time when focus on breast cancer is at its very highest across the world.
Pink is the colour during Breast Cancer Awareness Month hence the new look to [...]

Glenda Watson Hyatt, who lives with cerebral palsy, shares a video on how blogging with WordPress has enabled her to be heard by the world, increase her circle of friends and more. View it on her blog at Do It By Myself, or you can use the Easy YouTube viewer to watch the video.

“Nobody likes to think of themselves as disabled – lots of people ignore content aimed at disabled people because they want to use what everybody is using” – one of the quotes from the conference day at Scripting Enabled.
I recently attended Scripting Enabled, which was a two day event held in London on 19th and [...]

On the YouTube blog you can read about the new captioning feature for videos which can help people who would not otherwise understand the audio track to follow along, especially those who speak other languages or who are deaf and hard of hearing. Read the article and how to use this feature at New Captions [...]

Accessibility 2.0 was a practical conference focussing on web accessibility in a Web 2.0 world, organised by Abilitynet held back in April. Podcasts, transcripts and presentations from the event are now available for download at Podcasts and transcripts : Accessibility 2.0.

Not from a nonprofit as such, but this interesting article gives an insight on how Ning was used as a project management tool and how it was used in such as way, that the CEO became the facilitator, rather than the more usual barrier for speed and safety. Read the upbeat article at Using social [...]

Social Actions has launched a widget that recommends to readers of your blog or website related ways to take action.
The widget automatically identifies the keywords on any page and lists social change campaigns related to the stuff you’re writing about. These campaigns are gathered from social action platforms like Kiva, DonorsChoose, Change.org, GlobalGiving, Care2, Idealist.org, [...]

I’ve been following unfolding of the excellent We Are Media project which is a community of people from nonprofits coming together curated by NTEN who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organisations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world. Working together [...]

Jon Gibbons on his dotjay.co.uk site has collated an impressive list of videos that demonstrate accessibility in order to help others gain insight into how assistive technology is used, particularly with regards to the Web, and its value to those who use it. Visit the site and read the article – Assistive Technology: a [...]

Designing the Online Newsroom is an article from PebbleRoad which delivers a thoughtful roadmap to integrating an online news area for your website, and how to manage it and make it work. Well worth a read, and relevant to all sectors and organisations, read the full article at Designing the Online Newsroom.

Deafness and the User Experience is a recent article at A List Apart that helps you to a better understanding of deafness, highlighting the need to stop thinking of deafness as simply the inverse of hearing, but to understand deafness from both a cultural and linguistic perspective. A great overview with lots of suggestions [...]

Last year, over twenty thousand bloggers participated in the first annual Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Last year [...]

A new add-on tool to work with the Firefox browser will soon be launched which aims to help those with vision loss.
Excerpt from the Lighthouse International website:

While existing programs enable blind people to access the web effectively, LowBrowse™ is the first program to enable people with moderate or severe low vision to both view web [...]

Scripting Enabled is a conference and hack day taking place in London, England in September 2008.
The aim of the conference is to break down the barriers between disabled users and the social web as much as giving ethical hackers real world issues to solve. Find out more at the Scripting Enabled website.

It’s that time of year again. Anyone who is involved with making, developing or editing websites should take this quick survey. Nearly 33,000 people took the first survey last year which provided a snapshot picture into the web profession.
Improvements have been made to this years survey to reflect the wider diversity [...]

Silverback, a recently released tool, created by the geniuses at Clearleft provides unobtrusive usability testing for designers and developers. In short, it captures screen activity, videos the users voice and actions, you can add chapters and notes, and exports the files to Quicktime. This new application is for Mac only, and is available for [...]

The Web Access Centre at RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) has launched the Surf Right Toolbar. The new toolbar available for Internet Explorer is designed to make adjusting viewing options easier, using either the mouse or keyboard.
Many of the functions that the toolbar offers are already available via the ‘Internet Options’ tab [...]

Beth Kanter writes about some practical tips with the Nptech FriendFeed experiment currently taking place on FriendFeed where there has been a ‘room’ set up for non-profit techies by Jonathan Coleman to be able to share, discuss and comment using FriendFeed to connect. Find out how to join the room and participate on Beth’s [...]

Chris Heilmann did an excellent thought inspiring post yesterday on his blog at Wait til I come! on Is it time to take Mashups and use them to solve real issues? where he writes about his mashup fatigue but also the recent events that have re-inspired him to think again with mashups especially later in [...]

Photo – Alexandra Samuel from Social Signal, in the Bringing Your Community to Life (with lots of fun chocolate to encourage participation!) session.
Last week over 300 people came together for the NetSquared Conference in Santa Clara, California. This years conference was all about the N2Y3 Netsquared Mashup Challenge where 21 projects competed for cash prizes [...]

On May 27th and 28th, Netsquared is holding it’s third annual conference in San Jose, California. I’m excited to be joining the conference as one of the guest live-bloggers.

As well as having the opportunity of meeting people that I’ve connected with on social networks and meeting lots of new faces too; I’m really excited [...]

Building a Collaborative Workplace, by Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and Nancy White is a useful downloadable guide exploring the meaning of collaboration; and why organisations and individuals should build and implement their collaboration capability.

Podcasting in Plain English by Common Craft
Common Craft have created another wonderful bite-size video in plain english, adding to their great collection of easy to understand and fun introductions into social media tools. This latest one on Podcasting, shows how versatile and portable podcasts can really be. See more of their videos in [...]

AbilityNet are holding an Accessibility 2.0 event later this week. Accessibility 2.0 will be a practical conference focussing on web accessibility in a Web 2.0 world, and looking at practical solutions to making the modern web a more inclusive and accessible place for all.
On the event webpage you can listen to a [...]

Visitors to my blog will notice something missing today. (on the 9th April only) It’s the third annual CSS Naked Day and over 1500 websites and blogs across the globe will have taken part.
The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, [...]

Chris Brogan, who writes about social media and technology to build digital relationships, shared his birthday yesterday with a free PDF download of Building Community Around Your Blog. Lots of useful tips, take a look at his post Free Tips for Your Blog.

Google for Non-profits provides a round up of Google’s relevant and useful free tools, all in one handy place to help organisations get started easily.
The site lists everything from docs, calendars, web analytics, groups to YouTube. They’ve categorised the free tools list into two areas, ‘Save time and money’; and ‘Find and [...]

Common Craft who produce the most fabulous fun bite size mini videos on social networking tools in plain english have released another in their growing series. The latest one is all about Twitter which explains how Twitter can be used in just 2.5 minutes. Check it out at www.commoncraft.com/twitter.

I’d highly recommend reading a copy of the new booklet from Tactical Tech which is also available as a pdf download. Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design is a useful guide aimed at helping organisations strengthen campaigns and projects through communicating vital information with greater impact.

London region ICT champ, Miles Maier has created a great visual round up of some of the best web office tools on his blog. He ran a session called ‘Web Office 101′ at the recent Circuit Rider Conference, and shares a wide range of links to web-based office tools which allow you to create, [...]

The day after the Circuit Rider Conference in Birmingham, Lasa organised a learning event with John Kenyon who had also facilitated a session at the Circuit Rider Conference. John is a nonprofit technology consultant based in San Fransisco and has an abundance of infectious vibrant enthusiasm and is always a delight to meet. He [...]

Around 70 nonprofit techies and ICT development workers from across the UK came together in Birmingham for the Circuit Rider 4.0 conference organised by Lasa on 28th and 29th February. As well as those who innovate with technology for voluntary sector organisations here in the UK, some of my favourite inspiring nonprofit technology consultants [...]

Problogger guest writer Stephen Hopson helps to champion accessibility in making video posts accessible to the deaf community with a step by step guide to adding subtitles to a video post. Check out the insightful article and the interesting reader comments and conversation at Problogger – How to Make Your Video Posts More Accessible.
If [...]

The new handy Photo Dropper plugin for Wordpress could save time when searching for images to brighten up blogs and websites. This plugin finds Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr for use within your blog.
Excerpt from the Photo Dropper website:
“When it comes to finding great quality images, you basically have 3 options: stealing, [...]

The Design Vitality site has a useful list of 40 helpful free web based tools to help you design anything from logo’s, create and edit webpages, includes collaborative online tools, and image editing and more. See the full list at Design Vitalitys’ 40 excellent web based tools.

Over on the NTEN website there is a great round up of how politicians here in the UK are using social media to reach new audiences. Check out the article at NTEN on politics 2.0 co.uk.

Deborah Elizabeth Finn, who blogs at Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector, has written a great article which I’d highly recommend organisations with websites to take a look at.
Her introduction to the article -
“This article is designed to introduce nonprofit professionals to the basics of search engine optimization, which is also known as SEO. [...]

NetSquared Mashup Challenge
Over on the other side of the pond, NetSquared is inviting you to take part in the Mashup Challenge. If you have an idea which can make a real difference to create social change with your unique mashup, you could also have an opportunity to win cash prizes and attend the NetSquared [...]

Twitter, my most used and favourite networking tool is finally (but still so slowly!) being used a little more with nonprofit techies here in the UK.
If you’re new to Twitter and want to find some like minded people to follow, Chris Brogan has created ‘Twitter Packs‘ which is a simple list of people who use [...]

Any woman with a telephone who works in technology at a non-profit, a political campaign or is interested in technology is invited to participate in this free, live event on March 31, 2008 from 11 am to 6.15 pm EST. (We’re five hours behind here in the UK, so equates to to 6 am – [...]

Back in January, I asked readers of this blog, and others on my many other social networks what we should include on the session on social media that myself, David Wilcox and Nick Booth (along with the participation of others too!) could present to Circuit Riders at the forthcoming UK Conference for Circuit Riders being [...]

Stuart Mader who supports organisations, and other sectors to network, collaborate and create new communities with wikis is currently running a series of 21 daily posts with videos on wiki adoption. You can see all articles related to this series at www.ikiw.org/21days. There’s lots of useful tips and ideas to help your organisation get [...]

Head over to Beth Dunn’s Small Dots blog, where she updates us on the new version of the Google Apps (a suite of applications such as Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Google Docs), which has now been made easier for people to collaborate and use without the technical knowledge needed to get up and running [...]

NTEN have used Sproutbuilder in an innovative way for you to to send a special message to your favourite techie for their celebratory ‘Love Your Techie Day’ on February 14th. Find out more, and send your special message at the NTEN website today!

There’s been much excitement in the media during the past week about a new widget application called Sprout. It aims to be an easy to use Flash based interface with simple drag-and-drop features, to build live, interactive multimedia content that can easily be added to any web page. Once a user publishes a [...]

Google has released it’s new API (Application Programming Interface) graphing publicly available social connections on the web.
You can see more about the Social Graph API for developers or have a go at looking up your own public profiles and see who is connected to you at the Social Graph – My connections demo page.
(Want to [...]

I don’t usually write about my favourite websites, or websites that I think can really create ownership and participation with a big audience, but just yesterday a new website was launched that really deserves a mention.
The Big Picture is a project to create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands. Everyone can add their [...]

Data portability has been big news in the web tech world in recent weeks. If you want to understand more, there’s a great new article and easy to understand video explaining the basics on ReadWriteWeb showing DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix by Smashcut Media.

Meeting people for the first time at events, conferences and job interviews for example can be tricky for some.
Chris Brogan has written a useful article with lots of helpful suggestions on how you can use social media to meet people.

Christine Martell of VisualSpeak has a wonderful screencast about how images were used in Beth Kanters online fundraising campaign. Some good tips and advice on how to use images, plus also a really great example of how screencasting can be used to present a subject.

By the way, it’s not too late to donate to [...]

The forthcoming Circuit Rider conference for ICT support and development workers here in the UK is being held at the end of February (see the conference page at Lasa’s website for further details). I’ll be delivering a session on Web 2.0 and social media for the nonprofit sector, along with David Wilcox of Desigining [...]

If you provide direct ICT support and development to voluntary and community organisations, make sure you book your place for the ICT Hub 4th Annual Circuit Rider conference which is taking place at: BVSC in Digbeth, Birmingham on the 28th and 29th February 2008. To find out more and book your place see the conference [...]

Whilst discussing publicity and promotion with one of my new local groups who are just setting up earlier this week, they mentioned that they were thinking of using Flickr to put up the photos onto the internet they’ll take at an event planned for the summer. They thought it would be good to begin [...]

A useful guide to help you work out whether social networking sites can add value and benefit the work of your organisation. See the full article to help you decide at Techsoup – Should your organisation use social networking sites?.

Beth Kanter tagged me in a meme, asking the question “What if I could start all my social media and nonprofits work over from scratch? What would I do differently? What lessons have I learned that will stick with me for 2008?”
New Year is a great time to reflect on the past [...]

Webcredible’s latest article on 10 common errors when implementing accessibility is a useful reminder for those making their websites accessible and inclusive to all.

Beth Kanter explores how Simon Berry of Ruralnet UK has enabled his organisation to have a presence of its own on Facebook. You too can leave your non profits’ Facebook tips and best practice for success over on Beth’s Blog. See the article at: Simon Berry’s Facebook Advice on Beth’s Blog.

Over on David Wilcox’s Designing for Civil Society site, David recently reported about Roger Wilson-Hinds, who was demonstrating screenreader software at the e-democracy conference. The screenreader (known as ‘Thunder’) not only reads text out loud, but also can increase the text size for those that can see. It also helps with managing information, [...]

Today, I was contacted by Laura Oliver who writes for Journalism.co.uk – a leading website for journalists.
Laura informed me that their site is launching a series of features and articles that will be published throughout this week on the accessibility of the UK’s main newspaper websites to blind and visually impaired users. They’ve [...]

The UK government has issued a consultation document on ‘Delivering Inclusive Websites’.
Read the full story at the Web Standards Project.

I’ve been keeping an eye on sNews for a while now, and have given it a good road test for use as a simple CMS (content management system) that will meet the needs of many voluntary and community organisations.
The choice of CMS to use for any nonprofit organisation should be always considered carefully. Will [...]

MODx wins the Most Promising CMS of the year 2007! This is a great achievement for the MODx team! Congratulations!
Read the celebration news from the MODx team.

The Media Snacker Respect meme started by Jerimiah Owyang is now at my blog courtesy of Beth Kanter who tagged me. I’m not the biggest fan of meme’s but this one did make me stop and think as it’s made me aware of our shift into how we’re using social media tools to get [...]

A new UK initiative for web-enabled social innovation began last week with a discussion to set up Netsquared in the UK, loosely based on the US Netsquared conference and community, which has now led to a host of meetups and other activities through which tecchies and activists find common cause and do good stuff for [...]

I first met Tim Davies, whilst completing the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge and also on Twitter. He regularly writes about his work in young people’s participation, non-profit technology and social change on his blog site.
Whilst completing the challenge, and connecting with other new friends also doing the challenge tasks, I learn’t [...]

Newspapers and radio seem to be covering the growth of Facebook almost daily, the social utility networking tool which enables you to connect with friends and join in with interest groups.
How many voluntary and community organisations here in the UK are using Facebook as a tool to connect and share good practice with [...]

Network for Good has produced a new study report – The Wired Fundraiser: How Technology is Making Fundraising Good to Go (downloadable as a PDF document). The article gives a great insight into what a ‘wired fundraiser’ is and how fundraisers and those passionate about a cause can use the internet to help raise [...]

For those that can access and watch video clips, head over to YouTube to see a short video exploring the changes in the way we find, store, create, and share information. Information R/evolution was created by Michael Wesch.
Thanks to Luis Suarez of the the Elsua Blog for spotting this!

A couple of days ago, Beth Kanter put a shout out to help her with a session she’s running at the forthcoming She’s Geeky Conference. Her session will be directed at women who might be working in the corporate or business sector and are thinking of switching to the nonprofit sector. Beth asked [...]

With a rising interest in Web 2.0 and media skills amongst non profit organisations here in the UK, many groups are learning that there are a variety of ways available to communicate and market the work of their organisation to potential supporters and funders. One area which many small groups have difficulties with, is knowing [...]

Take a look at the AssistiveWare website to see videos on assistive technology in use for computer accessibility. Providing a useful insight and understanding, the video’s show real life experiences by users using a wide range of technologies, enabling them to work, enjoy their leisure and manage their daily life with the use of [...]

Across the globe, bloggers are writing articles for Blog Action Day. This years theme for the event is to write about the environment. I’m not going to write about global warming, carbon footprints, green technology, video conferencing or social communities on the net, but write a bit about ‘my’ environment instead.

My environment
I haven’t always [...]

After a plea for help, Bristol Wireless has sent a laptop to Sarajevo to help a young civil war victim to enable him to turn his life around and help him gain the qualifications to find work. Read the story to see how they are using free and open source software to help Amir.

Following on from my posting earlier in the month where a US court issued two landmark decisions that the Target Corporation has to make their website accessible to blind people, web accessibility is an area which many nonprofits and charities still find difficult to implement on their sites.
In this article I’m going to show a [...]

Many organisations and charities are increasingly becoming interested in free and open source software (also known as ‘Foss’) and wanting to learn about the benefits it can bring to their organisation. But where do you go to find out more, understand what it all means and discover what is available to your group?
Nosi, the Nonprofit [...]

Free Burma!
I’ve joined with over 4,600 bloggers across the globe on 4th October. You can find out more at Free Burma!
Picture courtesy of Nickjais.

A federal district court judge in California has issued two landmark decisions in a nationwide class action against the Target Corporation ruling that they must make their website accessible to the blind.
Read more about the case at Max Design.

If you are looking for a simple and quick way to make a website for your organisation, there are many tools and choices available that are not only cheap or free, but also easy to use for the end user with no complicated need for in depth technical knowledge and ability. In this article, we’ll [...]

Regular readers will have noted a drastic colour change today on my blog.
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From politicians, to the public, to the press, it is a time when focus on breast cancer is at its very highest across the world.
Pink is the colour during Breast Cancer Awareness Month hence the new look to [...]

Text resize buttons on a single website or enable your readers to take control and learn how to make all their internet viewing a better experience? Which would you prefer?
Later in this article, I’ll provide you with a helpful list of links to resources which can help you to understand more about accessibility.
As [...]

Google adds presentation tools to Google Docs. A great feature is that users can connect through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they’re watching. Could be a great tool for sharing learning.

I’ve had several requests this week from local organisations wanting to understand more and use Google Docs to share documents (perfect for partnership and collaborative working!). CommonCraft have come up with a timely release to their ‘plain english’ series of quick and easy to understand videos to help people to learn and understand easily [...]

Several interesting articles appeared this week out there on the internet, all looking at different ways that non-profit organisations can harness or find difficulties with the power of technology and the internet to help communicate their cause. The first part of this article focusses more on social media and later, there’s some links to useful [...]

iT4 Communities are welcoming nominations for the 2007 IT Volunteer Awards, which aim to recognise and celebrate the best and most innovative examples of IT volunteering. Find out more on their site at www.IT4Communities.org.uk.

My favourite open source CMS has been nominated to be a finalist as the Most Promising CMS in the 2007 PacketPub Awards. Click on the image to find out more and vote for it to win!

After returning from my recent holiday I discovered that I had RSS overload. Not a medical condition, but it did make me panic for a few moments, with the reality that whilst I had removed myself from technology and everyday life for a short time to enjoy the delights camping in the South [...]

Netsquared has a new article with some great links to articles – Online Philanthropy is Hot, Hot Hot!
Ideal if you are exploring online giving for your organisation.

In the web design arena, there is currently a lot of discussion about how and where the ‘web’ is headed. With the concepts and available draft of of HTML 5, and the air of disappointment to many that it potentially is not necessarily going to enable better accessibility to all. On the other side [...]

Firstly before I begin my summary of the final tasks, I’d like to say a big thank you to Paul Webster from the ICT Hub, who boldly took on the final days of the challenge whilst I hopped on a train with the family, leaving all technology behind and unplugged for a much needed vacation [...]

Podcamp is coming to the UK! Find out more at the Podcamp UK site. It takes place in Birmingham on 1st to 2nd September.

Day 22 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge is all about helping new readers to catch up with your blog.
Darren from Problogger, describes todays task:
“Sometimes after you’ve been blogging on your blog for a while it’s easy to forget that not all of your readers have been reading your blog since you [...]

Day 21 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge is to make a reader famous.
Darren from Problogger gives us some ideas about how to build relationships and support your readers:

“Promote a comment to a Post – sometimes readers make incredibly insightful and wise observations and tips in the comments of your blog. While [...]

The challenge continues…
On day 20 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog experiment, we’ve been given the task to run a reader survey.
Darren from Problogger explains why this is useful:
“There are two main reasons why this exercise is worth doing:
1. Blog Improvement – the most obvious benefit of asking readers to [...]

The task continues, and the task for day 19 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge is to respond to comments on your blog.
Seems an easy task, but one that is essential to help build relationships with your readers and show that their involvement in your site is what makes it successful. [...]

Day 18 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge involves creating a ’sneeze’ page for your site. A sneeze page you may ask? What is that?
Darren from Problogger explains the task.

“A Sneeze Page is one that simply directs readers in multiple directions at once – back into your archives.”
A useful tip for not [...]

Roger Johansson of 456 Berea Street reviews ‘Just Ask – Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design‘. The book will help you to integrate usability testing and accessibility into the design of your site. The book is available free online or can be ordered.

Calling all font lovers! Helvetica is an independent documentary film about typography, modern design and global visual culture. It’s now available to pre-order. See more about it at the Helvetica Film website.

Grantmaking 2.0 – Using new technology to enhance grantmaker practices. An informative article with some useful case studies on how funders can use the web better.

The 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge continues…(for background information to the project follow this link here.)
The task for day 16 is to create a heatmap of where readers click on your blog. This looked a fun task to do and I could see the usefulness of having a go, and seeing if [...]

It’s now been around six weeks since I began with Facebook and Twitter to see how it can be used to connect and share with others.
I wasn’t really over aware of the full variety of social media available and how it can support and benefit non profit organisations until I played the Social Media Game [...]

To help enable my blog to become more accessible to a wider audience, I’ve added an audio feed.
I’ll share with you how I’ve gone about it and why.
I’ve been looking into audio feeds and podcasting recently, trying to see how I can use them in my site. I discovered a nice free tool to [...]

Following on the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge, the task today was to ’stickify’ your blog.
Darren at Problogger says:

“It revolves around identifying key points where traffic is entering your blog and then optimizing those points for stickiness either by providing means for subscribing via RSS or email or by driving people deeper into [...]

Todays task in the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge is to analyse your blogs competition. Darren of Prologger did use the term ‘competition’ hesitantly, as your competitors or those blogging in a similar theme are also your biggest allies, connect and share with them.
Since this challenge began, I’ve connected lots with other [...]

The 31 days to a Better Blog Challenge continues…
The task for Day 12 is to Introduce Yourself to another Blogger.
“Email another blogger in your niche to introduce yourself and your blog. You don’t need to ask them to link to you or anything – the point isn’t to get any specific outcome other than to [...]

Great article by Jeffrey Zeldman on Staying Creative. Includes links to some useful A List Apart Articles to keep designers and web writers creative and motivated.

The task for day 13, of 31 Days to a Better Blog is to dig into your blog’s metrics or statistics package.
(for further information on the challenge I’m taking part in, see the background page to the project)
“Take some time out today to do a little analysis of your blog’s statistics. There is a wealth [...]

The Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) have collated a brilliant list of resources on Blogs, Social Networks, and Tags for Nonprofits on a Google doc. Check it out here!

I’m still there and up to day 10 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge. The challenge set by Problogger Darren was something that I had already begun thinking about whilst stuck in a bad traffic jam earlier today. Yes, de-clutter your side bar. Read my thoughts below on how I will be [...]

Today’s challenge by Prologger Darren Rowse was to run an advertising audit on your blog. Like many of the rest of us taking part in the challenge (see here for background information as to what it is about), it possibly isn’t relevant to the types of blogs involved in this challenge and to our [...]

The 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge continues, and to save repeating what it’s all about every day, I’ve created a handy page for the background information to the project and as to why I am taking part. Also, please do read the full article, your input could help you to win a lovely [...]

Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere. Windows or Mac, easy to use and free! Perfect for screenshots and quick screencasts! Find out more at the JingProject.

A ‘must see’ – new online video on Social Bookmarking in Plain English by Commoncraft. Spotted on Beth’s Blog.

Does the web need fixing? The Web certainly performs adequately as an information source, but how well does Web technology itself work?
Useful article with interviews with tech stakeholders at xhtml.com

The 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge is gathering pace and numbers too in the collection of people who have connected together thanks to Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project Blog. At last there is someone else from the UK taking part (there’s 14 in all from across the globe now under Michele’s mini challenge, [...]

Today’s task in the 31 Days to a Better Blog project by Prologger, is (thankfully) an easier one.
Darren says:
“Do you have readers that have been reading your blog since the ‘early days’ of your blogging? You know the ones, they’ve been commenting and contributing away to the point where they’ve almost become part of a [...]

The Non-Profit Blog Exchange latest post is full of useful links to articles and other sites aimed at non-profit organisations who want to blog or who blog already. Check out their latest round up of resources!

Primarily as a freelance website designer, and becoming more immersed in the role of ‘blogs’, I’ve become more aware of some of the ease in which blogs provide an easier way for communication and can serve a real valid purpose compared to just having a static information site.
I’m receiving an increase in requests from organisations [...]

The task set out for day 5 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog project was to run and audit of your About page. Darren comes up with some really useful points which are useful to blogs and websites too, and some helpful quick tips pages on what to include on such a [...]

Wow, this challenge is requiring abit more headspace and time than I previously had anticipated. I hope that I can keep up!
For the background as to what this is all about, I was tipped off by Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project Blog who is collecting a growing list of bloggers like myself who are all undertaking [...]

Well, having two young sons, a day out a the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton could have been abit dull for the average mum. (I like trains rather than planes!). Anyway I did manage to have some fun finding some delicious examples of fonts and typography.
Especially the lovely Concorde one. If you [...]

Lifehacker website posted a video tutorial for the excellent GIMP, which is an open source, cross-platform powerful alternative to photoshop. The video is part of a series of ten video tutorials by VN Tutor, covering the basics through to intermediate levels.

I have a new gadget in my possession. And one, that hopefully, my husband will not take, use and hide elsewhere in our house, so at long last I can always find my trusty screwdriver when I need it.
This screwdriver looks fab, thanks to it’s more feminine styling!

Today’s task for Probloggers 31 Days to a Better Blog was to search for and join Forums.
Rightly as Darren quotes by taking part in forums and online communities, they can help build relationships, help with profile and branding, learning and readership. (and increase your credibility?)
Like Michele Martin on her Bamboo Project blog, I already [...]

If you read yesterdays post, I was embarking on the challenge of 31 days to a better blog and had a new reader which commented (thanks to Liz at Smoke Free Wisconsin!), and I duly emailed back and am pleased to see she is joining me on the challenge with Michele Martin at the Bamboo [...]

Following up on Michele Martin’s recent post at her Bamboo Project site, I too am going to take up the challenge of problogger Darren Rowse who has relaunched his series of articles and guides of 31 days to a better blog. (although may have to miss the last part and do that later as [...]

Latest article from Podnosh on their project working with young people on podcasting. Listen to the podcast too, a great example of what podcasting can be used for.

Beth Kanter (inspirational nptech and social media blogger!) needs your help…
Find out how you can help her get to the Cambodia Blogging Summit… to work with the Cambodian Blogger Team to teach young people in Cambodia to blog and use social media to make a better life!

When I moved my blog over to Wordpress after blogging neatly and perfectly and in control with the most excellent Modx, I began to use many of the gizmo’s and widgets which make my blog abit more ‘Web 2.0′.

Usually when designing sites, I don’t use other people’s bits of code or plug-ins, as I am designing purely for the purpose of creating a custom site for a purpose for the client. But with Wordpress and enjoying the ease of blogging and playing, I’ve ventured into ‘widget world’ and ‘embedding objects’ too. So what is my problem with alot of it?

Validation – YouTube and many others bits of code meant my site failed validation of its mark up with the W3C Validator. But I did find an easy cure to remedy this nasty condition…

If like me, you like MODx as the perfect choice for your CMS when designing, your help is needed. Nominations for Packt Open Source Content Management System Award began a few days ago.
First step is to nominate MODx as Most Promising Open Source Content Management System! Nominations end August, 31 and voting begins September [...]

Design Vitality’s post on 100 best open source design resources, templates and resources.

Webcredible’s latest article on improving accessibility for motor impaired users.

The “50” exhibition is a beautiful project which had 50 designers to visually interpret a year in the Helvetica font era on 50cm square posters. Spotted on the Veer website.

Those of you who know my little vibrant Oliver, will know that he loves music and as well as wanting to be a ‘restaurantman’ (his own words!) when he’s bigger, running a neat cafe that Jamie Oliver would be proud of…he also wants to be a rock star too. (pretty much your average 6 year old!) Luckily, managed to catch him having a spontaneous jam with his lead guitarist (okay – his dad!) yesterday evening! He loves YouTube no end (funny pet videos and clips of the Simpsons are his faves!) so he wanted this up for you to see…

The HBO Voyeur Project is an amazing new multimedia example and experience that just shows what can be achieved, with good design, good audio and a theme that certainly captures your imagination. It’s set in New York and tells a story behind each of the windows of various parts of town.

You can delve deeper into learning about the characters and the blog of understanding what its all about at The Story Gets Deeper, and find out more about the project at HBO’s main site.

The launch of the new iPhone has made me really think abut handheld and mobile design again. Although not being launched until later in the year over here in the UK, I’ve been researching what changes I may need to make in designing sites to adapt to the iPhone.

Later in this article, I’ll mention about how non-profits should also be thinking about mobile technology for communicating their cause. It goes hand in hand together, me the designer creating their site, and the organisations themselves thinking about how they can effectively communicate with their users in another media.

Beth Kanter has come up trumps again on her blog and discovery of tools that can help non-profits and others tell their story. VoiceThread is an online tool which you can use for a variety of purposes and is free and enables a slideshow with voice and sound too. It’s amazingly simple to use, and can involve wide participation which makes it so great.

In my circuit rider role, over the last few weeks, I’ve had an increasing number of requests from people looking to do the following: make a tutorial for their volunteers; find a creative way to let others know the work of their organisation, but not wanting to keep up with the maintenance of a blog; provide something real and live for potential funders and supporters to show the work they do, and also a group of young people wanting to collate their knowledge and share a project they’ve been working on together. VoiceThread may be able to help.

Well, practice what you preach. Hmm…taken me a little while on this one. As an information addict who looks at lots of sites and blogs regularly, it was time to pull all my feeds into one place. I’d been using Thunderbird for some, and live bookmarks for others, so it was high time to get my house in order as it were.

So, this morning I spent a while having a play with quite a few options to choose from. Bloglines, which I’ve used a bit in the past, Google reader and others too.

I couldn’t have been more surprised and overwhelmed with joy the other evening when settling to watch abit of late night telly and flicked over to BBC1 just in time for the fabulous Imagine documentary with Alan Yentob with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett as they embark on their new creative endevour for the opera Monkey, Journey to the West which showed in Manchester this week.

Spotted on the e-rider news today, was the announcement of the web launch of the latest edition of NGO-in-a-box, the BaseBox which looks like it will prove to be a great resource for not for small to medium sized organisations.
Produced by Tactical Tech in association with Women’sNet, the BaseBox aims to make it easier to set up base, find the right software and learn how to use it. It comprises a whole range of reviewed open source tools and software helping organisations to be able to make informed choices on what to use, plus the important guidelines and information on how to use it all.

The edition can be accessed online as a CD download in the coming weeks ahead, so it will provide a wealth of materials all in one place, which is great to be able to pass on to others when supporting them with their first steps into open source rather than having to tell them they need to download this and that. I’m going to be investigating this one more, could be a very useful resource…

This afternoon, I dropped Oli off to one of his friends birthday parties. Nearby to the venue, is a fabulous old fashioned sweet shop, so Ralph and I popped in to get some sweets. Now, I am not known for having a sweet tooth, but my heart melted when up on the top shelf….can you believe it – Mojo’s and banana ones at that too!
Read on to see my joy with my Mojo’s…

A recent shout out by Beth Kanter for experiences for those using Google Analytics in non-profit organisations, led me to write an article as she was looking for case studies for a forthcoming podcast.

WestCiv’s popular and recommeded free courses in XHTML and CSS are back on-line.

Yes, they are really free! Read more to find out.

Well, I’ve succumbed to the easier quick way to blog, moving my blog site to Wordpress. I do love Modx and will still use it for most if not all my future sites, but for the main Popokatea website, both Tony and I wanted blogs on the site, which can easily be done with ubercool Modx, but he really needed something, quick and easy to get along with.

Looking from the perspective of accessibility, thankfully the webworld has moved on. But still sometimes you find a website that was designed some years back with the lovely animated gifs and flashing and rotating banners that would make most screenreaders balk. Read on to find out more about a great example of retro web design. (actually reminds me of some MySpace sites!)

This really made me smile. I was sent a link to this on the UK Circuit Riders e-list. Well, I know when I’m fixing machines….why doesn’t an MS install this smoothly.
Fabulous to see it and coming from a library. Yep, its a library with a neat little video showing just how easy [...]

A long time coming, and I settled for an Imac! Read about what it’s got on it, and what we’ve used it for so far (other than playing our CD’s and listening to cool funky Cuban and Latino music!)

Was it my imagination, or were the noses for Red Nose Day exceedingly big this year?

Back at the end of February I went on FOSS (free and open source software) training aimed at circuit riders which took place in Bristol.