In my third year coming to NetSquared, I find myself in a new role: as one of 21 designated "project leads" who will be trying to connect the featured projects with the developers ready to work on an NGO project.

I'm working with Roshani Kothari and Michael Litz of the Oneworld Connect project, and together we've started a wiki page with what we'd like to work on. I'm posting the story here too: please help us develop this further, shape our thoughts, and connect our ambitions to the endless possibilities :-)

Saturday, May 31st, "green geeks" will get together at GreenDevCamp at the Green Building Exchange in Redwood City, CA to talk about:

* How can companies, big and small, make their operations, code, practices, etc. more sustainable?
* In what ways can technology make our lives more green?

They are also hoping to walk away with concrete projects:

Last year, NetSquared Featured Project, FamilyFarmed.org received the Yahoo! Green Award for its potential to use Web 2.0 tools to benefit the environment by connecting everyday consumers with their local farmers.

This year, Yahoo! is looking for innovative “green mashups” that will inspire people to use social technology to help the environment.

Yahoo! will review the project submissions included in the “Environment” Cause Area of the NetSquared Project Gallery. Using Yahoo! APIs is a plus, but not necessary. The most innovative green mashup will receive a $5,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing award.

TechSoup’s free day-long online event is coming up this Wed. May 14th: Online Activism: Social Media Tools for Social Change in the TechSoup online forums.

Each week in the Net2 Newsletter I try to share links to jobs that use the social web for social change. People often ask me where to find these kinds of jobs. The main places I find them are:

NTEN's Job List
New Organizing Institute Job List
Idealist
TechSoup's Job Listings
Social Edge's Job Listings
Nonprofit Tech Jobs Yahoo Group
Progressive Exchange List

Is there anywhere else people who are looking for nonprofit technology jobs should look?

Flickr photo credit: Need a Job? by Doug Bowman.

People often store their private data, such as passwords, photos and other on USB flash devices. If the device is given to someone, you have no control over your data. He may read and delete them, or even corrupt. For example, if a hacker have seen the password to your website, he'll probably try to hack it.

With a new tool, HideFlash 1.1, protecting your folders and files on USB flash drives become easy. For example, you create a folder, named "private" on the flash drive, run HideFlash and tell it to hide the folder. It makes all work, and now the folder is not visible! If you try to use your flash drive on another computer, the folders and files will remain invisible too. Even under Linux and MacOSx machines.

Research Triangle, NC Net Tuesday will have its first meeting on May 22nd. For those of you (like me) who didn't know where the "Research Triangle" was, here's Wikipedia's definition:

"The Research Triangle, commonly referred to as "The Triangle", is a region in the Piedmont of North Carolina in the United States, anchored by the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill."

Ruby Sinreich, Co-Director of Communications, Fellowship of Reconciliation will present. RSVP for the first Research Triangle, NC Net Tuesday on their Meetup page.

May 27 and 28 at the NetSquared Conference (N2Y3), social changemakers and web innovators will gather to network, socialize and help the 21 Featured Projects from the NetSquared Mashup Challenge take their ideas to the next level.

We'll also have sessions like, "Using Flickr to Make Your Existing Community More Amazing, or to Create a New One," and "Investing in Social Networks: Where Are They Going and What Can/Should Nonprofits Put Into and Get out of Them?"

For more information, check out our N2Y3 Working Agenda.
Public registration will be open until May 16th.
To get the special room rate at the Hotel Santa Clara, book your room by May 9th.
Questions? Email net2@techsoup.org

A Crowdsource Design Site for a Crowdsource Mapping Site Logo

For the Your Mapper project, we decided to use an existing site to "crowdsource" the design of our logo. This means that we are starting up a paid contest to determine our logo. Anyone can contribute a design for free, everyone can vote for and comment on the designs, and to the winner goes $150 in cash!