Oh, climate change.  Oh, the UN. A giant concept and a giant organisation, both with limited access points for the public, guarenteed to make you feel small, disempowered and unheard.  Well, it's that time of year again: it's the UN Climate Change Conference, and this year it's happening in Poland! 

You’d think with the election over, we would shut up about Obama’s internet strategy - but not so much. Because it turns out that an oft-quoted statistic about his campaign isn’t quite right. See, I went around telling everyone that small donors formed the bulk of his campaign contributions. I bragged about how the internet had made it possible to mobilize huge numbers of regular folk, who gave small amounts of their hard earned cash until, together, they put Obama in the White House! Power to the people, baby!

A nice story, but according to a study of his campaign finances, not exactly true.

Are you a social media trysumer? A digital dilletante, you are constantly trying out all sorts of social media sites, online networks and forums.  You flit from one to the next, finally settling on a few that work for you - for now.  You are, rather literally, a social butterfly. You just might be the future of online fundraising.

Trysumer has newly entered our lexicon, describing a class of consumer who constantly seek new products and experiences.  The good news? They have a great willingness to experiment and play with new ideas and things.  The bad news? They have ridiculously short attention spans.

Everyone was all a-flutter earlier this week when Google introduced a new feature that allows you to vote search results up or down based on their accuracy and track it on a search wiki. The implication is that from now on the web will be a giant popularity contest where, if you haven’t been voted for, you’re a nobody! For non-profits, this is sure to be a refreshing change from the current state of Google search, where you’re nobody unless you’ve been clicked on and linked to.

Well, plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose.

In the 19th century, do-it-yourself x-ray kits became hugely popular as people x-rayed their own boots, hands, and plants (not to mention weirder stuff) to find out what the invisible world really looked like. Wired's Alexis Madrigal has a great article series with links to San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art's Brought To Light: Photography and the Invisible exhibit exploring these DIY pictures as part of the social consequences of x-rays and photography of the period.

The latest version of Google’s SketchUp software was released yesterday.  Aside from having a cute name, the software has some great potential use in your non-profit toolbox.

For those that haven’t played with it, SketchUp is a three dimensional modeling program.  That means you can create little virtual models of practically anything: a house, a train, a space station, a dinosaur.  Well, it’s really geared towards mechanical things - my dinosaur comes out looking a little funky.

Yesterday morning, 1.2 million people in 6 major US cities read a morning edition of the New York Times that was a little…different. The Times was dated July 4, 2009, and announced that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had ended; global warming was fixed; and the economy was on the upswing. Good news! Or was it news?

Of course, this wasn’t actually the staid NYT. Instead, a collective of activists had created the spoof, with the intent of encouraging President-Elect Obama to keep his election promises.

You're ready to get your non-profit online and make a difference. Grand. Except...there's just a few basic things you're not quite sure how to do. Like edit a wiki, back up your computer's memory or um, code.

Off with you to Wired's How-To Wiki, which happens to be the most empowering place I've discovered for acquiring any internet skills beyond checking your Facebook.  Get started with our selected list of their how-to's here:

First, learn to back up your non-profit's computers.

In our last post, we wrote about the brilliance of the Obama internet campaign. Apparently, Joe the Plumber is now joining the fray - with an internet fundraising site.

Secure Our Dream is a terrific example of what not to do. Let’s take it apart…and learn some lessons along the way...more

What can we learn from the unstoppable Obama PR machine that just rolled over the country? Never mind the politics: the campaign was the smartest publicity siege that’s been seen in a long time. It’s particularly worth paying attention to how Obama and his crew of merry techsters paid attention to the net. They pulled a bunch of cool tools from their utility belt: social networking sites, twitter, text messaging, and even virutal advertising in video games.  Find out more about their strategy and how it could work for your non-profit...