Greetings from the Lisbon Poets Hostel in Portugal. I will make this post quick, since I´m terribly confused by the punctuation on this keyboard, and should probably rest before my presentation tomorrow, but I want to share my experiences today, while they´re still fresh in my mind.

My name's Gina, and I work mostly behind the scenes at NetSquared. Right now, I'm pretty much breathing N2Y2 24/7, trying to make sure that staff, panelists and community members have everything they need to make N2Y2 a success.

Going a step beyond voting, people are using their video cameras and even cell phones to document voter intimidation, long lines, voter equipment problems, and to keep tabs of what's going on during the election.  

Video the Vote was inspired by American Blackout, a movie about voter suppression, and encourages citizens to film the vote.  Going one step further in futuristic media coverage, YouthNoise and Veeker are presenting Veek the Vote. A Veek is apparently a video taken with a cell phones (a video peek) and people are encouraged to take video peeks at their local elections and upload them.  People can then not only view streaming videos from people's cell phones, but can embed the veek the vote player on their site.  Actually, I'm going to do that right now.  Let's seek how it goes.

I just embedded a chat window into the Net Tuesday page, and it took me all of 20 seconds.  Serously, that was so easy I still can't believe it!

The makers of Gabbly, that oh-so-easy chat maker that powered the NetSquared remote conference, will be participating in an on- and off-line chat for tonight's Net Tuesday.  If you can't join us in person at the Hotel Utah, join us online at 7pm PST by just going to the Net Tuesday page (it may take a few seconds for the chat to load).  

In other chat news, there's a new service from an old friend of NetSquared, Meebo (Seth presented at our 2nd Net Tuesday).  It's called MeeboMe, and it's the talk of the town.  Like Gabbly, MeeboMe is easily embedded into your website.  While Meebo is a personal 1-1 chat service and works with a variety of Instant Messengers like AIM, Gabbly creates chat rooms and doesn't require a login.  They're very complementary tools, and both free and easy ways to bring a new dimension to your website. Yay free and easy! 

i used to come home to visit family in brooklyn and feel like i was stepping into the past.  sure, this is new york, it's hardly the middle of nowhere, but still...a year ago i couldn't even really get people to understand the concept of a "technology nonprofit".  now i'm using the free wireless that's spilling over from the neighbor's house while watching coverage of last week's games for change conference on ny1, and my sister, who teaches history to 7th graders at a local public school, got a bet

Congratulations to Clancy  J.  Wolf,  Ed. D, who won the Social Web Survey iPod Nano giveaway! Clancy has worked with students, teachers, and researchers from Forks, Washington, to Key West, Florida, exploring how technology helps students learn and challenging students to think about their role in the world around them. He is   the past President of the Northwest Council for Computer Education, the country’s oldest organization for teachers who   use technology in the classroom.

Congratulations to Amanda Atkins, who answered our Social Web Survey and won an iPod Nano! Amanda works for Metropolitan Affordable Housing , an entrepreneurial non-profit organization committed to improving the quality of life for people living on limited incomes.

Like many of our 700+ survey respondents, she came to the survey through TechSoup.org, the technology portal for nonprofits that is the home of the NetSquared project.

Amanda uses social networking sites as one stop shops to blog and share photos. Though she enjoys using them personally, she doesn't use them at work, and sees her main challenge as being public perception of the professionalism of these tools.

I passed on the enchiladas at dinner and went straight to my room, only to be brought out by NetSquared. Our dinner guest works for a domestic violence shelter, and in her spare time is building a media literacy organization focused on how the media affects body image and self esteem. She has a blog for the organization and was sharing plans to move into social networking…

Roommate: You should talk to Gina about this project she’s working on. It’s called NetSquared, and it’s basically about how nonprofits can use blogs and social networking and things like that to spread their message, and raise funds, and you know, run their nonprofits better without spending a lot of money. Hey G – was that right?

The roster of NetSquared Advocates continues to grow and diversify, & we're proud to welcome two new supporters: Stuart Gannes & Karen Coppeck of Stanford's Digital Vision Program. 

In early 2002 Gannes was recruited by Stanford University as the inaugural Director of the Digital Vision Program at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). Over the past two and a half years the DV program has evolved from an independent fellowship experience to an integrated prototyping course that focuses on technology innovation and social entrepreneurship. The goal is to support the design and concept-testing and sustainability modeling of technology solutions that address humanitarian needs in the developing world.

The Tech Museum will be awarding $250,000 to innovators using technology to benefit humanity. Previous winners of $50,000 cash prizes include MIT OpenCourseWare, Malnutrition Matters and the Hib Vaccine Team. Nominations are due by April 3, 2006.


Visit www.techawards.org

The Tech Museum Awards is a unique and prestigious program that honors and awards innovators from around the world who use technology to benefit humanity in the categories of:

• Education
• Equality
• Economic Development
• Environment
• Health