Flickr Photo by Ben Sheldon

As we head into the holiday next week, food is on my mind.  And what do I find in the nptech tag stream from flickr?  More photos from conference gathering of nonprofit techies? No!  A riff on the metaphor of sandwiches and nonprofit technology sustainability. 

Better yet, it is being shared by a creative commons share alike 2.0 license which means we are free to use it as long as we credit the photographer.

There was an interesting post about the pros and cons about the technology that drives the NpTechTag (social bookmarking services/RSS versus collaborative search engine.)   What do you think?

Blogosphere Chatter

NTEN releases the results of its information technology staff survey.  The good news is that a lot of nonprofits "get it" and are investing in technology, but a large investment gap exists between large and small nonprofits.  While not surprising, this information could be very useful to many organizations in making the case to decision-makers about the importance of IT investments.

Martin Kearns announces the launch of MediaVolunteer - a distributed media contact database.  He also invites all of us to take 12 minutes to call a reporter, check a bit of data, and see more public interest stories in the media.

Nancy Schwartz of the Getting Attention Blog hosted this weeks' Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants on how to pinpoint the right social networking tools for your nonprofit.   I  enjoyed the article by Marc Sirkin,  blogger at npMarketing Blog It emphasizes the importance of communication as a human being - rather than a marketer - social networking spaces.

NTEN's recent announcement for its video contest (which remixed some brief clips from a Frank Capra movie - brilliantly I might add) sparks some cross blog commenting and posts (here and here) about fair use, copyright, and creative commons.  Meanwhile, Ken Goldstein debates himself about what constitutes fairuse in his "The Great YouTube Copyright Debate"

RootscampSL finished up this week and by all reports it is a success. 

What does the On Demand Nonprofit's IT structure look like?  Check it out here. 

Newly Discovered Blogs and Blog Communities

Blog communities, like Netsquared, are becoming more common in the nonprofit blogosphere.  Here's one from the UK set up for Aid Workers.

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for Today's Learner Blog is a blog about learning theory for the digital age.

The folks at see3 media have a really useful blog on nonprofit media.

Podcasting

PragTASTIC Podcasts, sponsored by the March of Dimes, are podcasts for pregnant women.

There's also lots of nonprofit and activist podcasts on the Rabble Podcast Network, a consortium of 38 podcasts from across Canada.

Web 3.0 - Oh No!

JP's Philantherapy Blog informs us that Web3.0 is here!  (And if you're still trying to figure out Web2.0,  this week's nptech tag stream pulled in a year-old article from TechSoup called "What is Web2.0 anyway?"

Vlogging, Video, Screencasts, and Machinima

If you're wondering how Second Life and techniques like Machinima (movies made in a game envrionment) might used for political activism, check out the notes from Machinima session from Aldon Hyne's Blog and watch some Second Life machinima here.

Aldon Hynes also points us to Homeless Nation's Videos from a well-known vlogger and homeless activist in Canada, Brett Gaylor.

Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog stirred up a debate about the basic rules of the YouTube World which includes being authentic, homemade, original, get out of the camera frame, give up control, and giving people a reason to watch.

  
On YouTube, I've seen people leave video responses as comments.  Now you can add this feature to your (wordperss) blog which has a plugin for video comments? 

I'm always happen to see other screencasters in this space.  Here's a series of screencasts from the Silicon Valley Commons, a nonprofit wiki magazine.

Widgets and some cool tools

Michael Stein (East Coast) has a post about using the right tools that begins with a friend attacking his old sofa-bed with his chain saw.   I won't say more, go read it.

stikkit (where?) is a cool web app that gives you the digital equivalent of a sticky note.

e-politics writes about RSS widgets and offers some good points about why campaigns and organizations should use them.

Carnet Williams, longtime member of the nonprofit technology community, has launched a Web2.0 start up company called Chip In, a simple flash application that allows people to organize to collect money.   Peter Deitz, of First-of-its-Kind, writes a detailed guide to features here while Britt Bravo writes about a campaign here .

Rants in the Nonprofit Blog Space

The Nonprofit Curmudgeon is  described as "anonymous mutterings from the nonprofit sector" and lets it all hang out.  Some speculate that this is a cranky CompuMentor employee, but it seems unlikely.  There are not a lot of visible anonymous blogs written by nonprofit employees on nonprofit organizations.  Another good one to read is "Today I Cried

The NonprofitTechBlog Blog points us to an irate consultant comment on a post (that was subsequently deleted) on Deborah Finn's blog.