Hello to the Net Squared community blog readers!

I wanted to take a quick moment and re-introduce myself to everyone. I'm an nptecher that loves community. I think we have something special here at Net Squared and am excited to say that I'm now going to be a solid part of it! I'll be posting here twice a week, with insights, case studies, and how-tos that I come across to help you all as you continue to adopt and evaluate technology for nonprofits.

There is less than half an hour left for folks to submit their projects to the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. On March 17th, voting will begin to decide which 20 projects will go on to the 3rd Annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y3).

We really appreciate everyone's help in getting the word out to a diverse range of audiences. We have received over 100 entries!

Thanks to all of the bloggers and tweeters who have spread the word about the call for submissions. We hope you'll help us tell folks about the community voting process next week:

Using Blogger to host a weblog and Google Apps to create web pages cannot be done on the same custom domain, as I found out after much troubles.
Solution could be to use Wordpress, or not to use the Google page creator not with the custom domain.
See original post here (NL) and here (UK)

Google, Yahoo!, Six Apart and Federated Media will give awards to the bloggers who have the greatest impact during the DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge October 1-31st.

DonorsChoose is a nonprofit website where public school teachers post underfunded classroom projects like the Walk in the Wild project submitted by a second grade teacher at Spring Creek Elementary School in Kentwood, Louisiana. They need $1,265 to create an outdoor classroom which will include four discovery-learning stations. The school is located in the rural community of northern Tangipahoa Parish where 75% of the students receive free/reduced fee lunches.

I came across a Joi Ito post today about how he's joined the board of WITNESS, an incredible nonprofit that helps other nonprofits and NGOs to use video to document, create educational materials about and advocate against human rights abuses. You can read case studies of how their videos have made a difference here, and you can also hear WITNESS' Technology Manager, Bryan Nunez, when he presents at the NetSquared conference in the spring.