John Lyman from Google.org talks to us about how social benefit organizations are using Google Apps to enhance their operations and collaborate.

Our goal is really for non-profits to have access to the same technologies that Fortune 500 companies have… And the way that you do that, basically, is you make the same technology available to everyone, which is what Google has done.

Jed Sundwall: What are you working on with Google.org?

"I would like to see a mashup that can create a value index that people can use to understand how their identity is negotiated, traded, and assigned across multiple web spaces."

Joaquin Alvarado is a NetSquared Advocate, and the Founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University. In this e-interview, he talks about the Institute's work, Web 2.0 and the "digital divide", and the kind of mashup he'd like to see developed for the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.

BB: The Institute for Next Generation Internet provides leadership in the evolution of Next Generation Internet focusing on issues of public policy, industry collaboration, research and development, and community engagement. What project is the Institute working on right now that involves the social web?

JA: INGI is focused on developing semantic web tools for creating persistent user experiences across the network. The amount of data on the web in an overwhelming number of sites and services is marginalizing people. We want people to be the creative core of the network.

BB: One of the Institute's goals is to break down barriers to digital literacy for underserved communities. How do social web tools enforce the "digital divide," and how do they bridge it?

What makes us write a donation check, spread the word about a campaign, or show up for a meeting or protest? What makes us want to act for social change? Emotional connection. Passion for a cause.

For the past year, I have been writing for NetSquared about nonprofits and NGOs that are using the social web to cultivate donors, advocates and activists for their organization and their cause. I find that the campaigns I respond the most to are the ones with heart, whimsy and oftentimes, a story. Here are my picks for the Best Internet Marketing for a Cause 2006 (in alphabetical order). I hope you'll add your picks in the comments.

Blogging for Chickens by ProBlogger: Darren Rowse celebrated ProBlogger's second birthday by raising $1100 (AU), or about $830 US, to buy 110 pairs of chickens for impoverished families via Oxfam Australia. When Oxfam contacted Rowse they said that Blogging for Chickens was, "one of the more interesting fundraisers that they’ve seen."

An announcement was posted on the New York City Young Nonprofit Professionals Network yesterday about an Internet provider called May First/People Link.  Here's their mission from the web site:

We are an organization of progressive people who use the Internet. We have joined together to improve our access to it, enhance its function as a tool for mass communication and organizing, develop new technologies and uses for it, and help social justice movements use it effectively to communicate with each other and with the world.

They also have some interesting news on their front page about a program in Venezuela to train 400,000 people in open source software and the 7th Annual Organizers' Collaborative Grassroots Use of Technology Conference  happening at UMass Boston this Saturday.

Q : What is the New Orleans Voices For Peace Project?

A: Providing the tools, technologies and training for communication.

Q: For Who?

A: Communities effected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

I write a weekly column for Campus Technology magazine's" IT Trends" newsletter. This was the most recent one - http://www.campus-technology.com/news_article.asp?id=11862&typeid=153 - published Thursday, September 29, 2005.

In the ocean of media that we live in, what we think of as 'life' may already just be a series of 'media interrupts.'

In the year and a half that I spent with the US Navy's Underwater Demolition Team 13, in 1969-70, I spent far less time each day immersed in water than I now spend immersed in media. So do you, unless you happen to be related to Aquaman.