We played around with two sites that looked promising: Box.net and e-Snips (www.esnips.com). Both worked well. Both allow you to set up separate folders and to choose your collaborators and the level of access they have—for example, read and download only, or also editing/uploading access.

Box.net had two features that led us to prefer it. First, it had no advertising. While the advertising on eSnips is tolerable, it’s a bit irritating, especially the “You have 2 new messages from Auckland!” and “You have just won a prize!” sort of spam. Box.net, on the other hand, is “cleaner” looking because of the lack of advertising. I assume eSnips gets its financial support from the advertising, whereas Box.net gets its revenue from members who upgrade to one of the more advanced versions (which gets you more storage space and some additional features).

The other feature we like about Box.net is that it allows you to upload an updated version of the same document. For eSnips, you have to delete or move the older file and upload a new one. Not a big deal, but the “update” feature saves a step. On the other hand, if you want to save the older versions of documents on the site, you’re better off setting up something like an “archives” folder and simply moving the older version of the documents there. You can do that on either site.

eSnips does have one big advantage: It allows 5 gigabytes of storage free, compared to 1 gigabyte free on Box.net. That wasn’t so important to us, since the whole book (which is 15 chapters and about 500 pages), plus support documents, used up about 6 megabytes—leaving us 1018 megabytes remaining!

Both sites have other features that we have not used, but would be worth exploring.

Contributed by Ted Zorn (tzorn@mngt.waikato.ac.nz)

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The Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand licences are all up and running for Kiwis to use, and we have a brand new website where people can register as a licence user and promote their work, ask questions, find helpful guides and contribute to discussion forums.

The new site is at www.creativecommons.org.nz.

If you haven’t come across Creative Commons before, the fine folks over there have this clear explanation right up top on the home page:

Creative Commons aims to establish a fair middle way between the extremes of copyright control and the uncontrolled uses of intellectual property. It provides a range of copyright licences, freely available to the public, which allow those creating intellectual property — including authors, artists, educators and scientists — to mark their work with the freedoms they want it to carry.

I use Creative Commons licences on most of my work — I’m only too aware that most of my thinking and writing is based on the freely shared ideas of others. I also know that my words are unlikely to be the final definitive statement on anything. If someone else can build on what I’ve done then we all benefit.

At the same time I not only enjoy acknowledgement of my work and recognition of my achievements, but have also found that the supermarket have never yet said: Don’t bother paying for your groceries this week — we hear you’ve been doing some fine work recently. I need financial reward attached to my work.

Creative Commons allows me to share my work freely, but ask for recognition, and that others don’t take the financial benefit I need.

Community organisations in particular should consider whether a Creative Commons licence is useful for anything they produce. Collaborating, creating, developing and building are all promoted by sharing information. If your organisation hasn’t yet looked into Creative Commons this is the time to visit www.creativecommons.org.nz.

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Mike Riversdale has kept us going with a few recent posts, but I’ve been swamped with work and haven’t had the opportunity to keep up regular posting. I already have 3 blogs of my own that have also been a bit quieter lately.

A few months ago I realised I was suffering from data overload. I was receiving too much news, too much information, from too many sources. So I cut back. Drastically.

Less information coming in meant less opportunity to share it with others. It also meant more peace of mind and more focus on the paid work that (barely) allows me the luxury of giving away my time and energy to community groups through this blog, the Engage your Community conferences and in other ways.

Recently I’ve started to think hard about my life. I’ve decided 2009 will be a ‘gap’ year for me: I’m retiring from all volunteer and unpaid positions in the interests of getting my own metaphorical house in order.

I’ve been doing unpaid voluntary work for decades now, in addition to the paid work that buys the groceries. Often the paid work has been on behalf of community organisations and the rate of pay has not been high.

It’s just not sustainable.

I have very high standards. I expect to offer excellence with my work, whether I’m paid for it or not. I’ve contributed 3 posts here in the last month. I haven’t updated any of the content in the Webguide for many months. That’s not enough, and I can’t do more.

So, this may well be the last post here from me, and I’ve resigned as the person who ‘looks after’ Groupings and the Webguide.

The Webguide organisers are looking for someone to take over — they have funding for some payment for the job. If you’re interested contact Ted Zorn for more information.

Meanwhile, I sometimes write about the kinds of topics that appear in Groupings over at my work blog, KnowIT. You’re welcome to visit, maybe sign up for the RSS feed.

[Cartoon: Geek And Poke: Scoial Graph. The cartoon has a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Licence. ]

I’m also looking for work writing for the web. Feel free to contact me directly if you have something to offer. The wording on your website has a huge impact on your visitors — I can probably help make it more powerful and more successful.

If you’re a Mac user do visit my MacTips archive, where I add a new Tip for Mac users each week.

Cheerio,
Miraz

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… by using interactive Web 2.0 tools, Mr. Obama’s campaign changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents.

Mr. Obama used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground, Mr. Trippi said. …

Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. Mr. Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted. …

There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens. …

The Internet also let people repeatedly listen to the candidates’ own words in the face of attacks, Mr. Huffington said. As Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary words kept surfacing, people could re-watch Mr. Obama’s speech on race. To date, 6.7 million people have watched the 37-minute speech on YouTube.

… “This medium demands authenticity, and television for the most part demanded fake. Authenticity is something politicians haven’t been used to.”

[Via : How Obama's Internet Campaign Changed Politics - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com.]

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Gibson spoke clearly and with enthusiasm about the importance of using ’social media’ — things like blogs and Twitter for connecting authentically with an audience one is trying to reach.

While her domain is business, everything she said also holds true for community organisations.

And for those organisations who represent the views of consumers, of goods or services, this interview is also particularly interesting. Gibson spoke, for example, about how the Internet has changed the way that companies interact with their customers; about how companies are quickly found out if they attempt to communicate in ways that are inauthentic and disingenuous.

It’s well worth a listen, and even those on dial-up can probably manage an 8Mb audio file.

Note: RadioNZ seems to be making their audio files available for longer these days. The sidebar on the Saturday Morning with Kim Hill page now says:

Audio is available for all 2008 programmes.

Download:

• Barbara Gibson: networking and authenticity (Ogg Vorbis)
• Barbara Gibson: networking and authenticity (MP3)

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We know that many NGOs and community groups are not benefiting from some of the integrated online features that can make managing an organisations contacts more straightforward.

Features such as enabling people to register direct for events without having to reply to e-mails or logging in to websites; renewing directly from a link in an email, without risking creating duplicate contacts etc.

Therefore, I wanted to let you know about an application to the Digital Strategy Community Partnership Fund which would provide funding to help more users in the not-for-profit sector to take advantage of an open source contact management tool — civiCRM.

The first round of documentation has to be delivered on November 10th 2008 and while this timeframe is now incredibly tight there is always the option of organisations becoming involved further down the track.

The funding application is being made to help enable the non-profit sector to benefit from a fully-feature, flexible, open source ‘contact’ management tool. The funding would subside data migration, training, implementation and support for those NGOs that choose to be a part of the project.

Being open source means civiCRM has no licensing costs or support obligations, and there is a strong community of developers adding new features.

We have implemented civiCRM for both simple and highly complex organisations in New Zealand and know that it is a robust and capable system.

We are very keen to help other NGOs know of its existence and enjoy the benefits of having a product that can effectively manage their

• membership
• fundraising
• contact management
• internal organisational systems
• events
• bulk emailing and much more.

I would of course be very happy to show you what civiCRM is capable of, should your organisation be keen to learn more, regardless of the outcome of this funding proposal.

However, at present we are particularly keen to get some ‘letters of support’ from the non-profit sector so that we may get funding to assist with several aspects

• develop a series of resources to facilitate adoption of CiviCRM by other non-profit and community user groups
• encourage the expansion of the community of CiviCRM users in New Zealand, with a view to benefit from economies of scale
• run a series of CiviCRM Workshop Series that would cover implementation, system manager training, data migration, user training
• ensure there are affordable CiviCRM Shared Hosting & Installation Services.

We are also hoping we will be able to develop a community of learning of CiviCRM users in the New Zealand non-profit sector, to ensure continued sharing of knowledge and best practices.

An additional outcome would be to set up the first annual New Zealand CiviCRM User Group Meeting, to provide an opportunity for mutual learning and sharing of experiences and successes.

To help support the application we are looking to get letters of interest from within the non-profit sector.

Please contact Peter (peter.davis [@] fuzion.co.nz if you want to discuss providing such a letter.

Read more about civiCRM at www.civicrm.org.

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At the very last moment we then decide to allow others into our document by sharing it by a multitude of means - printing, emailing as an attachment, sending as a link or even publishing to the Intranet.

And then what?

If you’re like me it probably sinks lower and lower in our vision as we embark on creating more and more documents full of more and more words.

For the readers of the document they may find that your words have been the answer to all their problems and they pass it on. They may, unfortunately, never actually read it. Or the words in your document may have lasting value to your organisations and be found over and over again as more and more people share it.

How do you know which applies to your masterpiece?

If, like me, you use Google Docs (within Google Apps) as the place to store your words you’ll know that not only can you create your document but you can also collaborate (in real time) and share your documents with anyone connected to the Web. And because this is the “web” you can now do things that were initially only avaialble for web sites - track usage.

Today Google has announced:

Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators can link their Google Analytics accounts to Google Apps through the Google Apps administrative control panel. Just go to the ‘Advanced Tools’ tab, click ‘Setup Google Analytics’ and enter the profile ID number from your Google Analytics account to begin collecting usage data.

Google Docs, not only can you create and share your words you can see how those all important readers are using them.

Interested in more about Google Docs then check out the RoSSCo hosted Engage Your Community Conference in Rotorua on Friday 28th November - full details in the programme (pdf).

Also, these articles will help you discover more about Google Docs:

• Google Docs
• Video: Google Docs in Plain English
• Google Docs Help
• Google Docs … so what - the ONE reason why you should care

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Right now the National Library of New Zealand are undertaking Web Harvest 2008:

The National Library of New Zealand has a legal mandate and a social responsibility to preserve New Zealand’s social and cultural history, be it in the form of books, newspapers and photographs, or of websites, blogs and YouTube videos.

An increasing amount of New Zealand’s documentary heritage is only available online. New Zealanders find this content valuable and convenient, but its impermanence, lack of clear ownership, and dynamic nature pose significant challenges to our efforts to collect and preserve it.

The public benefit from the safe, long-term preservation of New Zealand’s online heritage is incalculable. Our online social history and much government and institutional history will be preserved for researchers, historians, and ordinary New Zealanders. We will be able to look back on internet documents as we do the printed words left to us by previous generations.

The 2008 domain harvest

During October 2008 the Library will perform a large-scale harvest of the New Zealand internet. We will do this using a ‘web crawler’ to find and download web pages.

The domain harvest will attempt to acquire every publicly accessible website that falls under the nz country code, as well as certain other websites that are owned by New Zealanders or legally considered New Zealand publications.

The internet is always changing, and uses a myriad of technologies, so it is impossible to make a perfect copy. Despite this, we are hoping to harvest 100 million URLs during October 2008, giving us a snapshot of the internet at that time.

The harvested web pages will be stored at the Library, and will eventually be made publicly accessible.

And by the way, the Internet Archive already does some of this with its Wayback Machine. For example, here’s a look at Communitynet Aotearoa from May 2001. Some of the pictures are missig, but it’s still very interesting.

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yMedia are doing some research into running specific ICT-related workshops for community organisations facilitated by industry professionals. As part of this research, we are asking community organisations based in Wellington to complete a short survey telling us their needs in regards to digital skills/tools and technology.

Please complete this survey yourself and pass on the information and survey-link to as many relevant organisations and groups that you can think of (in the Wellington region).

Survey link:
http://www.polldaddy.com/s/B84E3F4DA6C8888B/ .

The survey takes only a few minutes, and should be well worth your time.

Update: the survey closes at midnight Sunday 12 October 2008.

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But Suzanne Kendrick, in her post Cloud Recruiting and the Voluntary Sector (on her own blog) linked to Intersect:

[which] is about creating networks to promote sustainability. It’s a charitable trust - a non-profit organisation - that provides the fertile ground in which to grow networks between young professionals.

Intersect are using Ning, as Suzanne explains:

Intersect is a group for “green” Wellington young professionals. They have formed a social network on Ning. This group already has 441 members. It looks active and good fun. Intersect have now attracted enouth attention to have a story in this month’s Good magazine.

At the recent Engage your Community conference in Wellington Deirdre Kent talked about Ning.

We’d love to have more information about Ning on the Webguide here. Have you used Ning? Do you want to? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Welcome! learn2sign is for anyone who wants to have a go learning New Zealand’s third official language, New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). …

Mission:

To promote the teaching and learning of New Zealand Sign Language.

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Internet users trust other information sources – TV, radio, newspapers – less than people who don’t use the Internet. It’s almost as though using the Internet makes you more cynical about other forms of media.

Q: So, the take-aways from the survey?

A: New Zealanders are big Internet users despite our low broadband uptake. People who use it come rely on it. Nearly two thirds of those of us who use it think it would be problem if the Internet were to be taken away. Essentially, the Internet is a core part of most New Zealanders’ lives. Not bad for a geek toy!

The AUT - World Internet Project says:

The World Internet Project New Zealand (WIP NZ) is an extensive research project which aims to provide important information about the social, cultural, political and economic influence of the Internet and related digital technologies.

ICDC’s longitudinal survey includes a cross-section of participants aged 12 and up across New Zealand. A quota ensures that people of Māori, Pasifika and Asian descent and the range of age-groups are not under-represented.

The report is available as a downloadable PDF, or you can order a hard copy.

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This year though viewers are invited to send in video questions via YouTube:

Today, we’re thrilled to announce the ONE News YouTube Election Debate between Helen Clark and John Key, a history-making initiative with New Zealand’s public broadcaster, TVNZ. This marks the first time the head of a national government and a challenger will face YouTube video questions in an official live TV debate. The debate will be broadcast live on TV ONE on October 14.

So now it’s over to you.

This is your chance to interact directly with the leaders of both parties. All questions are welcome. Be as creative and compelling as you like, just keep your questions under 30 seconds. You may be a frequent YouTube user, or you may be giving it a go for the first time. The power of video is that you can show where you’re coming from, instead of just saying it. Whether you’re on a train, in a classroom, outside your lecture hall, in the centre of the city, on the water’s edge, in front of Parliament in Wellington, or an expat Kiwi abroad… get your camera and ask away.

… and stay tuned to see the questions — and the answers — as the country’s leaders respond directly to the issues that matter most to you.

[Via : YouTube Blog.]

Send in a video question and / or comment on and rate questions from others.

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