Posts from — February 2008
Collaborate on documents with Zoho Writer
While many people know about and use Google Docs, lesser known Zoho Office is an interesting alternative. Sarah Perez at Read/WriteWeb tells us today that Zoho Writer Adds New Features:
Zoho Writer, part of the online Zoho office suite, was updated this morning to include some new features that users have been asking for. These new additions, which include support for the DocX file format, a thesaurus, a “sharing with groups” feature, and enhancements to headers/footers and endnotes/footnotes, bring Zoho Writer that much closer to being a viable alternative to desktop software.
Her post includes further useful information, and several screenshots. If you’re looking for an easier way to collaborate on documents than emailing Word files as attachments, read her article and consider Zoho.
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February 28, 2008 No Comments
We love to share - photos, videos and links
m-net writes about findings from recent research on how Kiwis use the Internet. We’re using it a lot, and we’re becoming increasingly active (rather than passive) users. We enjoy connecting with people.
In its first ever study of Consumer Generated Media (CGM), Nielsen Online has found that the majority of those surveyed had engaged in some sort of CGM activity, with 84 per cent of Australian and 88 per cent of New Zealand internet users sharing content such as photos, links and video in the past year. A similar proportion - 83 per cent in Australia and 88 per cent in New Zealand - consumes CGM content.
The report also found that once consumers are familiar with CGM, they progress to more advanced activities such as editing and commenting on content (77 per cent of Australians and 78 per cent of New Zealanders), as well as creating online content such as uploading videos and music (69 per cent of Australians and 76 per cent of New Zealanders).
“We are seeing a revolution in the way in which consumers here in the Pacific and around the world are interacting, communicating, creating and nurturing personal and professional relationships,” says Melanie Ingrey, Asia Pacific market research director for Nielsen Online.
[Via : Kiwis love Web 2.0, Aussies lead in music sharing - m-net - ICT business news and information.]
Is your organisation making the most of this very human drive to share what we find? Do you make it easy for visitors to your site and members of your organisation to link to and pass on information, photos and links? Do you encourage them to share? Do you encourage them to interact with you, to leave comments, to contribute material?
One of the benefits of blogging is that blogs are usually set up to allow comments. They let visitors communicate both with you and with one another. Could your organisation use a blog?
Could you add photos to Flickr or videos to YouTube? Can people interact with your group on Facebook or MySpace?
What are you doing to add more two-way communication through the web?
If your group is doing something interesting, let us know about it in the comments.
Update: My thanks to Laurel Papworth who figured out where to find the stats:
now we have stats
[Via Laurel Papworth - Online Communities - Australia and Global: Australians DO Blog - number of Australian bloggers.]
February 26, 2008 No Comments
Freewellington informs about events
The freewellington Twitterbot does something interesting — it notices tweets that begin with the letters fw and then repeats them.
This means, for example, that if I happen to know about or come across a free or low cost event in Wellington I can immediately let others know about it. Anyone ‘following’ the freewellington Twitterfeed will immediately receive the information.
Here are a couple of examples from the web page:
@chillu says free opshop concert in waitangi park at 7 today …
@br3nda says This week is FAIR TRADE FORTNIGHT.. just for 2 weeks, try for fair trade coffee, sugar, chocolate, cocoa, soap, software…
@johubris says Lyall Bay is very seaweedy today, go to a different beach 03:01 PM February 23, 2008.
February 26, 2008 No Comments
Why have a Blog
Wild Apricot has a compelling post called 10 Reasons Why Every Nonprofit Must Have a Blog. Here are just two of the reasons:
2. Expert in the Field — Nonprofit organizations have a wealth of information on their specific area of focus. This information is highly desired in online blogging communities. …
3. Credibility — It is more important today than ever before for nonprofit organizations to be trustworthy in the eyes of their contributors. One of the best ways to establish this relationship of trust is to make events and projects as visible as possible. By having weekly updates on projects and the projects’ successes, users will know exactly what difference their donations have made (or will make if they donate). Furthermore, project developments can be posted onto the blog keeping the organization’s efforts current.
[Via : Wild Apricot Blog : 10 Reasons Why Every Nonprofit Must Have a Blog.]
If your organisation currently has no website at all, then a blog is a good place to start. In fact you could just begin with the most excellent and free WordPress.com. If you already have a website then talk to the web developers about whether and how you could incorporate a blog.
February 24, 2008 No Comments
People want to engage
Julie Starr, in talking about News services, mentions how important it is to give your visitors the ability to engage with you:
Community, like it or not, is the future. Digital citizens are not happy just looking at your news website and using your services in a static way. They want to be able to engage. To tell you what they think of your service, to make suggestions (which are sometimes very good), to talk to each other about news stories (and your service). If you don’t give them the chance to engage, they’ll give up on you eventually and go somewhere else. These ideas are well articulated in a couple of books I’ve read recently, if you’re interested: The Cluetrain Manifesto and Wikinomics. The Wisdom of Crowds also comes highly recommended.
[Via The Evolving Newsroom: Radio NZ gets it right, again.]
Although she’s specifically talking about News, I think what she has to say holds true for all kinds of services and organisations.
In our part of the world attitudes have shifted away from an old top-down approach where someone tells us what to do, say, think, how to behave. Now we are increasingly wanting to interact, to share our opinions, to challenge established authorities, to influence what goes on around us.
In real life we’ve been ‘talking back’ in this way for decades. Now we’re wanting to carry that approach across to the web, and to organisations we might not previously have thought to talk back to, such as news organisations.
It’s no longer sufficient for community organisations to have an isolated, informative website. Websites need to make it easy for visitors to interact, to share, to discuss with peers, to engage.
What do you think?
February 24, 2008 No Comments
