Posts from — June 2008

Headlines and news items like this are disturbing — Petrol prices getting too much for volunteers:

Volunteer charity workers are resigning because of rising petrol prices.

The Auckland Cancer Society has lost five volunteer drivers since petrol passed $2 per litre last month. …

The Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society recieves 72,000 from the Corrections Department to help children visit family members in jail. …

… many jails are in remote areas, without public transport links, so people simply are not making the visits with the price of petrol going up.

Of course, for things like prison visits and services such as Meals on Wheels there is no simple answer for transport costs — we can’t just suggest phonecalls or emails instead.

But we know that volunteers carry costs for their activities. Attending a meeting costs time, attention and transport fees. Of course, some volunteers welcome the opportunity to get out and spend time with others, to socialise face to face and enjoy the sense and spirit of community.

The petrol prices do give us cause though to carefully examine how we run our events and activities.

Could some meetings be held over the Internet using services such as Skype or video chat?

Could some documents be passed around and discussed via email (or better, using Google Docs or Basecamp or a similar online service) rather than having a meeting to hand them out and discuss them?

Those fuel prices also affect everything that’s transported, including books, papers, magazines, leaflets. Can your group offer members and subscribers the option to receive newsletters and other communications by email or as web pages, rather than as print publications?

Are there aspects of your activities that can be moved online? The Tools section of the Webguide has some details of services your group may be able to use. We have more pages yet to add to the Webguide and can always use your help: have you used a tool or service and could write a bit about it for us?

Let us know in the comments how your group plans to save on transport and running costs.

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The invitation arrived from a local community group: would I like to attend their next important event?

It looked gorgeous — it had a frame, the logo, beautiful colours, a ‘handwritten’ script.

But it was really annoying, and not very useful. You see, this was just a picture of text, and you can’t do much with pictures.

When similar text invitations arrive in my e-mail, the software notices the date and time and gives me a link to add the event to my calendar. Not this one: because it was a picture and not real text, my software didn’t pick up the date or the time.

So I had to add the event to my calendar by hand. That’s not such a big deal: just copy and paste. Except, oops! I can’t copy the relevant information and paste it because it’s a picture, not real text! I have to remember the details, switch to my calendar program and retype it all.

Hey guys! I’m busy — unless I’m very dedicated to attending the event you may lose me at this step. And if I mistype the date or time or venue, well, I won’t be there…

I’m a blogger too and would love to pass on the information about the event to my readers. Usually I’d select the text and click a button in my toolbar to send it to my blog. Except, that’s right, I can’t! because it’s a picture, not text. What a way to lose valuable word-of-mouth publicity.

OK, I added the event to my calendar by hand, I decided not to tell the rest of the world about it in my blog, and I tried to click the RSVP reply address. Except — you guessed it — I couldn’t, because it was a picture, not a text link! And I couldn’t copy and paste it — you know why. So again, I had to remember the correct address and compose a whole new email to say I wanted to attend. That’s because the reply-to address was different from the address the email came from.

So here’s an easy rule: if you want to annoy your supporters and keep them away from your events; if you want to throw away publicity from bloggers, then use images instead of real text in your emails and on your web pages.

Or, on the other hand, if you want to maximise potential then do whatever you can to help your supporters. Use text for text things, give people permission and tools to spread the word about your group and its events, supply quality photos bloggers can use. Make it easy and you’ll have more success.

Written by Miraz Jordan for, and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, June 2008.

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I often go out and look at the stars. Sometimes I take a telescope or binoculars — astronomy’s a hobby. Every single time I spend more than a couple of minutes gazing at the night sky I see at least one satellite whizzing by: north to south, south to north, west to east, there’s always a little dot somewhere speeding overhead.

Some of those hundreds of satellites, and other sources, contribute images to Google Earth.

If you’ve already downloaded and experimented with Google Earth you may have looked for your house or workplace, or checked up on the neighbourhood. Depending where you live you may see a highly detailed image, or one that doesn’t allow you to zoom in very far.

For example, I can zoom in from an initial 11,000 Km viewpoint to about 150 metres above the Beehive in Wellington and still see details of the building. On the other hand, there’s a whole chunk of the Hutt Valley missing: view it from any closer than 50 Km height and all you see is big, blocky pixels.

Layers on Google Earth.

Google Earth offers a great deal more than views of your house from the air. Layers of information are available — photos, movies, descriptions, roads, buildings, weather, news reports, and other special content.

First go to the View menu and show the Sidebar. Several panels appear on the left. At the bottom of the Sidebar is a Layers section. Open up the Gallery item and check the boxes beside Google News, New York Times and YouTube.

At the top of the Sidebar is a Search box. Try searching for ‘cyclone nargis’, ‘myanmar’ or ‘burma’ for example. Google Earth takes you to Myanmar and displays numerous icons for YouTube and other content. Click an icon to watch a video inside Google Earth. A small ‘newspaper’ icon appears near places that are mentioned in Google News. Hover over any icon to see a News headline. Click the icon to see more details in a pop-up window. Details may include text, links, images.

If the icons are all piled up on top of one another zoom in to see them spread out.

Global Awareness.

Just reading about what’s going on in the world doesn’t always touch us very deeply — photos and videos make a more lasting impression. Google Earth brings together rich media around various locations under the heading of Global Awareness as a way to explain issues and reach out to the public.

Open the Global Awareness subsection, under the Layers section of the Sidebar, and double click one of the items, for example, Jane Goodall’s Gombe Chimpanzees or USHMM: Crisis in Darfur. Make sure you check the box beside the item to enable icon display. Google Earth goes to your chosen location and presents numerous icons. Click icons to view further information, including blog posts, images and other rich data that presents a coherent view of the topic you’ve chosen.

Often the content that is displayed provides further links to information available on the web.

Or perhaps check the ARKive: Endangered Species section under Global Awareness and the ‘travel’ to New Zealand. Read about the endangered Kokako, for example.

More Earth Features.

There’s much more to Google Earth than spotting your own house from space. Explore the Layers section to find out about the world we live in.

Then open your web browser and visit both KML Gallery and Google Earth Outreach.

At the KML Gallery you can download tiny Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files that overlay graphical information on Google Earth, for example, a visual representation of world oil consumption or world population density.

Google Earth Outreach:

Gives non-profits and public benefit organizations like yours the knowledge and resources you need to reach their minds and their hearts: See how other organizations have benefited from Google Earth Outreach, then learn how to create maps and virtual visits to your projects that get users engaged and passionate about your work.

Google Earth is an exciting, free piece of software. Use it for fun, entertainment, education and awareness. But keep in mind that it requires a broadband Internet connection.

Written by Miraz Jordan for, and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, June 2008.

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It’s hard to keep up with everything, and finding time to read a book — even if you can find an appropriate book at a fair price — can also be a problem.

One possibility to consider is learning from videos, such as those available at Lynda.com. These are high quality videos created and produced by professional trainers. Watch them online (if you have a broadband connection and decent computer) or buy titles on CD.

When I bought the latest version of Photoshop I received free use of the Lynda.com training library for a month. The videos I watched were extremely helpful.

In 2006 Maria Langer and I co-authored a book on WordPress. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, and one I recommend without hesitation to anyone wanting to get a website up and running with minimum fuss and best speed.

Now available online at Lynda.com is a video training series Maria has created about the free, hosted WordPress.com blogging system — WordPress.com 2.5 Essential Training:

There are many reasons to have a blog: to inform customers about new products and specials, to share information and expertise with a worldwide community, or to express oneself and communicate publicly. WordPress.com is a free and flexible set of web-based blogging tools that can be used to launch a new blog in minutes. The tools can then be used to personalize the blog and update and improve it continually. In WordPress.com 2.5 Essential Training, Maria Langer walks through the entire process of building and maintaining a blog, from setting up an account to using advanced customization techniques. She explains how to create and organize posts, pages, and links, and also offers tips on how to become a better blogger.

Visit the link above and watch a few of the free sample videos. Each sample is about 3 minutes long and will give you a feeling for whether or not you’d enjoy the entire series.

The full training course is available for US$25 per month, but for that you have access to the entire library of courses. You could sign up for one month, watch all the videos you’re interested in and then stop the subscription.

There’s a growing list of dozens of courses that includes topics such as blogging, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Excel, Internet Explorer, Office for Mac, Windows XP.

Try some of the freebie samples, and tell us in the comments what you think.

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You’re on Facebook, you’ve got yourself a GMail account and your putting up photo’s to Flickr. Or maybe you’ve merely heard about this new web thingy called social networking* and are wondering why everyone’s inviting you to a “book of faces”. If you’re an old hand at the Interweb or new to the whole shooting match this post aims to give guidance to keeping your online presence (”persona”*) safe and snug within your own control.

1: Reserve your name in all the right places
The number of sites that claim to ‘be your homepage on the Web’ is growing each and every day with current estimates ranging from 110, 230+ and beyond. And the usage growth is phenomenal with the top twenty sites growing at 11% per month.

Research by Rachel Cunliffe states that the top 5 visited sites for the young uns of New Zealand are (social networking sites, incl. online gaming, bolded):

… for boys taking part:

1. Bebo
2. YouTube
3. Google
4. Miniclip
5. RuneScape

… for girls taking part:

1. Bebo
2. Google
3. YouTube
4. Miniclip
5. Stardoll

That’s a lot of places for you “to be”.

And the drag is that you really really should be there because if you don’t reserve your online presence someone less attractive and far more nasty may do it for you. You may discover that there is a MySpace account in your name saying all sorts of horrid and terrible things.

I would suggest that, at the very least, you:

1. Review the list of social networking sites I am on
2. Sign-up for those you can
3. Edit your account with some basic information
• name, real or non-de-plume,
• picture, real or your cat - stick with one for all the sites
• something that is definably you - age, marital status, tattoo, school, whatever you’re comfortable with that differentiates you from all the others with your name
4. Point the account back to your base information (see tip #4) - there’s always a “your website” or “your blog” field you can use

2: Have a plan for each persona
STOP! Don’t shoot off and sign-up to every darned thing without thinking about it first.

If you intend using some of these sites as more than ‘place holders’, and I suspect you will once you delve into the wonders that lie within, you’ll need to decide what persona you’ll want to portray.

Each of these websites has a different feel, a different reason for being and therefore attracts a different type of person. You will need to think about what person you will be projecting within each place.

For example, I write and connect to very different people at LinkedIn than I do at Facebook. I perceive LinkedIn to be a place of work and use it to generate a web of ICT Professionals that I use in a reserved, thought out and sober manner. Facebook is about me connecting with anyone and everyone that I know, chatting about the sun and keep a track of what people (both close and not so close, current and past) are up to.

The language I use, the links I promote and the connections I generate or accept are very different between these two social networks.

In essence, one is a “drinks and nibbles with clients at the office” (LinkedIn) and the other is akin to a “BBQ and beer with the lads” (Facebook). Of course, you are likely to meet clients at your BBQ and have friends that come to the ‘work nibbles and drinks’, that is the way of the world (especially here in Wellington, New Zealand). You will definitely act different in each circumstance as you display a different persona. The same applies online.

Ready now? STOP!
Read on before clicking that ‘Create account’ link …

3: Monitor who’s referencing you and why
And now you’re done … aren’t ya? Well yes, you are - you’ve reserved your spaces and they have the appropriate persona for each, you are done.

But what are people now doing with this very public information?
The beauty, power and room for abuse of Web 2.0/social networking is the ability to reconstitute the information using context. Who has you in their lists, who has added you to the latest weird-ass application, where are you now appearing?

Most social networking sites let you monitor the activity around your ‘persona’ using email and/or RSS - use it! Unless you’re Dan Carter or the latest soap opera lady you’re unlikely to get swamped.

On a side note, I would also set up a Google Blog Search alert (again email or RSS/Atom) just to keep a tag on what people might be saying about you - I wonder if Mr Richie Trezise has that set-up!

4: Maintain one core set of information
You’ve set-up your persons (don’t think of them as merely accounts or log-ins, they are so much more) which are either basic empty place holders or the full monty. You’ve got your email address in 3 or 4 places, your photo is smiling down upon the world and you’re sick to the back teeth of having to enter your “interests” over and over again.

Don’t try and maintain multiple copies of information about yourself. Stick one version on a publicly accessible site (a blog, a website, a non-login-required profile) and link the rest back to it. You now have one place to update when it comes to the birth of the extra child, the change of job or the squashing of those criminal records.

Talking of criminal records, do I need to remind everyone that what you publish on the web is around FOREVER! And whilst it might be difficult to link that blog rant you left 2 years ago to one particular persona of yours please believe that it is only a matter of time before Google and the gang work out how. My advice - if in doubt, do not put it on the Web or in email.

5: Don’t use the same email/password password for all
Raring to go and get your personas out there?
All you need is a computer, a browser and an Internet connection …. and an email address. I can’t think of one social networking site that will let you sign-up without a valid email address.

But your email address is another expression of a persona - you probably have two email addresses without moving passed Go, your work one and your ‘personal’ one. And that’s a grand start - if you’re signing up on behalf of work then use your work one, that’s the persona you want to use.

If, however, you intend to do this outside of the work context then don’t fall into simply using the one email address for all the sites. As I said, your email address is a tool of expression for your personas and they may not be mutually compatible. For example, I use a few email addresses and use GMail to bring them all together meaning I don’t have to worry about the mechanics of email management. My most common email ‘persona’ is miramar.mike@gmail.com but I do use others depending on the level of closeness I will allow the contacts to me.

And finally. Don’t use the same password for all the sites.
Devise your own system of maintaining a few passwords depending upon the level of “oh fvck!” you’ll experience if someone steals it and uses your persona. I have a hierarchy of passwords (not too onerous but enough to make me feel comfortable) that range from “I couldn’t give a monkeys” all the way to “Wholly crap they could use my credit card!”

I hope that’s been of use to you, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment and let me know how it goes and remember - let’s be careful out there!

Further reading

• Google: Does your password pass the test?
• USA FDC - Social Networking Sites: Safety Tips for Tweens and Teens
• US FDC - Social Networking Sites: A Parent’s Guide
• Telegraph: Treat it like the village pub and you’ll be fine…, honest
• Google search: ’social networking safety’

* Appendix
social networking
You link people to you with a relationship (friend, colleague, fellow party goer …) and from that a ’spider web’ of connections is generated. This is also being called the ’social graph’. Social networking is the most popular way of generating online personas but not the only one, your email address is also one. More at Wikipedia: social networking

Online persona
A side of the whole you that you generate online. You have, as in real life, many personas - you have your “go to work” persona, the “chairman of the school committee” persona, your “drinking down the pub with mate”s persona and many many others. Whilst online personas are the same be aware that they operate in a much more fluid, traceable and aggregated world that is not always (if ever) in your control.

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This is cross-posted at MiramarMike.co.nz - Connecting people with people via information

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