Webguide 2.0

OnlineGroups.Net - created

wikiadmin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:50:38 +1200

OnlineGroups.Net

Note: this information was supplied by Dan Randow of OnlineGroups.Net. If you've used this service please contact us with your feedback.

The service is based in Christchurch.

OnlineGroups.Net makes it easy to hold conversations and share information in groups using email and the web.

OnlineGroups.Net groups work like a list server, and a web-forum with file-sharing and chat. They are similar to Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups, except that all your groups are on a dedicated website with no ads.

You can have as many public groups as you like on a fee site. Premium sites, available for a fee, can have private groups.

Here are some examples of sites using OnlineGroups.Net.

OnlineGroups.Net runs on the open source collaboration framework GroupServer, which can be downloaded for free at http://groupserver.org.

Here are some examples of sites using GroupServer.

Tools

wikiadmin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:46:15 +1200

Tools

Internet tools help you manage projects, share photos, earn advertising revenue, write collaborative documents, even just store your files.

Combine tools to run campaigns, advocate for causes, mobilise supporters, raise funds and build networks. See the Case Studies for examples of how groups are working with these tools.

This guide introduces tools we're familiar with. The Internet is constantly changing, and at high speed. If you're familiar with other tools, or have spotted new features, share your findings here. Your expertise is invaluable.

We're keen to hear about what you think is good, bad, useful, unhelpful. Use the Contact Us form to get in touch.

Affiliate links — Earn a percentage on sales of products. Amazon bookstore, etc.
Basecamp — manage projects
Blogs — WordPress, Blogger etc
Bulletin boards — also called Forums. Discussion areas.
CafePress Store — sell T-shirts and products such as mugs and mousemats
Flickr — share photos
Flock the social browser — a web browser for the social web
Google AdSense — Earn when people click on links. Contextual advertising
OnlineGroups.Net — share information in groups using email and the web
SMS, MMS and texting — Short message service, texting
TradeMe — online auctions
Twitter — micro-blogging; keep in touch
YouTube — make short videos; upload and share them for free with the rest of the world.

Activities

wikiadmin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:34:16 +1200

Activities

Whether you want to advocate, collaborate, network, create communities, cut costs, manage events, network, promote, provide services or raise funds, the Internet can help you.

See the Case Studies for examples of how community organisations are carrying out their activities. Tell us what you're doing — we'd love to include a case study about your group.

This section highlights some techniques that may apply to your activities. The Internet is constantly changing, and at high speed, bringing us new ways of working. If you're familiar with other techniques, share your expertise — it is invaluable.

We're keen to hear about what you think is good, bad, useful, unhelpful. Use the Contact Us form to get in touch.

About Us

wikiadmin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:33:38 +1200

About Us

The Webguide was initiated in 2003 by Ted Zorn of the Waikato Management School ICT Research Group, who formed the Webguide Partnership with the following partners:

Community Employment Group (CEG) of the Department of Labour.
Communities Online Trust.
The Local Government and Community Branch of Department of Internal Affairs.
Communitynet Aotearoa.
Te Puni Kokiri.
2020 Communications Trust.
The Wellington Region 2020 Communications Trust.

Currently, the Webguide is administered by Miraz Jordan of KnowIT and the Waikato 2020 Communications Trust. Recent development was enabled by a Digital Strategy Community Partnership Fund grant.

Content and site design

Miraz Jordan of KnowIT wrote the content and designed the website, in collaboration with current and former Webguide partners.

The original site used the content management features of WordPress. Learn how to use WordPress by reading the WordPress 2 Visual QuickStart Guide book, written by Miraz Jordan and Maria Langer.

After moving to a new server, the site now uses Docuwiki.

Webguide 2.0

wikiadmin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:30:11 +1200

Webguide 2.0

Webguide 2.0 is an inspiration and toolkit for community groups. It reveals the modern tools groups are using to achieve their goals. Tell us what you think of it. Tell us what you are doing.

At first the strength and power of the Internet was in connecting documents and information. We wrote Connect your Community about making websites. About us.

Now it's about connecting people and building community.

That takes more than sending emails and trying to get people to visit your website.

Dive in. Start anywhere.

If you've heard of Tools, such as YouTube or Facebook, use the search box at the left to find out more.

To see what other groups are doing, begin with the Case studies.

Or look up ideas around particular Activities. Find out more about Engage your Community workshops.

Watch the Groupings blog for a stream of news and ideas.

Send us your thoughts and ideas or register to join the discussion here. (How to register and log in.)

about-us:copyright

wikiadmin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:26:25 +1200

This work is copyright to The Webguide Partnership. Contact.

YouTube

wikiadmin — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:58:58 +1200

YouTube

(This page is a stub and as yet unfinished.)

In brief, YouTube is the extremely popular, best-known, video sharing site on the Internet. At no cost, upload videos, watch videos from others and comment on them, embed videos on your blog or share them by email.

YouTube

Images are often more powerful than words alone. Moving images are even more powerful. You don't need a whole production studio to make YouTube videos — some people upload movies straight from their cellphones.

When to use this tool

Examples

GOOD FIGHT: The Greening of Greensburg Ep. 4:

How to use this tool

If you have a recent Mac, with a built-in iSight camera and iMovie software, you may have all you need to make quite good quality videos.

Or chat with your local schools or colleges to explore options for borrowing equipment such as movie cameras, microphones and so on.

See the YouTube screenshots page.

Add a link on your website to make it easy for interested parties to find your videos. Embed your videos in blog posts or on other pages.

Here's a video from YouTube with tips for non-profits.

Things to be aware of

Detailed help

See also Five Tips for NonProfit Videos from Wild Apricot blog.

Related tools

YouTube has captured the market, but other sites allow and encourage video sharing too. Look at:

Some example YouTube videos

The videos listed below are drawn from a spectrum of the millions of YouTube videos. They include music, tutorial, documentary and just “oh gosh! look at this!”. These were drawn from Miraz Jordan's personal list of YouTube favourites.

Use them as starting points and then try out the 'More from' or “related videos' features to explore YouTube.

PlayPumps Promotional Video
Basic introduction to macro photography
Jake Shimabukuro plays "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Honda Car Commercial (not your everyday commercial)
A Stranger in Her Own City Pt. 1 of 3 ( The bravest 13 year old girl in the world. )
Jordan's Queen Rania on Arab women

YouTube screenshots - created

wikiadmin — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:32:24 +1200

YouTube screenshots

Note: some screenshots may have been digitally altered, or had details obscured for privacy reasons.

1] YouTube home page.

Advocate

wikiadmin — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:14:32 +1200

Advocate

When a group gets together around a cause or issue they need to monitor flows of information, publish their own news and reference material, rally support, move people to take co-ordinated action, and lobby decision makers.

Action comes in many forms: real-world events such as marches or sit-ins, and online activities such as petitions and 'virtual' demonstrations of support.

Virtual support

Still images

Still and moving images and the spoken word are powerful: photos and movies carry high-impact persuasive messages.

See how Oxfam used Flickr to share and aggregate photos of people supporting Ethiopian coffee farmers, for example:

Oxfam New Zealand's photos

Permission requested to use this Oxfam NZ photo.

Movies

Meanwhile Oxfam America are using YouTube videos to raise awareness, to foster solidarity and to give otherwise unheard peoples voices:

Oxfam America YouTube channel

Thank you from Oxfam and Ethiopian coffee farmers:

It's extremely easy these days to create and publish videos. Many cellphones and point and shoot cameras can record video clips, while video cameras are also inexpensive.

Edit clips with software such as Apple's free iMovie, which can also export direct to YouTube.

Information flows

Gathering and sharing information is crucial for an advocacy organisation, and there's often a need to move information quickly.

Blogs and micro-blogging services such as Twitter make it quick and easy to release information.

Blogs

Set up a free blog in 5 minutes with a service such as WordPress.com or Blogger.

Blogs are simple to use too, and you don't need skills in HTML or creating web pages to post an entry or create a web page. Many blogs can accept entries sent in by email or even SMS text message.

Search engines seem to favour frequently updated blogs over more static websites, and the many tools available for monitoring blogs and their associated RSS feeds mean that blogged information can propagate very quickly.

Blog posts appear on a web page, but can also be delivered by RSS feed or by email.

Micro blogging (Twitter)

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging tool. Use it for quick alerts, to announce blog posts or Flickr and YouTube uploads, events, news. You can send the messages through the web or via SMS or a specialised application — even set it up to announce your blog posts.

'Followers' can receive the 'tweets' via the web, SMS or a specialised application.

Messages are very short, but they are also instantaneous.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists have long been a very popular way to communicate with supporters and to send out information. The quantity of email spam, and the many measures ISPs take to counter spam are having a detrimental effect on email in general.

Email's becoming less reliable and less effective. That chances of your perfectly legitimate messages being caught up in spam filters are increasing.

While mailing lists are still useful, it's important to make your news and information available through as many different channels as possible.

Public writing

An important aspect of advocacy can be to draw together input from many contributors while developing both a knowledge base, and written materials such as submissions on public policy.

A wiki is an ideal medium: one party sets up a wiki page; others can add their contributions directly to the page or even edit what's already there. The wiki software tracks all the changes.

The wiki can be set to require a login and password before contributors can modify the page.

As an example, see the Sustainable Community Action wiki at http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Sustainable_Community_Action:About

See the History tab on that page for a record of the edits that have been made.

Petitions

Online web-based petitions can garner informed signatures from widely dispersed parties.

Sending a petition around by email, as sometimes happened in the early days of the Web, is totally ineffective and can be counter-productive. To understand the negative effects, see the Snopes page about a petition against drunk-driving:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/drunk.asp

TechSoup recommend some good online petition tools at:

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5524.cfm

Note their concerns about some of the free petition sites.

To see an example of a partially successful online petition to save Alaska's Cook Inlet Beluga Whales from extinction visit:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/385057140

Other tools

Advocacy groups share the needs of all groups to raise funds, network, and collaborate. Have a good look through the Tools section for ideas on those topics.

Twitter

wikiadmin — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:04:31 +1200

Twitter

In brief, Twitter is an easy way to communicate short messages to those who are interested in what you're doing. This is also known as micro-blogging.

Twitter is a free service that has you answer one simple question: What are you doing?. You send your answer (in less than 140 characters) via a web page, or specialised software, or as an SMS or as an Instant Message. Your update is called a tweet.

These messages are then distributed to those who have elected to follow your updates. They may receive the tweets through a web page, or specialised software, or as an SMS, MMS and texting or as an Instant Message.

You may also choose whether or not your updates should appear on a public timeline, open to anyone.

It is possible to respond to an individual's tweets.

When to use this tool

Twitter is for people who want to keep in touch with one another: friends and family are perfect examples.

It could be ideal for members of a support group — perhaps people wanting to exercise more, stop smoking, lose weight, for example — they can send tweets about their progress.

It's a useful publicity tool: let followers see what your organisation is doing. See the Jodrell Bank Observatory link below.

Use Twitter during specific campaigns and events: allow people who can't be physically present to follow the action during a public meeting.

For example, leading up to and during the LiveEarth 070707 event, tweets kept followers involved.

Examples

Live Earth send a tweet every few days with a handy tip for saving the planet: http://twitter.com/liveearth070707 . In July 2007 they had 1766 followers.

Jodrell Bank Observatory is home of the world's third-largest steerable radio telescope, and the MERLIN National Facility. Part of the University of Manchester. They send tweets before and during interesting events. In July 2007 they had 230 followers.

At the Full Code Press event in 2007 Twitter proved to be the hook that drew in a wide audience:

Twitter turned out to be the hook that drew many people in to the event. The speed and frequency of posts as well as the immediacy and quickness of the comments allowed those away from the event to get a feeling for what was going on - in real time.

How to use this tool

See the Twitter screenshots page.

Sign up for a free account. Then use the web interface or one of the other options to send and read short messages. Because each tweet can be no longer than 140 characters it's quick and simple.

Add a link on your website to make it easy for interested parties to find your tweets.

Encourage some friends or colleagues to sign up and experiment together. Because this is very much a social tool, it's most rewarding to use along with a group. Follow friends or organisations.

While tweets from strangers would be very boring (and trivial) try following one of the popular users as an example, or perhaps the BBC news. Explore Twitter Search Engines.

Some US politicians are using Twitter as a campaign tool, for example Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Things to be aware of

SMS tweets may incur costs from your cellphone service provider.

Twitter is often seen as entirely trivial, because so many people are using it to keep in touch with the small details of the lives of others they know. It is however a powerful tool with plenty of scope for meaningful use. Dismissing Twitter out of hand is like dismissing the phone as a tool because some people use it for meaningless chat.

Increasingly news and other organisations are using Twitter as yet another means for communication with their audience.

Twitter offers brevity and immediacy.

Twitter is not immune from spam and spammers. Don't just automatically follow anyone who follows you or you may start to receive a stream of spam tweets. Only follow people after visiting their profile, or if you know them personally.

Personal observation: while using the web interface is fine, Twitter is much more convenient using one of the free software applications that provide a separate interface, such as Twitterific. See the Twitter screenshots page for an image.

Detailed help

The Twitter FAQ is available online. There is also a Twitter Fan Wiki.

Related tools

Jaiku
Pownce

See 10 Micro-Blogging Tools Compared and The Most Popular Twitter Apps According to the Blogosphere for some interesting information about similar tools.

Find out What People Say When They Tweet

See also Tune in with Twitter for an article about how Twitter drew in the audience at Full Code Press.