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Engage Your Community Conference Agenda

by Mike Riversdale

Here’s Google Calendar version of the Wellington conference agenda so you can add it to your own calendar using it’s iCal feed

To learn how to create your own public Google Calendar showcasing your own events read our guide: Make Your Public Event Calendar Usable To All

What’s the conference about - this:

This is a conference pitched at an introductory level. If you’ve ever wondered how the web could be better used by your organisation; or know what a blog is, but not how it could be useful; or are a little nervous about opening a Facebook account, then this is a conference for you. If you think the internet is for geeks, or young people, or those with nothing better to do with their time, then this is a conference for you. And if you want to move beyond using email and having a simple website, then this is a conference for you.

This is a cross posting from MiramarMike.co.nz

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August 15, 2008   1 Comment

A Scrap Piece Of (e)Paper To Remember Your Web Journey

by Mike Riversdale

When you’re on-line and found that great article that you know you’ll definitely/probably need again tomorrow/next year what do you do?

You can save it to your browser bookmarks/favourites … and lose it in the swamp that is everything you’ve ever thought you’d want but never actually did. You can use an on-line social bookmarking site such as Delicious … and hope you remember what you tagged it as. Or you can do what most people do, pretend you’ll remember the site name and then pray to all things saintly that you find it in the next 5 hours by dredging through every Google search you’ve ever done and some you’ve just made up to see if they work.

How about using a wee on-line Notebook? Google Notebook to be precise.
I have to say it’s not one of the Google services I am that familiar with but over the past few weeks I have met more and more people that swear by it.

What does it do - this from their FAQ:

With Google Notebook, you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that’s accessible from any computer. Planning a trip? Researching a product? Just add clippings to your notebook. You won’t ever have to leave your browser window.

So there, it’s a place you can “bookmark/favourite” pages but in typical Google fashion they have tried to make it much more than the simple function of keeping a list of website addresses by looking at it as somewhere where you can organise and share them in a logical (to you) fashion.

Google have defined Notebook as having three distinct parts to it:

  1. The mini Google Notebook (the browser extension version)

    Download the extension to access Google Notebook; you can view your notebooks, organize them into sections, add notes of your own, and more. Quickly add clippings of web content (images, text and links) straight to your notebook by highlighting the content you want and clicking the “Clip” button in the mini Google Notebook.

  2. The full-page view (the web site version)

    Keep all your notes organized by creating multiple notebooks or by dividing a single notebook into several sections. You can also easily rearrange. Click the “New note” button to add text notes to your notebook, or click the “Add comment” link within a note to add comments to clippings you’ve collected. Find any information in your notebooks using the search box at the top of the page.

  3. Collaborate and share with others
    Now this is probably the more interesting part but I’m not sure how well used it is and as with all modern web services the more people use them the more useful they become.

    Invite your friends to collaborate on a notebook with you, giving them full access to edit that notebook and add their own notes. Or just share your notebook with everyone on the web by making it a public web page. Your published notebook will be assigned a unique web address that you can then share with friends and family. And finally, search for notebooks that others have created and published to the web

I suspect Google Notebook will evolve and become integrated into some of the more well known Google offerings, possibly Google Reader, but even so it certainly has potential.

How about we all give it a go and let me know if it solves the issue of finding that long lost article you knew you’d want.

(cross posting from MiramarMike.co.nz)

August 7, 2008   No Comments

Make Your Public Event Calendar Usable To All

by Mike Riversdale

If you run a sports club, this post is for you.
If you are on a community committee, this post is also for you
If you host events, this is for you.
If you put on shows, this is for you.

In fact, if you do anything that has a date/time component that you’d like to share with people, this is for you. Yep, probably for all of us.

Sharing calendars can be both:

  • an effective way of letting everyone know
  • a complete and utter technical pain in the bottomly region

If you’ve posted up an events page onto your website you know how difficult it is to keep up to date, how the readers have to keep coming back to get the latest changes and don’t even think about integrating with somebody else’s “events page”.

Ok, so we all know the problem.
What’s the solution? iCalendar (normally shortened to iCal) … yep, it’s a geek word that you will come to know and love just as much as RSS. In fact, think of it as RSS for calendars. But that’s enough geekery, if you want to know more pop over to Wikipedia: iCalendar

All we need to know is that iCal is the Web way of sharing calendars.
And with everyone being on the Web why not make your sporting club calendar available on the Web? “Because it sounds hard Mike, that’s why!”

Allow Google Calendar to be your friend.
Google Calendar is not just a calendaring system for you, the singular, even though it does that very well. It also allows you to:

  • Set-up group calendars
  • Share and collaborate on calendars
  • Publish them on the Web

And it’s the last bit I want to draw your attention to today.
Publishing your calendar on the Web means that anyone can “subscribe” to your calendar and all updates you make are instantly reflected in their calendar client. And it’s not just about dates and times but also locations, maps, details and even links to web pages.

Take a look at this example from the publicly available Wellingtonista Event Calendar (iCal)

Everything you need to know without ever having to do a thing.

Set-up a public Google Calendar

  1. Get yourself a Google Account
  2. Go to your Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com)
  3. Click the ‘Manage calendars’ link - bottom left of the current calendar list (which might only be one, yours)
  4. At the bottom of the “My calendars” list click the the ‘Create new calendar’ button
  5. Fill in the new calendar details including:
    • A clear name (I include a location that the calendar covers such as “Wellington, New Zealand”)
    • Verbose and clear description
    • Who, if anyone, you’d like to be able to update the calendar

  6. Ensure the “Make this calendar public” is ticked

    Note: you can change this later or for specific events
  7. Push the “Create Calendar” button
  8. Start adding your events

Share your newly created public calendar
Google will index your calendar within 24 hours allowing it to be searched by everyone.

However there are many other ways to share your calendar and, because it uses the Web standard iCal, they don’t have to use Google Calendar (but why wouldn’t you!) as long as their calendaring system understands iCal you’re sorted.

And for the uber geeks and/or IT Departments you can build calendars on your own website using Google Calendar Data API

One final goodie, notifications.
You can have events pop-up, email you or even send a txt to your mobile … you never have to miss an event ever again!

Add a public calendar to your Google Calendar

  1. Go to your Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com)
  2. Click the ‘Manage calendars’ link - bottom left of the current calendar list (which might only be one, yours)
  3. Click the ‘Add calendar’ button - bottom of the list of current “Other calendars”
  4. Make sure you’re in the “Search Public Calendars” tab
  5. Search for your calendar (eg, wellingtonista) and push the ‘Search’ button
  6. There it is - click the ‘Add Calendar’ button

A sample of public calendars
Finally, the goodies we’ve all been waiting for, a sample list of publicly available calendars you can subscribe to right now by either doing a search inside your Google Calendar or by browsing the Google Calendar Directory. If you publish a public calendar for your events let me know and I’ll tell the world for you.

New Zealand
978 calendars matched my search, here’s a sample:

Australia
A total of 457 matched my calendar search with the following a mere taste:

UK
Too many to contemplate, you’re gonna have to really be specific to the events you want :-)

The rest of the world
I went looking for the strangest calendars I could find and the three I present to you are:

More resources
There’s LOTS about Google Calendar on the Web, here’s some pre-loaded searches for you:

(this is a cross posting from MiramarMike.co.nz)

July 28, 2008   2 Comments

Google for Non-Profits

by Miraz

Google have a section dedicated to non-profit organisations where they explain all the various tools they have available, and how your organisation can use those tools. Google for Non-Profits lists all the tools, and links to tutorials for all of them.

Note that not all tools are available worldwide yet.

I use many of these tools daily — Gmail, Calendar and Analytics, for example. They can provide a lot of value for community organisations.

Here’s what Google for Non-Profits has to say:

You are changing the world. We want to help.

Learn how to use free Google tools to promote your work, raise money, and operate more efficiently.

Gmail
Save time and resources with free Google-hosted email, customized for your domain
Checkout
Collect donations online and process them for free, with no monthly, setup, or gateway fees
Docs
Create and edit documents online and collaborate in real time with staff and volunteers
Calendar
Organize schedules and publicize events with shared calendars
Analytics
Understand how people find and interact with information on your website
Google Grants
Reach and engage your supporters through free online advertising
YouTube
Broadcast your cause to the world’s largest online video community
Blogger
Publish instantly and keep your supporters informed and engaged
Maps & Earth
Give life to your cause by illustrating its global context
Gadgets
Drive traffic to your website and interact with your supporters more often
Groups
Communicate easily to staff or volunteers and encourage discussions among supporters

[Thanks to Ted Zorn for suggesting this post. ]

March 28, 2008   1 Comment