NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life

As you may have noticed, there has been a little event calendar on the site for the last few weeks. We've been ironing out some issues and there are still other elements that we may add in the future, but it is ready for folks to start making use of.

NPSL on MSNBC. Cool.

Seeing as this site is a Drupal site, I thought our members might be interested in how to set up Drupal locally on a computer.

The first time I ever set up a local install of Drupal was a copy of 4.7.4.  I remember aspects of setting things up being a little convoluted.  5.x had not gone into full release--I believe it was in RC 1.  So there was no installer and it proved to be an interesting challenge.  With the advent of 5.x, things have become much simpler.  I'm going to describe how to set up a local install of Drupal 5.x on a Mac.

First

In my intersection with other nonprofits through the NPSL group and on the TechSoup site I am expanding my focus to deal with emerging technologies in general and how they can be utilized by the nonprofit community as a whole.  My background is in the arts, so expect to continue to see some bias for that industry but my personal experiences over the last two years have shifted my sense of self toward social justice (although being Canadian probably has something to do with that too.)

Aggregators are tools that allow you to access the RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds from different sites.  You can tell that a site has a feed if you see this icon on the page.  Aggregators allow you to mix the feeds from many sites into a single place.  In other words, no need to surf when an aggregator can deliver the content to your desktop.

Some of my favourite aggregators include:

Social networking sites are gathering places.  When they are successful, they build community.  That community can interact through chat, forums, blogs and comments, virtual environments, text messaging and wikis. 

Skype is a terrific tool.  It is a software based phone that allows VoIP calls anywhere in the world.  If you place a Skype call between computers--your computer and the computer of the person on the other end--the call is free.   It costs pennies a minute to call to a cell phone or land line.

Skype will allow you to do video calling, share documents, and IM others on the Skype network.

REVVER is a video site similar to YouTube.  The company is quite a bit smaller than YouTube.  The number of videos on REVVER is much smaller than on YouTube.  While it is a little guy, REVVER is my preferred video site. 

Why? 

The small guy is more likely to try and work with content providers.  You can post messages to the forum on REVVER and get a response very quickly.  The REVVER staff are quite likely to email you directly if you have something you need/want to have resolved.

If you don't know about YouTube you must be living a sheltered life... YouTube is a video sharing site that has successfully captured a huge portion of the Internet video market. It has come under some criticism for allowing large quantities of copyright material to be pirated and uploaded onto the site. None the less, YouTube is a powerful tool that can be used by the nonprofit community to raise awareness and market.

What do I need to post and tag on YouTube?

I was asked by a colleague if I would write a "How To" on Qumana.  I've been using Qumana now for several months to post to three different blogs--dogstar.org, imagespace.blogspot.com, and secondlife.techsoup.org.

What is Qumana?