Online Volunteering Technology, Tools, and Tips by Randy Tyler

More Online Tools Provide Options to Flash to Accommodate Apple's New iPad

Non-Profits Must Consider Flash Options to Accommodate Huge Mobile Market, Including Apple's iPad

More online tools (for example, AuthorStream and SlideShare) are moving to provide options to Flash in order to be compatible with Apple's new iPad (which does not support Flash) and other similar mobile technologies. Non-profit organizations that make use of Flash (for example, Flash-based Web video) will now also have to consider such non-Flash based options if they want to communicate with an ever growing market share of devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Free, Until Feb 24, Program Easily Removes Your Forgotten Owner PDF Passwords

Have you created a password-protected PDF that prevents your content (for example, a funding proposal or an Online Volunteering Position Description) from being copied or printed but have now lost the password? PDF (Portable Document Format) files have two common passwords: Owner (the password which restricts such functions as printing or copying of a PDF file) and User (the password required to open a PDF file).

PDF Password Remover is one such easy-to-use application that will remove the encrypted Owner password to allow the copying, modifying or printing of a PDF file. As well as being easy to use application, PDF Password Remover also:

• removes the Owner password from a single file or a group of Files (see Screen capture above)
• supports Adobe PDF 1.0 to 1.7 (which is version 8)
• does not require Acrobat or Adobe Reader to be installed
• supports English, Turkish, Thai, Latin, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese
• allows PDFs to be imported or dragged and dropped to remove Owner password
• works with Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32 bit)
• does not remove the User password required to open a PDF
• does not remove other protections, such as DRM or third party plug-ins

http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-password-remover.html

If you do not receive your activation key (via e-mail) with a reasonable time period, contact support through their Web site. For what appeared to be a technical glitch, I had to contact support; I received an e-mail reply within a day with an accompanying activation key.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

How to Easily Backup Your Photos from Google's Picasa Web Albums

As a non-profit organization, there are a number of effective, easy and free ways to promote, reflect, demonstrate or illustrate your mission, whether it be, for example, your events, the contributions of your online volunteers or how you are making an impact. One such method is to use Google's (free) Web Albums. However, at minimum, you must ensure that your precious memories and stories sitting on Google's servers are regularly backed up to a local computer. One quick and easy way to backup your photos from Google's photo sharing site (without requiring other applications to be installed) is to use the free Picasa Webalbums Assistant, as I will briefly explain below.

How to download photos from Google's photo sharing site using Picasa Webalbums Assistant:

• download the zipped file (PWA0_3_1.zip) to your desktop
• extract the files from the zip archive (with WinZip, 7Zip or similar program)
• double click on the 53 KB file called "PWA3.jar"
• agree to the terms of use (if you so choose)
• if you agree to the terms of use, as shown in the screen capture above, you will now have the option to select whether you want to download a public album (where you will be prompted for the UserID of the Album owner) or an album from an invitation URL (where you will be required to copy/paste the invitation URL e-mailed to you)
• once you provide either the UserID or invitation URL, Picasa Webalbums Assistant will display thumbnails of all the photos within the specific album you haveselected
• check the photos you would like to download and then click the "Download Selected" button.
• You will then be prompted to choose a location to save your photos (I suggest you save the photos to a folder where you will be able to easily locate them, such as your desktop).

Picasa Webalbums Assistant Requirements:

• requires Java 5 or later to be installed on your Windows or Mac computer (check your version of Java)
• if you have Java 5 or later installed and doubleclicking on the PWA3.jar file fails to launch the Picasa Webalbums Assistant application, you may lost the file type/application association.
• If you are using Windows XP or Vista, you can download Jarfix 1.1. (39 KB) to restore the .jar file association to the Java Runtime Environment
• the Webalbums Assistant application (PWA3.jar) can also be launched from the command line as in the following example (the PAW3.jar file and the lib folder, which also contains nine jar files, in this example are on my desktop): C:\Documents and Settings\Randy Tyler\Desktop>java -jar PWA3.jar

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Easily Edit a YouTube Video with a Free FLV Editor

As a non-profit, you may want to edit your special event video you posted on YouTube but do not have the original. Over the last 20 years of working with non-profit organizations, I have experienced those occasions where a source file, whether it be the original photo, newsletter, brochure or video, was not readily available.

Specifically, you may have an FLV file (which is a compressed, Flash video file) that an online volunteer produced for you but do not have access to the uncompressed source video to edit and encode again as a compressed FLV video. You may wonder: I don't have the source video file, so how can I edit the FLV file I do have? When your non-profit organization does not have the original video to edit and then encode again as an FLV, in a pinch, you can use Moyea's Free FLV Editor Lite to edit your FLV flash-based video.

Where can you use this free Flash Editor? Some Suggestions:

        1. Trim an FLV video (cut off a date, remove an old logo; reducing the duration of an FLV video when the source video is not available to edit and encode again to an FLV video)
        2. Join two or more FLV videos, whether the FLV Video has been encoded with h263 [Flash 7], On2's VP6 codec [Flash 8] or H264 encoded video [which is Flash Player 9, Update 3 and newer]. Please note: up to five 5 files can be imported in the Free FLV Editor Lite application).
        3. Replace an audio track with an mp3 of your choosing by Unlinking the audio and video tracks, delete the audio track and import a different mp3 file.
        4. Extract the audio track of an FLV file: say you wanted to use the audio portion of your FLV video PSA as an audio ONLY PSA, then FLV Editor will allow you to export the audio as an MP3 file (Note: Only FLV container files with encoded with mp3 audio can be exported as an mp3 with FLV Lite Editor. Thus, for example, using the Free FLV Editor, the mp3 audio can not be exported from an H264 encoded video with AAC encoded audio (viewable with Adobe Flash Player 9, Update 3 (or newer); update 3 is specifically version 9,0,115,0.
        5. To add additional FLV Metadata, which is information about the video embedded in the video: For example, you could add the author or title of the video (on the tab where you click Metadata, you will note that the free FLV Editor application does not list current metadata embedded in the FLV). However, when an FLV file is imported, some metadata is shown, as follows:

• video: codec used (for example, an h263 encoded video would require at least Flash 7 to view in your browser), resolution (eg, 640x480), video duration and frames per second
• audio: codec used, bit rate, sampling and number of channels

So, when you do not have access to your original video to edit, the Free FLV Editor Lite may serve your purposes to re-work your FLV video file.

You can download the Free FLV Editor Lite application via the following URL:

http://RandyTyler.org/u/flv

After installing, bypass the pitch to upgrade to their paid version by clicking continue; also, as of late, Moyea seems to automatically launch your e-mail application with a prepared message, suggesting you pass on the news about their FLV editor.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Promote Your Cause, Fundraiser on Other Blogs, Web Sites Quickly, Easily and without Cost

Promote your cause, fundraiser, onsite or online volunteer opportunities quickly, easily and without cost using a widget. Most blogging platforms, such as Wordpress, automatically create feeds (RSS or Atom) of your content (posts). With your feed's URL copied, head to Feedsweep ( http://feedsweep.com/products/fs/create.aspx) and create a required free account (an account allows you to use your widget, change, save and create as many widgets as you like).

With your account created, paste your feed's URL into the Custom Feed URL box (about half way down the page), which is part of the free basic designer option. After filling in the remainder of the fields (e.g., widget title, number of posts to show), customize your widget's appearance and then click on the "Get Code" button, wherein you will be directed to a page containing your Feedsweep widget code (please see the screen capture above of a sample Feedsweep widget showing two posts). If you like the way your widget looks (your widget will be shown beside the code), save it.

The JavaScript-based widget code can now be copied and distributed (e-mailed, made available on your Web site and/or blog) to any of your associates, donors or friends' blogs or Web sites to help you (virally) promote your organization, a fundraiser and/or your volunteer opportunities.

Feedsweep's free option, through their Advanced Designer option, will also allow you to combine feeds, filter content and format your feed using HTML Tables or CSS to match a Web site or blog.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

How to Create an Online Volunteer Recruitment Video Using Testimonials by Randy Tyler

This 90 second video demonstrates how to use testimonials from your current online volunteers as part of your online volunteer recruitment strategy. MYS extends their thanks to virtual volunteer Adz Abarquez (of the Philippines) for producing the video.

Download (Right Click/Save) How to Create an Online Recruitment Video Using Testimonials, now.

For further information contact Randy Tyler www.mys.ca/aov or directly at RandyTyler@gmail.com or visit Online Volunteering Pioneer and Presenter

CTV Canada AM Interviews Randy Tyler About Online Volunteering

Click here to download:

CTV-Interviews-Randy-Tyler-About-Online-Volunteering.flv (11512 KB)

How to Create a Non-Profit Video PSA Using Online Volunteers

The potential of the Internet to help non-profit organizations in one of the most challenging of tasks was demonstrated by MYS Online Volunteer Program Developer Randy Tyler. Online volunteers from Detroit, Michigan; Toronto, Ontario; Clinton, New York and Portland, Oregon joined virtual hands to produce a 30 second, 75 year time capsule TV PSA about MYS.

MYS extends their thanks to online volunteers Kibben Miller, Richard Wagner, Gerard Doyle and Rebecca Webb for producing the video.

For further information, contact Randy Tyler www.mys.ca/volunter or visit pioneering online volunteer program developer Randy Tyler or e-mail RandyTyler@gmail.com