Online Volunteering Tips, Tools and Technology by Randy Tyler

Quickly Generate CSS Syntax for a Heading or Paragraph Using the Free Online Tool CSS Type Set

If you are new to Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) formatting or just want to quickly try styling a paragraph or heading in real time, then you may want to explore CSS Type Set, a free online tool. As shown in the above screen capture, first enter your desired text (whether a heading or paragraph) and add some attributes (e.g., add bold or change your font size) to your text and the CSS syntax for your styled text will be automatically generated in real time on the right. With this tool you can apply changes to font-family, color, font-size, font-weight, font-style, text-alignment, letter-spacing, word-spacing and line-height.

http://csstypeset.com/

For further information about virtual volunteering, visit Pioneering Online Volunteering Program Developer 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.

How to Use Bloom, a Free Facebook Photo Uploading Program

Select Photos Can Help a Non-Profit Organization Develop a Productive Facebook Presence

With an articulated purpose, formulated objectives and action plan in place, a non-profit organization can develop a productive Facebook presence (Facebook is a social networking site with about 400 million users). Photography is one powerful medium to help you develop your organization's Facebook presence. Whether your chosen images tell client stories, illustrate community impact, recognize your donors or reflect your online volunteers' contributions, you will require an easy and efficient tool to upload your photos to Facebook. Bloom is one such free, photo uploading application.

Bloom is an easy-to-use multi-platform Java-based desktop program that allows you to upload (which also supports uploads behind a Proxy server) more than 200 photos (to a new album or existing album), select your desired level of privacy, tag people within your photos, import a photo's IPTC metadata (if available) into the photo caption, download albums, view your friends' photos as well as upload videos. Before explaining how to use Bloom, I will highlight the application's requirements.

Requirements

Minimum hardware requirements:
Pentium 3
384 MB of RAM, some images require 512MB or more
1024x768 display

Recommended hardware requirements:
Dual or quad core Intel or AMD processor
1GB of RAM
1280x1024 display

Operating Systems Supported:
Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Windows 7 with Java 5 or Java 6 installed
Mac OS 10.4, 10.5 & 10.6 (Java 5 or Java 6 are pre-installed on Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6
A Linux distribution with Java 5 or Java 6 JRE installed such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse
Solaris 10 with Java 5 or Java 6

How to Use (Bloom v2.8.0):

• Install Bloom
• Launch Bloom
• Drag your photos into the window (white area) as shown in the screen capture above
• Provide an album name, location and album description
• Select Who Can View your Album (Privacy Level): everyone, friends, friends of friends or network
• Add photo captions (if your photos have embedded IPTC metadata, Bloom will automatically generate the photo caption from the IPTC Caption field). If your photos do not embedded IPTC metadata, you can select each photo one-at-a-time and add different photo captions. If you want to add the same caption to each photo in your album, select all photos (using CTRL A on Windows) and add your desired generic caption in Bloom's  photo caption box.
• Now press the Login button on the top left toolbar
• At the "Welcome to Bloom" window that opens, check "enhanced security" (which will provide you with an https connection), then press "Login"
• Your browser will launch so you can log in to Facebook
• After you have logged-in for the first time a window stating "Allow Bloom to access my information" will be displayed
• Click the "Login to Bloom" button (for security purposes, I recommend that you not allow Bloom continuous access privileges to Facebook. Instead, require authorization each time you upload photos to Facebook).
• If successful, you should then see a message stating "You may now close this window and return to the application (on your desktop)"
• Return to Bloom and click "I Have Successfully Logged In".
• The new album window will be displayed
• Click the "Upload Photos" buttom on the bottom right of the application
• When you finished uploading your photos, click Bloom's "Sign Out" button
• Ensure you have logged out of Facebook

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, Easy-to-Use Program Provides a Secure Way to Email Confidential Information

Using AES 256 Bit Encryption, LockNote Keeps Your Sensitive Information Secure

Whether you have passwords or serial numbers to store or need to e-mail sensitive information to your non-profit board members or your online volunteers, LockNote provides a quick, easy and secure method to hide your information from prying eyes. LockNote, by Steganos, is a free (open-source) PC application that stores your sensitive information within an AES 256 bit encrypted password-protected exe file. LockNote, as shown in the Screen capture above, is similar to Notepad but with the added ability to create secure documents.

As LockNote is open-source, the source code is available for anyone to review. Recently, security expert Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation (GRC.com) did an analysis of LockNote's source code. In his February 11, 2010  "Security Now" podcast (Episode 235) he revealed his glowing findings about LockNote:

"So they did everything. It is bulletproof. These guys clearly know their crypto, which is great news. And having looked at this, I can tell our listeners that this is as secure as it gets. I mean, everything was done right. Use it without fear."

How to Use LockNote

• Download LockNote (requires Windows 2000, Windows XP+), which is contained within a Zip archive, to your desktop, from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/LockNote/
• Using the Windows built-in unpacker (or an application such as WinZip or 7-Zip), extract the files from the Zip archive (LockNote-1.0.4-src+binary.zip). There will be a folder called "src" (source code) and the "LockNote.exe" application
• Drag the LockNote.exe file to your desktop and delete the rest of the files and folders

LockNote works with text only either via copying/pasting text (or typing) into a LockNote window or by dragging and dropping text files (files with a .txt extension) over the icon of the LockNote.exe file. I will explain the two methods below:

1. Pasting or Typing Text in a LockNote Window

• When you have entered all text, left click on the "File" menu item and select "Save As" (see the screen capture above).
• Then provide a file name (e.g., "Private") which will allow you to easily identify your file's contents (you can leave "Save as Type" blank as the file will be automatically saved with an .exe extension).
• Next you will be prompted for a password.
• Create a secure password or use the free password generator, both of which I addressed in my previous post (even though LockNote uses AES 256 bit encryption, the security of your information is contingent upon the strength of your password).
• Now your text will be encrypted within a LockNote.exe file (that is, the LockNote application and encrypted text are now contained within the password-protected .exe file).
• To open the encrypted LockNote file, just click on the Private.exe file (or whatever name you gave to the .exe file) and enter your password.

2. Dragging and Dropping .txt Files LockNote.exe's Icon

• If you have a text file (.txt) you want to encrypt, just drag the file over the icon of the LockNote.exe application.
• You will then be asked if you want to convert this file, and if you agree, will be prompted to provide a new secure password to encrypt the document. (and the encrypted file will be automatically saved as an exe file preceded by the name of your original .txt file).
• If you have more than one .txt file and you want to combine the contents into just one Locknote.exe file, you will first have to merge all of your text files into one (combined) .txt file. You can copy and paste the contents of each of your text files into a master file or use a free application such as TXTcollector to easily combine an entire folder (and optionally, subfolders) of .txt files into one .txt file (with a separator and the file name between each file, if you so choose). TXTcollector, which runs on Windows 95 to Vista, can be downloaded from: http://bluefive.pair.com

Solutions for Changing a Text File's Encoding

If you have encrypted a .txt file to an .exe file and after providing the password to open the .exe file you find the text unreadable, you can either copy/paste the text (from your .txt file) into a LockNote window or encode your .txt file in Windows ANSI (Windows 1252) using an Open-Source (freeware) text editor such as Notepad++, which is available for download at:

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

E-mailing an Encrypted LockNote File

As explained above, all encrypted text contained with a LockNote file will have an exe extension by default. In order to prevent your (LockNote) exe file from being blocked by certain servers (due to exe files carrying viruses), I recommend that you do the following:

• Compress/pack your password-protected LockNote.exe within a Zip archive (or whatever archive format your Windows recipient desires) using a freeware program such as 7-Zip.
• If you are using Gmail, for example, to send (and/or your recipient will be using Gmail to receive your LockNote attachment), an executable (exe) file will be blocked even if contained within a Zip (or similar) archive. As a work around, you can rename the .exe by right clicking the LockNote .exe file, select rename and change the file's extension from .exe to .jpg (with your cursor over the file, pressing F2 will also allow you to easily rename the file).
• Once you have successfully e-mailed the LockNote attachment, provide (e.g., via phone, fax or Skype but not through e-mail) your intended recipient with the password to open the encrypted file and of course advise the recipient to change the file extension back to exe from jpg if you re-named the exe file to e-mail (before attempting to open the encrypted LockNote file with the provided password).

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.

Study Finds 73 percent of Bank Customers Use their Online Account Password to Access Other Web Sites

• 73 percent of bank customers use their online account password to access other websites and
• 47 percent use both their online banking user ID and password to login elsewhere on the Internet.

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.

Monitor Your Web Site Visitors in Real-Time as They Click Through Your Site, for Free

Who is Visiting Your Web Site Right Now? Non-Profits, You Can Quickly and Easily Know

Billed as providing what Google Analytics does not, Footprint allows you to view your visitors as they click through your Web site in real-time. Any visitor's click path history through your site can also be viewed along with referrer, search engine terms used to arrive at your site and visitor profile (including city, country, company, IP address and first and last visit).

 How to Track Your Site Visitors Using Footprint

After you provide a working e-mail address, account password, the domain you want to track and preferred timezone, you will receive an e-mail message containing the JavaScript-based tracking code. The tracking code must be placed just before the closing body tag on each static html page that you want to monitor (if your site has dynamically generated pages, paste the JavaScript in your dynamically generated footer for quick site-wide placement). Footprint can also be used with any content management system (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla, Blogger or Drupal as well as secure (https) pages. After you have added the tracking code, log-in to your Footprint account to review extensive information about your site visitors, including any live traffic on your site.

Visit the following URL to create your free (currently) Footprint tracking account:
http://www.footprintlive.com/live/sign-up--one-step-signup.html

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.

Non-Profits - Easily Create Your Free Yammer Private Microblog to Plan an Event, Collaborate on a Project

When e-mail is too slow and inefficient to plan an event or fundraiser or collaborate on a project, consider a free Web hosted microblogging tool. Yammer, similar to Present.ly, offers a private, efficient way for employees to stay connected through the posting of messages, file sharing and the creation of groups (based on, for example, department, project or team, fundraiser). SMS integration, e-mail as well as iPhone and BlackBerry applications along with an Adobe Air-based desktop application ensures employees keep updated whether on or off their work site. To allow quick and easy identification of your colleagues' expertise, each employee can create a photo-based profile.

Although Yammers' free level of service lacks the administrative functions Present.ly currently offers without charge, all users are required to confirm they have a valid organizational e-mail address (from the same domain) in order to sign-up. Along with requiring users to have a valid organizational e-mail address, the ability to suspend former employees allows a measure of privacy.

To easily create your non-profit organization's free Yammer microblogging tool, visit:

https://www.yammer.com/

For further information about how your 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

A Rich Definition of Online Volunteering by Randy Tyler

(download)

Click here to download:

A-Rich-Definition-of-Online-Volunteering-By-Randy-Tyler.wmv (3.32 MB)

At one level, virtual volunteering (also referred to as, for example, online volunteering, e-volunteering, Internet volunteering, cyber volunteering, inclusive volunteering, volunteering without barriers and borders) is volunteering via the Internet.

At a deeper level, virtual volunteering reflects a much larger and richer social phenomenon, as reflected in Randy Tyler's definition of online volunteering (which was conceived by MYS's Online Volunteer Program Developer, Randy Tyler).

Geoff Edwards, an MYS Vancouver-based online volunteer, brought life to Randy's definition in his voice narration and Toronto-based MYS Online Volunteer, Svitlana Chepurna, visually illustrated Randy's definition of Virtual Volunteering in the Flash-based Video.

See the link above to download Randy Tyler's rich definition of online volunteering.

For further information, please contact Randy Tyler www.mys.ca/volunter or directly at:

Pioneering Online Volunteer Program Developer, Presenter and Trainer or RandyTyler@gmail.com.

CBC TV Newsworld Interviews Randy Tyler About Online Volunteering

(download)

Click here to download:

CBC-TV-Interviews-Randy-Tyler-About-Online-Volunteering.flv (15.04 MB)

As part of a day long special about volunteering in Canada called the "The Kindness of Strangers", CBC TV Newsworld Interviewed Randy Tyler About Online Volunteering.

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