Online Volunteering Tips, Tools and Technology by Randy Tyler

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.

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.

Reach Your Online Volunteers with a Tweet and a Chirp - by Randy Tyler

How To Enrich A Tweet With A Voice Message Using Chirps by Randy Tyler, Pioneer Online Vo

(download)

Click here to download:

Add-A-Tweet-Voice-Msg.mp3 (1014 KB)

How to Easily Enrich Your Tweet with a Voice Message Using  Chirps

Reaching your online volunteers via Twitter's 140 character limit may be inadequate. However, adding a voice message to a Tweet allows one to move beyond the 140 character limit while adding rich emotions to your Twitter message. This audio recording provides a brief overview as to how you can use Chirps free service (www.chir.ps) to easily add a voice message to your tweet.

To learn more about online volunteering, see http://www.RandyTyler.org or e-mail RandyTyler@gmail.com.

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

Five Ways to Use Video Mail with Online Volunteers

Five Ways To Use Eyejot Video by Peter Drew

(download)

Click here to download:

Using-Video-Mail-with-Online-Volunteers.mp3 (6.68 MB)

How to Use Skype with Online Volunteers - An Instructional Video

Click here to download:

How-to-Use-Skype.wmv (6.65 MB)

Although Skype states their VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) application is relatively "easy to download, install and use", a visual tutorial may help those with installing and using this program for the first time. As apart of the best practises publication about Online Volunteering being developed by Randy Tyler, MYS has facilitated the creation of many how-to videos.

MYS is pleased to share a video tutorial that provides an overview of how to download, install, configure and use Skype for Windows. MYS extends their thanks to online volunteer Yu Cheng, who now lives in China, for creating the approximate nine minute video.

Download the "How to Use Skype with Virtual Volunteers" instructional video from the link above, now.

For further information, please contact RandyTyler www.mys.ca/volunter or directly by visiting Online Volunteering or e-mail RandyTyler@gmail.com.