We are so excited to share our new video, produced and filmed by local volunteer Mark Urmos! The video stars Barbara Davis, Dunia Fleihan and our amazing HandyTechs hard at work! Please watch and share your comments, we’d love to know what you think of it!
W3Schools Online Web TutorialsI’m an inveterate email list subscriber. I belong to a bunch of nonprofit tech lists, including the one at the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, which most of us know as NTEN. They do a fabulous conference every year where you can meet other people dedicated to nonprofit technology. That’s great, because face it — we’re just different from for-profit businesses.
One of the skills that I pretty much missed in my back-to-college tour in the early 2000′s was CSS. Oh, we heard that it meant Cascading Style Sheets and got to play with it a bit, but it wasn’t the BIG THING that it is today. I’ve been thinking, in the back of my tech consultant mind, that I need to know more about CSS, but the price of the books and the online training always held me back.
So you can imagine my delight to learn of this site that has free tutorials for folks like me. Check it out if you want to expand your web development skills!
And another voice adds:
The best thing is to have a staging area to test things out in. You can check your work in browsers to make sure it looks good, but also try validating your html/css to ensure it is being done properly:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-
Here is my favorite, funny np techie speaking about one of my favorite online tools, LastPass:
Strangely, I use LastPass. I say strangely because it’s not really designed as a password storage system – rather it is designed for SSO (single sign-on). I use it to manage (and automatically sign into) a myriad of online identities. (Let me state, categorically, that in no identity am I a nine-foot tall pink cat. I want that clear.)
Why I like it for password management (remembering all those *other* accounts) is that it keeps it all in the cloud, encrypted, secure, yada yada. This means that things I store from one place or another are instantly available on the plethora of other devices that occupy my batman-like urban utility belt. LastPass makes clients for about everything – firefox, IE, droid, iThings, etc. With my one LastPass account, I have magically memory access to the same list of stuff.
I use Lastpass for web credentials – all sorts of them – and it works reasonably well. It’s not perfect – but web sites are wacky and it’s amazing the variations of credentialing systems.
But.. I also use it for storage of things I need to know and remember or use or just have handy. Here I use the LastPass secure notes feature. They’re notes. About anything. Encrypted and stored in the cloud. With a little planning, I adopted a standard format for things. Then again, it helps that it is all searchable from within the client.
Yeah, it’s secure – only the cyphertext is stored online. It’s decrypted using your private key by the client app – it is all encrypted and decrypted locally – Lastpass only stores the resultant pseudo-random gobbledygook. . It never stores anything in clear text.
You can share with one or more. You can share collections (which is why I originally got it). We have institutional memberships to a boatload of crappy and not so crappy web sites. Trying to manage security for 100 people, all trying to use the same credentials, but only about once a year, was worse than being cursed by Apollo with the gift of prophecy. Lastpass lets me set up the sites, manage the SSO, and distribute them (automatically across the globe) to 100 folks – a simple “shared folder” metaphor.
Costs range from free to $12 a year. A bargain. I’ve seen *other* sorts of password managers, keepers, and the like, but none do all that this does, and it does it relatively simply. It ain’t a beauty .. but it works like a charm. Oh.. and it also generates secure passwords too.
Regards
Gavin
Bilou Enterprises sent out a notice today that it has an online calendar of free and low-cost webinars about fundraising. You can sign up to get an email seven days in advance.
Here’s what director Valerie has to say:
On my website, I keep a calendar of free (and low cost) training courses aimed to serve those in Annual Giving fundraising. This crosses several areas, including fundraising, grant writing, social media, choosing the right database, mobile giving, etc.
You can see the events at http://bit.ly/BilouCalendar and subscribe free to receive emails 7 days ahead at http://bit.ly/SubscribeBilou (although it’s good to check the calendar now & then for events that might be posted less than 7 days in advance…)
While those in major gifts typically have the largest training budgets (and their profession remains relatively static), annual giving professionals have seen their budgets evaporate, yet their profession continues to change dramatically!
Check it out!
We were all happy to welcome the photographer from FoxNews the other day to tell our story and to ask the community to contribute their old computers. As you can see, the Handy Techs are hard at work, refurbishing computers for sale to nonprofits and low-income individuals.
If you get up on Christmas Morning and find a brand new computer under the tree, think of HandyCapable!
We’d love to have your old computer!
We’ll wipe the hard drive and take all your personal information right off.
We’ll have our HandyTechs add a new operating system and new software.
And then we’ll make sure a deserving school child or a hardworking nonprofit gets to enjoy it.
HandyCapable Network is happy to announce that past president Dale Metz has been awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. This honor is presented by the North Carolina Governor’s Office to citizens who have provided 30 or more years of exemplary service to the state. Dale was there for us when we first started and helped us start up as a 501 (c)(3). Dale has been a great supporter of HCN over the years and we send our deepest congratulations to him in receiving this honored award!
http://jamestownnews.womacknewspapers.com/articles/2011/11/17/news/features/features60.txt
Imagine, what would happen if your computer were to be destroyed today? Where would all your important information go? Poof! Just like that, it’s all gone… If you or your organization are still not sure if “Cloud Computing” is the way to go, here is a great article to prove just how much more efficient, safe and secure it is than that old server you’re using! Nothing highlights the truth better than a true story.
http://cloud4good.com/announcements/cloud-security-true-story/
Do you work for a nonprofit which uses social media, understands the basics, but still need a little guidance? HandyCapable Network can help!
-Basic social media jargon and applications
-Using social media to build new relationships
-Increasing visibility, donors and event attendance
-Setting goals and measuring success
-She will also be discussing her own data collected on Guilford County nonprofits and their social media use.
On Monday, Oct. 31st, Care2 (http://www.care2.com/) is doing a webinar on the recent Facebook changes and what they mean for nonprofits. The webinar is “Keeping up with Facebook’s Changes (and ‘Liking’ it!)” You’ll have to register, but the webinar itself is free.
Here’s the link– http://bit.ly/pFGGqf
If you decide to take advantage of this offer, do come back here and offer your opinion. If we find that our nonprofit community would like to hear about more of these webinars, we’ll post them.
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