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Computing in the Clouds

Steve Backman — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:17:59 -0500

Moving our office this summer, we ended up having a gap between moving out and moving in. I got many questions about what we did with all our servers while bridging the gap. Fact is, though we use many such things, most of it is out there in the “cloud.”

Passwords and personal data security

Steve Backman — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:36:10 -0500

Data security has been in the news again lately with new stories about stolen laptops (Anheuser Busch) and credit card break-ins. Its easy to slip into the mindset that nothing is safe so why bother. One point of vulnerability that has been on my mind lately is passwords.

Take the Firefox 3 Pledge

Steve Backman — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:20:12 -0500

I’ll be celebrating Download Day Tuesday June 17. That’s when Mozilla will release Firefox 3, the new generation of the Open Source browser. I have used test versions of Firefox 3 for months and love it. I love the performance and speed even when I have multiple tabs open, which I almost always do. Right now, I have Firefox 22 tabs open, and the browser remains perky and stable. Yes, it’s using up a huge amount of my computer’s free memory, but I’d rather give it to that then most anything else on my desktop.

BlueAnt: Great Product, Great Service

Steve Backman — Wed, 4 Jun 2008 06:40:47 -0500

Being in the customer service line of fire myself, I'm always impressed when a small company manages both good products and good service.

Memorial Day

Steve Backman — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:39:38 -0500

I visited the Forest Hills Cemetery today, on Memorial Day. I rode my bike over for a quiet afternoon visit. Fresh flags had gone up along the winding roadway in, and commemorative flags marked some of the graves.

Backing Up is Not Hard to Do

Steve Backman — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:17:19 -0500

Recently my Carbonite back-up stopped working. Carbonite is one of the new breed of low-cost, on-line, continuous data back-up services. I have tried Mozy and Jungle Disk as well, and stick with Carbonite because I started with it, it works quietly and reliably, the control panel is simple, and its costs just $50 a year for unlimited storage.

Heathrow's T5 and technology project management

Steve Backman — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 19:31:25 -0500

I have been trying to follow the problems in the new T5 terminal at Heathrow Airport. There are small project management problems and there are big ones. Ours are modest. On the scale of big, you have T5 which apparently included 400,000 hours of software development (that’s a lot of lines of code!), a full year of testing and a full year of training. Yet its open was a technology disaster.

Where will you get your news?

Steve Backman — Sun, 6 Apr 2008 06:02:09 -0500

From the opening scene of Blade Runner, you know you are in for a more personally challenging vision of the future. Harrison Ford’s monologue interposed with messages from oversized personal billboards (“a new life awaits you…”) still come to memory first for me even after all these years. Visually alluring ads clash with the degraded city.

Check out Goodreads

Steve Backman — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:31:57 -0500

I joined Goodreads this weekend. I had heard of it, but not gone down that road before.

Open Source or Open Enough?

Steve Backman — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:10:22 -0500

The 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference reinforced my sense that at this point, it's useful to consider choices about Open Source as a continuum rather than a yes/no.

Loving Firefox 3

Steve Backman — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:09:30 -0500

I have been using the beta version of Firefox since last weekend. I love it! You can try it here.

The main thing I needed and that I’m experiencing is that it stays perky even with a ton of tabbed windows open. Yes, my browsing habits include opening and keeping open lots of windows at once. Firefox has had the ability to support this for a while, but memory use grew, sluggishness crept in, and Firefox sometimes crashed.

Back from the Nonprofit Technology Conference

Steve Backman — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:09:33 -0500

I'm just back from this year's NTC (Nonprofit Technology Conference) in New Orleans. The most striking and welcome thing for me was the richness of experiences in organizing campaigns and building constituency on the web today. Lots of detailed, honest sharing of experiences in blending email, one's own web site, and the social media to accomplish meaningful goals. By social media, I mean public resources such as FaceBook, mySpace, care2, blogging, social tagging.

Data Exchange and APIs as part of the solution

Steve Backman — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:31:16 -0600

I've been thinking a lot about data integration lately. It's always been a significant and distinctive part of our approach. It was therefore a natural to contribute to Idealware's wonderful framework for evaluating data exchange programming tools for nonprofits.

Health and Disability Working Group site relaunches

Steve Backman — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:59:39 -0600

The Health and Disability Working Group website (www.hdwg.org) has relaunched as a Drupal site. HDWG is a public health research, training and public information resource project of Boston University's School of Public Health.

FairTest.org site relaunches

Steve Backman — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:42:37 -0600

Cambridge, Mass-based national advocacy organization FairTest has relaunched its web site, fairtest.org, based on the Drupal content management system. Also known as The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, FairTest has championed the cause of open and educationally valid assessment of students, teachers and schools, from K12 through college.

Wayne Glynn, Jr

Steve Backman — Sun, 2 Dec 2007 19:51:07 -0600

Wayne Glynn, Jr, friend and colleague in nonprofit tech circles, died this week after a long battle with a dire form of cancer. He was forty, he was a fighter, and he was an inspiration through it all.

Getting Real

Steve Backman — Sun, 2 Dec 2007 07:26:40 -0600

I have been reading "Getting Real," book by 37signals, the creators of basecamp. BaseCamp is great and the book is great.

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age

Steve Backman — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:05:20 -0600

In her new book, Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, Alison Fine stands at the intersection of new technology on community activism.

Fine takes the skeptical community activist, nonprofit communications manager, or policy advocate on a whirlwind tour of new social media. She peeks in at everything from blogging to on-line advocacy and everything in between. She provides accessible examples of grass roots campaigns qualitatively reshaping and enriching themselves through judicious use of new web technologies.

Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Some Die

Steve Backman — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:02:24 -0600

You have to read "Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Some Die" on a practical level. The book takes the reader through a series of predictors of how to make your writing, publicity, organizing initiative reach its intended audience, and stick. When ideas stick, they stay with you and change your behavior or expectations.

Another recent book, Malcolm Gladwell’s "The Tipping Point," focused more on how social phenomena spread outward and take hold. Made to Stick focuses more on the formulation of ideas themselves.

Die database, die! Five reasons why Access has not disappeared.

Steve Backman — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 06:26:55 -0600

I just started a data management assessment for a new client with my colleague Emily Graham. The organization uses a dizzying array of contact and process management tools from rolodex to high end commercial nonprofit CRM software. A custom-developed Microsoft Access database sits squarely in the middle.