Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Since I’m travelling, I haven’t had much time to think in depth about much of anything. However, in my snippets of time reading my blogroll, there are a few technology snippets that I’ve come across that are interesting.

Beth Kanter has been investigating vlogging - that’s video blogging. It’s pretty interesting - and I imagine that once high bandwidth connections are truly ubiquitous, vlogging might get pretty popular. But the barriers to entry are pretty high. I’ve done a little video editing, etc. myself, and the time and energy it takes to do it well is pretty daunting. I think I’d be lucky to get one or two vlog entries a year actually done. More power to Beth, though! And great to start thinking about this new technology and how nonprofits might use it. I also have been watching her coverage of Blogher - something I just learned about, and sounds really interesting. I wish I’d known about it sooner.

There are rumors that Palm is going to move off of the Palm OS platform, to possibly to Windows Mobile. Case in point - the new Treo 670 has been seen running Windows Mobile. Anyway, this is all rumors and innuendo, but the truth is, if Palm moves to Windows Mobile, I hate to say it, but I dump Palm. Sad but true. I’ll hold on to my Treo 650 until it falls apart, then figure out what to do next.

Unintended consequences: The new energy bill has in it a change in the daylight savings time, which hasn’t changed since 1987. So there are a fair number of devices that have programmed in them the old schedule. I imagine this will be worse for devices not connected to the internet in any way. Could have some interesting side effects.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised in my travels how much I’ve been able to use wifi, most places. Most of the chain motels are sporting Wifi, tons of cafes and the like are, and even rest stops seem to have wifi. I think the days of ubiquitous Wifi are coming. The question is, ubuquitous free? Will that grow, or will it move to become ubiquitous, but you pay for it? Not clear yet.