Friday, January 12, 2007

PolicyLink - E-Advocacy -- Overview

PolicyLink - E-Advocacy -- Overview: "Advocacy is essential for anyone working to ensure that this nation’s resources are shared by everyone. The struggle may be for housing that’s affordable to people of all incomes, secure jobs and accessible transportation to reach them, or healthy communities with clean air, parks, and supermarkets that offer quality food and produce. Whatever it may be, we, the people, have the right to take action when our rights are threatened or denied.

Now more than ever, people are coming together—in coalitions or organizations—to harness the power of technology for policy change. This new Internet-based approach to advocacy—electronic advocacy (e-advocacy)—is a multifaceted process that uses an array of technology tools, tailored to specific campaign goals."

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Live Assistance

Live Assistance: "Chat with a Representative
Ask us a question about federal agencies, programs, benefits, or services. Currently our chat service is only available in English and during the hours listed below. Chat service is unavailable on federal holidays.

Hours:

• Monday - Friday: 12:00 PM - 08:00 PM Eastern Time.
• Saturday - Sunday: Closed.
• It is currently Wednesday, Jan 10, 2007 11:49 AM Eastern Time

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Monday, January 08, 2007

Beth's Blog: Cross Blog Discussion: NpTech Tag

Beth Kanter has some interesting discussion from a variety of folks using the NPTECH tag on her blog.
My short answers to her questions(See Below) are as follows
1. We use the NPTech tag to highlight news articles that we've seen that would also fit the evolving criteria for our AFP Nonprofit Technology News Blog.
2. Yes we subscribe to the feed to find resources and also to network. We would not however post the feed itself but instead use it as a winnowing device via our aggregator with the additional step of "human" filter.

3. Yes we read the summaries as well as selected posts. To date we skim the postings as opposed to sub searching( not sure if this is a real term) the tag.

4. We tag for both promotion and outreach. As a more general comment we also tag to categorize for future retrival (cataloging) of the material by topic. We find ourselves regularly challenged by the quandry of "broad" vs. "specific" tagging.

Thanks for the ongoing discussion.
Feel free to comment.

Beth's Blog: Cross Blog Discussion: NpTech Tag: "For a
n experiment, here's some conversation questions about the NpTech Tag. Write a blog post reflecting on these questions and tag it with NpTech and we will summarize the key points.

* How are you using the NpTech Tag?
* Do you subscribe to the feed to find resources?
* Do you read the summaries?
* Do you tag items with the NpTech as a form of promotion or outreach?"
Tags:

Foundation links disaster victims to technology - Examiner.com

Foundation links disaster victims to technology - Examiner.com: "Foundation links disaster victims to technology

Frank Sietzen, The Examiner
Read more by Frank Sietzen
Jan 8, 2007 3:00 AM (7 hrs ago)
Current rank: # 40 of 11,603 articles
WASHINGTON - In any given year, many regions of the world need help with famine, floods and other catastrophes. Most of these are largely forgotten, however, when high-profile disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes grab world attention.

The D.C.-based U.N. Foundation, established by a $1 billion donation in September 1997 by CNN founder Ted Turner, is forging a series of innovative partnerships to bring technology to bear on the needs of these hard hit areas."