Monthly Archives: October 2008

Responses to my iGoogle review and thoughts on Google support

Posted on October 20, 2008 | 2 Comments

A couple of days ago, I posted a review of the new iGoogle, which I mostly liked except for a few bugs, and I got a lot of response. (A lot of response for this humble blog, anyway.) All of the commenters completely disagreed with me.

But I noticed something else in common with all the comments: frustration. I don’t think that frustration stems from the new iGoogle so much as the way Google rolled out the changes and the lack of options Google gives its users.

For one thing, Google makes it nearly impossible to give feedback or request support on their free services. Their official blog doesn’t even take comments. My husband has been trying to make a relatively simple change to his Gmail, and not only does Google not allow the change, but they provide no way for him to get in touch with them to request the change or ask for help.

Well, Google is a free service. They don’t have to offer support.

I think that’s wrong. I use several free Web tools that offer excellent support. WordPress.com always responds in a timely and helpful way to my support emails. Hiveminder provides an option for reporting bugs or requesting features right on their interface. I have tweeted about problems I’m having with a software program and gotten an unexpected response from the software developers who are monitoring Twitter. Similarly, I have blogged about free tools, and the developers, who are obviously keeping on top of the blogs, have come by and commented.

Why doesn’t Google do this? Is it just too big? One of the reasons I blogged about iGoogle was because I had found a couple of pretty serious bugs, and I had no other outlet for reporting them.

People are pretty ticked off with Google for the changes made to iGoogle. The changes were made suddenly, without notice. There is no choice between old style and new style. And there is no way to let Google know directly how you feel. No wonder there is so much frustration.

I know Google is a monolith, but I think there is an opportunity here for a company that offers free services comparable to Google’s quality and is in touch with — and actually listens to — its users. Right now, the sense I get is that Google completely discounts its users — at least, its non-paying users — and that won’t cut it on today’s web. No company can afford to ignore any of their customers.

Google may think they’re too big to care about the users of its free services. I think they’ll fiind out they’re wrong.

Please keep the conversation going, and tell me what you think in the comments.

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The new iGoogle — the good and the bad

Posted on October 18, 2008 | 20 Comments

Like a lot of people, I use iGoogle as my home page, and I really depend on it for quick access to all my web “stuff,” like email, my documents, frequently used bookmarks and my calendar.

A new design for iGoogle was recently unveiled, and for the most part, I like it a lot. The tabs are now down the left side of the page instead of across the top, and all the widgets are listed under each tab. I have 3 tabs and a lot of widgets, which I often forget about if they are buried. So this new design keeps all my useful widgets front and center in my mind.

The Gmail widget underwent the most useful changes. Now you can read the first sentence of the email message inside the widget and perform actions like deleting, archiving and marking as read without opening the Inbox.

Click on a widget’s name underneath the tab and in most cases, a full-screen view of the widget opens, without navigating to a new web page. Some of these are incredibly useful, like the full page weather report for the Weather widget, the front page of the New York Times designed to look like a newspaper and a full map for Driving Directions. Of course, the Google widgets have the most integration. Click Gmail to open your Inbox, Calendar to display a monthly calendar view and Reader to read your articles inside your Google page.

This new integration is useful, but a few bugs have popped up that have made me distrustful that everything is working as it should. For example, links in email messages viewed inside iGoogle are not clickable or do not appear. This renders a lot of web mail useless. And the articles just stop displaying in Google Reader after paging down a few times. I have to start all over again to get them to reappear, and then I wonder if I’ve missed something.

Maybe the new iGoogle isn’t quite ready for prime time. But despite these few bugs — and the ones I have yet to discover — it has become a much more useful tool for me. I just hope Google is quick about fixing the bugs.

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How to get started in the Web 2.0 world

Posted on October 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
Web 2.0

Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr

I have a colleague who’s interested in bringing some of our organization’s knowledge management efforts into the Web 2.0 world, and she wanted to know how to get started. My advice was, before getting an organizational blog or setting up a wiki or something like that, that she — or ideally everyone on her team — get involved on a personal level. Because I don’t think you can get Web 2.0 — and therefore your organization can’t get Web 2.0 — unless you’re doing it. It’s all about participation and collaboration, and that means you have to dive in.

So here are my suggestions for the steps you should take before you even think about setting up an organizational blog or wiki or anything like that.

1. Start bookmarking. You are soon going to be touring all over the web, and you need a way to remember the best blogs, videos and other stuff you find. You can use your browser’s bookmarks feature, but the Web 2.0 way is to share. So I suggest getting an account on a social bookmarking site. I recommend Delicious because it is so clean and easy to use, but StumbleUpon is also a good option. Both provide toolbar buttons so you can bookmark as you surf. Get in the habit of bookmarking the sites that interest you and tagging them in meaningful ways.

2. Read some blogs. Blogs are the heart of the social web. Somewhere out there, someone is writing about something you’re interested in or working on. Use Google’s blog search to find 5-10 blogs on those subjects and start reading them. Take a look at their blogrolls or the blogs they cite often, and start reading them too. Of course, there’s an upper limit to the number of blogs you can read, but you do want to be keeping up with at least 20, probably more if you can handle it.

RSS feed readers make it a lot easier to keep up with all those blogs, because they deliver new content to you, instead of you having to go out on the web to get it. I like Google Reader myself, but there are many  other choices. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have RSS feed readers built in, as well. To find the feed, look for the orange RSS feed icon and click on it: RSS feed icon

The most important thing, though, when reading blogs is to comment on what you read and like. Web 2.0 is all about participation, and commenting is one of the main ways to join in. Once you start commenting on blogs in your niche, you’ll meet the bloggers and other commenters and begin getting to know the community that you’re joining.

3. Jump into Twitter. It’s time to up the interaction a notch, and Twitter is a good way to do it. You can start out small and build up as your confidence increases. Find a few people to follow; first check the blogs you’re reading, as bloggers are typically on Twitter too. See who they are following and follow any of those people who seem interesting, as well. There are plenty of Twitter applications that make following tweets easier.

Why are you on Twitter? You will get in the habit of sharing: what you’re working on, what you’re reading, links, whatever. And you will have a ready-made community to ask questions and get feedback from. What’s more, it’s fun.

4. Get a blog. It’s now time to join the conversation. And I don’t mean starting an organizational blog. That should come later. First, you should start your own personal blog where you can write in your own voice. You may choose to write about your work or about some other passion. What matters is that you’re adding your voice to the conversation.

Starting a blog is easy and takes less than five minutes. I recommend WordPress.com as the best free blogging platform, because even if you don’t know the software, it’s easy to learn and get started on right away. If you’re intimidated by having a full-fledged blog or don’t have the time, you can start a “micro-blog” on Tumblr and share interesting links, video, quotes and other short snippets. Remember to keep commenting on other blogs and leave a link to your blog when you do. You’ll soon find that folks who read your comments are stopping by your blog and commenting on what you’re writing.

And before you know it, you’re part of Web 2.0.

If you follow these steps, more or less, and get involved in the online community on a personal level, you’ll probably find it much easier to think of creative and worthwhile ways your organization can get involved.

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How to use tagging to make connections in the nonprofit web

Posted on October 1, 2008 | 4 Comments
A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.

Image via Wikipedia

Probably one of the best innovations of the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon is tagging. A tag is “a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information” (source). Tags can be used to identify blog posts, bookmarks, photos, videos, presentations, events, etc., and are supported by pretty much every Web 2.0 tool. Tags are generally assigned informally and without regard to a structure of categories; they are more like annotations and are often assigned in addition to categories, such as on blog posts.

The genius of tagging is that it organically builds connections over time between seemingly unconnected content. If my blog post and your video and his bookmark and her photograph all have the same tag, then we can start to see how they are related in some way. This leads to a bottoms-up classification system for web content that is often called a folksonomy.

The problem is that tags are arbitrarily decided on by the content creator, and with language being what it is, one tag can mean many different things to many different people. Take the word development, for instance. In my own little industry, it can refer to the process of creating software or giving aid to low-resource countries. In other contexts, it might refer to child development or personal development or a large and ugly subdivision.

The nonprofit field has bypassed this limitation by coming up with some unique tags to identify our content. If we use these tags consistently, we can easily locate a wealth of content in our particular niches. Here are some of the most useful tags I’ve come across:

nptech: Short for “nonprofit technology,” this tag refers to nonprofits’ use of technology, mostly internally rather than as part of the program offerings.

Examples:

ict4d: Stands for “Information and Communication Technologies for Development.” Refers to groups that are using technology in their development programs, usually international development.

Examples:

web4dev: Using Web technologies, mostly Web 2.0, for supporting international aid and development.

Examples:

km4dev: Stands for “Knowledge Management for Development.” Using knowledge management tools and techniques to support international development.

Examples:

m4dev or m4d: Using mobile technology to support internatonal development.

Examples:

I’m sure I haven’t discovered all of the tags being used by nonprofits using technology, especially in international development. If you know of any other good ones, please leave a comment.

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