New server transfers…
Filed under: Conversation, Our Thirdsector Systems, Web services
We are having our webmail functions transferred to new servers from midnight on Friday (4th September 2008).
This means that access may be down for a few minutes, with some delayed response times for a couple of hours following.
Improving service levels from the Thirdsector team.
See our home page at Thirdsector Web here.
Google is Chrome coloured…
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services
Google have launched their own web browser in beta, called Chrome.
Lightweight and fast, we tested it on our office laptops still running XP/SP2 and were pleased with the performance of this new entrance into the browser market.
Chrome has a popular pages displayed function, very similar to Opera with its speed dial and we like the ability to create application shortcuts to services directly on the desktop.
The incognito tab selection allows maximised privacy during a browser session, by tab, with the ability to see how much machine resource is being used by each tab simply by right-clicking the tab bar space at the top of the browser window.
Chrome has some new tweaks that will suit a lot of browser users, and if minimalist display and max performance are your thing then Chrome will do it.
You can download the Chrome beta from the Google search home page.
You can visit the Thirdsectorweb home page here.
Directed Edge - a new take on ‘pedia’ searches…
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services
Directions
Directed Edge isn’t a totally new resource any more, but we have been using it for research purposes and find the depth, clarity and subtlety of the results very good indeed.
A prototype service from Directed Edge a company involved in developing recommendation engines for social and e-commerce networks.
The ‘Wikipedia’ search tool is a demonstration of their technology. We think it stands up pretty well as a distinctive service too. Helping to draw users to their site and to show how it can work for your data.
(We don’t have shares in Directed Edge …honest)
See a Directed Edge search result for Microsoft here. We like the core information, but also the useful links to other articles, people and additional resources.
We think it can provide a great jumping off point for a web research or writing project.
You can visit the Thirdsectorweb home page here….
Computer Science and inclusion… Google respond
The Official Google blog recently published research findings that show how, in the United states, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of students from minority communities enrolling on Computer Science degrees.
Between 2000 and 2006 student uptake from these groups diminished by 50%.
The web is everywhere, whether self publishing, researching information for work, lifestyle or family purposes - for those with access to the technology web information is now an indespensible aspect of their lives.
The web as a means of information exchange can be fraught with difficulty, of course, but for communities at the edge of technical ownership, social or political influence having ‘technical representation’, if it can be expressed that way, must be an important element in developing community infrastructure.
Google, to their credit, utilised the energy of their educational outreach group, University Programs - Diversity and Talent Inclusion team to undertake workshops and networking activity with a cross-section of students in August, promising to track and maintain contact with their group.
Working to encourage the students from under-represented groups to maintain their career choice, develop confidence and awareness skills and to generally enhance the inclusion agenda in Computing Science.
Is there similar awareness of such a skills gap emerging in under-represented communities in the UK?
Google have existing scholarship schemes. These are designed to promote the take-up of computer science knowledge by students from diverse backgrounds.
You can see the original research findings here.
See the original Google post here.
You can visit the Thirdsectorweb home page here.
Using RSS feeds wisely - getting information by email
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services
We would certainly like all our readers, clients or passers-by, to subscribe to our Tech blog.
We have a subscription button just to the right at the top of this page that enables you to subscribe to our feed in a multitude of ways, including by mobile and email.
But if all this rss stuff is a bit complicated, O.K. for the anoraks at Thirdsectorweb, but you need a somewhat simpler solution - Emily Chang on her blog has highlighted a new service Feed My Inbox.
If you can see the rss icon, as above, then you can get the web address of the information you need and enter it into the simple Feed My Inbox page, enter your email address - the rest is automatic.
The Feed My Inbox team will send you daily updates by email of your latest blog or rss newsfeed.
Try it with our blog - go to www.feedmyinbox.com/
Enter our blog feed address - www.thirdsectorweb.co.uk/blog
…and then add your own email address. Once a day ‘tech’ updates on demand. Rss feeds, not many people know that…(Really Simple Syndication)
See the work of the Thirdsectorweb team at our home page www.thirdsectorweb.co.uk
Enjoy multiple desktops from Microsoft
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Our Thirdsector Systems
The Sysinternals team at Microsoft have this month lanched Desktops v.1.0 - a neat desktop utility that allows you to organise your software and services into up to four separate vrtual desktops.
The software, when loaded, appears to have a small footprint, sitting neatly in your task bar. This is an early version that is sure to be added to by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell.
You can find Desktops at Microsoft here - we use Sysinternal utilities on our office set-ups and value greatly the innovation and energy the team put into creating these no-cost system add-ons.
You can visit the Sysinternals home page for a whole range of Windows system utilities here.
You can visit the Thirdsectorweb home page here.
Opera goes back to school, kicks off global education program
As you know we are great fans of the Opera web browser.
Light in weight, feature rich and safe to use. The ’speed dial’ function of the browser is great for keeping a cluster of web sites which are in development only one click away.
Opera have recently launched, on their blog, a ‘world tour’ of the Opera Education programme. Visits to universities include the U.K. and are designed to promote web standards, innovation and debate about the web with young people and academics.
The Opera Education site has some useful links too. It has a growing collection of tutorials. They are all useful, offering insights into how to construct web sites, or rather what to look for in a proposition to build a useful web site. As you would expect, there is a wide range of information on how to deploy web standards in your work or site.
At Thirdsectorweb we wholly support the application of standards and clear thinking in design. We temper our passion for standards though, recognising that delivering a clients vision is the most important aspect of our work. We take accessibility and sheer usefulness of content as an important way marker in creating projects too.
We do produce sites that miss standards validation because, as in our work to deliver children’s books for example, we utilise a lot of remotely stored data, images and interactivity from sites such as Amazon, which whilst wholly professional are notoriously difficult to make standards compliant because of the nature of their content.
This debate of standards over function is not new, but to our clients function is king, accessibility its helpmate.
You can see the Opera Education site here at http://www.opera.com/education/
View Original Article from Opera here
You can visit the Thirdsectorweb home page here
How big is the web…continued
Who gets a 100 million unique visitors a day? This site from coverpop.com graphically shows the heavy hitters in web site traffic.
Visit the site and click the coloured bands to see which sites rank the highest. Are some of your favourite sites in the crowded 1 million unique site visits per day?
The raw data for the graph was created by Jim Bumgardner from Google Web Trends.
You can visit the coverpop.com big picture site here.
Our Thirdsectorweb home page is here.
City Stories - a literacy and reading project
We have recently launched a new web site for City Stories, which will continue to be a work inprogress for a while.
This partnership supported project is designed to introduce authors, illustrators and storytellers to children, particularly in inner city areas.
Having created an event the project works to make sure that every child who attends goes home with a free City Stories book bag.
Meeting the author, the creator of the book, is a great experience for children - the magic of which we hope is increased by being able to continue reading on the way home.
The project also hopes to work with communities to create children’s book groups in areas where there have previously been none.
This work with parents and carers is intended to create web sites for the groups, an activity which all of us hope will involve the children, parents and carers in the delivery of their ideas.
Using their new web presence to help sustain the group and an interest in literacy by using our technology as a lever for learning. Just as important, we think is the impact on confidence and levels of expectation that creativity stimulated by suppported access to technology can bring.
We’ll keep our readers posted as the programme of events rolls out and let everyone see what e-presence the groups are able to deliver for themselves.
We would be happy to work with any organisation that could either deliver an event within our core partnership or bring some innovative and fresh technology to the programme.
We are passionate about using our technology to break out of the bounds of perception…not least for ourselves as well as the children who have worked with City Stories.
The City Stories logo was created by our partnership graphic designer Radha Clelland.
See the City Stories web site here..
You can visit the Thirdsectorweb home page here…
The secret of the web?
Seth Godin has some heart-
felt truth to tell about how the web, or rather having and effective and durable presence on it, is to be achieved.
The drip, drip, drip of steadily growing effectiveness is the key, he argues. Here in our small partnership we know this too.
His comment that new frontier technology and first wave tech launches always want a quick return or immediate high status is telling. We know in our sector, which sits across education, social change, community development and projects for children and young people, that the same rule of ‘drip’ applies even for a small business with a social aim.
We recognise too the need to plan for more support for the upkeep of existing creations, whatever their nature, than was ever considered in our first planning meeting.
In our social and community sector ’sustainability’ is a whole organisation mission critical concept. An effective and durable web presence in any form is a key part of that philosophical approach to regenerating communities.
We started with simple static web sites that were informational in a plain sort of way. We now work hard to produce interactive and useful sites that employ ever growing compexity of ‘back-office’ function.
Our growth as a social business is predicated on this increasing complexity. The process for us, in our small corner of the web world, is just as described by Seth.
A gentle, ethical persistent attack of our goals…often seeming to slip away, but with our technical knowledge, capacity to deliver and turnover all increasing over time as we use that wonderful non-technical function - hindsight.
To paraphrase another marketing (the 4P’s) model …perspiration + persistence = presence ..on the web - for most of us anyway.
You can visit the homepage of Thirdsectorweb here…
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