HUD - Heads-Up-Display

Kerry Garrison at Trixbox conducted a webinar last Wednesday on HUD, the Heads-Up-Display... a computer interface to the TrixBox PBX. HUD gives you a display of all current calls, allows you to forward calls, and make calls to others on the PBX without having to dial your phone. The client version interfaces with OutLook, but the whole application is cross-platform; it will run on a Mac, PC, or Linux box. It includes an instant messaging system, which allows you to IM all the people who are on the system. Although they are currently using a proprietary IM protocol, an update will use the jabber protocol....which will allow you to include IM participants on AOL and other instant messaging systems.

One thing addressed in the webinar is a way to integrate your phone system with web applications, so you can use HUD with Salesforce, and SAP or other "customer relationship management" or CRM products. So, what might HUD be used for?

• Call centers; inbound and outbound
  
• Suicide and rape crisis lines
  
• Counseling centers
  
• Outbound solicitation (blood donors)
  
• Clinic phone systems
  

Even if you never would consider using Trixbox, the webinar is useful to show the kind of functionality that is available in similar systems. The possibilities are mind-boggling.

There is an interactive demo.

The webinar is located here. It requires registration.

What our future might be like?

The Oil Drum is considered one of the best chronicles of our current energy and global warming dilemma. They posted a scenario today about what life might be like in 2034.

Oil has gone up $92.00 today. A new high.

So, what does the price of oil have to do with non-profit technology? Well, we're going to have to reduce our energy consumption along with everyone else. Fewer desktop computers and more laptops. Fewer servers humming away 24x7. More efficient screens.

Walt Mossberg talks about Apple's New OS: Leopard

This will only be generally available for seven days, after that it disappears behind the paid firewall at the WSJ. Their tech columnist, Walter Mossberg has a nice written review and video of the changes that Apple has incorporated into their new OS..."Leopard". The OS is due to be released on Friday evening.

I'm wavering.

Over Lunch: New Models for Philanthropy

Lunch reading today.

Although this is mixed up considerably with Bill Clinton, an article in the October Atlantic describes a new paradigm for philanthropy, using "business models". Interesting. The full article is behind a subscription firewall...but there is an excerpt and interview with Clinton online. They describe how their organization changes the market for things like AIDS drugs and florescent bulbs.

From the article:

The modern era's predominant model for philanthropy, the grant-making foundation, is a century old. When the Rockefeller Foundation created the template, Woodrow Wilson was a new president and World War I was still a year away. Since then, the world has changed more than foundations have. In recent years, new generations have come to see the traditional approach as hidebound. 'Everyone's searching for new models and new ways of doing things,' Peter Frumkin, the author of the recent book Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy, told me. 'There is an urge for something other than the standard model of the grant-making foundation that dutifully delivers funds to nonprofit organizations that dutifully deliver the services.'

Two new web apps

Two more lightweight web applications to help you manage your life...

Stikkit

This is a "sticky note" application that allows you save to-do lists, create reminders, and lists of your "peeps".(which can then be exported to your eMail application). Looks promising. Doesn't quite pass the Five-Minute-Test....but maybe ten?

Sandy

From the same developers, Sandy is an eMail version of the stikkit application. This is currently in beta...I received a login within 24 hours of trying to sign up. Nice 50's graphics...where is her apron?

Home-Town Hero - Tim Nulty of Burlington Telecom

Tim Nulty has been the spear-head for our local municipal fiber optic network. He has announced his resignation. My hope is after a well-deserved rest he'll continue to help other local towns get their own fiber network. Excerpts from his letter:

The BT project has demonstrated the viability and desirability of publicly owned, universal, open-access fiber-to-the-premise telecommunications networks. Such networks are the “electronic public roads” of the future and proving their feasibility is a major contribution to our society. Having established this important principle, I would like to spend the remainder of my working life building other such networks elsewhere in Vermont where they are needed.

The communications scene in Vermont presents various points of interest:

• Verizon is trying to sell all of its dial-up land-lines (voice lines) in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont
  
  
• FairPoint communications wants to buy these...via what looks like a very strange financing deal, that among other things, appears to reduce Verizon's tax obligations by millions of dollars.
  
  
• Verizon is buying Rural Cellular, (Unicell) which was the major wireless competitor in our region. We don't have ATT here...and that means no IPhones (!) So, on the one hand, while Verizon is buying additional wireless capacity, they are attempting to unload their wirelines.
  

And no...Verizon isn't installing FOIS in Vermont, (fiber to the home). That's why Burlington Telecom are the heroes. They sell a triple-play tv, phone, internet connection for $99.00/month.

NCIIA Grants

Digging down into the pile on my desk, I ran across a packet from NCIIA the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. http://www.nciia.com/. Among other things, they have grants in the amount of $2000-$50,000 to colleges and universities to help improve existing curricular programs or build new progams in invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Next application deadlines are December 3rd, 2007, and May 9, 2008.

They know what they are about...in the first item of their instructions, they say..."Start Early! We require approval from deans and grants administrators."

Still, December would probably be doable.

Community Voice Mail

Hmm..if you are ever wondering what to do to with a Trixbox...

Community Voice Mail is a service that provides free phone numbers and voice mail boxes to clients without reliable access to a telephone.

Their phone may have been cut off; they may live in a group shelter; they may be fleeing domestic violence. For many poor, homeless, or otherwise needy people, the privacy afforded by a personal voice mailbox is an impossible luxury.

CVM is a hosted service which is run out of their national office in Seattle. They reserve blocks of phone numbers in their host cities. Local programs are hosted by an existing social-service agency or program, who must provide one FTE person as staff.

From the CVM web site:

The CVM Model

Each CVM site around the United States is hosted by one main social or health service agency ("Host Agency") which is responsible for funding and managing the CVM service for the whole city/community. The host agency gives out the voicemail boxes to other participating agencies who then give them to the end users/clients. The key to the program is the fact that clients receive a local telephone number at which to receive messages from potential employers, landlords and others --and case workers can utilize CVM to stay in contact with their clients, doubling the impact of the service.

Another fine article...hidden behind the "premium" firewall at the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Vermont Fall Foliage Now!

Photo by Al Utzig

Chron This Week

Lately the Chronicle of Philanthropy hasn't had a whole lot of new things about technology...but this week they discuss non-profits who are getting involved in projects to mitigate the problem of global warming. There is a very interesting article about Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute. Lovins has been pushing a "Hypercar" design (over 100 mpg) for years.

Perhaps the biggest effect that Amory Lovins and his colleagues at RMI have had on the auto industry has less to do with specific technology and more to do with showing potential opportunities that can be derived from thinking differently about how cars are designed and engineered.

Lovins has his detractors.

Unfortunately this article is behind a registration block. Hey Chron!, the New York Times dropped their paid system, why can't you? This week's issue is too good to be restricted to the break room of the alumni development office, lost among the sections of yesterday's WSJ.

Monthly Intro October 2007

Welcome to Tech for Non-Profits, the unplugged version of Microdesign Consulting. Part lab-notebook, part brain-extension, it is a repository for new and half-baked ideas that we run across as we provide software and database development, network support, and R&D for a growing list of clients in education, health care and non-profit organizations.

Postings have been a little thin lately as we have stepped up work with one non-profit client, chaired the board of the outreach committee of another, and moved into a business incubator, (which is also a non-profit). All this while attempting to stay on top of running a for-profit consultancy. (I actually was wondering about re-incorporating as a non-profit myself, mostly to be able to apply directly for grants that are restricted to non-profits...but that discussion is long in the future).

Occasional features here include Tech Friday, which may include code(!), our (mostly) annotated VoIP resource guide, Stuff That Works for hardware and software items that have passed the Five Minute Test, and Chron This Week, which is a synopsis of technology articles of interest in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Topics on grantwriting and fundraising appear as we seem to have one or more grant application in progress most of the time.

OneNote for the Mac

Users plead for OneNote for Mac.

Of course, many Mac users say something along the lines of "Except for OneNote, I'd be 100% happy with my Mac, or I'd convert to my Mac and dump those clunky Windows machines."

So is a port to the Mac likely? I don't think so, for exactly that reason. OneNote is one of the few "must have" Windows programs that keep people from moving to the Mac (or Linux even). Too bad.