I regularly work remotely at coffeeshops with my laptops and get a lot of questions about my portable ergonomic setup. Here's a list of the components I use:
1. Goldtouch Go! Travel Notebook Stand - I've found this works better and stands slightly taller than this still excellent Logitech Notebook Riser Stand. The Goldtouch also packs down smaller.
2. Goldtouch Go! Travel Keyboard Aluminum
3. Apple Magic Mouse
This post is part of a series we're putting together on online community building recipes for the NewsCloud Facebook application. Please share your feedback and ideas with us.
While this is a pretty straightforward question, you can begin to see the possibilities of this kind of feature and how readers might use it.
We've also got a bunch of widgets built specifically for regular placement on your website. And, we're glad to improve or extend upon those listed.
We use a variety of tools to execute our grant and we'll summarize these for you in three categories: Software Development, Communication and Outreach, Financials and Legal Resources.
Software Development Tools
We host all our code at Github which offers free accounts for open source projects. Github is an excellent source code management system which allows our team to work together remotely and allows other developers to fork our code and add new features to be re-integrated with our main tree. It also allows users to download any release or even unstable (latest) code from our project at any time. Github facilitates the transparency and open source nature of our grant software development efforts.
Lighthouse is a bug/ticket management service which we use to track defects and feature requests and organize our work across milestones. It's a critical resource for our project management work.
Lighthouse is also integrated with TenderApp which we use for NewsCloud's online support and feedback. So, if a use reports a problem, we can easily create a new defect ticket in Lighthouse or attach it to an existing one. TenderApp has become a critical service for interfacing with our grant partners. It also offers free accounts for open source projects and has great t-shirts!
Since we're using Ruby on Rails, we get live defect reports via HopToadApp and performance statistics via NewRelic.
As a Mac user, I am (lowly) part of the cult of Textmate, a great editor for software developers on OS X. I've also recently begun using Balsamiq, an interesting AIR-based mock-up tool e.g. I created this mock up of our future topics page with Balsamiq.
A lot of our partners use Google Analytics for tracking usage statistics on their Facebook applications. We've also begun experimenting with TypeKit for custom font styling within our applications.
We get a ton of bug reports about the incompatibilities caused by the pathetic non-standard versions of Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (nightmare!) so we fire up Parallels Desktop to reproduce these. We're thankful Facebook has begun encouraging IE 7 users to upgrade.
When we're co-working, we use a Sprint Overdrive modem for Internet access. It works well in some locations, not well in others. It is not as reliable a device as my old Verizon USB modem, but it provides router capability for multiple users. I recommend waiting for version 2.0.
Communication & Research Tools
We choose to issue biweekly status updates via email to our foundation contacts, our team and other stakeholders. Here is an example status report from February 27, 2009. These reports are not required by the foundation but help us organize our work, get help with risk areas and open issues, highlight our achievements and keep everyone on the team plugged in.
For email, we're big gmail users. No surprise there.
We use TypePad to publish this blog and our open source blog. It's powerful, affordable and regularly improving. Wordpress is also great.
Recently, we've begun using Google Wave and are quite impressed with it. Wave has improved a lot over time. It offers a way for our team to collaborate together, while not losing important information from our conversations and IM chats. It also helps minimize the need for IM or phone interruptions.
We also use Google Docs to share documents and spreadsheets and Google Groups to communicate with our grant partners.
We use Adium with Google Talk to keep in touch with team members throughout the day.
Hootsuite is our favorite Twitter client which we use for outreach about our grant activities on Twitter. We also like Tweetdeck but find it less reliable, especially on mobile devices.
Financial Management Tools
We manage our finances with Quickbooks. Quickbooks make tracking expenditures and reporting to our fiscal sponsor fast and easy. We use Microsoft Excel for sharing budget spreadsheets back and forth. We use online bill pay with our bank to send checks to contractors.
Quickbooks can take a bit of time to set up but once we configure the Chart of Accounts to match our grant budget items, it's fairly straightforward to track payments and track our spending to plan.
We turned off the sketchy (hard to cancel) eFax service last year (which we used to use to capture PDFs via local fax) and now scan any documents to PDF over WiFi with our Epson Artisan Scanner.
We actually run an extra gmail account for our grant which we CC: every contract, receipt and invoice sent to our fiscal sponsor. This helps us create an online archive of all the materials shared back and forth with them.
Legal Resources
The Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard has been an extremely helpful resource to our team.
Please let us know if you have additions, feedback or comments!
When KPCC, an NPR affiliate in Southern California, decided to launch a Facebook application, they wanted to focus distinctly on user generated content. Hence, The Freeway was born.
KPCC recruited a number of community volunteers to kick off the community blogging on topics as varied as gardening, poetry and cycling.
The best bloggers are essentially co-hosts of the site. Their activity keeps the site fresh, draws in readers from around the Web and provides content for on-air and KPCC website cross promotion.
Approved co-hosts are now indicated on the site with a small star icon beside their Facebook profile photo.
The Charlotte Observer's Insight Facebook application works similarly. This past week, an Insight blog post on Atheism led to major story which The Observer ran on their front page (see below). Regular cross promotion of blog posts from your Facebook community in print or on air is a great way to incent participation.
Recruiting a community of bloggers for your site may require a great deal of effort and creative outreach. But, if successful, as these trials are showing, it can extend your brand's reach in a truly unique way.
This post is part of a series we're putting together on online community building recipes for the NewsCloud Facebook application. Please share your feedback and ideas with us.
Building a directory is a time consuming editorial task. Not only may it take years, your staff may not know about all the best places in your town. Our Facebook application allows you to use crowdsourcing to let your audience suggest and comment on each other's suggested places and links.
Seattle is known for coffee. So, at The Needle, we've begun a crowdsourced directory list of great coffeehouses! With our directory feature, you can create any number of categories e.g. coffee, ice cream, pizza, beer, government links, local blogs, etc. You can link to the Directory home page or a specific category page in the directory or any specific entry.
Whenever you start a list, it's good practice to seed your list with a number of entries and always use photos. I've even added video to several listings, in this case a tour by a local foodie blogger which went by a nearby farmer's market and into Caffe Fiore. I just googled for Caffe Fiore under videos and found that one - it turned out to be my friend Jess Thompson.
Recently, The Charlotte Observer published a link to their Ice Cream Store directory page on the front page of its paper.
After creating the list, you can promote it in other places you regularly publish e.g. in print or on air. Include a call to action: Encourage readers to submit, vote (like) for, comment and share their favorites. Be sure to post a link to your list on your Facebook page, to your Twitter feed and on your website.
If you already have staff writing a review of a specific place, post their review as a story or blog entry on your application and then create a listing to the place on your Facebook application and link to it from there. Put a call to action at the end of the story to suggest other places or comment on the review.
In the future, we'll make it possible for local businesses to sponsor your list. We're also planning to make it possible to add links to web pages related to specific listings e.g. additional reviews of a coffeehouse.
The Event Calendar in the NewsCloud Facebook application is quite powerful. Not only does it provide a way for you to publish events related to your community or topic, it allows for your audience to post events or add events from Facebook. We can also import events from Calendar provider Zvents.
Promoting and highlighting specific event listings can be a great way to drive interest and awareness of your Facebook application.
For example, with Internet guru Clay Shirky visiting Seattle this week, I created an event page at The Needle to promote his appearance: Clay Shirky at Town Hall Seattle. To add appeal to the listing, I included a photo of Shirky and a video of one of his talks from YouTube.
Then, I shared this event to my Facebook wall using the Share link. And, I tweeted it using the Tweet link (note, normally it's best to tweet to your site's account).
As a moderator on The Needle, I Featured the event and configured the home page to include the Featured Event widget at the top of the front page sidebar.
There are some additional features we'll be adding to make it easier to add events: making it easier to map and link locations, adding an external URL when you add events individually, allowing you to associate other links with the item as well as affiliate products such as books, DVDs and CDs. In the future, we may enable you to sell event tickets directly through the application.
This post is part of a series we're putting together on online community building recipes for the NewsCloud Facebook application. Please share your feedback and ideas with us.
One way to stimulate participation in your Facebook application community is by providing a variety of incentives. The incentives don't have to be monetary - often recognition or the opportunity to have an idea or article amplified within the community is sufficient.
Recently, William Warren, a member of the Insight Facebook application from the Charlotte Observer posted a story about his atheist billboard advertisement which appeared on the Billy Graham Highway in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Observer decided to send a reporter out to interview him and ran the story on the front page of its paper and its website: Atheists Buy Sign on Billy Graham Highway.
"When the words 'under God' were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance between 'one nation' and 'indivisible,' they made a lie out of both those ideals," Joseph McDaniel Stewart, vice president of FreeThoughtAction and one of the N.C. coalition founders, said in an e-mail. "You can't have an indivisible nation if you draw a line between the godly and godless. We all belong here."
This is a great example of using cross promotion to incentivize participation. Insight is encouraging its members to post story ideas as well as to write their own stories using the community blogging feature. If you have a great idea or a great story, you might see it shared with the entire Charlotte Observer community.
The story ended up generating a large number of page views for The Observer. More extensive online coverage ensued after someone defaced the billboard.
Similarly, KPCC radio, an NPR affiliate in Southern California, plans to mention articles that its co-hosts write on its Facebook application, The Freeway, on air on the radio and on the station website.
Stories and blog posts aren't the only Facebook application features to cross promote. Other user generated content that might make sense to promote could be a great user comment or idea or an interesting event or a great question. Think outside of the box.
Creating creative new exposure for your application members creates a positive feedback cycle that will continually stimulate participation and energize your Facebook community.
You can read more about this example at the Knight Foundation blog: Custom Facebook News App Engages Readers and Drives Story to Front Page of Local Paper
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