Coming Up

I’m very excited about a few things coming up. First of all I bought a new USB cable for my Canon Powershot A95. I lost the cable yesterday and was bummed that my pictures of Mt. Equinox (near Manchester, VT) would have to stay on the camera. I’ll have them up soon I hope.
The other [...]

Make Your Own Buttons

If you’re like me and you don’t have a clue about code, there are short cuts out there. For example, Adam Kalsay’s Button Maker allows you to specify the content, lay out, and color of your buttons. I made a simple one for my web site that I will offer to users who want [...]

Before You Check Your E-Mail . . .

Wired News reports that technology has made many workers less efficient. In an article titled, “Work More, Do Less With Tech,” a series of surveys and reports point to a rushed and unfocused work force that is only able to nibble away at projects.
“Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, [...]

Arlington, VT Photography

Winter has finally arrived with the temperature dipping down into the single digits and about 6 inches of snow falling. Last week we took a walk along a Old Depot Road in the Arlington /Shaftsbury area. Though it was a beautiful, clear day, the landscape had a brown, barren look to it.

The Future of Blogs

CNET news has put together a list of articles relating to the future of blogs. Of particular interest is an interview of Mena Trott, one of the developers of Moveable Type, which powers the popular blog building program known as Typepad.
While I will provide some excerpts from from the interview further down, it’s also worth [...]

Do Unto Others . . .

A casual scan down the right columns of this web site will show that I have been quite busy adding links and signing up for affiliate programs. This was not an overnight decision. While I plan to continue adding helpful links, I have also given a lot of thought to the “monetizing” of this blog.
My [...]

Vermont Photography

Equinox Pond in Manchester, Vermont:

Technorati tags: equinox, manchester, vermont

Directories

One of the ways that I have begun promoting this blog is through online blog directories. While technorati is a search engine that finds blogs with specific material, directories typically categorize blogs according to topics (entertainment, arts, business, etc.).
While I have listed this blog in several sites, my current favorite is the Globe of Blogs. [...]

Volunteer Tip: On Vacation

Vermont is the kind of state that experiences a sudden influx of senior citizens in the warm, summer months, and then quickly clears out after the leaves hit the ground. Every non-profit organization in the Green Mountain state would do well to keep this trend in mind. The winter volunteer base of every organizaiton will [...]

English Teachers Band Together

I regularly attend a writing group on Tuesday evenings at a local bookstore. During that time we do creative writing exercises. I will be sharing the exercises as well as my own writing here for you to try out.
Writing Exercise: Write about a bracelet that is associated with a cause other than a disease. Allow [...]

Passive Road Rage

Blue, yellow, and white: these colors signify a foreign presence, an invasion, a threat. They are the badges of the disdainful and intolerable force who threaten peace, life, and order. Pollution streams in their wake, and all close to them are in danger. They travel at unsafe speeds, take unnessary risks, and spread discontent in [...]

Volunteers and Change

Change is perhaps one of the thorniest issues to navigate with volunteers. Since they are not employees, they typically do not have a say or an inside look at what’s happening in the organization. But since they do “work” for you, they are not as removed as the general public or those who receive your [...]

Electricity: Things Have Not Always Been So

 60 mph wind gusts brought down a host of trees yesterday in Southern Vermont. Route 7A was closed down at several locations from downed power lines. My car only puttered into our driveway after weaving through a maze of fire trucks. I knew that something was wrong when the garage door disobeyed my finger that [...]

Vermont Non-Profit Links

I have spent the past few days accumulating links on a social bookmarking/tagging service called del.icio.us. You can access my tags here. While you can scroll down the list of my most recent tags and browse them, there is a listing of categories on the right where you can seek out what is of interest [...]

Non-Profit Paradigm Shift?

Some very interestings thoughts from Marnie at ext337:
“Bascially, Google’s search has replaced any store front loyalty. Their only brand loyalty seemed to be to the things that they carried on their person—phones, cameras for example. They would by that at the cheapest place possible and use search to find that place. What does this mean [...]

Volunteer Tip: “We”

It is a very good sign when a volunteer uses the word “we.” It denotes ownership and identification. The volunteer is no longer slaving for some impersonal organization. It’s a personal matter, and he/she feels involved in the organization.
How to move from “you” to “we” can be a difficult transition. If volunteers do not feel [...]

Technorati

Speaking of technorati . . .

Signing up for technorati is a great way to promote your blog. Technorati is a blog search engine that allows people to find blogs related to certain key words. By signing up for an account you can register your blog and define it with a list of 25 key words. [...]

State of the Blogosphere

Blog search engine technorati has published a report on the state of the blogosphere. Read it here: link.
Here are some main points from the summary:
In Summary

Blogging and Mainstream Media continue to share attention in blogger’s and reader’s minds, but bloggers are climbing higher on the “big head” of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting [...]

Volunteer Tip: Delegation

While every good manager in a company should know a little about delegation, it is a crucial skill when working with volunteers. It is not common that volunteers are the ones driving a project. They typically are performing tasks that are part of the whole, but they are not the ones pushing the big picture [...]

Making a Buck … or Two

It’s unrealistic to expect your web site to make a lot of money. Nevertheless, it may be possible to have a web site that pays for itself.
Using Google ads and other advertising programs that use key words, you may be able to place ads on your organization’s web site that will provide links to sites [...]