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• Discover the Ajax Toolkit Framework for Eclipse
  The Ajax Toolkit Framework (ATF) is a core piece of the new Open Ajax initiative, which aims to increase accessibility to the powerful Web programming technique through the Eclipse Foundation.
  (tags: ajax development eclipse dojo javascript)

• Guardian Unlimited | Richard Gott: Latin America is preparing to settle accounts with its white settler elite
  The political movements and protests sweeping the continent - from Bolivia to Venezuela - are as much about race as class
  (tags: economics politics latinamerica)

• Spoke POV - Persistence of Vision Toy with Kit
  Spoke POV is an easy-to-make electronic kit toy that turns your bicycle wheel into a customized display! The project includes a free schematic design, open software for uploading and editing stored bitmap images, and a high-quality kit with all the parts
  (tags: bike electronics)
• FeedCycle : Publish serialised RSS web feeds
  a service for delivering content as rss feeds not as published, but on a set schedule
  (tags: web2.0 RSS marketing)
• Neuros OSD
  linux-based open source media center
  (tags: linux dvr opensource)
• Demo of Salesforce.com | PodTech.net: Technology, Business, Media, and News Podcasts
  10 minute video demo by Adam Gross, vice president of developer marketing at Salesforce.com, of the next release of Salesforce
  (tags: salesforce.com demo video)

This year my family will be giving Kiva gift certificates to our friends and loved ones. Kiva partners with microlending organizations all over the world that give small loans to individuals. Those loans are generally made to entrepreneurs without access to capital. It’s a lending model invented and made famous by recent Nobel-laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Kiva is a web-based fundraising site that ties in to existing microlending around the globe. They list the projects available for funding, and you can chip in your money to help make the loan. You make loans effortlessly via PayPal. When the full loan amount is committed (by one or multiple donors), Kiva makes the loan happen through it’s partners.

Through the life of the loan, you’re updated as payments are made, or when there’s other interesting news about one of your loan recipients. Updates are via email and RSS.

When your loan is repaid in full, your loan amount is returned to you for loaning to another project of your choice. So once money gets into Kiva’s microlending cycle, it doesn’t leave. A $100 gift certificate for a friend is a gift this year, but also a gift each time the loan is repaid as your friend gets to pick another project to fund.

In August we made a small contribution to Dorah Mwihaki, a farmer who wanted to improve her granary to help her business which pays for her kids’ education. So far she’s paid back $10 on the original $225 loan.

This year we’re running most of our giving through Kiva–what better way to positively affect the world than share some of the abundance we as Americans take for granted? Kiva makes it so easy to find entrepreneurs to give to. Try it, and spread the wealth!

technorati tags: kiva, microlending

Cogmap is a weird new service, but is worth examining. It’s a public repository of org charts that are collaboratively created and maintained, much like a wiki. Google’s org chart is up there, and if you take a look at it you’ll see what you expect, a hierarchical set of boxes. It was created by cogmap in their initial load and has been modified by two other users since then. The staff have a first and last name, as well as a title. Some have phone numbers and email addresses. It’s a pretty interface, and there are 3 different ways to view the data, which is helpful.

But why should we care about collaboratively maintained org charts? People who are working for change in the world do so by engaging other people in bringing about that change. Sometimes they bring a lot of ordinary people together in a mass action. Other times they engage with a smaller set of people who are in charge of making decisions that affect large numbers of people. These decisions makers could be in government, or at the tops of large corporations. If you get those people on board, the can write laws or making business decisions that have huge impact. Leveraging those key decision makers (sometimes called the “inside game”) can often be the best way to use scarce resources to bring about change.

When I am working with my customers’ data, I have seen some intersting things. One thing I’ve noticed is that a few people show up in many or all of the databases. These folks are the key decision makers. They are the ones who if brought on board can have a lot of influence. But everyone has to maintain the basic information about these people by themselves. Key funders, politicians, business leaders, are all kept in these private rolodexes.

What Cogmap does is move this data into a collaborative space. The basic info for the top 25 people at Microsoft is now publicly kept and maintained. We can all use it, and keep it accurate. Heck, maybe even the companies listed will maintain their own folks.

It would then be technically possible to connect company and people records in your database to their public homologues in Cogmap. So that when you first start to work with Amzon.com or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, you could import the company and people into your database. And changes that were made on Cogmap could show up in your database where could choose to accept or reject those changes.

It’s a slightly different take on the problem than the Media Volunteer Center. They’ve got a database of media outlets and reporters and have an interface for volunteers to clean the data. If you make changes they have to go through a review process before they are visible. And I don’t believe there is an interface for creating new data.

So Cogmap is an interesting peek at the future of collaborative CRM database services. I’d like to know if they have any API plans. Things could get interesting if they go this route–org charts are great, but using Cogmap as a source for collaboratively maintained key decision maker data is a bit more interesting.

technorati tags: salesforce.com, cogmap, collaboration

• FlickrExport
  Great add on for iphoto that makes backing up and sharing in flickr painless.
  (tags: flickr osx software iphoto)
• Technology Review: Part I: Philanthropy’s New Prototype
  The cofounder of MIT’s Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, wants to make $100 laptops available to poor children throughout the world. The next few months will be critical in determining whether the One Laptop per Child project succeeds.
  (tags: olpc)

• David Sirota on Public Financing
  thoughts on public financing of elections
  (tags: politics election)
• AJAX tutorials
  A comprehensive list (over 130) of tutorials on AJAX, JavaScript and other web development topics.
  (tags: ajax code howto javascript)

• stamen design | big ideas worth pursuing
  The guys behind the awesome digg labs tools. I wish I could hire them for salesforce widgets and social network visualization…
  (tags: flash design visualization data)

Jon put on a great conference, and one of the high points was the keynote delivered by Eben Moglen: Software and Community in the Early 21st Century. He’s a phenomenal speaker, with an amazing grasp of history, and the place of open source software in the greater context of human struggle. According to Eben, we’re moving past an age of steel, an age of production and scarcity, to an age of sharing and collaboration, an age of zero marginal costs. In this new world, there is no justification for the proprietary model of software–it’s not as good (see IE7), it’s economically more expensive, and it’s is less moral than the open source model. Open source software and communities have the potential to benefit the world, particularly the poor.

Find the time to watch it. He’s amazing. Thanks Eben for coming to the Plone conference and sharing your thoughts!

technorati tags: opensource, socialchange

I love CRMFusion (I’ve written about them before) They’ve built some great tools and make them available to nonprofits using Salesforce for free or a minimal cost. They’re latest tool is PeopleImport, and Judi has a nice write up of how it’s making her life easier. If you haven’t looked into DemandTools and PeopleImport, you should.

technorati tags: salesforce.com, nptech