Bruce Whealton: On Being a Poet and Other Existential Ideas

via labnol.org

This is what I have been writing about lately… web 3.0, the semantic web.

via slideshare.net

Great presentation on the evolution of the web and what it means for us.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia’s content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (March 2010)

Virtual volunteering is a term describing a volunteer who completes tasks, in whole or in part, offsite from the organization being assisted, using the Internet and a home, school, telecenter or work computer or other Internet-connected device. Virtual volunteering is also known as online volunteering, cyber service, telementoring, and teletutoring, and various other names. Virtual volunteering is similar to telecommuting, except that, instead of online employees who are paid, these are online volunteers who are not paid, and they are working to benefit a nonprofit organization, school, government program or other not-for-profit entity, as opposed to a for-profit business.

Contents [hide] 1 In practice 2 Early history of the practice 3 Current state of the practice 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] In practice

People engaged in virtual volunteering undertake a variety of activities from locations remote to the organization or people they are assisting, via a computer or other Internet-connected device, such as:

• translating documents
• researching subjects
• creating web pages
• editing or writing proposals, press releases, newsletter articles, etc.
• developing material for a curriculum
• designing a database
• designing graphics
• providing legal, business, medical, agricultural or any other expertise
• counseling people
• tutoring or mentoring students
• moderating online discussion groups
• writing songs
• creating a podcast
• editing a video
• monitoring the news
• answering questions
• tagging photos and files
• managing other online volunteers^[1][2][3]

[edit] Early history of the practice

The practice of virtual volunteering to benefit nonprofit initiatives dates back to at least the early 1970s, when Project Gutenberg began involving online volunteers to provide electronic versions of works in the public domain.^[4]

In 1995, a new nonprofit organization called Impact Online (now called VolunteerMatch), based in Palo Alto, California, began promoting the idea of “virtual volunteers”.^[5] In 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the USA. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project, and the web site was launched in early 1997.^[6] After one year of operations, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2002, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved within the university to the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

The first two years of the Virtual Volunteer Project were spent reviewing and adapting telecommuting manuals^[7] and existing volunteer management guidelines with regarding to virtual volunteering, as well as identifying organizations that were involving online volunteers. By April 1999, almost 100 organizations had been identified by the Virtual Volunteering Project as involving online volunteers and were listed on the web site.^[8]

Due to the growing numbers of nonprofit organizations, schools, government programs and other not-for-profit entities involving online volunteers, the Virtual Volunteering Project stopped listing every such organization involving online volunteers on its web site in 2000, and focused its efforts on promoting the practice, profiling organizations with large or unique online volunteering programs, and creating guidelines for the involvement of online volunteers.

Until January 2001, the Virtual Volunteering Project listed all telementoring and teletutoring programs in the USA (programs where online volunteers mentor or tutor others, through a nonprofit organization or school). At that time, 40 were identified.^[9]

[edit] Current state of the practice

Virtual volunteering has been adopted by at least a few thousand nonprofit thousand organizations and initiatives.^[10] There is no organization currently tracking best practices in online volunteering in the USA or worldwide, how many people are engaged in online volunteering, or how many organizations are involving online volunteers, and studies regarding volunteering, such as reports on volunteering trends in the USA, rarely include information about online volunteering (for instance, a search of the term virtual volunteering on the Corporation for National Service‘s “Volunteering in America” yields no results.^[11])

The United Nations runs an online volunteering service, formerly a part of NetAid, that allows organizations working in or for the developing world to recruit online volunteers, and does have statistics available regarding numbers of online volunteers and organizations involving such through its service. Several other matching services, such as VolunteerMatch and Idealist, also offer virtual volunteering positions with nonprofit organizations in addition to traditional, onsite volunteering opportunities. VolunteerMatch currently reports that around 5 percent of its active volunteer listings are virtual in nature. As of June 2010, its directory included more than 2,770 such listings including roles in interactive marketing, fundraising, accounting, social media, and business mentoring. The percentage of virtual listings has dropped since 2006, when it peaked at close to 8 percent of overall volunteer opportunities in the VolunteerMatch system.

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia endeavors are examples of online volunteering, in the form of crowdsourcing; the majority of Wikipedia contributing volunteers aren’t required to undergo any screening or training by the nonprofit for their role as researchers, writers or editors, and do not have to make a specific time commitment to the organization in order to contribute service.

Micro-volunteering is also an example of virtual volunteering and crowd-sourcing, where volunteers undertake assignments via their PDAs or smartphones. These volunteers aren’t required to undergo any screening or training by the nonprofit for such tasks, and do not have to make any other commitment once a micro-task is completed.^[12] Micro-volunteering was invented by a San Francisco-based social enterprise called The Extraordinaries in 2008.^[13][14][15]

[edit] See also

• Volunteer
• Telecommuting
• Online tutoring
• Online mentoring
• Virtual management

[edit] References

1. ^ “What are examples of virtual volunteering?”. AIDSvolunteers.ca. http://www.aidsvolunteers.ca/vvfacts/general.html#examples. Retrieved 5 October 2009. 
2. ^ “examples of virtual volunteering”. University of Texas at Austin. http://www.serviceleader.org/old/vv/examples.html. Retrieved 5 October 2009. 
3. ^ “Make a Difference From Home: Be a Virtual Volunteer”. theextraordinaries.org. http://www.theextraordinaries.org/2008/11/make-a-difference-from-home-be-a-virtual-volunteer.html. Retrieved 5 October 2009. 
4. ^ Cravens, Jayne (Spring 2007). “Online Volunteering Enters Middle Age – And Changes Management Paradigms”. Nonprofit Quarterly (Nonprofit Quarterly). 
5. ^ Green, Marc (Fall, 1995). “Fundraising in Cyberspace: Direct E-Mail Campaigns, Virtual Volunteers, Annual Fund Drives Online. Does the Information Superhighway lead to new horizons or a dead end?”. The Grantsmanship Center Magazine (The Grantsmanship Center). 
6. ^ Cravens, Jayne (February 2001). “who funds the virtual volunteering project?“. The Virtual Volunteering Project (University of Texas at Austin). 
7. ^ Cravens, Jayne (April 2001). “related resources“. The Virtual Volunteering Project (University of Texas at Austin). 
8. ^ Cravens, Jayne (February 2001). “Virtual Volunteering Project“. The Virtual Volunteering Project (University of Texas at Austin). 
9. ^ Cravens, Jayne (February 2001). “[http://www.serviceleader.org/old/vv/orgs/mentor.html agencies and initiatives that involve online volunteers as mentors or tutors]“. The Virtual Volunteering Project (University of Texas at Austin). 
10. ^ Cravens, Jayne (Spring 2007). “Online Volunteering Enters Middle Age – And Changes Management Paradigms”. Nonprofit Quarterly (Nonprofit Quarterly). 
11. ^ volunteeringinamerica.gov. Retrieved 09/24/2009.
12. ^ http://nonprofit.about.com/od/volunteers/a/microvol.htm
13. ^ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106118736
14. ^ http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Responsible-Tech/2009/0804/smart-phone-app-lets-you-do-good-deeds-in-your-spare-time
15. ^ http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/assignment_7&id=7162300

[edit] External links

• The Virtual Volunteering Project
• The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook
• Virtual Volunteer opportunities at VolunteerMatch.org

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_volunteering“

Categories: Volunteerism | Community Service | Civil society | Free labor | Philanthropy | Giving

Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles with possible conflicts of interest from March 2010

via en.wikipedia.org

This is a great idea for non-profits. I wonder how one finds volunteers? This is something that I want to discover.
Bruce Whealton
http://brucewhealton.us

via video.tomshardware.co.uk

Interesting place to find a video that was for Word Salad’s aniversary event. I am the publisher and co-editor of Word Salad Poetry Magazine and I do the Word Salad Online: http://WordSaladPoetryMagazine.com
http://facebook.com/WordSaladPoetry

Unlock Meaning

Powerset finds articles related to the meaning of your query. And sometimes even direct answers.

try these:

• who portrayed Batman
• what causes diabetes
• movies starring Tom Hanks
• paintings by Salvador Dali
• actors in Forrest Gump
• when did Caesar cross the Rubicon
• what was banned by the FDA
• who plays for the Oakland Raiders
• what is the population of Paris
• what did Benjamin Franklin invent
• what are the ingredients in beer
• who is a member of Apple’s board
• who did Google acquire
• what did Stephen King write
• when did earthquakes hit Tokyo
• what do engineers design
• who manufactures televisions
• what eats insects
• who did Bill Clinton nominate
• how many people were evacuated from New Orleans during hurricane Katrina
• who led the invasion of Baghdad
• how many dimensions does string theory postulate
• what is the surface of Mars composed of
• what did Caravaggio paint
• impressionist painters
• films starring Edward Norton
• who designed the Transamerica pyramid
• what did Frederick Law Olmsted design
• what did Columbus discover
• what awards did No Country for Old Men win
• what is the capital of New York
• when did Alaska become a state
• people who died from lung cancer
• how old is Brad Pitt
• who discovered the neutrino
• what did Rita Moreno win
• what treats depression
• who lost Super Bowl XLI
• who directs films
• who designs houses
• who played a villain
• who did Robert De Niro play
• who won the World Series in 2004
• what did Michael Jordan win
• who is Superman’s wife
• when was Harvard University founded
• science fiction books
• who was John F. Kennedy’s vice president

more

via powerset.com

A more intelligent way to search. This tool uses natural language processing to allow you to more accurately and flexibly search wikipedia. It seems that they took wikipedia as an example website application they could use to test their ideas. It is fun to use and very handy.

RDF is a W3C standard for modeling and sharing distributed knowledge based on a decentralized open-world assumption. Any knowledge about anything can be decomposed into triples (3-tuples) consisting of subject, predicate, and object; essentially, RDF is the lowest common denominator for exchanging data between systems.

This module provides comprehensive RDF functionality and interoperability for the Drupal 6.x platform. For more information, read the introductory posting or watch the demo video. Be sure to subscribe to the Semantic Web group on groups.drupal.org to keep up with the latest happenings.

The module requires PHP 5.2 or newer, makes use of the ARC2 library if available, and will integrate with the Views, FeedAPI, Feed Element Mapper, Location, and Services modules if they are installed. For adding SPARQL query support, see the related SPARQL project.

Projects that rely on this module as a dependency include Calais, File Framework, FeedAPI RDF and the Relations and DAV APIs and their spin-offs such as File Relations Server.

This project is being developed by Arto Bendiken, Miglius Alaburda, Ben Lavender, Jeff Miccolis, Frank Febbraro and Stéphane Corlosquet. Development has been in part sponsored by OpenBand and MakaluMedia.

Downloads

Recommended releases

Version	Downloads	Date	Links
6.x-1.0-alpha7	Download (63.71 KB)	2009-Mar-25	Notes

Development releases

Version	Downloads	Date	Links
6.x-1.x-dev	Download (66.22 KB)	2010-Jul-11	Notes

• View all releases

Resources

• Home page
• Read documentation
• Try out a demonstration
• Look at screenshots
• View usage statistics
• View project translations

Development

• View pending patches
• Browse the CVS repository
• View CVS messages
• Report a security issue

via drupal.org

This is the future of the web. Companies, organizations and individuals who take advantage of these technologies will be more competitive and be able to take advantage of the benefits. RDF is part of the semantic web. Semantics is about meaning. I’ve been writing about how most content on the web is not setup in a way that has meaning that can be understood by web agents, by machines, computer, the software that makes up the web. So, web services, in most cases, until they implement these changes, have no idea what the meaning is contained in the content, the data on the web.

As I mentioned in another post, we can take google and how it does a search. We might ask a question of google but it is just looking for the keywords in the question mean. With the semantic web which is being slowly implemented by Google and moreso by Yahoo, the search engine will understand the phrases we use – the language we use, the meaning in our questions. So, if you have a search that includes the word apple, it will look at the context and know whether you are talking about a fruit or the software company. This usually isn’t a problem because other words (keywords) in our search usually help to increase the likelihood that we will find something related to what we are searching. We won’t get a site that has information about the fruit if we search for apple software. Those two words help target the results.

This did become a problem problem recently for me when I was looking for a place called Digsby. I got page after page about the social chat application (it does more than chat/IM). I tried to tell my search engine, not to give me results that have anything to do with software, or computers… it did not work. The semantic web would help with this.