Tag: nptech

Technobabble : A short list of "Home Words"

Pete Ashton (a fine brummie blogger) pointed me to a wonderful post from George Dvorsky on Must Know Terms for the 21st Century Intellectual.

The list has some gems, from the increasingly familiar Moore’s Law and Open Source through to Noosphere, the freakily possible Participatory Panopticon and the onrush of the Technological Singularity.

I consider most of this language to be downright rude. They are what I call “home words”: the ones you can get away with only in ‘private’. It’s the sort of language which convinces others that a normal human has become a techno-evangelist (oops), at best a geek, at worst a raving lunatic and certainly to be avoided. So in the world of charities and the internet which are out ‘home words’? What will alienate rather than stimulate?

Here are my five starters…

nptech (tags don’t belong in the real world)
vlogcast (unh?)
blogosphere (we want them to join it, not run screaming)
user generated content (worse ugc)
trackback

Please add yours. Trackback if you like, perhaps even tag them homewords.

The Smartest Online Organisations

Just a quick pointer to the 59 smartest online organisations. Great for inspiration for charities looking to make better use of a range of internet tools.

Celeste over at studio 501c tells us to encourage just this sort of list making in our own organisations.

If you’re interested in using the web more effectively, ask different staffers or volunteers to each review a few sites and to report back to the group on their findings. Make sure to examine the sites of those with missions that are close to yours as well as a few that aren’t. If you have a narrow goal, e.g., improving your online donation capacity, concentrate on what the different nonprofits are doing in that area.

A civil spat – the Youtube way.

I have masses of blogging to catch up on, but thought I would start with one of our local councillors here in Birmingham who is using youtube to tackle graffiti. In the process Martin Mullaney appears to have sparked an intergenerational brushfire.

On January 5th 2007 this Liberal Democrat Councillor for Moseley and Kings Heath popped up a video in which he talks about specific tags and taggers and tells us that many of these young people are from ‘good homes’ and good schools. 10 days later it has provoked more than 170 (often vociferous) comments, essentially a conversation between the taggers concerned and the councillor.

[youtube]hVf1AP6EBW4[/youtube]
As Pete Ashton points out the councillor is clearly determined to confront the taggers. On his own blog we also find out that this particular politician gave police evidence which he says led to the arrest of 3 taggers before Christmas.

Read more

Toast falls butter side up

nameontoast

Yournameontoast is a great reminder of some guiding principles for attracting attention online: It’s a simple idea and a good one; the people who had it (Belfast’s Atto) also had the confidence to see it through and make people smile – or at least the hundreds of millions who harbour an abiding affection for toast. On top of that Atto are giving the profits to charity – which is a key wallet opener for many. It’s not social networking per se, it’s marketing and it works.
Thanks to beth and nancy.