harmonyst.org

Drupal has been packaging itself for nonprofits for years, and John Stahl recently outlined a set of core plone products that could be similarly packaged to address common non-profit use-cases.

META (Modern Educational & Technology Associates) have developed an OpenCourseWare (OCW) module for Moodle 1.6.  The module provides instructors and designers with the ability to mark individual resources or activities within a Moodle course as “private” (only visible for registered students) or “shared” (allowing anonymous guest viewing). Additionally, the OCW MetaMod® for Moodle provides for tagging of resources and activities as either Copyrighted (C) or Creative Commons license/Copyright cleared (CC).

Dave Bollinger’s dbGroupToC is a fantastic improvement to the default ArcIMS html client interface. “It is capable of grouping any number of layers into any number of groups which may be collapsed and expanded. It supports visibility toggling at both the layer and group levels. It supports a single “swatch” per layer to indicate legend rendering, as well as an optional “legend” per layer which can include detailed legend rendering if desired. It distinguishes between layers which are completely visible, and layers which have been flagged visible but are not visible at the current zoom level. It is relatively browser-independent, requires only minimal changes to existing code to implement, and is clearly broken into code and data modules.”

You can download it, and instructions for installation, here.

Basically:

1. Copy the entire dbGroupToc directory to the website directory which ArcIMS uses (so dbGroupToC is a subdirectory).

2. Replace the default toc.htm file, located in the website’s directory with the toc.htm included in the dbGroupToC directory you
just copied.

3. Add the following bit of Javascript to “MapFrame.htm” in
the website’s directory before (or after) the other included JavaScript files

4. Clear your browser cache and reload the website to make sure the ToC has been updated.

The FAO has made the 2007 GAUL available from the geonetwork site (search for “GAUL”).

The GAUL is comprised of the best, most recent Level 0, 1 and 2 boundaries for every country in the world. There are also quite a few level 3 ,4, 5 etc. boundaries when available. Moving from VMAP or ESRI boundaries to the GAUL would represent a significant improvement the detail and accuracy of your global geodatabase.

You need to contact them for an account which grants download privileges, as the layers are not distributed to the general public.

These are my favorites: they are mostly free, targeted toward typical Microsoft users, and generally useful for maintaining your distributed office.

1. Hard drive indexer

Google Desktop http://desktop.google.com/

Windows doesn’t have a good hard drive search functionality. This software will maintain a full text index of everything on your hard drive, including email and browser history. It utilizes the standard google web interface, but searches locally. This is an extremely useful productivity tool as it allows you to quickly find old email, documents and webpages which you once viewed regardless of how organized your PC is.

2. MS Outlook synchronizer

SynchPst: http://www.synchpst.com/

There is no good free version of this sort of thing as far as I can tell. But there is a free trial of SynchPst. It will syncronize mail folders, contacts and events between two installations of MS Outlook.

Not sure what is available for Thunderbird users.

3. Directory synchronizer

Allway sync: http://allwaysync.com

Synchronizes various distributed directories over a local network connection. If your MS Outlook synchronizer doesn’t do this already, then this free software that will synchronize any folders you select. For example, it will synchronize your laptop and desktop anytime you connect them to the same network, copying the new files over and replacing older files with updated versions. Also useful with thumb drives. You can also pay to have Avvenu syncronize your directories via the internet (see below).

4. Easy remote access to hard drives (plus optional synchronization)

Avvenu http://www.avvenu.com/

Free, and very easy way to search within and access the contents of your hard drive from anywhere via the internet. Install the client on any computer to which you would like to have access, and you will then be able to browse the hard drive via a password-protected web interface as long as the computer is online. If you pay a monthly fee, you get server space from Avvenu where the content is also copied, enabling you to browse files even if the computer of interest is offline. This upgrade also enables the automatic synchronization of directories between two computers–directory contents are updated automatically over the web. (Avvenu depends on google desktop to index hard drive content for full text searches.)

5. Web-based word processing and collaborative document production

Google docs: http://docs.google.com

Google recently bought and launched Writely, the web-based document creation software. Now called google docs, you can create, collaborate on, and share documents and spreadsheets using the web-based word processor, then publish them as a file on your hard drive (e.g. a Word .doc), a publicly viewable web page, or blog a entry. It’s a very good tool as long as you and your collaborators have good internet connectivity. You don’t need to move files around from one computer to another. I think you need a google account.

6. Voice over internet

skype: http://skype.com

Skype is commonly used and clearly useful for voice over internet and chats.

7. Messaging and chat

trillian: http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/

Distributed offices often rely upon messaging/chat tools for quick communication and file transfer. There are many platforms, including MSN messenger, Yahoo messaging, Google Gtalk, Skype etc. Trillian speaks all the languages, functioning as a single client interface from which you can manage messaging contact lists and conversations. Yo have to pay for some of the extensions, e.g. the google extension (jabber protocol).

8. Tabbed browser with RSS aggregation capability

Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Internet Explorer 7: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx

Many people still use IE 6 or below–these are really primitive and browsers. Tabbed browsers let you to open up many different web pages under a series of tabs, allowing you to conduct concurrent, multi-branched internet searches, or to create a profiles of related websites or web-based tools. Furthermore, open tabs or tab profiles can be saved and opened again when you re-open the browser. Built in RSS aggregator allows you to quickly manage and scan syndicated content from you browser. Built-in bookmark or favorites organization are also very useful for remembering your way around the internets

Firefox was by far the most advanced browser in all these areas, but IE has caught up with the release of IE 7. The default way of handling RSS in IE 7 is probably better than Firefox. I would suggest IE 7 if you just want to install and use it right away. Firefox is ultimately more powerful, but it achieves this through extension and customization. Whatever you choose, spending about 30 minutes reading the online documentation and learning how to use your browser up to its potential is extremely well spent time.

9. To do list / Task management

TBD

-Adam Papendieck. 12.04.06. This is a work in progress..

Talk about a knowledge building institutions, RimuHosting is a fantastic example of how businesses can maintain and build upon tacit knowledge within their organization. Even better, they put this stuff online for everyone to use. Invaluable.

For instance, quick and easy setup of virtual hosts using webadmin.

Or distilled series of steps for setting up a robust production zope/plone installation.

I’ve been waiting for this report to be published in full for a long time, and now it’s available here on the FAO site. The report is a very detailed review and inventory of gobally consistent geospatial databases, and it is being used to inform core geodatabase construction by the UN Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG). Anyone aquiring data for a global geodatabase or doign GIS at international level will find this to be a critical and comprehensive view of what geodata is out there, where it comes from, what it is good for, and and how to get it.

The School of Public Health is using Moodle for its online courses, and they are turning out very well. However, Moodle is a course management system, and has not been developed as a student information system. There is apparently an add-on module for Moodle in development, called Online Education Portal, but it is not yet clear how robust an SIS this will turn out to be.

While Blackboard and WebCT have received a significant open source challenge from the likes of Moodle et al., open source student/school information systems are not nearly as well developed. Centre SIS was perhaps the most widely used and highly developed, and it seems that a fork called Focus/SIS is picking up where thay are leaving off. Both are PHP/postgresql systems, which is both an advantage in that postgres is a bit more sophisticated and powerful than mysql, but also a disdvantage in that the majority of other learning paltforms (like Moodle) use MySQL.
There are currently people trying to integrate Centre and Focus with Moodle, but the progress is not yet significant. The IMS enterprise standard is the key as usual, but the integration is not o.t.b. yet.

I am also looking at Uni Open, a student and university management system out of FernUniversitaet in Hagen, Germany. I have very high hopes for SchoolTool, a python/zope application which looks like it will be ready for production implementations next year. The demo looks really slick. SchoolTool would be an ideal solution for educational institutions also employing plone/zope for learning centers and content management.