I saw a note from long-time friend Amanda Hickman this week announcing the release of the “Base Edition of NGO-in-a-box”. It reminded me of all the work that’s been underway (for some years now) at Tactical Tech to get the NGO-in-a-Box project up-and-running. NGO-in-a-box is probably one of the most impressively organized projects in the social-technology sector … from the NGO-in-a-Box site:

NGO-in-a-box offers a set of peer reviewed and selected Free and Open Source software (F/OSS), tailored to the needs of NGO’s. It provides them not only with software, but also with implementation scenarios and relevant materials to support this. read more »

After a couple of weeks of fighting off pneumonia — antibiotics, inhaler, and all — I’m finally feeling like I’m getting back on my feet. Though I never feel very productive when I’m sick — I did have time to jot down a few Web sites of recent note:

Total accident that I stumbled on Fog Creek Copilot: Wow! What a great little subscription-based application for remote desktop assistance. Works on Windows or Macintosh computers. It looks simple to set-up, and the price is right.

I think that OpenCongress caught everyone’s attention recently. Yet another great “Politics 2.0” project from the Sunlight Foundation. OpenCongress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill.

stikkit just stuck for me during a little Web 2.0 application search. This is a crazy little Web-baed productivity application that David Wheeler — the lead Bricolage developer — is involved in.

Of course Brad — my fun-loving BSD friend — pointed me to the BSD Network CLI. It’s one of the most interesting “themes” for Wordpress that I’ve come across. The world of Web 2.0 never ceases to amaze me. Basically, this is a command-line interface for reading a blog via a Web browser. Type “help” to get a list of available commands.

I can’t remember where I first saw One Percent for the Planet — but it seems to be catching on. One Percent for the Planet is an alliance of companies that recognize the true cost of doing business and donate 1% of their sales to environmental organizations worldwide.

Adam tipped me off to CheatNeutral — a good satirical campaign about carbon offsetting. And Colan Schwartz tipped me to RetailMeNot in SILC.

So, there you go: being sick is totally boring. ;-)

Collaboratively authored by Dmytri Kleiner and Phillip Smith

Last updated December 2004

Like many curious onlookers, you're probably wondering, Are free and open-source applications really able to meet our needs? or, Are open-source systems compatible with the software that our clients, partners and colleagues are using? The honest answer is yes. In the past two years, the pace of open-source desktop development has increased dramatically, the usability of Linux has been improved(http://www.relevantive.de/Linux-Usabilitystudy_e.html), the installed base of users has increased to an estimated 18 million (http://counter.li.org/estimates.php) and many large software companiesfrom IBM to Novell to Sun—have made significant commitments to develop on, integrate with and support open-source operating systems and software. Additionally, several "e-Riders" (organizations and individuals that support not-for-profit groups with technology) have started the process of moving their clients in the direction of free software (http://www.lincproject.org/), and many brands you experience every day, like the Government of Canada, CNN, Google and Yahoo, use open-source software to power their Web sites.  read more »