HOWTO

Last year I wrote about how an organization could aggregate shared bookmarks from multiple people and present them on their website.  In the recent redeisgn of CivicActions.com we implemented this functionality.  You can see the shared bookmarks feed in the center column at the bottom of the home page, or you can look at a more complete list.

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If you are a developer, blogger or a client who manages or participated on a technical project, screenshot-taking tools are a very useful way conveying your thoughts and ideas to others on your team. Screenshots save you from lengthy explanation emails and keep your team on same page while discussing an idea. This blog post is about different screen capturing tools available out there and which to use and why.

1. Skitch(mac only):

Skitch is more than just an image capturing tool. It is very quick, simple and efficient. You can edit your images - crop them, draw figures on them, write notes on them and share directly via uploading to skitch, flickr, ftp with many other options. This all is mere drag and drop with nothing complex to learn. Download Skitch. Images in this blog are captured using skitch only.

Shortcut keys with skitch:

• Command-Shift-5 – Crosshairs Snap
• Command-Shift-6 – Fullscreen Snap
• Command-Shift-7 – Frame Snap

There is also a great short video on the Skitch website that gives you a quick overview of how it works and what it can do.

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We've created many sites with user profiles, and every site seems to have a few differences, but there are certain best practices which I would like to share.

Module Requirements

This article concerns user profiles in Drupal 6, and recommends that you have the following modules installed:

• CCK
• Content Profile
• Auto Node Title
• Filefield (optional)
• Imagefield (optional)
• Link (optional)

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In Developing A Personal Email Management Strategy I discussed the sorting, filtering and processing of the seemingly endless flow of email I receive. Recently, I took the plunge and converted my non work email to IMAP in preparation for converting work email to the same. The goal is to be able to see important direct email on my iPhone without seeing all the list traffic, commercial communications and other solicited bulk email

First, Some HistoryGoogle Aps For Your Domain) for different types email traffic, travel@ for example for when i signed up for travel related services and lists, buy@ for commercial email and receipts after making purchases. This made sorting and filtering the incoming email really easy, just set up a message filter in Thunderbird based on the To: address. But all of these email addresses were just aliases delivering the mail to my primary account. Thus when checking email on the iPhone, sifting through all the solicited bulk email for the personal messages was like finding a needle in a hay stack.

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During a recent client meeting, I had the opportunity to explain Twitter to an organization with very little social media experience.  I think my explanation may be of use to others who are just starting to consider using Twitter or other micro-blogging platforms (though I would argue that Twitter is where the people are and thus is where any organization looking to jump in should be. 

The Basics of Twitter

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A post about Drupal on the XO over on the Development Seed blog reminded me about a HOWTO and video demo I put together over a month ago and then got too busy to post. The Drupal on OLPC HOWTO is over on the OLPC wiki, and uses Lighttpd and MySQL for the stack.

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