------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine ------- Vol 2, Issue 5 I'm in the process of moving my website over to a new hosting service. As a result, I'm having to switch the system I use to send out these newsletters. As with any new system, there may be a glitch or two, so I hope you'll be patient with me. That being said, I thought I would write a bit about some Google tools. I attended a seminar about a week ago about using various Google Apps and tools especially for nonprofit organizations. ---------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue... ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: Nonprofit Google 101 2. Blog Posts 3. Shameless Self-Promotion 4. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: Nonprofit Google 101 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Last week I attended a presentation about using a variety of Google tools for nonprofit organizations. Our local Google offices, in concert with the New Center's npServ program and the Friends of CASA, gave a four-hour overview, including some of the pros and cons of the various systems as well as some opportunities which are available right now. I'll try to run down the list as best I remember. * Google Apps (http://docs.google.com/): With this I am referring specifically to Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet, and Google Presentation. These, of course, are Google's answer to the Microsoft productivity suite of applications. These tools have a clear benefit in that they have been designed for the web with collaboration in mind. Their functionality is a little bare-bones, but in general supports most of what you need to create useful documents. I particularly like the Spreadsheet facility and use it quite a bit in running my business. Using these tools has an added benefit that all of your documents are stored onine (though you can download them and store them locally). This means you'll never have to worry about losing important information just because one of the machines in your office decides to die a grim and horrible death. Using the Google Apps Team Edition (http://www.google.com/apps) you can even limit document access to members of your group (without specifically having to add each member of the group to each file). * Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com/): Groups can display both private and public event information. Using Google's embedding capabilities, you can even display public calendars on your website. I've already set up this feature with one of my clients, CNP of Ohio, Ltd. Once it is in place, Google's intuitive interface makes it child's play to keep your website's event calendar up to date. * Gmail (http://gmail.google.com/): Having an email application which ties in with all of the other Google services can make your life a lot simpler, too. In addition to just having a good web-based interface, Google even makes it possible to retrieve email from your other accounts and display it in the Gmail interface. I do this myself so that all of my business correspondence is easily searchable and available wherever I can access the Internet. * Google Checkout (https://checkout.google.com/sell): This is a credit card processing system similar in capabilities to PayPal. The benefit right now for nonprofits is that it is free. Yes, let me repeat that. From now until the end of the year, Google is charging zero fees for nonprofit organizations to use Google Checkout. That means if you're organization accepts $100 on your website, all $100 gets deposited into your account. After the end of this year, nonprofits will have to pay a fee, just like the rest of us. Even that, though, (2% + $.20 per transaction) is better than services like PayPal for pretty much every level of usage up to $100,000 per month. * Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com): Advertise your organization, it's events and opportunities to those who are actively searching for you. There are a lot of cool ideas with Adwords -- tutorials to help you craft your ads, communities which can give advice, and no charge (no matter how many ads you create), unless someone actually clicks on the ad. Not bad. How about one better? If your organization is approved for Google Grants (http://www.google.com/grants/), you can get *months* of advertising for *free*. Hard to beat that. There were a couple of other tools we talked about -- Google Sites (http://www.google.com/sites/) and Page Creator (http://pages.google.com/). They seem to be a means to create actual web pages and sites for your organization. I haven't been able to play with it yet, though, so I'll hold off talking about them. Now, none of these tools are completely perfect. You will undoubtedly run into challenges trying to use any one of them because it doesn't *quite* work the way you want. Still for many nonprofit organizations, this might be a great way to get most of the features they need without having to break the budget for the upcoming year. If you try them out, drop me a line at gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com and let me know how they work for you. Copyright 2008, Greg Peters ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Blog Posts ---------------------------------------------------------------- Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the last year: Monday, February 25, 2008 -- Don't Surprise Me! http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2008/02/dont-surprise-me.html "The kind of surprises I can do without usually involve software. Ironically it's often the little things that get under my skin...." Monday, February 18, 2008 -- Farewell, NoMonthlyFees http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2008/02/farewell-nomonthlyfees.html "I was inspired by the post my friend, Andrew Miller of Your Search Advisor, crafted recently wherein he bid a not-so-fond farewell to Comcast as his Internet Service Provider. In my case, though, it's time for me to say goodbye to my website hosting service, NoMonthlyFees.com...." ---------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Shameless Self-Promotion ---------------------------------------------------------------- The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your webmaster. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 4. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: You can subscribe to the "Clearing Up The Confusion" E-zine at: http://www.cyberdatasolns.com/ezine Questions: If you have any questions, concerns or comments regarding the Clearing Up the Confusion E-zine, please email Greg Peters at: gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com This content may be forwarded in full, with copyright and contact information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not for-profit format. 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