Social Software

One frequent request we get from clients is to integrate their Drupal web site user profiles with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system so that their users' information can be used for email messaging and other purposes.

Since many of us are involved in campaign-focused work that requires rapid turn-around, I wanted to share some lessons from a recent internal project we delivered in 4 weeks for the "Apps for America 2" contest.

(Our application, DataMasher, placed in the top 3 (out of 47), so by they way, I'd appreciate your vote so we can be pushed to #1.)

Very interesting summary about how various researchers are making data available through Google Earth. Modeling the effects of climate change using Google Earth

GrowYourWiki has a pair of posts on the Pitfalls and Keys to Success for Wiki Adoption within your organization. Its a concise summary of key best practices to encourage participation when you deploy a wiki.

There is an excellent case study in NY Times on how Zen's ultra simple camcorder the Flip has grabbed 13% of the camcorder market and been the best-selling camcorder on Amazon.com. It did this not by offering every feature and tech acronym buzzword under the sun, but by making it trivially easy to use. David Poque says,

Within just the last several years, concern over climate change has grown significantly.

Interestingly enough, environmentally-focused online user engagement is an idea that remains largely untapped.

The "Video the Vote" project (http://videothevote.org/) seeks to enlist volunteers to document, on video, any "irregularities" that occuring during polling next Tusday November 7th.

Online campaigning is picking up on growth of online video on YouTube and other sites, such as this spot on public education at "Give kids good schools" and this spot about Climate Change from a UK government advertisement.