Exciting netCorps Staff Updates in North Carolina

netCorps is pleased to announce new staff in our North Carolina offices. Sean Watson has recently started work from our Durham office as a Technology Consultant. Sean is equally handy with websites, databases and troubleshooting office technology issues and we're tremendously excited to have him on board.

Aliya Abbasi, who for the last two years has served as our Greensboro Technology Consultant, started work in September as the Project Coordinator for the Basebuilding Initiative, a collaborative project focus on list enhancement and civc engagement by North Carolina nonprofits.

Aliya will continue to work from Greensboro where she is joined by John Cepulo. John is in his last year at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and is working with us part-time providing technology services to area nonprofits.

We plan to add a new VISTA employee in North Carolina later this year as well--you can read about the position on our website, and you can learn more about our North Carolina staff on our Staff page as well.

New Websites Engaging Students, Youth and Activists of all Ages

Over the last few months netCorps helped launch new websites for the League of Young Voters, the United States Student Association and the Alabama Rivers Alliance.

All three sites were developed with and are now managed by Plone, an open-source content management system that allows these organizations to easily update their websites right from any web browser....read more

Mediation Works: An IT Success Story from Southern Oregon

Picture a situation where everything is much harder than it needs to be and the technology in use is only making things worse. Computers weren’t networked. Users ran between machines to find information. Each computer ran different versions of software, so sharing documents was difficult Because information was spread around it was impossible to back up. The whole office shared one email account so the office manager printed everyone’s emails and put them on their desks. There was no database of constituents. Instead, each person had their own Excel sheet on their own computer with their own contacts. It was a situation generously described as “frustrating”.

Fortunately, Mediation Works’ Executive Director took these challenges and turned them in to an opportunity to think long-term about the strengths, health and goals of the organization. ...read more

How RSS Feeds Changed My Life--for the Better?

So much information, so little time. At least it seemed that way, before I fell in love with RSS. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a method that allows information on the web to be collected--by a keyword, a tag, a type of content, a content author, etc.--and then made available to anyone who wants it. Some content is collected by the publisher. Want to get the latest Science and Technology headlines from Google News? Go to http://news.google.com, click on the Sci/Tech link and then click the RSS link. Not specific enough? Create your own feed based on a Google News search. Instead of just "Science and Technology" maybe I want to see articles on "Green Technology" so I can search on that and click on the RSS link to access that feed.

Wait--a what? A feed?

Sorry. Let me back up. RSS has been around for a while, but the every day use of it by common folk (that would be most anyone who isn't a proudly self-identified "geek") has languished due to a lack of easy software to collect and read RSS feeds. What is the point of creating or promoting RSS feeds if no one out there is listening? ...read more

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