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

The democratization of information, where the barrier to entry is often only an Internet connection, has seen some interesting ideas about how to best educate the public about complex issues such as climate change. One of the standout efforts has to be Google Earth. More and more individual scientists, research projects, and institutes are making their data available to the public in the form of Google Earth overlays, that demonstrate vividly their findings. The UK's Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey are teaming up with Google Earth to better inform the public about their work on climate modeling.

The following links provide both guidance and analysis about how (and if) to get your Organization on Facebook. For most organizations, there are few reasons to not have a presence on the site and free to setup. The only cost might come if you find yourself spending too much time managing your presence on it (or any other social networking site.

First, read if Should Your Organization Use Social Networking Sites?

So should you invest in creating a profile or networks on social networking sites? It depends on your organization. To succeed with social networking sites, you'll likely need a staff member or consultant who has a passion for working with these types of sites. You'll also need to establish goals to understand if the time commitment is worthwhile. For instance, if you're trying to expand your community, how many new people linked with your cause would make your time worthwhile? Be open to alternative goals, too: Perhaps your primary purpose with social networks is just to get your name in front of the younger members of your audience.

SMUG makes the case for Why Organizations Should Join Facebook Group Land Rush

In reality, you can have an infinite number of groups related to your organization, each with a different purpose.

If you decide to jump on board you'll need the invaluable A Beginner's Guide to Facebook

These nine points are meant to be a starting point for you to get your nonprofit on Facebook and into the social networking world. There are also many examples of nonprofit groups on Facebook

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.

Internally, we've faced similar issues, its eerie that his advice that "Meetings are an especially good place to start" describes how, at least the Tech Team, makes the most use of our Intranet Wiki. He also makes the point that you should plan for success, not failure. Too often, we're worried how a few bad actors may post inappropriate content or misuse the tool in some way. The usual reaction to such a risk, is to either not deploy the tool at all, which can be a huge missed opportunity, or to overburden it with controls, reviews, and approval process so that no one is ecouraged to use it.

Managing to the possibility of failure, not success – If you are more focused on how the wiki will fail, instead of how it will succeed, you have already written your destiny.

HT: Sage advice on wiki adoption: keys to success

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,

Instead, the Flip has been reduced to the purest essence of video capture. You turn it on, and it's ready to start filming in two seconds. You press the red button once to record (press hard -- it's a little balky) and once to stop. You press Play to review the video, and the Trash button to delete a clip.

There it is: the entire user's manual.

"But Oscar, we don't make camcorders or gadgets. Whats your point?" The success of the Zen lies in getting out of the way of users who want to record a video clip. User's don't need to adjust a million settings, don't have the option of adding special effects, zooming in and out, and so on. They just point and record. Next time you're building out a new web site, section of your web site, or any point where you're asking users to interacts with you - fill out a form, post a comment, make a donation - try to eliminate as much cruft as possible and reduce the interaction to its barest essence. Ideally, and I'm probably a bit of an idealist for writing this, this would mean an email newsletter subscription form that, shocker, has only one field for the user's email address, and no more. Or a donation form that is simply the amount to donate and fields required to process payment. The less hoops you make users jump through, the more users may jump through your hoops.