Youth-empowerment non-profit Global Kids recently celebrated their one year anniversary in Second Life’s teen grid. Here is a cool video summarizing their celebratory activities, produced and narrated by teens. Enjoy!
Written by: rikomatic
Fight Hunger video
Written by: tuesday
Reminder: Walk the world to fight hunger this Sunday!
Codelia sends out updated info on the "Fight Hunger: Walk the World" event taking place this Sunday, May 13. The UN World Food Programme every year organizes a "Walk the World" fundraiser / awareness raising event to draw attention to the problem of famine and hunger around the world. In towns and cities all over the planet, people gather to walk in support of humanitarian aid and development assistance for the most needy. Now avatars in Second Life can also participate.
The gathering point is now the Dragon Moons Resort (Teleport SLURL) generously provided by Demian Caldera and Nyna Slate. You can also make a donation at that same location and join the "fighthunger" group to stay abreast of the latest developments.
Cross-posted from Rikomatic.com
Written by: rikomatic
Skype and Nonprofits
Skype is a terrific tool. It is a software based phone that allows VoIP calls anywhere in the world. If you place a Skype call between computers–your computer and the computer of the person on the other end–the call is free. It costs pennies a minute to call to a cell phone or land line.
Skype will allow you to do video calling, share documents, and IM others on the Skype network.
How can a nonprofit use Skype? I think it can be particularly useful when working on collaborative projects. These projects could be technology based or not.
- Conference calls become free using Skype.
- If you have documents to share, they can be sent to everybody in the group by dragging and dropping into a Skype chat.
- Skype’s chat feature allows you to see when others in your group are online–and potentially available to talk.
I use Skype pretty much everyday in collaboration with programmers and other project based colleagues.
For the purposes of the Nonprofits in Second Life group, it is used to keep the project leaders in touch with one another.
Paired with other tools, Skype can become a powerful–and free–tool in your virtual kit. It is a free download, works on MacOS, PC, and Linux.
Look me up, my handle is jmatthewsaunders.
Written by: Creech
Just a little funny bit that was in today’s SF Chronicle
if you get the San Francisco Chron, check out Leah Garchik on page e8. If not, just look here:
from Public Eavesdropping
Public eavesdropping
“I have to hang up now. I’m in a business meeting for Second Life, and my avatar is speaking.”
— Young woman on cell phone at work, overheard at Brannan Street tech company by Connie Champagne
(In case you were wondering, I was that girl overheard by Connie (she was standing waiting for me after work), and CompuMentor’s offices are on Brannan)
Written by: Glitteractica_Cookie
Tagging Tutorials, Part IV, REVVER
REVVER is a video site similar to YouTube. The company is quite a bit smaller than YouTube. The number of videos on REVVER is much smaller than on YouTube. While it is a little guy, REVVER is my preferred video site.
Why?
The small guy is more likely to try and work with content providers. You can post messages to the forum on REVVER and get a response very quickly. The REVVER staff are quite likely to email you directly if you have something you need/want to have resolved.
Posting to REVVER is very similar to posting to YouTube.
What are the steps?
- You need an account. Accounts are free. Go to http://one.revver.com and click on "register" in the top left corner.
- Once you have an account, log in and click on "Upload".
- REVVER takes the process in reverse of YouTube–first you choose your file (and you can upload mov, mpeg, mp4, asf, avi, DIVX, 3gp and 3g2). Click on the "Browse" button and after you have selected your file, choose "Upload".
- That opens up a "Title", "Description", TAGS, Web Page, Credits, and Age Level. Click "Save This Video".
- Do NOT leave this page until your file has completed uploading.
You can tag during this process or after you have saved your video. The Nonprofits in Second Life Group are using "NPSL".
One thing to note is that REVVER is highly sensitive of copyright. They will not post a video that they suspect contains any copyrighted materials. Background music can cause a video to be rejected.
Written by: Creech
Teens create Second Life PSAs on obesity, piracy, intolerance
(Also posted on Rikomatic.com) Youth non-profit Global Kids announces that five teams of teenagers has completed 30-second Public Service Announcements created in Second Life. The PSAs cover a range of issues including obesity, media literacy, piracy, discrimination and safe surfing on the net. It’s great seeing young people using Second Life to put out positive social messages.
(I blogged previously about other machinima for good.)
Written by: rikomatic
Tagging Tutorials, Part III YouTube
If you don’t know about YouTube you must be living a sheltered life… YouTube is a video sharing site that has successfully captured a huge portion of the Internet video market. It has come under some criticism for allowing large quantities of copyright material to be pirated and uploaded onto the site. None the less, YouTube is a powerful tool that can be used by the nonprofit community to raise awareness and market.
What do I need to post and tag on YouTube?
- An account. Signing up is easy. Go to YouTube.com and click on sign up in the top right corner of the screen. Enter in the required fields and submit. You will get a verification email which with a link that you need to click on to activate your account.
- Upload a video. This presupposes that you have videos ready to go. YouTube accepts a wide variety of different video formats including: .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG. Uploading a video is simple. First click on upload videos in the top right corner of the site. Second, enter in a name, description, and TAGS. For the Nonprofits in Second Life site, we are asking folks to use NPSL as a tag to identify it as related content. Choose a category and a language. Click "Continue Uploading". Browse for your file on your computer. Just like on Flickr, you can then decide who can see your video–will it be public or private to friends and/or family. Click Upload.
- This will bring you to a page with a snippet of code you can use to embed your video into your Web site. In my case this looked like this…
<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/04dCZ3Rzsho"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/04dCZ3Rzsho" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object>
which produces this:
You must own the video to tag it. So, unlike Flickr where friends can add tags, you need to ensure that all the tags you think are relevant are added. You can always add to your own tags later.
Written by: Creech
Community Member Spotlight: Stacy Narayan
Information Architecture Inst. (IAI)
Nonprofit Commons 10
iainstitute.org
Stacy Narayan/Stacy Surla
Why is your organization in Second Life?
To look and see what the practice of information architecture has to offer in the design of shared information spaces, like Second Life. To look and see if any IA-type work. Second, to use SL as a platform for our worldwide community of practice
So, we got an island so members can experiment, use it as a sandbox, have a place to meet, and so on.
What’s your favorite place in SL that other nonprofits should check out?
NMC Campus is a must visit for nonprofits
NMC Campus
slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Campus/139/225/42
Written by: kanter
Community Member Spotlight: Meet Rebus Mandelbrot
Matt Cowley, Webmaster, WMNF Community Radio
NPCommons Tenant: Space 30
Web Site
Listener-supported, non-commercial, Radio that plays eclectic music and progressive independent news and public radio news.
“We’re here to create a virtual radio station in SL, independent news and public affairs, entertainment and fundraising. We’d like to present speeches and talks for discussion, put on concerts, and things we haven’t realized are possible yet.”
Written by: kanter