News items from Hot Topics from TechSoup.org

A white paper from Citrix Online outlines the benefits of letting employees work from home.

Unclear about computer networking? We lay out the basics for nonprofits and libraries.

This article provides a roadmap to networking options for nonprofits and libraries and also offers some questions to help make the best choices while building a network to suit your organizations needs.

We'll show you how virtualization software works, what it can be used for, and a few virtual software packages your nonprofit or library may wish to consider.

Multi-user computing is a system, like Windows MultiPoint Server, through which several users access the same computer or server simultaneously. How could this benefit nonprofits and libraries? It can mean maintaining fewer machines for more users, helping cut costs.

How can you best communicate with your constituents by using text messages, web pages, and mobile applications? Idealware looks at each method in detail to help you navigate the options to deliver content and engage users in donations and ongoing conversations.

What's the best phone system - at the best price - to meet your organization's needs?

Learn about database management systems - including FileMaker Pro and how your organization can get it.

A primer on cloud computing - advantages and drawbacks for your organization

Internet-based constituent relationship tools can save money and the environment for your nonprofit or library.

Confused about the cloud and its security implications? Learn more the pros and cons of having your nonprofit or library's data online.

For a while, Microsoft Office was the only office suite in town. But in the last couple of years, a viable open source option has emerged: OpenOffice.org. Will OpenOffice.org work for your organization? Idealware does a head-to-head comparison of the two office suites.

Are your online communications working? How can you tell? In this article, we talk through four types of measures - views, followers, engagement, and conversion - that help you track your efforts to see if they're worthwhile.

We will soon be using the Education version for our non-profit. I am trying to find a solution for backing up everyones Google Docs onto a local computer here should a document get either accidentally or deliberatly deleted. There surely must be an inexpensive way to do this, but I am having no luck finding it. Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I have a Win7 pro laptop that was working fine on the domain.  It was taken out of the office for a few days, now when you start outlook it asks for username and password before it will connect to Exchange. Also you cannot browse or connect to the shares on the server at all.

It is still a domain member and the user can log in to any other work station and access his files, so I don't think it is a server issue.

I can ping the server, access the server based web pages, can't CIFS to the file shares

Unfortunately the web searches I've found to research this relate to initial connecting to a domain or making the home network work.

Windows fire wall is disabeled

I've disabled the antivirus software -- no change

Changed the machine name -- no change

Anyone have suggestions where to start?

Dave

The nation is turning its eyes toward Milwaukee’s Urban Ecology Center as the model of effective and impactful urban environmental education. Located on vibrant public green spaces, our fast-growing organization serves over 75,000 people of all ages annually. Our innovative team of cutting-edge non-profit professionals works in a creative, high-energy open office in a state-of-the-art green facility. Awarded the national Alfred P Sloan “When Work Works” recognition and a 2009 Top Workplace by the Business Journal, the Urban Ecology Center is a leader in workplace flexibility. The Urban Ecology Center’s facility and programs have been recognized nationally and internationally for their innovative approach to sustainability, neighborhood-based urban environmental education and citizen science.

I am very excited to say that we're close to going live w/ the first phase of upgrades to the TechSoup community forums. We are upgrading to the latest version of the Community Server platform, which is the software that powers our online forums. With the upgrade, there will be improved stability and performance to the forums.

The TechSoup forums will have a brief downtime to install the updates. The upgrade will take place Tuesday evening, December 14, 2010 between 9:00PM and 12 Midnight Pacific time. During this time the forums and TechSoup Wesites will be unavailable.

Some of the major new highlights we’re excited about:

• Improved usability and stability

• Better navigation to make it easier to post, edit posts, and find your way around the forums

• New look & feel in keeping w/ the rest of the new TechSoup site

• All of the pages in the Community section of TechSoup will soon be moving over to a matching look and better integration with the forums

Some differences:

• The “Discuss This” feature on TechSoup articles will not yet pull in the forums discussion below the article; for now, this will only link to the specific forum discussion.

By default, you have to be friends with a user to send them a private message. However, you can change this option in your forum profile settings to allow any users to send you a private message.

In early 2011, we will be taking on the second phase of the upgrade. This phase of the project the TechSoup blog over to the Community Server platform, so the blog and forums can easily connect to share blog posts, comments, and related forum discussions.

Have any questions about the upgrade? Please post any questions, feedback, and/or any issues with the brand new site here.

Best,

Megan

I am looking for some easy software to use to take much needed inventory for my organization. I have used spreadsheets and Access before in the past but I was wondering if there is anything out there. Any ideas?

Hi everyone,

My name is Steve Leeper and I am with the Moyers Corners Fire Department in Clay, NY. We have been with Tech Soup for quite some time but have never posted in the forums. We are the largest volunteer fire department in Onondaga County and one of the largest in New York State. We have about 150 members and run about 1500 calls a year. We operate 4 stations that are all connected via VPN links and Cisco ASA5505's. We have about 25 workstations all on Active Directory running off of 2 Windows Server 2003 R2 servers. 

In my day job, I work for the a college that is part of the SUNY system doing end user support and desktop repairs. I'm an avid techie and hope to get some assistance from others users and provide any assistance I can to others.

-Steve

We are considering the three license Quickbooks for our organization. The three users are a part-time employee, a volunteer Treasurer and an independent bookkeeper. We have no office and each of the three users works in a different location. First, can we download the software to computers owned by the three users and second, how would we synchronize the three data files?