Free Tech Tools for Poverty Law

NTAP Presenters:Gabrielle HammondGwen Daniels

Presenters

Gabrielle Hammond Executive Director, NTAP

Gwen Daniels Technology Director, ILAO

Surprise Panel: You!

Overview of Free Tools to:

Manage Information Online Manage Tasks and Projects Transfer Large Files Manage Collaborations Manage Meetings and Conference Calls Office Productivity Client Tools Help Techies (Viewer Recommendations)

Preview of Tools

Mozilla RSS, National RSS,

Netvibes Ta Da Lists Basecamp YouSendIt Team Viewer Wiki Jabber Chat Campfire

Survey Tool Meet-o-Matic MeetingWizard FreeConference.Com GotVoice Gliffy PDF Alternatives Thunderbird OpenOffice 2.0 PublicRoutes.Com

Viewer Recommendations: Links for Techies

HostMonitor:  http://www.ks-soft.net/hostmon.eng/index.htm This is a very simple program with a great interface that lets you monitor a wide variety of aspects of your system (server up? service running? file size? low disk space? WAN down?...) and then launch any one of a number of different actions (send an email? restart the host? restart the service?  Event Log?  SNMP trap?  Syslog?...)  There is a FREE version with a limited number of tests and there is a pay verion (based on the number of tests) that is very reasonable. (Michael Bowen, PA)

SnapFiles: The other site that I go to when I need something is snapfiles.com.  Though not strictly a "tool" it is a great place to go to find tools...

Kiwisyslog:  http://www.kiwisyslog.com/index.phpThis is a great syslog tool.  Well supported and at a great price.  They also make a cool tool called CatTools that lets you easily manage multiple devices such as routers and switches. (Michael Bowen)

VNC:  http://www.realvnc.com/ This little gem (in any of it's incarnations) has to be on everyone's short list.... (Michael Bowen)

Firefox developer toolbar--toolbar for Firefox that lets me test web pages (resize them for different screen resolutions, test with it different stylesheets, validate for accessibility and many other functions) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60 (Gwen Daniels)

intraVnews -- a nifty news reader for Outlook http://www.intravnews.com/download.aspx (Hugh Calkins)

Part 1: Managing Information

Your Internet Experience: Mozilla and IE 7

RSS National RSS Feeds Netvibes

Why Mozilla Firefox (or IE7)?

Easy to use and improves your efficiency.

Tabbed browsing

Easy creation of folders for bookmarks

LiveFeeds (We’ll discuss later.)

www.mozilla.com

Organize Your Bookmarks

Create Folders in your Bookmark Toolbar Easy Access

What if the Web Came to You?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is simply a technology that allows you to – with a couple clicks SUBSCRIBE to online information, news, blogs, and content.

Have you seen its logo?It indicates content you can subscribe to.This means it comes to you.

Where Can You Subscribe To?

RSS can be received in your browser. RSS can be received in your email inbox. RSS can be received on a webpage.

How Do You Subscribe?

Browser: If you use Mozilla, it is Easy. Find content you want to subscribe to. Click on the logo. Drag to LiveFeeds Folder on your

Bookmark Bar.

Let’s try it.

Subscribe to my Email Inbox?

You need what is called an RSS Aggregator.

There are different services depending on your email client.

Poverty Law Content Organized

What if all the news, blogs, and content from support centers, funders, and leaders relating to poverty law were in one place?

What if when YOU found a good resource online, you could add it there for everyone to benefit?

Enter: National RSS Server http://rss.lstech.org

Final Step: Your Own Personal Newspaper

NetVibes www.netvibes.com

NetVibes www.netvibes.com

Part 2: Managing Your Tasks

Basecamp (discussed later) TaDa Lists – Online Lists

Linked with Basecamp…

Part 3: Transferring Large Docs

YouSendIt.Com

TeamViewer.Com

Transferring Large Files

YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com) Perfect for when you want them to receive it

by email. No downloads needed for recipient.

TeamViewer(www.teamviewer.com) Perfect for when you have someone on the

phone and want to give them something to look at or review with you.

They need to download an executable file (30 seconds).

Part 4: Project Management & Collaboration

Wikis Confluence (www.atlassian.com) PBwiki (www.pbwiki.com) JotSpot (coming soon. Google bought.)

Basecamp Instant Messaging (Jabber.org) Campfire: Group Chat

What is a wiki?

In a single sentence, a wiki is a web site that is created and edited collaboratively.

Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania

The problem Telephone Intake manual and Staff

manual required constant changes to a printed manual. Staff manual---everyone throughout the program had different versions, depending on which updates they had actually kept.  

Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania

The solution: “I checked out the NTAP info on

wikis, and was drawn by the claim that creating a wiki could be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.  I figured I’d see if that was true, and it was.”

Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania

The result:A wiki with: Organizational information Help Line Manual Staff Directory Substantive Law resources Other Resources

Basecamp

Basecamp is a free to low-cost web-based project management application

Both versions include the ability to record milestones, assign tasks, relate tasks to milestones, track messages, create writeboards, and unlimited people

Paid version includes more projects and file storage. Some plans also include time tracking

Jabber: Instant Messaging

Jabber (www.jabber.org) -- a customizable open source IM (instant messaging) protocol with many clients: Hugh uses Exodus (http://

exodus.jabberstudio.org/) Gabe uses PSI (http://psi-im.org/)

Campfire: Group Chat

http://www.campfirenow.com/ Free for four users File Transfer capability

Part 5: Meetings and Phones

Meet-o-Matic (www.meet-o-matic.com)

MeetingWizard (www.meetingwizard.com)

Free Conference.Com (www.freeconference.com)

GotVoice (www.gotvoice.com) Voicemail transferred to your email

Part 6: Office Productivity Alternatives

Gliffy.Com is a free to low-cost ($30 per year) web-based alternative to Microsoft Visio.

There are numerous free to low-cost options for creating PDF files. See Working with PDF Documents on LSNTAP

Open Office 2.0: Free alternative to Microsoft Office

Thunderbird: Alternative to Outlook for email

Survey Tool (http://survey.lstech.org)

Poverty Law Survey Tool

Sign Up: http://survey.lstech.org

More info: http://lsntap.org/techlibrary

Power of Surveys

Tool to return to “Community Lawyering”

Instant feedback for management, organizational development, fundraising, technology evaluation, services evaluation, and priority setting

More accurate than web tracking forms

Power of Online Surveys

Cheap, Relatively Easy, Fast

Lots of features -- Create surveys where:

anyone can respond as many times as they like; only invited persons can respond; a person can only respond only once; in other languages; anonymous surveys are sent in; participants go to a URL or respond to an email; prior surveys can be reused and edited; data is analyzed instantly online or downloaded to a

spreadsheet or graph.

Examples of Surveys for Poverty Law

Technology Evaluation Community Based Priority Setting Outcome Assessment & Satisfaction of

Services (Clinics, Hotline, Representation)

Fundraising Volunteer Recruitment Staff Input (Retreats, Conferences,

Training) Task Force or Committee Planning

Poverty Law Surveyshttp://survey.lstech.org

Poverty Law Surveys

Poverty Law Surveyshttp://survey.lstech.org

Poverty Law Surveyshttp://survey.lstech.org

#1 Feature: Share Your Surveys with Others

Usable by Non-Techie who is Willing to Learn Sign Up: http://survey.lstech.org More info: http://lsntap.org/techlibrary

For Your Clients and Websites

PublicRoutes.Com Picks a public transportation route from

two address points in major cities: NY, LA, SF, Seattle, Chicago…

www.publicroutes.com

More and Resources?

www.lsntap.org

Training Link at: http://lsntap.org/tm110