As someone who's worked on the media/communications end of the nonprofit world for a few years, I know how difficult it can be to even catch the coattails of new media technologies and the way they influence how we communicate with our constituents. Even more difficult is staying on the cutting-edge of those technologies.

The brand spankin' new Spring 2008 TechSoup Stock catalog is hot off the presses and you can check out the full version (PDF) of all the great finds for your organization today.

There's some new, some old (and still awesome), and some updated software, tools, and programs that can help your organization get a leg up for fundraising online, managing finances, editing and hosting photos, and keeping your office functioning smoothly and securely. Check out some highlights here:

Blackbaud announced yesterday that it is acquiring Kintera in an all-cash purchase price of approximately $46.0 million. Via press release:

If your organization is looking to join the blogosphere, there are a lot of things to consider — staff investment, leadership buy-in, one blog or multiple, return on investment, and a host of other issues. Once the decision has been made to get your organizational blog rolling (pun intended) the task falls to someone (probably you!) to choose the right tool. With that in mind, today we will compare two giants of the blogosphere: Movable Type and WordPress.

These days, nearly anyone create a short video clip with a cell phone or video camera. And now, you can upload and share these videos on popular photo-sharing community Flickr, thanks to a new feature that allows you to upload and show videos on the site.

Flickr video content is divided into three categories: videos, screencasts, and animation/CGI. Only Pro account members can upload videos, though anyone can watch them. Also, only the first 90 seconds of any video will display (longer videos can be submitted, but they’ll be truncated.) The 90-second limit is intended to frame videos uploaded to Flickr as “long photos,” or "slices of life," according to the Flickr Blog.

Nonprofits can use photo-sharing site Flickr in a variety of ways to raise awareness, launch campaigns, or show nontraditional sides to their organizations. Beth Kanter wrote a post how 10 nonprofits used Flickr in unique ways. Here are some examples we’ve selected that could inspire you.

O'Reilly Media's Web 2.0 Expo will be held in San Francisco this April 21 to 25, and has set aside 10 exhibit spaces to give away to nonprofits.

If you know of a nonprofit that should be there, leave a comment on the Expo Blog. They will use the feedback to provide free exhibit space to 10 innovative charitable and activist organizations.

Care2 has created an online calculator to help nonprofits decide whether they should spend time campaigning in social networks. You can use the tool to estimate the cost and return for recruitment and fundraising efforts on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. 

The tool is designed primarily to calculate fundraising results, but you can also look at the "cost per friend" or "cost per email name" to compare with the costs of recruiting people elsewhere. 

You can find the tool at ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaigns.

SupportingAdvancement.com has released the results of a survey on the use of Web 2.0 tools for fundraising. Most of the responses came from K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. The questions posed included: