This post originally appeared on NTEN's blog. This is the second in a fantastic series of guest posts by the authors of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission.

New applications and technologies are being developed at a rapid pace. This brave new world of touchscreens, aggregated data, and pastel AJAX-based social networking sites, is partly fueled by consumers' desires for faster, lighter, and often cheaper (if not free) technologies.

For hardware, the time that differentiates what is "new" and "passé" is becoming shortened. Your new iPhone is becoming old faster; your familiarity of the popular social networking app du jour may soon become obsolete. How, then, should a nonprofit professional learn about — and selectively embrace — new technologies, when it's hard to keep basic systems running?

Here are some tips to keep in mind: 

• Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. Every new phone, new software-as-a-service, or a new program will claim to do many wonderful things that have never been done before — until the next version comes out. As a frugal, belt-watching nonprofit professional, it's not too hard to be skeptical of the latest ads and buzzwords. Be judicious when reading marketing material, and always try things out before investing time and money. Look at what it can deliver for your clients and constituents.
• Take advantage of free information. Once you are comfortable in differentiating what is marketing and what is actionable information, use all the free information that is available. In this age of unfettered access and crowdsourcing, you will find analyses and opinions from bloggers and writers just by using your favorite search engine or a community tagging site like delicious.com. While the community's viewpoint may not be aligned with yours, you will find information to form your own, more informed, opinion.
• Read more

Mozilla Service Week is here! We've blogged about Mozilla Service Week a few times in the past few weeks, but if you still haven't gotten involved, it's not too late. The Mozilla Blog has a list of projects and challenges that still need volunteers. If you need help at your nonprofit but don't know where to start, try Jayne's list of short-term assignments for tech volunteers. Beth has some suggestions too.

All week, the Mozilla Service Week site will be featuring volunteer success stories. You can also follow the action on Flickr and Delicious.

Are you participating in Mozilla Service Week, either with your nonprofit or as a volunteer? If so, come tell us about it in the TechSoup forums.

Free Range Studios, the "Creative Agency with a Conscience," has announced its annual YouTopia Grant (formerly known as the Gratitude Grant). Free Range Studios will be donating their services to one lucky nonprofit and one socially responsible business. Past recipients of the YouTopia Grant include Sustainable Table for whom Free Range Studios created the award winning viral video, the Meatrix, now viewed over 20 million times and translated into 43 languages.

Free Range Studios also walks the talk. From the day Free Range Studios opened its doors it has been a socially and environmentally responsible company. Free Range Studios uses Triple Bottom Line accounting, renewable energy including wind power, and most recently Free Range Studios became a B Corporation.

In April, I blogged about the NPower and Accenture survey of nonprofits and technology and encouraged people to respond. Well, thanks to everyone who participated. More than 1000 nonprofits responded and the results and analysis are in!

You can check out the full report (PDF) on NPower's site but here are some key highlights I think are interesting for others in the nptech community:

If you weren't in the Bay Area on June 20, or wished you could've cloned yourself to attend multiple sessions at the same time, never fear. You can see presentations from anywhere, anytime online.

The Craigslist Foundation's annual Nonprofit Bootcamp was a fantastc one-day conference, chalk full of workshops on topics ranging from marketing advice (PPT 10.1MB) to advanced ideas about the future of technology (PPT 1.7MB) for nonprofits, which featured our very own co-CEO, Marnie Webb. Many of the slideshows presented at the event are already available to be viewed on their site. Downloadable podcasts will be available for most sessions soon (we'll update you when they become available but in the meantime, check out the podcasts from previous years!)

Aside from Marnie's presentation, TechSoup was there with bells on as a sponsor and exhibitor. I was there along with my colleagues Elliot Harmon, Ricci Powers, and Barbara Shaughnessy. We really enjoyed the opportunity to get to talk to throngs of people from established nonprofits around the country, start-up organizations, and future nonprofit hopefuls.

Coming up from April 26-28, NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference (or NTC) 2009, is the go-to event every year for nonprofit professionals. From panels, plenaries, and presentations (oh my!) to networking opportunities galore, get yee online to register to attend and join us in San Francisco for the three-day event.

If you're not sure whether you can afford to attend — through the help of creative fundraising techniques and a matching gift from Convio — NTEN will be able to offer 58 scholarships to attend! You can apply on their scholarship page and even though the date listed has passed, there may be some who can't attend or may be ineligible for the scholarship, so it wouldn't hurt to apply anyway.

We've written here before about why NTC is a great event if you can swing it. Aside from being held in TechSoup's awesome hometown of San Francisco (where we're also the local host for the Day of Service), the conference is sure to offer myriad opportunities for learning, networking, and promoting your organization's work.

Our pals over at the Wild Apricot blog posted this about Idealist.org offering nonprofit organizations FREE (yes, I said FREE!) online job postings during the month of June. If you've not used Idealist.org before, you need to GET ON IT! It's where I've found, literally, my last three nonprofit jobs and where I've posted umpteen number of job openings for organizations I worked with. I still get a daily digest email with jobs all over the country to match the search query I requested (not that I'm looking).

You can learn more about it with Idealist's cute and informative YouTube vid too: