While looking for anything to watch other than Tom Delay shake his bum on Dancing with the Stars the other night, I came across one of the new commercials from Microsoft about their upcoming release of the Windows 7 operating system. The commercial featured the cutest little spokesperson you've ever seen. Since Microsoft will be donating Windows 7 upgrades to eligible nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup beginning on October 22, this reminded me to post this little "save the date" announcement, as well as give you a heads up as to what you can expect to see from TechSoup as we approach this launch. If you're interested in checking out reviews of Windows 7, the commercial featured a couple of interesting ones from Gizmodo and CNET, though there are many others online and they're overwhelmingly positive. If you want to check out the cute ad, you can see it here.

What to Expect from TechSoup:

• Windows 7 upgrade products will be available for donation to qualified nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup on October 22 –  specifically Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise upgrades (32 and 64 bit).
• Your organization can request Windows 7 through TechSoup even if you've already received a Microsoft donation this year. Microsoft is allowing organizations to place one extra order this year for ONLY Windows 7 (or Vista) up until January 31, 2010. Learn more about Microsoft's donation program through TechSoup.
• The team at TechSoup is putting together information and resources to help nonprofits and libraries make the best decisions for their organization, so check back soon for more resources to help you evaluate.
• In the meantime, as you evaluate whether Windows 7 is right for your organization, here are a few things you should know about your current system and computers:
  
  • Read more

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

Have you checked out TechSoup's new Disaster Planning and Recovery Toolkit? We've updated and expanded our downloadable book, The Resilient Organization: A Guide for Disaster Planning and Recovery, and hosted two webinars on disaster planning.

If you've used any of these resources, it's time to let us know what you thought and how we could improve. Please take three minutes to respond to our very short survey. This is your chance to tell us what you think of the toolkit and what resources we should add to it.

As a part of the disaster campaign, we've been blogging about disaster planning and recovery over the past few weeks:

• Free Webinars: National Preparedness Month: Did you know that September is National Preparedness Month? Agility Recovery Solutions, a disaster recovery specialist, together with FEMA, is hosting a series of weekly webinars this month.
• Pangea Foundation's Disaster Relief Communications Hub: ReliefPoint is "a real-time communications hub for national disaster relief coordination and information dissemination." Pangea Foundation developed the tool in response to the October 2007 wildfires that destroyed land and homes in and around San Diego.
• Mobile Phones and Disaster Planning: Cell phones and "smartphones" are easily the greatest additions to accessible emergency preparedness and disaster response. Actively helping staff and volunteers to program their phones will directly and immediately increase their personal as well as your organization's preparedness.
• Freestore Foodbank: Standardized Practices and Disaster Planning: Learn how one organization's overhaul of its tech infrastructure made it ready when a disaster came.
• Back That Mac Up: Isn't Time Machine enough? Maybe not. Learn how to back up your Mac computers and recover them quickly in the case of hard drive damage or failure.

Photo: Random McRandomhead, CC license

If you haven't already, check out TechSoup's new Disaster Planning and Recovery Toolkit. In addition to our free book, The Resilient Organization: A Guide for Disaster Planning and Recovery, you'll also find webinars, articles, and links to other information around the Internet. We think that this toolkit can be a great resource for organizations in times of health as well as those facing disasters.

A point that we emphasize throughout the book is that disaster planning isn't just a matter of being ready for a natural disaster. It's about rethinking the way your organization works and adopting technologies and procedures that emphasize flexibility and adaptability throughout your organization. An organization that's ready for a disaster is also ready for a new opportunity to expand its impact when a need arises.

I can't think of a story that better illustrates this concept than that of the Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati, one of the winners of our Microsoft Show Your Impact contest.

Freestore Foodbank serves over 7000 individuals a month in the greater Cincinnati area, and those numbers double in November and December. Before undergoing a major overhaul of their tech infrastructure, the Foodbank’s multiple branches had a lot of trouble communicating and working together, both internally and externally. In making major infrastructural improvements and standardizing practices across all of their branches, the Foodbank was able to serve the community more swiftly; what's more, when one branch was struck by a natural disaster, the Foodbank was ready for it.

This post is mainly for Mac users. If you're not a Mac user, many of the points here will still apply to you, but some of them won't. You might prefer this video of a dog eating Potato Olés.

If you haven't already, check out our new guide, The Resilient Organization: A Guide for Disaster Planning and Recovery. This book represents several months' worth of research and numerous people's expertise, and we think it'll be a helpful resource for nonprofits and public libraries.

Working on the book got me thinking about my own backup strategies for my home computer. About two years ago, my old iBook G4 started to get slow and it seemed that the hard drive was probably on its way out. I was still covered by AppleCare at the time, so I bought an external MyBook drive and downloaded SuperDuper, in hopes that I'd still be under warranty when the internal drive inevitably died. No such luck.

Like most backup programs, SuperDuper gives you the choice of whether to back up only your own personal data (your home folder) or your entire drive, including the operating system and applications. To back up the entire drive, select "Backup - all files." (This is often referred to as a mirror image.) The benefit of this sort of backup is that if you need to, you can boot the computer from it. That's a huge plus for a lot of reasons: if something happens to your internal drive, you can still boot from the external drive. If you need to send the computer to the shop, you can boot from your backup drive on a separate Mac and keep working as usual.

Kevin blogged last week about the upcoming Online Nonprofit Technology Conference that NTEN is hosting on September 16-17. I want to add a bit more to the discussion about it here.

First, TechSoup users are eligible to get a 25% discount off the registration price just for being part of TechSoup. Type "TS25" as your discount code when you register.

If you are a small to medium-sized nonprofit, why should you care about cloud computing? Because it can save you time, money and help spare the environment.

What Is Cloud Computing?

Here is how the CyberOptic Group describes it:

Essentially, cloud computing enables computer software and hardware resources to be accessed over the Internet without the need to have any detailed or specific knowledge of the infrastructure used to deliver the resources, much like a utility model. You really don't need to know what the phone company or electric company does on there end to enable calls and allow the lights to go on when you flip the switch; and, you really don't want to know as long as when you plug into it, it works.

I bet many of you are using a form of cloud computing without knowing it. Current examples are Gmail, Yahoo mail, Google Docs, Salesforce, and Microsoft Office Live Workspace. They are often called Software as a Service (SaaS). A company provides access to their software applications over the Internet and you access it through your web-browser. If you are using email hosted by a company, like one of those mentioned above, you and your staff don't have to manage an in-house email server like Exchange. You simply sign up for the accounts and all the back-end stuff is handled for you.

Does your organization have a plan to keep your technology, data, and assets protected in the event of an emergency or disaster? What if it's not an actual disaster like a hurricane or flood, but a staff member simply loses or breaks a laptop carrying essential supporter data? How much time or money might your organization spend trying to recover even a fraction of what's been lost? If these questions have crossed your mind and your answers are less than ideal, you should join us for our two-part webinar series on disaster planning to protect your technology.

Join me on Thursday, August 20 at 11 a.m. Pacific as I interview nonprofit tech expert Chris Shipley from Nutmeg Consulting and Elliot Harmon, TechSoup staff writer and editor of our soon-to-be-released The Resilient Organization: A Guide for Disaster Planning and Recovery. We'll also be joined by Michelle Baldwin, Executive Director of Volunteers in Service to Others, which runs the Cooke County emergency food bank. They experienced a flood two years ago and she'll be offering advice for other nonprofits trying to plan ahead.

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:

Microsoft's Donation Program through TechSoup is by far one of the most in-demand and equally misunderstood programs available to nonprofits and libraries. Just like with all of the donation and discount programs through TechSoup, the vendor (in this case, Microsoft) sets the restrictions for how much, how often, and which types of organizations can receive their products. They generously donate, so we happily oblige.

What a lot of folks don't realize about the Microsoft Donation Program is that there is often more available than what people realize. This week, fellow blogger Elliot Harmon and former 'Souper Matthew Palmer, published an article explaining how the whole process works — from eligibility restrictions, order limits, frequency of requesting donations, and additional benefits available.