LOLnptechLet's start with the How-Tos.

NTEN member Amy Sample Ward points her blog readers to a helpful how-to published by Global Voices, "Blogging for a Cause". I think Amy's doing a good job of this herself!

Michelle Murrain, NTEN Board member, continues her helpful series of posts about open source tools by discussing Filezilla, an FTP application. She also includes a helpful post about data portability, pointing out that, with more organizations working in and with Web 2.0, they need to understand what data portability is and why open standards are important.

Judi Sohn offers an update on her organization, C3, which was recently featured on Lifetime TV. She also catches her readers up on staff additions, technology implementations, and the sad loss of one of their advocates.

In other news, Teaming for Technology (T4T) Colorado, an NTEN member organization, was a spotlight nonprofit on DailyCamera.com. Their contributions to their local nonprofit community through hardware donations and technology assistance were highlighted.

Also in the news is Convio, who announced two new board members: William Bock from Silicon Labs, and Kristin L. Magnuson, of JDA Software.

Deborah Finn, long-time NTEN member and contributor to the nonprofit technology community, announced that she's rounding up the Information Systems Forum (ISF) for their first ever face-to-face at the 2008 NTC -- through an Affinity Group session.

That brings us to Beth Kanter. Beth always has many contributions, including her nptech tag summary, which is consistently helpful, and this post about her interview with Tech Weekly (that includes a plug for fellow NTEN members Corey P. and Britt Bravo). But I'd especially like to point folks to her post about a potential "other" use of social media at your organization: as an alternative to email. It's not just about outward messaging; it can also be used for effective internal communication and collaboration!

On the other side of the discussion about social media, NTEN member TechSoup discusses a new report that suggests the appeal -- and therefore organizational usefulness -- of social media networks may be declining. Organizations need to think strategically about how they use social media.

Thanks to these and all our NTEN members for the ongoing discussions, developments, and work you contribute to the nonprofit technology community.

If you'd like to be on the record as an NTEN member, tag your posts with "nten_member".  And don't forget to use "nptech" whenever you discuss topics related to nonprofits' use of technology.