PICnet Blog

The National Arboretum in Washington, DC, is an amazing collection of our country’s beautiful trees. To enhance the support of the National Arboretum, the Friends of the National Arboretum (FONA) provides a variety of important services to the arboretum and the community.

We’re excited to announce the launch of FONA’s new Non-Profit Soapbox site! Congratulations to the FONA team for their hard work.

That’s right folks, you read that headline right: I use Windows Desktop Search. And I love it.

I know, I should be using Google Desktop, with all sorts of Web 2.0 gadgets, widgets, thing-a-ma-bobbers, etc. I’ve used Google Desktop for a few years actually, but I was finding that in exchange for the 3GB of disk space that it started taking up, the benefits were a little limiting. I wanted to be able to sort my results in a variety of ways, to search things other than just basic Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook contents.

In short, I wanted more control of my desktop search.
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What happens when politically inspired young people get their hands on a bio-fueled bus? An amazing revival of hope and energy in Washington state politics takes place before your eyes. The Washington Bus recently launched their new Non-Profit Soapbox site, and we’re extremely pleased with the results.

“Put yourself on a bus full of young people and experience first-hand the revival of hope and energy in Washington politics. It’s not just any bus, of course. It’s the Washington Bus. And on any given Saturday it rolls into a town somewhere in our state, full of volunteers eager to work for positive change.”

Many thanks to Nica Lorber for her fantastic design skills, and our friends at Democracy In Action for their tools to empower the Bus.

Some of you might know about N-TEN’s call for chapter proposals for their upcoming Tech for Good Guide. Ben and I couldn’t resist an opportunity to share our thoughts, and recently submitted a few chapter ideas to our N-TEN friends.

Two areas we find we’re unique apt to providing good advice on include the ability to best utilize Web 2.0 software and managing an effective online presence. We had thought about focusing on a chapter regarding open source technology, but we figured that folks like Michelle Murrain and others would probably take up that important chapter.

While we’re not sure our writings will stay off the cutting room floor at N-TEN, we commend N-TEN for the great idea of putting this book together. We’ll keep you posted as we learn if our names will be in print!

In our country’s current military involvement around the world, there are more than a few opinions. For those proud Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard reservists, the Naval Enlisted Reserve Association has stood by their side for more than 50 years, representing their best interests.

“In more than 50 years, NERA has been responsible many of the pay and benefits gains reservists enjoy today and take for granted. Why NERA? Today, more than at any other time, Reserve Enlisted members are called upon more often to mobilize frequently to serve our nation.”

Congratulations to the team at NERA for building a terrific online resource for those men and women in uniform.

I must admit, when it comes to development processes, I’m an old fashioned pseudo waterfall procedure kind of guy. I know what you’re thinking: this guy needs to drink the agile programming, extreme programming, pair programming Kool-Aid.

Well, with the help of our development department, I’m in full test-driven development therapy (thanks Chris and Mark). Even better, I’m dragging one of our project managers, Pradeep, along for the ride.

From our friends at Wikipedia: “Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a software development technique consisting of short iterations where new test cases covering the desired improvement or new functionality are written first, then the production code necessary to pass the tests is implemented, and finally the software is refactored to accommodate changes.”

Gulp. Can management and test-driven development live in harmony?
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With our roots in international policy, we’re excited at the opportunity to work with groups focusing on US international relations. We’re pleased to announce the launch of the USA*Engage Web site, an organization representing individuals across the US who are concerned about the proliferation of unilateral foreign policy sanctions at the federal, state, and local levels.

“Ten years ago, U.S. foreign policy seemed to turn frequently to unilateral sanctions,” said USA*Engage Co-Chair Bill Reinsch. “Today, the pendulum seems to be swinging back in the same direction. This new Web site will be an excellent tool as we seek to reinforce the benefits of U.S. engagement and diplomacy in the world.”

Many thanks go out to our design partner Free Range Studios on their design work on this new Web site.

As Non-Profit Soapbox continues to grow in popularity, our hours spent doing invoicing each month continues to grow as well. Our joy of working with QuickBooks seems to decrease proportionally with the swelling number of clients.

Being a company steeped in the Web, I began wondering recently if there’s a better way of managing our invoices. Currently, we have to manually use QuickBooks to create invoices and receipts, then PDF them, then email them. This ends up adding up to about 5 hours a month, which I’d rather have spent on new Soapbox innovations.

About 6 months ago I signed us up for Freshbooks, an online invoicing system well accepted by the Web 2.0 world. Freshbooks seems made for people just starting out with invoicing, and those that might not already be using QuickBooks. For instance, QuickBooks is our master accounting records, and where we record active clients. With Freshbooks, it seems like we’d need to duplicate our efforts by posting invoices in both our QuickBooks and Freshbooks.
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Over 7 million people, or one in every 32 American adults, are behind bars, on probation or on parole. Thousand Kites is a national dialogue project by Appalshop addressing the criminal justice system.

With assistance from our design partner Free Range Studios, the Thousand Kites site launched with links to a variety of social networks that the project connects individuals, video and audio, and other multimedia links.

It’s early in the morning here in NYC, and just as I’m getting to board the train back to PICnet for my annual address to the company, I see the following good news on the Joomla! Web site:  Joomla 1.5 is stable!

What an effort it’s been.  With a complete rewrite of the code base, making it sleeker and more elegant for developers and users alike, Joomla! 1.5 comes out of the door with a bang today.

While I’ve got to run to the train station this morning, I’m expecting a long day of celebrations ahead for everyone in the community.  Congratulations everyone, especially Louis and Johan, whose vision helped propel the code base to be what it is today.  Also, big thanks to PICnetter Kevin Devine, who’s work in the past few months in bug squashing has lead to many great strides forward in the 1.5 trunk.
More details coming soon!