Okay, we know Barack is a wonderful orator and he’s managed to make the primary election anything but inevitable.

But guess what… it’s not just a show. He’s got smart people supporting him and he’s great on the issues, too. I for one am getting a little tired of all the complaining going on among Hilary fans and camp about how Obama lacks experience, how he doesn’t have a platform, how he’s all fluff and no substance. I’d like to thank Paul for putting this great collection of Obama links together that might help stop this ridiculous rhetoric. I know it’s hard to believe that someone can be a great presenter AND a great intellect. It’s been a while, eh?

2004 was, I felt, a watershed moment for the American people… in a bad way. I somehow have managed to find some hope after the Iowa caucus. Elections really aren’t inevitable. Every vote really does matter. And given all the crap that’s going on today, some of us can even manage to find some hope. Here are two videos I hope you will watch. I hope you vote for Obama if you think he can make a difference.

This is so exciting! I use Flickr to house my own photos and I’m thrilled to say we use Flickr at work, too, but what the Library of Congress is proposing is really revolutionary in that a very large, extremely credible and federal (!!) institution is venturing into the world of online community and social tagging and encouraging other libraries and other cultural institutions to do the same by using all that Flickr has to offer.

You can see the collection of over 3000 gorgeous photos (one set from the 1930s and 1940s, the other from the 1910s) here.

It’s great for the LOC because they’re getting free help with their metadata. It’s great for everybody because everyone will have better access to more complete information about a particular photograph and be able to directly contribute. Very exciting! Have I already said it’s exciting?

LOC writes about it here and Flickr writes about it here. David Weinberger (who I found out from) writes about it here.

I just launched a website for the yoga teacher that had a real part in making me a mentally and physically stronger person. I was so flattered when Coeli asked me to work on her website, I just jumped at the chance. So, here it is… http://www.coelimarsh.com!

I made it using Wordpress (what my blog runs on). I could have made it from Drupal, but I’ve found that if you’re not doing any heavy theme work and the site isn’t complex, Wordpress is really the way to go.

The opposite was true for mcgtraining.com, which already had an existing design. I found myself struggling to theme in Wordpress, whereas I find it much easier to do so in Drupal. My instinct said to try Wordpress, though, because it’s such a small site, but hey, I learned from my mistakes and now it’s all done.

Two happy websites!

We’re getting socked with another Nor’easter. I love Boston, I really, really do — as long as it’s not winter. Is that fair to Boston? I’m not really sure, but that’s what it is. I’m annoyed that I can’t go to work today. I have lots to do. Fortunately, I can do a lot of it online, and as much as I’m a fan of the idea of telecommuting, I think face to face meetings are so critical.  But I can’t really do those meetings in my pajamas. Pluses and minuses, eh? Pluses and minuses.

Last week I received an email from Barbara Moratek of the Ivete Foundation with a very simple and seemingly genuine email. The subject line was “Information for prospective donors” and the content said:

“Would you have additional information for prospective donors or volunteers other than what is on your website?   Thank you in advance.
Warm regards,
Barb
Barbara Moratek
Vice President, Director of Grant Programs
Ivete Foundation
Phone-
Fax- 800.397.7205
Web- www.ivetefoundation.org”

Now, the lack of a phone number should have been an indicator. My work email is hardly out there, either, and certainly not in a development capacity. But I passed it onto our development staff to see if they could help her. Fortunately, several other random people in our org got the same email. So, development smartly did some research and it turns out it was a scam.  I was  surprised and frankly, bothered, by the fact that someone would specifically target nonprofits. Gross.

I do vote in every major election. But I have to say, I was really on the fence about bothering with this one. After 2004, I was crushed, like so many others, at Bush’s second (first?) victory. Edwards excited me, though. But his poll numbers were low and the media was virtually ignoring him. Hilary was “inevitable”. I felt like I had no voice. Unless I lived in Iowa or New Hampshire, my vote for the next Democratic candidate wouldn’t matter on Super Tuesday.

But then Iowa happened. And Hilary came in third. Everyone’s saying how Barack has given them hope. He’s the candidate for hope, for change. After last Tuesday, I believe it. He didn’t just beat the “inevitable” candidate. He beat the media. Voters proved them wrong. MAN, I love it when that happens.

So, I hadn’t registered to vote since I’ve been back in Mass. I did tonight. And what was nice was there was a steady stream of 20- and 30-something’s doing the same thing. Massachusetts will probably nominate whatever Democratic candidate there is in the general election, but it’s nice to know I’ve at least got a vote that matters among us Dems!

To figure out where you stand, check out:

http://www.change.org/presidential_matchmaker

I’m so happy that I’m seeing this on not just my nonprofit blog feeds, but also on my general web feeds. The word is spreading, hooray! So, I’ll help too:

See Free Rice tests your vocabulary, feeds others at one of my newest favorite blogs.

My head has been spinning this past week. I’ve been on a mission to help my org sort out a technology problem. Can we get a one-stop-shop hosted, yet fully customizable (i.e. template mods and form field additions) transaction platform that includes event registration, donations (one-time and recurring, preferably) and a store? Oh, yeah, and it should be affordable and not lock us into a contract. We’re a nonprofit, so we can demand these things… right?

Well, the good news is that there are options, but it’s been so difficult to find. GiftTool seems to do what we want, but I’m nervous that there hasn’t been much use and we can’t play with it ourselves before signing on the dotted line (only remote demo from a sales dude). There’s Click and Pledge, Shopify (doesn’t really do events), NEON, MemberClicks and some others. But how are we supposed to know who to trust? What’s good? What have others used? It’s an incredibly labor-intensive process.

Well, I’ve got a few thoughts on the matter and am hoping to help implement something that will solve this problem, so I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, if you’ve got any thoughts on these tools, they’re welcome!

Oh, and one more thing. After sending out feelers about this problem to some tech listservs, I also sent out a feeler for a freelance developer. Surprisingly, no one responded to this call either. I’m wondering if my delivery’s off, I haven’t hit the right group of people, or there’s just a lack of flash developer freelancers out there. The hunt continues!

A List Apart conducted an extensive survey of web professionals.  I was disappointed to see the gender disparities, let alone the ethnic ones, but I guess it’s not too much of a surprise. It’s nice to know that my new job title has added another woman to the small amount of female “web directors”.

Roar

Get the A List Apart survey… be warned, it’s huge. I only skimmed it.