Computing Assistance Support & Education Inc – CASE Notes

Current issues surrounding Google’s changes in privacy policies (which take effect today) are an excellent example of why we need to pay attention to where our data is stored and how it can be used by others: EU and US Consumer Groups to Google: “This plan is a mistake”

News from the Electronic Privacy Information Centre reminds us that not-for-profit organisations need to develop policies regarding how they use online services in their day to day operations. For years we have recommended that organisations read the conditions associated with the use of online services very carefully, especially the conditions associated with free services.

Should Australian non-profit organisations support a proposal for a new global Top Level Domain name of .NGO?

That’s the question being asked by the Public Interest Registry, a US based organisation currently managing the .ORG domain name space, who are proposing that a new domain name of .NGO be established for the exclusive use of community sector organisations worldwide.

Australian non-profit organisations are currently being contacted by Fenton Communications, a Melbourne based consultancy firm working for PIR, to sign an online petition in support of this initiative. A flyer being distributed by email urges groups to support the push for a .NGO domain name to assist PIR in proving that there is a need for a domain that gives recognised credibility to not-for-profit organisations.

After discussions with Fenton Communications and the Australian Domain Administration, CASE President Darrell Burkey stated,

“CASE has worked closely with the Australian Domain Administration over the years representing the needs of Australian non-profit organisations. It appears that Public Interest Registry may not be familiar with how well the Australian domain name system operates.

Thanks to the hard work of volunteers who initially managed the domain name system in Australia and the establishment of a Domain Name Administration some years ago, Australian non-profits benefit from a domain name system that is recognized world wide as having the highest of integrity. The result of this work is that when you see a domain name using .org.au or .asn.au you can be confident that you are dealing with a legitimate Australian non-profit organisation.

While we understand and support the need for US based organisations to work towards the same level of domain name integrity that we have in Australia, we do not believe adding new domain names is the best strategy to achieve that goal.

The addition of a new domain name for non-profits will require ‘defensive registration’ which we see as one of the greatest concerns with the use of domain names overall. If .NGO is created most non-profit organisations will have yet another domain name that they will want to license and manage. In this case the domain name will be of little value because it will not identify the non-profit as an Australian non-profit organisation.”

It remains to be seen if there will be any support for a new .NGO domain name for the use of all non-profits globally. We would like to encourage the Public Interest Registry to work with the Australian Domain Administration and involve Australian domain name stakeholders before seeking support of such an initiative.

CASE strongly recommends that member organisations do their research and consider the proposal carefully before indicating their support for the establishment of a new global domain name for non-profit organisations.

Today’s workshop “Building Websites From The Ground Up” has proven very valuable for us and I assume everyone else. We’ve had a range of diverse speakers from a wide range of backgrounds who have really covered building a website from the ground up from concept to delivery. Viveka kicked off the day with a hugely detailed presentation on the Victorian AIDS Council’s efforts to develop their new website. She let us into the finer details of the planning process including objectives, constraints, assumptions and a lot, lot more. The key thing to take away from their experience, I think, is that documentation and planning has to be paramount in the process of developing a site, if you’re to end up with what you want! Also critical to the process was ensuring Government accessibility standards were met and that the staff were adequately trained in using the new software backend (Drupal). Have a look at their site which was launched late last year – great effort! http://www.vicaids.asn.au

Following on from Viveka’s presentation we had Andrew Johnson from FII who detailed a developer’s perspective on processes and jobs very similar to Viveka’s. He really emphasised the personal aspect to developing a website, encouraging looking at the task as developing a relationship between the developer and the organisation you (they’re) developing for. Returned to frequently was the idea that it was a good idea to actually like the client you’re working for. If you don’t…consider not taking the job! FII are big on Joomla which is great to see. They’ve got a range of projects on the go and we can recommend checking out their site! http://www.footefrancis.com.au

If that wasn’t enough (and it could have been) Gary Barber from Radharc weighed in on all things Information Architecture. Detailed, to say the least! He offered suggestions on how to better survey and study a userbase so that more appropriate development decisions could be made. He also showed us multiple ways of considering content, how we might look at it differently and how we might spot patterns. Surprisingly, something as mundane as sorting cards turned out to be a great way (through discussion, not necessarily the final arrangement of the cards!) to organise information in way everyone can understand or at least is happy with. Survey, observations, interviews, analytics! Details about these and more can be found at Gary’s site http://www.radharc.com.au

A slightly re-arranged schedule and a relateively relaxed atmosphere after lunch resulted in an expert’s panel on web content management systems. Joomla, Wordpres and Drupal all represented (Silverstripe gets a mention), the importance of keeping ALL of your web software up-to-date was reiterated by myself a few times. Seriously, you’ll get hacked if you don’t stay up to date. Andrew and Vivecka got to field followup questions from an engaged audience and everyone seemed pretty satisfied.

Following afternoon tea an enthusiastic/passionate discussion about domain names in Australia and abroad ensued. Darrell’s position on the auDA policy review panel allowed everyone to get a bit of insight into the domains industry and the history that preceeded it’s current state. Do .com.aus get more traffic? Are they more appropriate than asn.au? What would happen if Australia’s domain policy ended up matching the American free-for-all? There were a range of diverse opinions and everyone came away with something to think about…

Overall a very valuable day and we’re glad we attended! This is actually an event that runs prior to Making Links 2010 proper which of course we’ll be attending. We’ll continue the coverage here and of course you can follow the Twitter stream at #ml10 http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ml10

If you live in the ACT, anywhere near Gunghalin and like your Internet, be aware that the NBN Co will be holding a consultation session on broadband deployment very soon. From the official release:

“An open public consultation is to be held about the NBN deployment to approximately 3000 premises in the Gungahlin region, which is planned for deployment in the 2nd quarter of 2011.

The consultation will be held by the Gungahlin Community Council at our October 13th meeting at the Palmerston Community Centre on Tiptree Crescent at 7.30pm.

Glenn Holdstock, the NBN Co Community and Stakeholder Relations Manager will speak about the early NBN deployment to Gungahlin, and then will open the floor for community discussion and questions.”

View Larger Map

More info can be found here.

Here at CASE we craft affordable IT solutions for not-for-profits and community groups. One area of research has been workgroup collaboration software as it’s a frequently requested service. For a while now we’ve been using VMware’s Zimbra as an alternative for groups that are looking for an Exchange solution. Zimbra is already used by large business and universities and now some of Australia’s most important community service groups use it too.

The Zimbra team is putting on a live webinar entitled “Zimbra vs. Exchange” on the 29th of September that will no doubt be a great introduction to the benefits of their software. If you’d like to know more you can register for the event here.

The Sydney Joomla Users Group is putting on “Sydney JoomlaDay 2009″ on the 17-18th of October. The conference itself runs on the Saturday with workshops being held on Sunday. They’ll be looking at the new features of the upcoming Joomla 1.6 amongst other things. Presenting will be Andrew Eddie, Sam Moffat and Brad Bake. At CASE we’re pretty interested in Sam Moffat’s talk on Joomla security and hope to ask some questions of him! For full detail on what will be presented you can view the conference program.

The essential twitter details are @sydjug for their official feed and #SJD09 for the hashtag.

Tickets are only $50 and these days always prove very informative. Head over to the official Sydney JoomlaDay 2009 site to find out more.

Last weekend Sen. Kate Lundy held the third installment of her “publisphere” series. This even focused on ICT & Creative industries.

The Australian ICT industry is extremely broad in scope and expertise – from core infrastructure to mobile, Web 2.0 and of course the creative industries such as gaming, film and digital arts. Australia has done quite well on the international scene, however we could still do more to inspire many smart Australian professionals and companies to base themselves in Australia in the long term and to encourage international investment in the Australian ICT sector.

Having a strong Australian-based sector means a positive contribution to a number of important national goals: economic growth and exports, provide opportunities for skills development and experience in Australia’s workforce and finally, reinforcing Australia’s international reputation for excellence.

You can see the whole overview here and here!

Chris Smart, Australian Linux guru, has started writing for Linux Magazine. This week he’s looking at the Linux graphical user interface “KDE”.

“KDE stands for the K Desktop Environment and was first released in 1998 by Matthias Ettrich, who was a student at the time. Ettrich saw a need for the Unix world to have a unified desktop environment which had a consistent look and feel, rather than just multiple applications looking and behaving however they wanted to…Now in its 11th year, KDE has come a long way in a short amount of time and recently celebrated the release of version 4.0, marking a turning point in the development of the project…”

If you’ve been thinking about giving Linux a shot, maybe the new KDE will give you the confidence to go ahead with it. Chris also runs Make The Move, kind of like an Apple version of “Make the Switch”, only Chris’s solution is thousands of dollars cheaper!
Read his article “KDE 4: The Komplete Desktop?” here.

The first Public Sphere event has just finished It’s been an information packed, thought provoking few hours. Here’s a brief rundown of material that has resulted:

• Official Public Sphere event details on Senator Kate Lundy’s site.

• The Twitter feed from the morning.

• Craig Thomler’s liveblog from the event.

• Tom Worthington’s blog (Including links to the slides of the morning’s  presentations)

More posts to follow, just need to let the dust settle!

From the auDA announcements list:

“Misleading unsolicited emails from Asian domain name companies
30/Apr/2009
auDA is aware that at least two companies apparently based in China and Hong Kong have been sending unsolicited emails to people with .au domain names, attempting to mislead them into registering their name in a number of Asian domain spaces.
Examples include:
We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,
Last week we received a formal application submited by Yadu Investment Co Ltd which wanted to use the keyword “***” to register the Internet Brand and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia/ domain names.
After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. We aren’t sure whether you have any relation with this company. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down this registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve this company’s application
In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.
and
We are a professional domain name registration center in asia, mainly dealing with the domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection.
We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “***” as their domain name and Internet keyword on Apr 2th, 2009. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. we would like to confirm if this company is your partner, subsection or some one you authorized, if it is not, pls inform us if these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first or not, thanks for your cooperation, looking forward to your reply.
auDA does not have jurisdiction to handle complaints about these emails, as they do not involve the registration of .au domain names. We have been advised that authorities in Hong Kong are investigating at least one of the companies sending these emails.
In auDA’s view the claims made in these emails are most likely false and misleading, and we advise people to disregard them.”

If any CASE member recieves a simiar email they are encouraged to follow the above instructions. If members have any additional questions or concerns they can contact CASE’s web support through usual channels.