Western Region Information & Technology Exchange

Social Networking Live Feeds

2010-01-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

Unlike e-mail, or even blogs, tweets and status messages are instant communications. If you have many friends, or following many tweets, the messages are a stream of live messages. In our instant world, it is instant news, instant feedback, instant communications.

You can have a browser window open to Facebook, another window open to Twitter, and another to MySpace. To see the latest information, you will have to refresh each window (except for Facebook's Live Feed). Still each one is a separate window, and a separate stream. How can you post the same status message to multiple social networks without retyping the message? This article presents some of the possible solutions.

Facebook

As mentioned in a previous post, you can connect a fan page to a Twitter account. If you create a status message on a fan page, Facebook automatically creates a tweet. Using the Twitter application in Facebook, you can display the tweets in your Twitter account on your profile page. Using this mechanism, fans, followers, and friends see the same message. If you only use Facebook and Twitter, this approach works.

MySpace

MySpace has an account setting that allows you to sync your MySpace account with your Twitter account. When you write a mood status message, MySpace creates a tweet. Tweets are feed back to your MySpace status messages. As above, it works as long as your two social networks are MySpace and Twitter.

Seesmic

Seesmic (seesmic.com) offers a Web application and Desktop application that interface to Twitter. The Web application interfaces to a single Twitter account, while the Desktop application can inteface to multiple Twitter accounts. The desktop application uses Adobe Air, which is a real memory hog. I would not recommend using it, if your machine has less than 2 gigabytes of memory.

Brizzly

Brizzly (brizzly.com) has an extension for the Google Chrome browser that allows you to view and post to one or more Twitter accounts, and to a Facebook account. Once you get over the name and their logo, it is a good application. Each account has its own tab, so you do not see a continuous stream. Brizzly only interfaces with your Facebook Life Feed and Profile. It cannot link to groups or fan pages. The final weakness of Brizzly is that it does not auto refresh.

Yoono

This FireFox extension is my favorite tool for social networking. Yoono provides both a continuous stream view, and separate stream views. It can link to multiple accounts within a single social network, and links to the largest number of social networks of any integrated viewing and posting tool of any I have found. Yoono even links to chat applications such as Google Talk, and Yahoo Instant Messenger (YIM).

Yoono does not have a Google Chrome extension. I have found that MySpace makes it extremely difficult for third-party applications to make and maintain a link to MySpace. While LinkedIn used to work, it no longer makes a connection. These are not Yoono problems, but problems with those social networks. In both cases, you can create a workaround by setting the option to synchronize with Twitter.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) is a desktop application that allows you to view and post to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. I like the application, it just doesn't like my machine. It is also depends on Adobe Air, and Adobe Air wants more resources than my old laptop with 512 megabytes of memory can give.

Ping.fm

Ping.fm allows you to post to over 60 social networks and instant messengers. It is a one way street, as it is not a viewing tool. It is Web application, and you do need a Ping.fm account. Ping.fm allows you to divide your social networks into groups, and post to a group. Ping.fm was recently purchased by Seesmic, and, according to the Seesmic Web site, will be integrated into Seesmic.

When using Ping.fm, you need to be aware of the following:

The text box for entering messages does not have a character counter, so it is easy to enter a message that is too long for Twitter.
Ping.fm has its own URL shortner, so don't shorten a URL with bit.ly, and then use the bit.ly URL in your message. Ping.fm will shorten the bit.ly URL, which just generates a lot of redundant Internet traffic.

Shareaholic

The name Shareaholic tells all. Shareaholic is a browser extension to both FireFox and Google Chrome. While it allows you to share a bookmark with almost every social network on the Internet, it does not allow you to share the bookmark to a number of them at one time. However, it is a useful bookmark sharing tool. It is great alternative to browser toolbar overload.

Summary

Have I covered every social networking tool? Not even close - I only scratched the surface. As shown by a recent Nielson report, social networking is a rapidly growing part of Internet. Live Internet is the future, as the connections between multiple networks grow.

Static Web pages and e-mail are giving way to microblogging and social networks. A post, unit, or squadron can be a social network that connects to other social networks. We share and collaberate in real-time microblogs. Everthing from desktops to cell phones can connect you to a social network.

This is the final post in this series. I hope the series has helped your organization make the transition to social networking.

Social Networks and Search Engines

2010-01-30T12:59:00.000-08:00

This is not an article about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Rather, it is about the basics of what search engines will find, and what you need to do to make it possible. Beyond search engines, the article covers social bookmarking sites, and how they can help your organization be found on the Internet.

Facebook

What a search engine can see depends on the privacy settings for the Facebook account. In regards to search engines, you need to mouse over Settings, click on Privacy Settings, and the click on Search. The Facebook Search Results should be set to Everyone, and you need to allow Public Search Results. Most of the setting under Profile Information do not apply to an organization. You may wish to change Comments on Post to Everyone.

Here is what search engines will find:

Notes posted by you
Groups that you create
Fan pages that you create

One SEO bit of advice, search engines are more likely to discover your pages, if you have a user name. Facebook will allow you to create a user name if you provide a cell phone number for verification, or have 100 friends or fans.

Twitter

By default, your Twitter account will be found by search engines. If it is not, you need to verify that the Protect my tweets is not checked in account settings. Google, and other search engines, will find your account but not individual tweets. Individual tweets can be searched using tweetmeme.com or topsy.com.

When you see a tweet with a hash mark in front of a words. The tweet is flagging those words as key words for tweet search engines. This is an SEO trick to direct traffic to the account (channel in twittereze) making those tweets.

MySpace

When you create your MySpace account, make sure that you create a user name. Your account will then be http://www.myspace.com/username. Since their are no groups or fan pages in MySpace, search engines can only find your user profile. Through the privacy settings, you control what is visible to the public.

Social Bookmarking

The world of social networking includes sited devoted to social bookmarking. With variations, these sites share your favorite sites to the public and to your bookmarking-service friends. It really helps if you have a user name for both Facebook and MySpace. You also need a bit.ly account to shorten the long URLs, especially those for Facebook groups and fan pages. The most popular social bookmarking services are:

Delicious (delicious.com) is a true social bookmarking site. Be careful not to upload all your bookmarks.
Digg (digg.com) is a social bookmarking site oriented towards news, images, and videos. The popularity is measured by the number of diggs a URL receives.
StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com) is a site where you tag a URL with either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. You have to experience StumbleUpon to understand it.

Social Media Search Engines

A social media search engine is different than a regular search engine, in that its focus is on searching and indexing social networking (social media) sites. The major players are:

OneRiot (www.oneriot.com) bills itself as a search engine for the realtime Web. It heavly leans on Twitter and Digg.
TweetMeme (tweetmeme.com) a search engine for Twitter.
Topsy (topsy.com) has an interesting twist on indexing tweets. For example, you can list tweets that referency YouTube.
WhosTalkin (www.whostalkin.com) is a social media search engine that searches over 60 social media sites (including blog sites) for information on a particular topic. As with any search engine, it can only find those item that are available to the public (everyone).

The world is listening. It may take time, but search engines are tracking public profiles, FaceBook groups, Facebook fan pages, blogs (notes), and tweets. Being found requires be active. Just like Web pages, social networking requires ongoing activity.

Other Social Network Alternatives

2010-01-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

In the previous posts, I discussed Facebook and Twitter. While these two are very popular, there are many other social networks on the Internet. Many of them are for a specific community, or are popular in certain geographical regions. Following are those alternatives that would be of interest to an American Legion Department, Post, Unit, or Squadron.

MySpace

While not as popular as Facebook, MySpace is a very large social network. While there are users who accounts on both, the percentage is very small. If you do a search of MySpace, you will find a solid representation of The American Legion from National down to individual Posts.

While MySpace is classed as a microblog, it also supports email, blogs, photos, videos, and music. It takes a bit of experimenting with their page layout, but you can create a reasonably good looking page. The best appropach is to study other American Legion pages and then build your own. The are easy to change, as they are nothing more than arranging building blocks called Apps.

Yammer

Yammer is a social networking service for companies and organizations. Yammer uses the domain of the users email address to determine the company affiliation. For example, all e-mail addresses ending in mtlegion.org would be part of a single social network. Yammer is an excellent tool for intra-organization communication.

Ning

Ning is a create your own social network site. Ning has tools for finding friends, and building your network. Due to a change in Ning's policy, there is no longer a search engine for finding social networks. However, there is a Ning Social Network that lists those who which to be listed.

Ning takes far more work than any of the previously mentioned options. However, it is the most flexible for building an open or closed social network.

SocialGO

SocialGo is another site that allows you to build your own social network. Unlike Ning, SocialGo is a pay-as-you-go service, although it does offer a very limited free plan.

Yahoo

In terms of social networking, Yahoo is not really a great site. However, it is a good source for an e-mail account, if you cannot get one from your Department. American Legion of Montana offers e-mail accounts to all posts, units, and squadrons withing the department.

Beyond Yahoo mail, the features that you may use are Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Internet Messenger (YIM), and Flickr (for photos).

Google

There is no short way to explain all the Google applications. Your Gmail account is the key to accessing Google's product. In terms of features, Gmail offers far more features than Yahoo mail, including chat. Orkut is Google's social network. However, the majority of users on Orkut are in Brazil or China, with US users making up about 17% of Orkut's user base.

Google Talk is their Internet Messaging (IM) product, which is similar to ICQ and AIM. Picasa is for sharing photos, and YouTube for videos. Of course, Blogger is their blogging product, on which this blog is hosted.

Summary

The above sampling of social works demonstrates that the Internet world is changing. Email and static Web sites are giving away to the dynamic interaction of social networking. Instead of subscribing to e-mail list, you can follow Twitter streams, or Facebooks live feed. Services such as Yammer bring the concept of social network into the organization.

Every service has its own adherents. The temptation is to try and reach every community, by participating in every social network. This can lead to the ever present danger of a site containing out-dated information. When looking at The American Legion's MySpace page, I noticed a reference to VetCam, a service which no longer exits. Yet, there was no reference to Burnpit. The point is that becoming over extended can lead to orphaned pages on some social network.

Tweets for Twitter

2010-01-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

Twitter calls its status message "tweets." When it comes to integration with cell phones, Twitter is an extension of text messaging. When it comes to interaction, Twitter falls short of Facebook.

In Twitter creates its network by having:

Followers, who receive your tweets
Twitter users who you are following and receiving their tweets
Your account may be listed in a list of accounts created by another user
You can also follow lists, instead of individual users

Twitter tends to be a one way street. To be sure, Twitter does provide two communication options:

Replies provide a mechanism for your followers to respond to one of your tweets
Direct Messages allow someone who you are following to send you a private message

A very handy feature in Twitter is the ability to "retweet." Retweets are identified by the RT prefix to a tweet that you receive. It is a way of spreading the word to your followers, who can retweet the tweet again.

Many tweets contain a link to an external Web page. The maximum length for a tweet is 120 characters, which can make adding URLs real interesting. To solve this problem, you can shorten a URL using a service such bit.ly. Twitter will automatically attempt to shorten a URL using bit.ly. There are two reasons for having a separately bit.ly account:

Occassionally, Twitter doesn't want to shorten a pasted URL that forces the tweet length to exceed the limit.
With a bit.ly account, you can keep track of how many users have followed the link.

Twitter and Facebook are two huge communities. While some people belong to both, some only use one or the other. For organization to have maximum outreach, it needs both.

In the Facebook post, I mentioned the importance of creating a link between your fan page on Facebook and your Twitter account. This will save you double posting a status message. You always want to post the status message on Facebook, as Facebook has a longer status message. If the message is too long for Twitter, Facebook will use its own URL shortener (fb.me) to create a link to the full message from Twitter.

You have just joined the world of connecting social networks.

Make Facebook the Center Piece

2010-01-21T05:01:00.000-08:00

Facebook is a large and diverse social networking Web site. While there is a public aspect to Facebook, Friends is the heart of Facebook. You interact with Friends, and only Friends. The major features of Facebook are:

The "What's on your mind?" block is a status message in Facebook terms, and a microblog in generic terms. It allows you to share short messages with your friends, which appear in their "News Feed," or "Live Feed," and on your Wall. You can also write a status message on a Friend's Wall. Friends can comment on your status messages. You have the ability to control who sees your status messages.
You can also send a Message to one or more Friends. These are longer and more like email. You can reply to a message, just as you reply to an email. Facebook allows Messages to be longer than Status messages.
You can write a Note, which can be very long. A Note is like a Blog, and you can import posts from another Blog. Like status messages, they can be shared with your Friends.
You can also Chat with Friends, who happen to be on-line at the same time as you.

While the above center on communication with Friends, the following two features go beyond Friends to larger communities.

You can create a Group. A member of Facebook does not need to be a Friend to join your group. The group page looks much like your personal page. You have status updates. Instead of Messages, you have Discussions. You need to keep groups active with regular updates, just like for your main page.
The latest addition is Pages, or Fan Pages. Much like groups, but with more features, including photos and YouTube videos.

I am going to focus on Pages for the remainder of this article, as they are the key to reaching out to a larger community. As mentioned in the previous article, you need to use an e-mail account that is specific to the organization, and not your personal e-mail account.

Facebook's policy strictly prohibits an individual from having multiple accounts. It is important to remember that the organization account is for the organization, and not for playing games. Keep the organization side separate from your personal side.

Establishing a Facebook account is not difficult. You just need to create a first name and last name that somehow identifies the organization. You can have a first name with two or words and a last name. I recommend using the date your organization was founded as the birthdate. When you see the company name field, this is a good place to enter the full name of the organization.

The hardest part of building a Facebook Fan Page is finding out how to do it. One way is to select the Help option under the Settings tab. In the help window, you will see a option for Fan Pages (don't select the one for businesses). This will open up a window with various articles on fan pages. Select the one that reference creating a fan page and follow its link. You can create any number of fan pages, but you should have one for the organization.

While we haven't discussed creating a Twitter acccount, you will notice that there is an option for linking Facebook to Twitter. If you have a Twitter account go ahead and create a link. Whenever you post a status message on the fan page, it will automatically post the same message on Twitter. This is an important part of building a network.

There is a difference between posting a status message on your profile page and a fan page. On the profile page, the message only goes to your friends. On the fan page it goes to your fans and to Twitter, if you created the link. If you post a status message on both your profile page and your fan page, then those friends, who are also fans, get the message twice.

To make finding your Facebook profile page easier, it helps to have a user name. Again place your mouse over settings and then click Account Settings. If your organization has a cell phone, then you can immediately verify your account and create a user name. Otherwise, you have to wait until Facebook decides that you are who you say you are.

Letting the world know that you exist is the next challenge. Here are a few suggestions:

If you have email address of members in your organization, you can use the Friend search to see if they have a Facebook account, and then invite them to be a Friend. The spread the word to their Friends.
If you have a Twitter account. Post a message to Twitter. You will need to use bit.ly to shorten the long URL.
For those who are part of The American Legion of Montana, just send an email to webmaster@mtlegion.org and ask to have your account added to the profile for your Post or Unit. Be sure to send the shortened URL from bit.ly.

The above works for both Fan pages and Profile pages. It take time to build a network of fans and friends, but the communication to them is fast and easy. Just remember to communicate. Messages are short, so there is no reason not to get the word out.

Internet Presence Through Social Networks

2010-01-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

A Web presence is important means of communication to every Post, Unit or Squadron in The American Legion family. A Web site and e-mail accounts are the traditional means of communication. Social networking sites and messaging are the new media for communications.

Web sites still have their place, but they are not free and require a lot of work to maintain. A Web site with year-old information is worse than no Web site at all. I am proposing that a organization can have a Web presence without a Web site by using the resources provided by social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and many more. Best of all, the only cost is time, and an Internet connection. The only tools you need is a computer with a browser, and an email account. You do not need to pay a hosting fee, or a domain registration fee.

Before proceeding, we need to understand a few terms that are commonly used:

Social Network - Wether they are called friends, followers, or a connections, the social network provides immediate communication to your network, and still be viewable from a public view.
Blog - What I am writing is a blog. As opposed to the static nature of a Web site, a blog (a conraction of the term "Web Log") is a Web application that allows for easy posting of commentaries, description of events, or graphics. Blogs tend to full articles on some topic.
Microblog - (also called status updates) are short messages that may have links to Web sites, blogs, photos, or movies. The size of the message varies from the 140 character tweets allowed by Twitter to 255 character status updates for Facebook.
Bookmarking - Sites such as Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon are bookmark sharing sites, with a social networking twist.

Before diving into this world, I suggest that you do the following:

You need to create an email account that is for the organization, and not a personal account. This allows you to transfer your work to someone else, as the social network source require an email account. Posts within The American Legion of Montana can get a free email account form the Webmaster. Other alternatives include, Goggle, Yahoo, and Hotmail.
URLs (Web addresses) are often long, and can quickly exceed the limited length allowed for a message. There are a number of service that shorten URls, which are then expanded to the correct URL by the service. The most popular service is http://bit.ly/. I would suggest creating a bit.ly account, as a first step. We will use it in later articles.

VA healthcare will not be endangered by national system, says President Obama

2009-08-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, DC, August 4, 2009 – President Barack Obama, meeting privately with the leader of nation’s largest veterans service organization this morning, pledged to keep the medical care system administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs essentially as is – quelling fears that VA healthcare would be absorbed into a national health care system.

“(I) got his very strong assurance the VA as our veterans know it will continue to exist,” said National Commander David K. Rehbein. “It will not be diluted or folded into some sort of national system and that the folks who go to the VA…that will be considered their insurance, so any insurance requirements (will be met) simply by being enrolled in the VA.”

Another topic discussed during the one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office was Medicare reimbursement to the VA, a proposal long championed by The American Legion. This proposed practice would require Medicare to pay for care provided at VA medical facilities to Medicare beneficiaries – that is, eligible veterans over the age of 65 with non-service related injuries, illnesses and conditions. Currently, Medicare is precluded by statute from doing this.

“Medicare reimbursement to VA would be a boon to veterans in that it would encourage them to take advantage of what we consider the best care anywhere,” said the Commander. It would also generate much-needed revenue for the VA.”

In fact, The Medicare VA Reimbursement Act of 2009 (H.R. 3365), which is now being considered in Congress, resulted from a discussion Rehbein had with House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA) at the Legion’s DC headquarters just three weeks ago. “I am pleased that Chairman Filner visited with us and then took prompt action,” Rehbein said.

President Obama and Commander Rehbein also discussed the positive effects that the enhanced educational benefits contained within the newly enacted and American Legion-pioneered Post 9/11 GI Bill will have on the veterans community and the nation as a whole.

The vexing problem of a dramatically growing backlog of VA benefits claims was also considered by the two. Rehbein said he feels the President “fully appreciates” its gravity and will do what he can to aid in its solution.

Commander Rehbein, obviously pleased with the meeting’s outcome, characterized the 25-minute White House chat as “very friendly…conversational in style” in which “issues were discussed rather than positions being presented.”

With a current membership of 2.6 million wartime veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and the mentoring of youth. Legionnaires work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.

Facebook and its evil ad machine...

2009-07-23T12:56:00.001-07:00

Facebook is now able to use your name and photos in auto-generated ads to people on your friends list. You can opt out by following these steps: Log in to Facebook, and then go to Settings>Privacy Settings>News Feed and Wall>Facebook Ads (tab near top of page)>Set “Appearance in Facebook Ads” to “NO ONE”> click “Save Changes.” Voila, you’ve now opted out.

Military and veterans health care should not be part of any national health care bill, says The American Legion

2009-07-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (July 22, 2009) – The national commander of the nation’s largest veterans service organization has reacted to tonight’s urgent call by President Barack Obama for national health care reform.
“While The American Legion appreciates the complexity of the healthcare reform challenge facing the President and Congress,” said David K. Rehbein, “on behalf of our nation's 26-million veterans and the nearly two million personnel now on active duty in more than 130 countries, we urge Congress to ensure that veterans’ and military health care not be part of any national health care bill. They should be exempt in the legislation.”

Rehbein added, “Our nation must maintain its long standing tradition that veterans’ and military health care systems will remain independent and focused on our most deserving citizens.

“The American Legion has a proud tradition of securing and preserving the earned benefits of America’s veterans,” Rehbein said. “Ensuring timely access to quality healthcare for today’s military and veterans is of paramount concern. These are the citizens who have borne our battles in previous wars as they still are in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have earned our care the hard way. We, as a nation, have an obligation to ensure that their healthcare is not compromised,” he concluded.

With a current membership of 2.5 million wartime veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and the mentoring of youth. Legionnaires work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.
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Media contacts: Craig Roberts, (202) 263-2982, Cell (202) 406-0887 or Joe March, (317) 630-1253; Cell (317) 748-1926. A high resolution photo of Nat. Cmdr. Rehbein is available at www.legion.org.

2009-06-08T12:10:00.001-07:00

I received quite a bit of responses from my original message regarding “another Veterans Corps”…

Thank you all for caring.

From many of the responses, there are valid arguments made for and against this new “Veterans Corps”.

On the one hand, this new initiative, if properly supported by existing VSOs, can help launch an awareness program to returning veterans and introduce them to the traditions of “veterans serving veterans”. This will help increase awareness for VSOs like The American Legion amongst younger veterans and get them involved. And with some mentoring from older veterans, we can expect these young veterans who get involved in the “Veterans Corps” eventually volunteer their time with the VSOs and continue to make an impact. As one legionnaire wrote “If the new Veterans Corps is to strengthen and enable organizations to build capacity for their own missions to assist fellow veterans, then there is a chance this new initiative will actually accomplish something.”

On the other hand, if improperly executed, this program risks wasting taxpayer money and further disenfranchise veterans who are already doing everything they can.

Your collective wisdom has enlightened me in the fact that given this initiative, we can either be counter-productive and argue who can provide the best assistance to our veterans, or we can see this opportunity and work together to help mentor a generation of returning veterans the importance of peer-support and volunteer services to strengthen their communities.

And keeping true to the grassroots, I urge you to find out more about this Veterans Corps and ask your American Legion representatives, and your congressional representatives, to ensure VSOs critical role in developing the “Veterans Corps”.

another Veterans Corps???

2009-06-08T09:23:00.001-07:00

Congress is trying to establish a new “Veterans Corps” under the established programs of AmeriCorps. (http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/worthy-AmeriCorps-program-benefit-veterans) The provisions introduced to both the House and Senate asked that the taxpayers to put more money into a bureaucracy and establish a program from the ground up to do the job that so many Veterans Service Organizations are already doing. From what I can tell, this new initiative will give AmeriCorps the funding it needs to establish transition assistance volunteers to help veterans.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always thought the point of VSOs, like The American Legion, are chartered by Congress to organize volunteer efforts, manage donations, and bypassing the government bureaucracy, and putting the efforts and initiatives at the hands of veterans who understand how to help another veteran. Maintaining true grassroots and empowering fellow veterans to serve their peers not only ensure the quality but also the bond that ties a veteran to his/her community. Why do we want to waste more taxpayer’s money to build something that is already there???
So why is the Obama administration looking in another direction on helping our veterans??? Can it be simply that Obama, or Congress, didn’t really think this through? Are they just jumping into the bandwagon to simply do something for the sake of doing something???
If it were up to me, I’d say instead of building another veterans’ service organization under AmeriCorps, Congress and Obama should look at what all of the VSOs are doing, and help build partnership across the board and help facilitate peer support to reduce the redundancy and maximize support to those returning veterans that need the help…
I think this is a case where politics and the appearance of doing something needs to take a backseat. Acting with reason and operating with the best interests of our veterans and servicemembers should be our first responsibility. Congress can really make a difference by coming to the VSOs and ask for an alliance or some sort to establish this “Veterans Corps”… but that’s just my opinion…

Web Accessibility

2009-05-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

When an architect designs a structure, accessibility to persons with physical impairments is always a consideration. Any public building must comply to the laws related to providing access to the physically impaired. Yet, when a Web designer creates a new site, Web accessibility is often not a consideration. In the U.S., the exceptions are Federal Government sites, which must comply with Section 508 guidelines, and some state sites.

I believe that it is imperative that every Web page designer treat Web accessibility with the same level of diligence as does an architect who designs a public building. For any Web site within The American Legion Family, Web accessibility is important for the following reasons:

As us older veterans age, we suffer a natural loss in visual accuity. To many, small fonts are no longer readable, and the ability to detect fine differences in contrasts declines.
There are many veterans who suffer some form of color blindness. While their color blindness may have limited the type of duty performed in the service, it did not prevent them from Serving Our Country.
Service related injuries may have resulted in visual or auditory impairments.

So that our Web sites serve all veterans, we need to do the following:

Design our sites using relative units, such as ems or percentages. The use of pixels as a measurement should be left to non-scalable elements, such as graphics.
The user should be able to control the default font size and default font from their browser. If scaled with relative measurements, a Web page should adjust according to the default font. For most browser's the default font size is 16 pixels, and the default font should be sans-serif. Serif fonts are just to hard to read by anyone with a visual impairment.
All images must use the alt tag, with a meaning full description of the image. If alt is not sufficient, use the longdesc tag.
Links should use the rel tag to describe the link, when the bounded text does not provide an adequate description.
Data tables must use headings and the heading need to include the scope tag to define the structure of the table to a screen reader.
Tables should not be used to provide structure for the Web page. This is a habit from the days when there was no other option. Today, we need to use other tags and style sheets to define the structure of a page.
A Web page must make navigational sense when the style sheet is not present. Screen readers read just the page, without the style sheet.

The above highlight the major considerations in designing a site to be accessible to the visually impaired. Giving control to the browser, allows the user to scale the font to the size that they can see. By using relative sizing, the page scales according to the font size.

Screen readers are used by the legally blind, and those with other severe visual impairments. A person who uses a screen reader may not even have a graphical terminal. The most common output of the screen reader is audio, while there is a smaller population that use braille devices. To understand the challenges these users face, just listen to a reader as it reads your Web page.

There are a number of on line tools for testing a Web Page. The Accessibility Guidelines page at mtlegion.org lists the tests I use in creating Web pages. If you want a quick test of your site, just change the default font size to 20 and see what happens to your site. Graphics do present an issue, so reducing the default size to less than 16 can render most sites unreadable.

Have I completed all the work on mtlegion.org to make it fully Web accessibile? The answer is no, but I keep working on it. My goal is to create a site that is accessible by every veteran that can use a computer to access the Internet.

How to start a good social network for veterans:

2009-04-29T07:02:00.001-07:00

I hear a lot of ambitious people wanting to start a social network these days to “provide transitional service and connect the veteran community”. While I admire their initiative and desire to help, often they lack the knowledge of what social networking really is and don’t know how to really tap the potential of social networking and employ the power of social media and new media.

One example:

I recently received a call from CPT “Socialnetwork Champion” to discuss his social network for the Marines. I asked a few questions about his desires, and this is the facts I collected:

• They have a brief market analysis and have determined that their targeted audience should be Marines and Veterans age between 18 and 35.
• They want to provide transitional services to these veterans.
• They have lined up one headhunting company to provide this employment service.
• They want to provide a matching feature to connect Marines with potential mentors and employers.
• They want to provide a vehicle of communication for active duty Marines and veterans.

I think what they have so far is great, but here are some problems:

• Their market research is incomplete and failed to capture the growing market share in Baby Boomer generation that encompasses the Vietnam generation veterans.
• If they do not target the older generation then how are they to provide the matching service for young veterans? Just peer-peer will not get them the experience and institutional knowledge our older veterans have with regards to the VA and other processes necessary to ensure a successful transition.
• Their identified goal of providing transitional services is too general. There are just too many issues for any one person to tackle. Transition means anything from PTSD support, to financial services, to family life mentoring, to job placement, to social reintegration. If a social network does not identify and target a function to provide a service, users may be distracted and do not recognize the things that makes your social network unique. The point here is that social networking is like any other competitive market, where you have to offer something new and useful in the product you are trying to deliver to ensure users return. Social networks are nothing if you don’t have users and no one is coming back for a unique service and/or function.

If you are thinking about using a social network to connect and provide a service to our veterans, here are some of the things to think about to ensure your success:

• You need to identify your targeted audience. Be as precise as you can and cast your net as wide as you can. What you may need to do is to segment your audience types and by demographic. Once you have that, then do your market analysis to determine just what the needs are in each segmented section and determine the services and function you can provide to that section.
• Then you have to carefully determine the risk and return on your investment on each of the sections of your segmented audience group. If you are providing a peer-peer support service to women veterans, then you need to determine what competitive edge you have, is there a existing social network providing the exact thing? Also keep in mind that the functions you decide must meet a need and has to depend on your Voice of Customer analysis. So you may want to do a small online survey to see just how many people may be interested in getting online peer support for VA home loan process (or whatever else you have identified). What you don’t want to end up with is a high price function, connecting Marines with golf courses that provide discount to veterans, that only serves a small population and is not demanded by users on the social network environment.
• Also you need to design a functional process that your social network will adopt and practice. You must always identify key input variables and output variables of that functional process so you can improve on this process int eh future depending on user input.
• You must identify all open-sourced social networks and see if any of them can provide what you wish to accomplish before you decide to spend a few million dollars on tech cost. A lot of times software companies will sell you on things that they know won’t work because they know the exact same function is being performed by Facebook or Boomj. But they will sell you the software solution anyhow just to make money off you. So do as much as you can open-source, and host only critical information on paid technology. I recommend that database functionalities are a must pay service since that allows you to collect user data for your own segmentation and targeted marketing.
• And lastly, know your users and keep up on your users. Drive your users to your site. Your social network is nothing without users so don’t focus too much on the technology and forget your users…

Student Veterans

2009-03-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of activities recently from the Students Veterans of America regarding how to advance student veterans’ issues and concerns. The SVA leadership sincerely believes that student veterans need to get involved in The American Legion because we have the experience and expertise to offer mentorship to the younger generation of veterans hoping to advocate for their own initiatives. Below you will see a example of a very thoughtful response to a student veteran regarding two issues: 1. The acceptance of military credits by colleges and universities; 2. The truthfulness of our military recruiters.

From the response you will see that our mentor from The American Legion Department of California carefully laying out counter arguments and actionable directions for our young veterans (I have removed their names to protect their privacy):

Dear Ms. (student veteran),

The reason I structured my statements the way that I did was because, in order to structure a resolution-type action within the American Legion, you must be able to clearly address the issue, and then provide an "action" to be forwarded.

I do have sympathy for your situation with recruiters, however, the word you used was "equivalent." Many fields/MOS specialties have "equivalent" counterparts in the civilian world. Some of the Army training I went to was very technical and had highly paid counterparts in the civilian world, but, if I wanted a civilian rating or degree, I had to either pay the fees associated with it, or take the certification testing required to get the "civilian rating." I think the issue of "credit" would be better stated to "encourage the military education/training programs to, as much as is reasonable, coordinate with a college in the area to include the equivalent syllabus materials, so that students graduating from the course, can pay the fees associated with the credit, upon successful completion of the course." (My attendance at CAS3 only resulted in one Masters Level Statistics or Calculus credit through one of the military-friendly Colleges, I don't remember which one. I paid the fees associated with that credit and was given a copy of the college transcript.) I think that is a fair solution, given that the college has not taught the class and are trusting that the military has taught the college's class syllabus. I do not think it fair that any college be required to accept course credit of any other institution, given that the degree that would be received, would be theirs, and their name is on the line. If I could say it another way...it would be like if I created a tool, then took it to Sears, and then demanded that they put it into their inventory as a Craftsman's tool. It is not reasonable to think that they would. It may be a great tool, but it is not a Craftsman. To take that a step back to the military, many of the medical fields require State Certificates in addition to the college training/classes. Many are not "degree producing" certificate programs, such as blood taking etc.

As for "truth is advertising" of the recruiters, I would approach that as a resolution that would be couched in a way that said something like, "As the military is under great change, it is particularly important that recruiters are kept up to date with the latest changes...etc..." As I have sworn in many troops since I moved here, I always ask the person being sworn what they have been promised. I am a firm believer that both parties have the responsibility to be both truthful and transparent in what they are offering and asking. Both are signing documents that should say what is promised. If you think about it, there are very few places of military training that offer "degrees." The service academies would be one example, but even that is a degree from the academy, and not of civilian college.

Your mentioned the GI Bill. There is a new one in place. If you need more personal help with what your benefits are, there should be a county office called "Veteran Service Office" in your area. They are just like the old Personnel Action Centers. They are a wonderful resource for discovering what benefits you are entitled to, as well as finding out about unique programs in your area.

Bottom Line: You will have to decide for yourself which direction you want to go with these issues. If you join a local post, they can help you in the wording of any resolution you might want to have voted on. If it passes your local area it is forwarded up through the channels just like the military does. Some of your general issues with education should probably be left in the political/civilian side of the issue. You will need to get to know your local political representatives.

Hope this helps,
Sincerely,
(The American Legion Departmetn of California Mentor to Student Veterans)

New Guide Helps Nonprofit Professionals

2009-03-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

During the first three weeks of 2009, hundreds of nonprofit professionals participated in a resolutions poll or shared their resolutions for 2009 through Convio's website, online community and industry blogs. The poll answers along with other shared insight was used to create the first ever Nonprofit Resolutions Guide from Convio. The Guide is available for free at www.convio.com/resolve2009

Results of the poll show that constituent empowerment, integrated channels and technology resolutions are top priorities in 2009:

30 percent of participants resolve to empower supporters to help tell their story, reach new people and raise funds,
20 percent want to better integrate traditional and online campaigns, and
19 percent want to better use technology to turn ideas into action.
These results, combined with analysis of feedback from Convio's Connection Café blog (www.connectioncafe.com) and more than one dozen industry bloggers who participated in the online discussion led to development of the Guide to help nonprofits keep their resolutions. Each section of the Guide focuses on key resolutions with insight and tips on how to maintain momentum throughout the year. Readers will also find related success stories from other nonprofit organizations and information pulled from some of the best ideas shared in Convio's online community over the past year.

Download the Guide and Join the Discussion

The Resolutions Guide is available immediately as a free download at www.convio.com/resolve2009

The nonprofit community is invited to continue sharing ideas, insight and obstacles to successfully using technology to drive results and support mission-critical needs, by visiting any of the participating blogs and/or linking their own posts to them:

A View from Judi Sohn - http://www.momathome.com/ - Judi Sohn

Beaconfire Wire - http://beaconfire.com/blog/ - Michael Cervino

Beth's Blog - http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/ - Beth Kanter

Connection Café - http://www.connectioncafe.com - Jordan Viator and Convio blog team

Donor Power Blog - http://www.donorpowerblog.com/donor_power_blog - Jeff Brooks

Everyday Giving - http://everydaygiving.typepad.com/ - Roger Carr

FI Space - http://www.fispace.org/ - David Neff

Mobile Commons - http://mcommons.com/blog/ - Matt Wilson

NTEN Blog - http://www.nten.org/blog - Holly Ross, Nonprofit Technology Exchange Network

Social Actions Blog - www.blog.socialactions.com Tech Soup - www.blog.techsoup.org

Tech Soup - www.blog.techsoup.org - Robert L. Weiner

Robert L. Weiner Blog - www.rlweiner.com/blog - Robert L. Weiner TREW Marketing Spotlight - - Wendy Covey

About Convio
Convio is the leading provider of on-demand constituent relationship management (CRM) software and services that give nonprofit organizations a better way to inspire and mobilize people to support their organization. The company's online marketing suite offers integrated software for fundraising, advocacy, events, email marketing and Web content management, and its CRM system, Convio Common Ground, helps organizations efficiently track and manage all interactions with supporters. All Convio products are delivered through the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and are backed by a portfolio of best-in-class consulting and support services and a network of partners who provide value-added services and applications focused on the unique needs of nonprofit organizations.

Convio clients include nonprofit organizations, Institutions of Higher Education, Associations and Faith-based organizations around the world such as American Red Cross, American Diabetes Association, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Humane Society of the United States, Easter Seals, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, Sierra Club, and National Public Radio. For more information, please visit www.convio.com

Placecam

2009-02-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

In addition to my duties as Dept Commander, I edit the Smoke Signals, the bi-monthly newsletter of Chief Joseph Post 135. I have started using Placecam to work with my proof reader to make corrections on the paper. It saves a few trips back and forth between our houses. I would highly recommend Departments look in to using Placecam.

2009-02-06T10:45:00.001-08:00

Photo Album as a Community Project

2009-01-27T13:05:00.000-08:00

Building a photo history for the department is an exciting but daunting project. One way is to have members send you the photos, and then add them to the album. Getting the photos is probably the easiest part. The hard part is getting the story behind the photo. For a whole department, this could be an overwhelming task.

We love to look at photos, and share our photos. Sharing is the key word. It is the basis of such sites as Google's Picasa, or Yahoo's Flickr. What these sites lack is an easy means for creating a community album, and for that community album to be a part of the Department's Web site.

While I had the idea for awhile, I wasn't sure how to implement it. At our son's wedding last December, I floated the idea of creating a domain name for the kids wedding album and providing one place for everyone to share their pictures. Within a week after the wedding, there were almost 1,000 photos in the album. If it works for a wedding, why not a department's history?

The software is Gallery 2, and available at my price - free. Installing the software is easy, configuring all the options takes awhile. After doing the wedding album, it was much easier. If you are doing it the first time, it takes a few days of experimenting to find out how the options work.

It really helps to have a few photos to get started. Once I created the basic structure for albums, the next step is to get more people involved. For example, the Department Historian has an account, the Department Commander has an account. They have their own albums for which they are the owner and for which they are responsibile for adding photos and building their part of the history. The initial photo album is not big, but it is a start.

The next step is to get other officers, program chairmen, and posts involved. This is the part that takes more time. A project takes time and effort to build. It takes promotion, and more promotion. As it builds critical mass, it gets easier. At least, the fantasy is that it gets easier. At this point my job is to promote, administer, mentor, and more promotion.

Community projects like the photo album allow others to be involved in the Web site. It gets more visitors to the site. It becomes a community project, and not an individual project. Only time will tell how this works.

Bill Anderson
Webmaster
American Legion of Montana

Static versus Dynamic Pages

2009-01-20T04:05:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, you hear that a Website is static, while a Web Application is dynamic. This distinction refers to how the pages are generated versus the content. Nor, does it refer to the timeliness of the information.

Anyone who works with the Web knows that the content must be current and it must offer something new to have repeat visitors. If a visitor sees an entry whose data has long passed, it is an immediate clue that the information on the site is not current. The side could is static, in one sense of the term, in that it is not timely.

The content of the site can be timely, and it can change, and still use static Web pages. If the content of a page is a fixed document, it is a static page. It does not make any difference whether it is written in HTML, DHTML, XHTML, because the content of the page is static. For many pages, this is the best solution. There are pages whose only change occurs when the information on the page is no longer timely.

A dynamic page is a generated page, using a language such as Perl, PHP, Java, or Ruby on Rails. The content of these pages change depending on the information requested. When delivering dynamic content, you often have a back-end database that provides the content.

On the mtlegion.org Website, dynamic content appears in a number of different Web Applications. I call them Web Applications because the number of PHP pages is small compared to the number of different pages delivered. For example, the Posts page only invokes two scripts. One for district information and one for post information. The district script only invokes the post script or the officer information script. The post script can inoke the officer information script. The entire department roster runs off of three scripts that invoke the same officer information script. When any change is made, it is made to the database, and every script automatically generates the new information. With dynamically generated pages, I can now add links to the chairpersons on the program pages, and not worry about changing those pages if the chairperson changes. Only the database changes.

The membership services section follows the same rules. Every post goes through the same scripts. What is offered as a service is defined in a database. If a post wants a dffierent level of service, it only takes one change to the database, and all generated pages change.

If any contact information changes for a post. It only requires a change to the database, and all pages change.

The visitor never sees the underlying code. It just makes maintenace and integration of the Web pages a lot easier.

Bill Anderson
Webmaster
American Legion of Montana

Forms and More Forms

2009-01-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

I just finished adding all the forms required by Posts and Legion Members to out Web site. It was a challenging project, as I have yet to find a source of National forms in PDF or Microsoft Word format. Without the source documents for many forms, I simply had to scan the forms. The PDF files resulting from scanned forms are much larger than those generated from source documents.

Making the forms available on the Web site makes them more quickly available, and reduces the postage cost for sending out forms. However, it is a long way from the ideal solution.

When we talk about using technology, we often forget the more mundane topics. Yet,, for everyday functioning of an organization, forms just as important, if not more so, than social networking. While computers do a great job of generating paper, they can also be used to save trees and reduce costs.

When available, I also made the Microsoft Word version of the form available. Yet, both the Word document and the PDF document can be improved. With both formats, a form can be designed to fill-in fields. For example, PDF has the capability to have fill-in fields. The resulting PDF file can then be send back to the Department without ever have to print and mail the form. Email could replace the FAX, saving paper in the process.

Ideally, every form would be a fill-in the fields type of document, which is electronically submitted. If we get real fancy, we can even complete the form on-line. All this is possible with today's technology. It would be both environmentally friendly and cost effective. In the meantime, it sure would be nice to have the source documents of National forms, and not just printed forms.

Bill Anderson
Webmaster
American Legion of Montana

The American Legion and the GI Bill

2008-12-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

Please forward and share this video

National Grassroots Conference

2008-12-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

Good morning to all departments of the Western Region.

First I want to thank you for your dedicated work in membership. We continue to hold a competitive edge over our Southern Region brothers and sisters in terms of membership. We still have a ways to go to be the leader of the pack, but I sincerely believe the West is the Best, and will continue to support you. Please feel free to contact me if you should need anything at all.

I also want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May the new year bring you renewed passion for the world’s greatest and largest Veteran Service Organization.

Allow me to be a bit philosophical for the moment: it was taught to me that no matter of our success, we shall continue to learn and better ourselves in whatever our endeavors maybe. With that said, there is a wonderful upcoming opportunity for all of us to sharpen our skills and rejuvenate our minds.

This year’s National Grassroots Conference will be February 4-7, 2009 - Renaissance Vinoy Resort & Golf Club - St. Petersburg, FL. There are a range of topics you may find interesting. Such as:

- (Re)Building Your Grassroots Program
- How to Write Effective Messages
- Ethics & Transparency in Grassroots
- Finding & Training Your Key Contacts
- Speed Networking
- Web 2.0/Social Media Crash Course
- Grassroots and Diversity
- Effectively Involving Your Senior Management
- Integrating CSR and Grassroots Strategies
- Prioritizing Issues and Managing Demands
- Association Grassroots Management
- Grassroots Communication
- Embracing Social Media

As you can see, there is something for everyone there. I have always heard that volunteer management is difficult, and our most profound challenge is to motivate and utilize our dedicated workers effectively. I believe this conference will give you some ideas and help you with your work at the department level.

To view a complete agenda please go to http://pac.org/conferences/grassroots/agenda
You can also visit http://pac.org/conferences/grassroots/registration for registration information. Note: we are not a member of the Public Affairs Council and will have to pay the non-member registration fee if attending.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Eligiblity question:

2008-12-15T12:51:00.000-08:00

I received an email today regarding the eligibility of Lebanon and Grenada veterans. apparently there are some confusions... here is my reply, with some research, i think will benefit you in case you are being asked the same questions...

Here is the original message:

"Maybe I am looking in the wrong areas but when I look for eligibility for the Grenada area, it either don't show up or I see a statement such as "Congress has not enacted legislation that would make the periods covering the 1983-1984 Lebanon crisis or the invasions of Grenada and Panama wartime service.92". Can you link me to something or send me a congress act which declares this as a wartime? I guess I am one of them stubborn ones that just have to see it in writing somewhere. You attention to this is appreciated. ....And "Merry Christmas" to You and all your Staff!"

In effect, Lebanon and Grenada are not Congressionally declared wars. Since the Constitution of the United States divides the war powers of the federal government between the Executive and Legislative branches: the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces (Article II, section 2), while Congress has the power to make declarations of war, and to raise and support the armed forces (Article I, section 8). Over time, questions arose as to the extent of the President's authority to deploy U.S. armed forces into hostile situations abroad without a declaration of war or some other form of Congressional approval. Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to address these concerns and provide a set of procedures for both the President and Congress to follow in situations where the introduction of U.S. forces abroad could lead to their involvement in armed conflict.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a United States federal law providing that the President can send U.S. armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or if the United States is already under attack or serious threat. The War Powers Resolution requires that the president notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war.

After Republican President Ronald W. Reagan dispatched U.S. Marines to Lebanon in 1982, he reported to Congress, along the lines mandated in the War Powers Act. With a Republican majority in the Senate but a substantial Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, Reagan's military initiative encountered considerable opposition in Congress, resulting in persistent challenges to the deployment of troops in Beirut. The congressional challenges, motivated primarily by narrowly partisan political considerations, weakened and undermined the Reagan Presidency's negotiating position with Syria and with the various warring political factions in Lebanon, thereby making the situation in which the Marines were involved a whole lot more dangerous than it would been in the absence of congressional challenges.

In late 1983, however, congressional leaders worked out a compromise authorizing the President to keep the Marines in Lebanon for a period of eighteen months. Approved by the two houses of Congress, the compromise was sent to the President for his signature.

In other military actions initiated by President Reagan, he proceeded without invoking the War Powers Act and, in general, acted as if his military initiatives did not require congressional authorization in advance. A notable example was the U.S. invasion of Grenada on October 25, 1983. Seeing a serious threat to American national interests in the southern Caribbean region, Regan had the National Security Council and Joint Chiefs of Staff draw up a plan for the U.S. military operation in Grenada, explained the situation to Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, and informed him of the presidential decision that had already been made, as regards what was to be done about the situation. Speaker O'Neill, top leader of the overwhelming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, indicated that, if the Grenada mission turned sour, Congress would not accept responsibility for the fiasco, that responsibility for the disaster (and its attendant political costs) would be borne either by the President alone or by the President and the Republican Party. Accepting responsibility for the operation, Reagan sent U.S. military forces to Grenada, effecting liberation of the small island nation from the Marxist-Leninist (Communist), pro-Cuban dictatorship that had been established through a coup d'etat.

Shortly after the American invasion of Grenada had begun, all resistance was overcome, since the greater part of the Grenadan population welcomed the invading forces as liberators. A rapid sequence of events ensued: U.S. citizens were safely evacuated from the island, the Cuban agents and so called "construction workers" (in reality, heavily armed and well trained paramilitary personnel) were expelled, the despotic Marxist- Leninist regime was overthrown, and a political coalition committed to democratic elections and more favorably disposed toward American interests was allowed to assume governing authority. Faced with a fait accompli, the U.S. Congress, after the fact, applied the War Powers Act, declining to grant an extension to the 60-day time limit and, in effect, requiring U.S. military forces to be removed from Grenada no later than December 25, 1983. However, the U.S. troops did not leave Grenada until June, 1985.

Therefore, the mechanism was there to enact the War Powers Resolution to justify Lebanon and Grenada, President Regan, however, did not fulfill his executive duties in compliance with Congress to resolve the conflict.

The Department of VA at this time does not recognize Servicemembers of this conflict to be eligible for wartime benefits. Therefore, The American Legion in support of our fellow veterans and recognizing their sacrifices, at the 19th Convention, passed a resolution to recognize operations in these countries. Please visit http://www.legion.org/documents/resolutions/08n124.pdf for review of this resolution.

To conclude, please keep in mind that The American Legion, although federally chartered, is a grassroots organization guided by the collective wisdoms of our membership. While our dates of eligibility reflects Congressionally declared period of war, it is not strictly bounded by congressional actions. Our eligibility dates are solely determined by our membership, amended at times to reflect the need for service to our fellow veterans. Under these conditions, The American Legion has seen fit to expand our eligibility dates to those veterans thereby ensuring their protection under civil engagements.

New GI Bill info

2008-12-15T10:29:00.000-08:00

The American Legion's new GI Bill website now has an interactive function, a map of state by state benefits... you can click on teh map and see if there are any specific benefits you are entitled as a veteran other than the GI Bill.

click here to learn more

ProCam (aka PlaceCam) review

2008-12-09T06:31:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I sat in on The American Legion Department of Colorado’s regular Monday night ProCam (formally known as PlaceCam) meeting…
The meeting was hosted at 6:30 Mountain Time, 8:30 Eastern Standard Time.
Meeting was hosted by The American Legion Department of Colorado Commander, Gar Williams, from a remote location (hotel in KY). Participants included Past National Commander Tom Bock, Department Vice Commander Frank McCurdy, Department Adjutant Pat Smith, Robb Smith, Tony DuMosch, James Gates, James Park, Larry Decker…

Including myself, there are 10 users online for video conference… the meeting took off with some glitches, with this many users the video feeds acted funny… Larry wasn’t able to log on since he was located in a hotel with unstable internet connection, and when he is online, his video feed was frozen. Commander Gar also dialed-in from a hotel, but his connection seemed fine and he was able to conduct the meeting for the most part, until his video feed also crashed…
For those of us using a dedicated high speed connection, we had very little problems with the video… in fact, some of our videos were smooth and of solid quality…

Over all, it took us 30 minutes to just get set up for everyone to log on, and hold a steady connection… we eventually had to let Larry call from a cell phone, but he was able to relate his message…

It was refreshing to be able to attending a department meeting from the comfort of my home, however, observing many of the glitches and troubles with log-on, I believe ProCam (aka PlaceCam) still has a long way to go from being a solid product… I encourage you all to use it and give me feedback on how your experiences goes… you can download a copy of this and register for use at http://www.legion.networkcb.com/

To clarify the difference between the new VetCam and ProCam… VetCam is for every legionnaire to use and for all servicemembers and their families… it only allows (MAX) three users to interact at once… so you are only able to call two others… however, there is no download for VetCam and it has minimum user interface so there are no significant bugs at this moment we have noticed…

With ProCam, it is offered to post, district, and departments as a meeting tool… it is suppose to be able to carry more than 10 users all at once, but we have noticed that anything more than five or seven users, depending on your connection, things slow down quite a bit… also if everyone is not using a headphone, echo is a hug problem…

That’s it for now…

COMMUNICATION SURVEY

2008-12-09T06:14:00.001-08:00

If you have a second, please take this survey... it's a communication audit conducted by the national headuqarters...

thank you

CLICK HERE

Web users' privacy and security

2008-12-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

From Bill's last post, i feel that we should blog a little bit about some standard web user inforamtion to protect our user's privacy and security... i have also included some American Legion social networks in the blog, (you can click on the blue links to visit TAL myspace, facebook, and flickr accounts...)

Website security is critical to the protection of our members’ privacy. There are a lot of ‘bots’ out there doing massive crawls searching and tapping and extracting information from servers, remote hosts, proxies, etc., and using the information for future spam emails…
That is why when your post or department enter into the social networks, such as MySpace, Facebook, or Flickr (a photo sharing site), you may want to consider the following security measures:
- Do not input your actual birthday… with a name and birthday, I can find most of the relevant information on you from various search engines and list servers. With that information, I can socially engineer a situation to obtain your SSN… that’s bad since with these information, I can now apply a credit card in your name… so DO NOT use your real birthday!!!
- Do not input your address or actual phone numbers… there are a lot of crawl-bots on the web that identifies these information, and capture them and turn it over to a list server for direct solicitation purposes… unless you want to get mail and emails about Viagra, you do not want to put your contact information down… if you do please make sure it is set to private.
- You may want to consider setting up a free email just to handle all registration online… a email is free from hotmail.com or google.com
- If you are technological savvy, you can consider an OpenID as a source of your virtual identity… OpenID requires no personal information, but also keeps track of your credentials online so you do not have to sign up for a lot of random useless services… just google the word Open ID and you should be able to find out more…

Review Traffic Statistics

2008-12-07T04:38:00.000-08:00

Every week, I review the traffic statistics for our Department's Website. The traffic statistics are one tool for reviewing how well the site is serving the community. I study what pages people visit the most, which tells me what they want. It also means these pages need to hold the attention of the visitor, and bring them pack to the site.
I also look at the search engine results, to see what visitors want to find. It is a clue as to areas of improvement. For example, there a number searches for baseball. I also look at referrer statistics, as they tell me what pages are important to other sites. For example, our site has a number of links to our Highway Fatality Marker program.

The statistics tell a story. We just need to read the story. When reading the story, I also look for potential security problems. This morning I noticed something I had not seen before on our site. There were search patterns that were attempting to harvest email address.

Protecting the site and the data on the site is one of my hot buttons. As part of an on-line membership project, I have been building a MySQL database for contact information. This database is not accessible from a remote site. I am moving in the direction of dynamically generating all rosters and post information from this database. Consequently, none of the pages on the site will actually contain any contact information. All such information will be dynamically generated. Furthermore, it will take two or three clicks before the actual contact information appears.

Making our sites better and safer is a never ending task.

Bill Anderson
WebMaster
American Legion of Montana

Major Themes from the NALC Survey

2008-12-02T05:24:00.001-08:00

Recently The American Legion conducted a short survey... here are some of the answers...

What do you tell others when they ask you about your membership in The American Legion?

I am a member of “largest and best” organization for U.S. veterans of war time
I describe the many programs and interactions with the community
I am a part of an organizations for veterans, that helps other veterans and builds relationships with veterans

What do you value most about your membership in The American Legion?

Making a difference in the lives of veterans
Building comradeship with other members
Helping the community through Legion programs

What led you to join The American Legion in the first place?

Someone asked me to join
Sought a sense of fellowship and belonging
Family history
Wanted to give back to the veterans and community

Based upon your own experiences, what do members at the local, post level think or say about The American Legion?

They worry about the increasing age of membership, remember the “good old days”
They hold the organization in high regard
They value the contributions they make to the community and the support they provide for one another
They want more interaction and direction from the top

Based upon your own observations, what do others in the local community – non-members – think or say about The American Legion?

·The people who know about the Legion and its programs love it and appreciate all that they do
·The people who don’t know about the Legion believe it is a place for “old guys to drink”
·Many people don’t know the American Legion exists

Thinking of The American Legion’s vision for a strong America:

● Strong National Security
● Taking Care of Veterans
● Mentoring Youth
● Promoting Patriotism and Honor

How would you synthesize these four pillars of service into a single, simple paragraphthat explains the Legion’s reason for being? Assume you were writing this for a family member or friend to explain why you are a member of The American Legion.

·Several members described the American Legion as a family who supports each other and supports the four pillars.
·Several members mentioned the American Legion as a continued commitment and service to their country.
·Many members also listed their actions and activities which help fellow veterans, the youth, the community and the country.

Considering the future, what do you think are The American Legion’s three greatest opportunities for growth and recognition at the national level? At the local, post level?

Note: The major opportunities for national and local were often the same.
·Creating cyber posts
·Increasing advertising and public relations
·Increasing membership and membership involvement
·Reaching out to Vietnam veterans

If you have any additional questions please feel free to ask.

2008-11-24T09:48:00.001-08:00

There was a comment posted with regards to virtual posts... i thought that was a great point to discuss here so here are my two cents...

Virtual Post vs. Virtual Community

I recently became aware of many legionnaires, posts, districts, and departments wanting to test out the idea of a “virtual post”. Florida has actually put together one of these and you can visit one of them at http://post401.ning.com/

You can also visit the following virtual posts hosted on ning.com:

Colorado Department virtual community: http://colegion.ning.com/

DC Post 1 http://americanlegionpost1.ning.com/

And http://americanlegionpost133.ning.com/

There are a few things to remember when you are planning and executing a virtual post:

- It is not a virtual post alone. If you strictly focus your effort on reaching members online it will be difficult. If you combine your virtual tools with a visible community presence, your virtual post will be successful with a reinforced purpose from the grassroots activities your post carry… this is why we are encouraging these different virtual posts to carry visible initiatives to enhance their virtual outreach… DC post 1 has done poker games, bike rides, golf outings… this combined with their various user groups on ning, myspace, facebook, has help their membership to increase.
- Use your virtual post as a way to communicate and lead your members. This is a place where you can update your event calendars, let people know of post involvements in the community, solicit feedbacks, and drive discussions for your post… if your post lack a post home, you can also use the virtual tools to host meetings, contact your members etc…
- Be sure to keep your virtual post site updated frequently… if you post some information and leave it behind, no one will want to be part of it… here is a real life criticism for DC post 1: First impressions now that I’ve transferred in.

“24 hours later no welcome message, not even an automated welcome.
Looks like it was born September 2007 and died November 2007.
Last post in the forums was Nov 2007.
Last meeting was posted as being Dec 6th 2007. And I don’t have a clue how or where the meetings are held.
Post’s MySpace page was last logged into in May.
Total membership appears to be 23.

It’s almost like it doesn’t enjoy much support and is intentionally hidden as it has no mention on National website and isn’t even listed in the post directory. I’m waiting for responses to my e-mails and to see if I actually get a new membership card…stay tuned” --internet user
o From this you can see that even if you have a virtual post, communication is very important to get new members excited about your post…

to conclude, i recommend that you build a virtual post as a tool to help your actual post succeed... you have to build it with some tangable real life purpose.. Department of Colorado built their virtual post to anticipate the new GI Bill intatives and is attempting to combine virtual interactiosn with student veterans outreach.. that is only one of the many great ways to build and sustain a virtual presence for The American Legion

DD214

2008-11-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

click here for information on how to request a copy of your DD214

click here for information on how to locate a veteran, servicemember

click here for resource for veterans

Department Web Sites

2008-11-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

Since assuming the duties of WebMaster for American Legion of Montana, I have visited the Web sites of every department. There are two things that stand out:

The number of departments that do not have a Web site. We talk about reaching a younger generation of veterans, yet, we don't communicate in their prefered media. Today's generations views the Internet in the same way that our generation viewed newspapers. It their primary source of information.
In my tour of department Web sites, I noticed that many were static, and presented out-of-date information. In my view, this is like sitting in a Doctor's waiting room, looking at last year's Newsweek. Information changes, and the Web site needs to change to keep pace.

Am I satisfied with our department's Web site? I am never satisfied. It is growing and evolving every day. I will be more satisfied, once I complete my list of projects. Alas, for every item I take off the list, more join the list.

Bill Anderson
WebMaster
American Legion of Montana

setting the record...

2008-11-21T06:44:00.000-08:00

In the last 24 hours of launching W.R.I.T.E.S. I have received some feedbacks from departments unsure if this is for just leadership or for the entire membership of the western regions.

I wanted to remind everyone thinking along that line that the purpose of TAL W.R.I.T.E.S is to open dialogues and have transparent communication between all levels of leadership and volunteers. The purpose is to empower our leaders, our members, our volunteers with knowledge about the organization and its current initiatives as well as relevant technologies that can make their jobs easier…

So I encourage you to let everyone know about this and invite them to contribute… who knows… maybe a good idea from Idaho can help California with some of its challenges or vice versa…

So be open, be honest, share, and help each other to be successful…

Thank you sincerely,

jin

DMS 99

2008-11-19T10:40:00.001-08:00

There have been some questions regarding the test DMS members this year. As you know, the national headquarters is testing an inhouse DMS to cut cost. all new members solicited through this new DMS will be supressed from the department records. we are sending out the first welcome letter/email to encourage them to transfer to their local posts and bring a copy of their DD214 to verify their eligiblity. if they do not wish to transfer, then we keep them in the DMS99 HQpost and will try to retain them for one year. If you receive calls from individual indicating that they joined recently online or by mail, and you do not have records on them, then they are DMS99 members. Their memebrship card will say they belong to Post (your department code) 99... for example, if i joined online in California, then my card will say CA Post 5 99

let me know if you have any questions...

New GI Bill

2008-11-19T08:14:00.001-08:00

The American Legion launches the new GI Bill site: www.mygibill.org

this will help you with your student veteran outreaches

TroopTube

2008-11-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

www.trooptube.tv

this is a new site from Military One Source. it allows servicememebrs upload videos to share with others... you can create a free account and upload department videos for these servicememebrs to see. it is a free marketing opportunity.

The American Legion Department of Colorado Social Network aimed to serve student veterans

2008-11-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

Click here to find out more about Colorado's initiatives to build a social network connecting student veterans with legionnaires.

VetCam for Legionnaires and Servicemembers

2008-11-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

The American Legion launches VetCam, a free one-on-one video conferencing – to enable you to talk face-to-face with friends and family across town or overseas; one-on-one; or with several people at a time.
Members of The American Legion, as well as members of the United States Armed Forces (active duty, Reserve and National Guard), their families and friends, are welcome to use this complimentary technology to remain connected with those people most important to you.
Visit http://vetcam.ncbintl.com/ for more information.