I work as a UX designer, program manager, and general IT consultant to help non-profits that are making a real, positive difference in the world. This blog is one of the ways I give back to the community.
I've been getting photo canvases printed to beautify my living space, and I can't recommend CanvasPop highly enough for this.
Since I'm getting pretty large canvases made, I've been running the source images through an AI image upscaler first (I use ML Super Resolution in Pixelmator Pro). There are a bunch of others out there too (check out BigJPG), so choose one that works best for you.
AVG antivirus was annoying me. It kept trying to install and use its own VPN, which severely degraded my video call performance. I switched back to Avast on the recommendation of A-Vtest.org.
I donate to Internet Archive every year because it's such an amazing resource. Not only do they have the Wayback Machine for viewing historic snapshots of web sites, but they have a lot of other content too.
For many of the wildlife conservationists I support, they have to make do with older hardware for a lot longer than for-profit orgs. This can be a problem when needing to reinstall an older operating system.
But the Internet Archive hosts copies of these old installers! Here's High Sierra and El Capitan. And best of all, they support download via Torrent, which makes it so much more resilient when downloading large files over unreliable internet connections.
My Zoom app on macOS wasn't showing any of the icons or graphics in the app, which was a real problem when trying to use features like raise hand and reactions. The solution was simple. I deleted the app then re-downloaded and re-installed the app. You can get it from here:
QiFi is a great online tool that will generate a QR code from your WiFi network name and password. So instead of printing out the name and password—which requires people to manually enter it and is prone to user error—all they need to do is point a QR reader app at the code.
And for you security-minded folks, the site is all local code running, so the WiFi network name and password are never uploaded to the internet. For the truly paranoid, you can load the site, and then go offline to generate the QR code.
Usually neverssl.com works great for forcing the WiFi authentication page to come up. But not at the Holiday Inn Express I stayed at recently. I ended up entering the IP address for the local router, which brought up the auth page.
To find that address, I connected to the WiFi network, then looked at its DNS address. On a Mac, you can find it under:
System Preferences > Network > Wi-Fi > Advanced… > DNS
In my case, it was 192.168.128.1
Yours will likely start with 192.168. If all else fails, try one of these:
If you end up getting texts from an organization and you want to unsubscribe, all you need to do is reply to the message with a single word: stop.
Of course this only works for organizations that are following the law. There as some spammers out there who might not honor your request. Use the “block” feature on your phone for these numbers.
The standard deduction for US federal taxes is now a staggering $12,400. Few people who don’t have a mortgage will come close to reaching that value. But if you (or your donors) do fall into this category, there is a trick to maximizing the tax deduction—lumping 2 years worth of donations every other year, and then taking the standard deduction on alternate years.
This works best with a donor-advised fund, but it could also work without if you want to donate in early Jan one year and then late December the same year, which to your charities will still look like you are donating yearly.
The optimal value—where you receive the largest percentage increase in deduction—is at the standard donation (again, $12,400). But you still get benefits if you are on either side of that number. Of course once you hit ½ the standard deduction ($6,200), the gains disappear. [The chart below really should cap out at 0, since you would simply take the standard deduction each year at any given level below $6.,200.) And as you increase above it, the percentage gain falls off asymptotically.
A month ago I nearly quit Facebook altogether. But on further consideration, I realized that there was still value in it for keeping in touch with some friends and acquaintances in my life. So I focused my efforts on optimizing my experience for that, and that alone.
This means unfollowing nearly every non-friend organization, artist, musician, influencer, and brand I had mindlessly “liked” over the years. Here’s the page where you can do the same:
Next, I cleaned out left most groups I had joined, either turning off notifications, or leaving the group altogether. You can do both of these things in the ••• menu at the far right side of the header when viewing a group.
I also became be more selective with who I allow in my feed. I unfollowed (but remained friends) for many folks in the long tail of my friends list (available in the ••• menu in the upper-right of one of their posts), or even unfriended a few where I felt like—even if we had had a closer connection at one point—we don't have what I would consider a friendship at this moment.
Finally, I started making ample use of the “Hide post” option. Even for people I like, sometimes they get a bit… spammy with their postings. I have a family member whom I love dearly, but they post way too many links to political stories with no additional comment or manipulative memes (“I bet this won’t get one like or share” 🙄) and I just won’t tolerate those in my feed anymore.
And when you do all that, you know what happens? It’s no longer possible to doom scroll your news feed. When you are only viewing posts from a small group of people you actually like, you can legitimately get to the end. And that is a good feeling. 😊
Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro are my top recommendations for image editing apps. Sadly they are Mac-only. But the good news is Pixelmator Pro is on sale this week for only $28 (it’s usually $40). Even at $40 for Pro and $30 for standard, these are amazing deals for the functionality you get. So if you were thinking about potentially buying, now is a great time.
This is sad, but not surprising. For any of my readers who work in the developing world, beware of cheap smartphones from brands like Tecno and Alcatel. They might have malware preinstalled that steal your data and sign you up for paid services you never agreed to.
Very cool guerrilla fundraising idea for routing donations through sympathetic corporate employees to get their employer match, thus doubling the donation. I have to be honest—I only got serious about philanthropy when I realized how much money I was leaving on the table by not maxing out the employer match when I worked at Microsoft. There are a lot of companies that match in the range of $5–20k/year.
Blackbaud was already pretty low on the list of nonprofit CRM services I would recommend to people 11 other better options on (there are this crowdsourced list). This data breach—and more to the point Blackbaud’s untrustworthy response of paying the ransom—puts them solidly in the “do not use” category. If you are on Blackbaud now, I recommend starting the process of transferring your data over to another option ASAP.
There are many other good options out there, but LiveImpact continues to be my top recommendation. I just talked with my contact over at LiveImpact, and they told me that the team there will absolutely help migrate data over from any current system you use, including Blackbaud.
Note: I have no financial or personal stake in LiveImpact. I’ve just evaluated a lot of different services in my years of IT for nonprofits, and I think they are great.
For anything more than a few MB (a few images, documents etc.), I’m now leaning on WeTransfer to send files. It prevents them from cluttering up my mail storage, and it allows sending larger files—up to 2 GB—which allows for videos and larger archives.
For sending to people who have spotty internet service, I still do prefer to use Resilio Sync or some other BitTorrent-based technology. But WeTransfer is so much simpler and easier to use.
Any nonprofit that is no longer in the startup phase should absolutely be tapping its dedicated donor base to ask them to consider including a bequest in their estate planning. I just ran across the online service FreeWill.com which can help your donors set up a will and at the same time include a bequest in the will to your charity.
Full disclosure: I know nothing more about the service than what I read on their own site. I’ve never used it nor do I know anyone who has. So caveat emptor.
Finally! An elegant solution for sharing your free/busy calendar information with anyone in the world and allowing them to book events.
Calendly works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Exchange and iCloud. The premium version allows you to let people schedule different meeting lengths. But I find the free version works reasonably well. I use 60 minutes as my standard event duration, and then have a custom question on the form that allows people to indicate they want a shorter meeting.
This is a brilliant concept, and even better it’s free! Webcams built into laptops are very low quality and it shows. If you really want to make a great impression on your next video call (and let’s face it, there’s going to be a lot of that for a while to come) then check out Camo. Get the app for your phone, the companion app for your laptop, connect the two and use it as your video source in your video conferencing app.
I recently discovered Kanopy. It’s a great resource for movies, and a nice alternative (or supplement to) Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. You need to have an account with a local library (or educational institution), and they in turn need to have an affiliation with Kanopy.
I just streamed The Mask You Live In which I cannot recommend highly enough. Watch it with your family, but especially with your boys.
I volunteer for The Greater Sum—a capacity-building and granting foundation focused primarily on US-based health and human services organizations. They are running a virtual incubator for a cohort of of young, upcoming nonprofits this summer. I just presented this IT overview to them, and it was well-received. I hope others will find it valuable as well. Much of the content comes from the posts I’ve made here over the years, but it’s presented in an up-to-date, concise package.
I finally ditched Adobe Acrobat Pro (and all the other Adobe products) when they moved exclusively to a monthly/yearly subscription model. I recommend you do the same.
I do miss some of the features from Acrobat Pro, but I'm finding workarounds. For extracting text from an image, there are a bunch of tools out there, including online ones which don't require you to install an app. My current favorite is OCR.space.
It works great with the default settings, but has things you can tweak to get better results if necessary. It also supports multi-page documents, which surprisingly few of the services do.
In this new era where work from home and daily video conferencing is the norm, it's worthwhile investing a bit of extra time and effort to improve the video experience.
OBS Studio is a fantastic free, open-source app for mixing video on your computer. And with these plug-ins that let you route the output for OBS into nearly any video conferencing app (Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams…).
I set up a green screen, some umbrella lights and a tripod with a smartphone mount (see below). I use that to put in an appropriate background for my video calls and get pro-quality video. I also picked up the OBS iPhone camera app, and for $16 it's a fantastic way to get a high quality video signal into your computer.
I use Google Chrome as my primary browser (and you should too!). But I've also installed a lot of extension and tweaked a lot of settings so that sometimes things just don't work for me. I've been running into this lately with all the video conferencing I've been doing (what with the lockdown due to a global pandemic).
I know I can just create another profile in Chrome and use that, but I actually like having a separate dedicated app that I use for video conferencing that I can switch to/from using my OS app switcher.
I solved this by installing Google Chrome Canary. It's the cutting edge development build, so there is some risk that it might be more unstable than Chrome itself. But I've not had issues with that thus far.
4 years ago I recommended AVG for Mac anti-virus, and I am renewing that recommendation today. AV-Test—the source I trust for anti-virus software evaluations—gives them a perfect rating (as they do with 75% of the tools they tested). Digging into the details, AVG has minimal impact on performance, and best of all has a free version.
To make things easier, I recommend going with the same brand for PC, especially since AVG is a solid option. It's performance isn’t great, so I don't blame you if you want to choose a different one that has less performance impact, like Norton, BitDefender, or BullGuard. But it doesn't look like any of the free options fall into that category.
If you end up with a page that is stuck or endlessly trying to load when logging onto a WiFi network while traveling, it very well might be because of the way Internet security works these days. By going to http://neverssl.com, your browser can immediately connect without getting stuck on blocked security requests. If it sounds a bit sketchy, go ahead and read the text on the page itself. It sure beats the alternative.
I just created an email with some images that I wanted to be clickable links. Maybe it's me or some weird extension conflict in my browser, but I couldn't get it to work. If I just select the image and clicked the link button (or Ctrl+K), either the selection would go away, or the link dialog would come up, but wouldn't work.
I figured out a workaround. Add text to either side of the image (I used a space on both sides), then select the text plus the image. You can then link that whole selection to a URL. Then afterwards, delete the linked text (spaces) from either side of the image and you are left with just a linked image.
All of the wildlife conservation non-profits I support do extensive work in the field, whether it is working with the community or doing research. Standard consumer electronics don't stand up well to the harsh conditions. But rugged versions design for military or mining are too expensive for the budgets of these orgs.
As a compromise, I recommend getting a solid consumer tablet which you can then “ruggedize” with a case, screen protector, or even an underwater case. That plus one or more power banks will be cheaper than a specially designed rugged version. Use the extra money you save to get a backup tablet and swap out the case/protective gear if it fails.
Also as a reminder, the best way to get a decent deal on tablets (or anything really) is use Amazon Warehouse Deals or Blinq to buy open box returns. And get an Amazon Prime credit card for an additional 5% cash back on your purchases.
Also, you will need a license of YAMM on your personal Gmail account. The one on your corporate account won’t work.
But if you do get it working, here's a tip for including emoji in your subject line: create a stand-alone text subject and add the emoji to either the beginning or end (or both!) as decorations. That way if a recipient can’t see the emoji, they can at least read and understand the subject; but there might be boxes or ? in place of the emoji, so decide if that experience is ok for those recipients.
LinkedIn offering free space to Bay Area nonprofits. LinkedIn's community center, InCommon, is on the ground floor of its San Francisco building. LinkedIn is introducing InCommon, a 1,400-square-foot space in its downtown San Francisco building available free of charge to nonprofits, on Tuesday.
Unfortunately that’s all of the article I can see because it is quite ironically sequestered behind a paywall. So I won’t even bother linking to the offending site.
I’m reaching out to InCommon@linkedin.com (you can too for more details) and will post more when I hear back.
I recently helped a neighbor build out a custom gaming PC. After putting it all together, it initially wouldn't even power up. Chalk up a bad power supply for that. Once replaced though, the computer still wasn't showing anything on the display, despite all of the components hooked up and getting power. All of the debug LED lights on the motherboard were coming on and going out as expected.
So I finally used a jumper to clear the CMOS and that fixed it. The boot screen came up as expected.
I should note that one thing that initially threw me for a loop was that this particular motherboard—and many motherboards these days—do not have onboard graphics. So despite having video out connectors on the motherboard, you need a graphics card installed in order to get any video signal at all. At one point I had pulled all of the cards out of the case to try to isolate the problem.
Once I got Windows 10 installed, I had another problem with the WiFi card. Despite installing the latest drivers, it was not showing up at all in the Device Manager. I had to flash update the BIOS and also change the PCIe bus from 16x to 4x-4x-4x-4x. Hope this helps someone else.
I was trying to watch TV last night and during the show—sometimes in the span of only a few seconds—the picture brightness would dim and then brighten on its own. I dug around in the settings, searched the web, and finally figured it out.
On my TV—Vizio D32-D1—the setting is: Menu > Picture > More Picture > Backlight Control.Set Backlight Control to Off. There’s also Menu > Picture > Auto Brightness Control which I switch off as well for good measure.
I’m sure there are similar settings on other Vizio models, or even other brands of TV. Look for a setting named Ambient Light Sensor, Smart Dimming, Zone Dimming, or something along those lines.
Fixed width media should never be in your email/web content. I previously blogged about responsive images, and here is a technique for embedding responsive videos, and even more content including a generic frame which could contain anything.
Just go to Embed Responsively and paste in the URL to the content you want to embed. It will generate the HTML source code that you can simply copy and paste into your content. Easy!
A friend and colleague who uses a Mac just had problems with his Mac Photos app library. First, it's frustrating in this day and age that software still can't be more resilient against such corruption. But I digress.
Of course if that doesn't work, you're going to have to recover the photos manually and start over with a brand new library. (Sorry 😞) To recover the photos from your library:
Quit Photos if it is running
Make a current backup so you can recover to this state should anything go awry
Go to the Pictures folder in your Home folder. (Click Go -> Home in the Finder menu, then open Pictures)
Right click on the Photos Library and click Show Package Contents
Copy the Masters folder out to a safe location (an external hard drive if you don't have space on your built in storage)
You may need to repeat steps 3–5 for the iPhoto Library if you have one as well; that will contain any older photos from before the Photos app existed
Delete the Library (or Libraries)
Launch Photos
Drag the Masters folder into Photos to import the photos back in
And whatever you do, don't go deleting any old iPhoto library on your system. As a part of the migration from iPhoto to Photos app, the developers chose to simply link to the photos already in the old library while adding photos to a new Photos Library. Super confusing, I know. But if you do delete the old library, you will lose those old photos.
HEIC is definitely a more efficient format for photos (and this is how the iPhone stores them now), but not all systems support it. I've found the quickest and easiest way to convert HEIC to JPEG on Mac is to create a droplet app using Automator.
Open Automator
Create a new Application
Search for "change type"
Drag the item for change type of images over to the workflow section on the right (if there is more than one, drag the one with the Preview icon over)
Save
Name it whatever you want like HEIC to JPEG
You might want to drag it into your Dock for easy access. Now just drag any number of HEIC images over onto the icon and they will be converted to JPEG.
I previously recommended FakeSpot, then switched to Review Meta. Now that both have Chrome browser extensions, I recommend using both. I find it especially helpful when shopping for third party refills for name-brand items: printer ink, replacement air filters, and replacement parts for vacuum and mopping robots (of which I am now a huge fan 😀)
These days given how pervasive smartphone usage is, it’s inevitable that at some point you—or someone you know—is going to crack a screen and need to have it replaced. It happened to me recently with my iPhone 8; and it was my 3rd in the 10+ years I’ve owned an iPhone.
For the iPhone 8, the official Apple price is $150. I found 3rd party repair shops (via Yelp) who will install an Apple OEM screen for $120. I ended up going with with a third party screen for $80.
You get what you pay for. The colors are definitely less saturated than on the OEM screen. I noticed it immediately when I picked up my phone and tested it at the repair shop. It’s almost as if I have a security screen protector on it that prevents people from seeing the screen when looking at it obliquely from thee side. I also noticed after a few days that the battery was draining faster with the 3rd party screen than it did with the original one.
Also the 3D Touch feature no longer worked for me. Thankfully the guys at the shop were cool about it. They tried to repair it and when that didn’t work, they offered to install a proper Apple OEM screen for me. (I half suspect these 3rd party screens don’t even support 3D Touch and most people who get the cheap repair done either don’t notice or don’t care.)
Bottom line: if I had to do it over again I’d definitely pay the extra money go with an OEM screen replacement. I look at this screen for several hours every day and it's worth it not to have that nagging feeling in the back of my head always that the display isn't as bright, sharp and saturated as it could be.
I’m pretty sure the 3rd party shop installation will work as well as the Apple Store, so it is possible to save a bit of money on the labor. But I think next time around I’ll go for the AppleCare. If nothing else, you can always turn in the phone near the end of the 2 year coverage and for $30 you can get a a new screen and battery.
Pretty amazing, right? I saw a demo of this at a community event I attended in Westgate, Kenya last year. And I realize something like this doesn't directly aid in wildlife conservation. But if conservation orgs provide resources such as clean water to the community with the understanding that they will in turn help with the org’s conservation mission, I believe that is the best way forward for long-term, sustainable community-based conservation.
I just started a thread on the WildLabs forum about when low-tech solutions outperform high-tech alternatives. I mention the practice of painting eyes on the rumps of cattle to trick predators into thinking the animal is looking at them (although I can't readily find any follow up data on how well that is performing). And there is livestock guard animals—such as The Livestock Guard Dog program at Cheetah Conservation Botswana which is one of their most cost-effective tools to aid in cheetah (and other predator) conservation.
So this was annoying: an ASUS laptop that I procured for a nonprofit stopped working on battery power. Previously we solved it by simply uninstalling all the drivers under Batteries in the Windows Device Manager (as outlined in this article). But this time that didn't work. I actually had to crack open the laptop itself, pull out the battery, and then reseat it.
Even more annoying is that the ribbon connector for the track bad is very finicky, so getting it reseated so that the trackpad still works proved to be as much of a hassle as reseting the laptop’s power management system.
While Mr. Hyatt’s invention didn’t have the desired properties to replace ivory in billiard balls, it did kick off the age of plastics. And it found a use in places where ivory had also typically been used previously: combs, buttons, collars and other fashion products. And it led other inventors to experiment with plastic materials, including Leo Baekeland who developed Bakelite in 1907, which was a superior material (cheaper, more consistent, and higher quality) and finally supplanted ivory as the preferred material in billiard balls.
A promotional pamphlet for the new material by the Albany Billiard Ball Company proclaimed (and rightfully so), “As petroleum came to the relief of the whale, so too has celluloid given the elephant, the tortoise, and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts; and it will no longer be necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer.”
So the Windows 10 built in software update seems to do well getting smaller updates, but it doesn't always pull down and install the big ones (like the most recent Windows 181o update from October 2018. Hence the numbering scheme they use.)
What you'll want to do is download the Windows 10 Update Assistant. That tool will force the latest big version of Windows to be downloaded and then installed on your PC.
If you are going into a place where there isn't fast internet, or if you just have several PCs you need to update, I recommend creating a USB installer using the Windows Media Creation Tool, which is available on Microsoft's Windows 10 disc image (ISO) download page.
Finally I encourage you to go into the installed apps page in Settings and uninstall pretty much all of the junk that you can from there. Both Windows and the PC manufacturer have put a lot of crap on the computer by default (OneDrive, games, bloatware from the manufacturer etc). The only thing I strongly encourage you not to remove is any WiFi/wireless driver you see in the list. Anything else is ok to uninstall as the computer will reinstall it if it is truly necessary for your computer.
OK, I know this is pretty far afield from IT, but it does qualify as technology that can seriously help wildlife conservation groups out there.
One common scenario in human-wildlife conflict (HWC) ocurs in livestock-herding communities living at the edges or even amongst wild carnivore ranges. If the livestock are not managed well, wild carnivores can take advantage of an easy meal of a domesticated goat, sheep, or even calf. Sometimes it's just a one-time act of convenience; after all, wild carnivores do have a preference for the taste of their particular prey animal. But sometimes the wild carnivore can get in the habit of taking livestock. Once this happens, options are limited. Relocation isn't that effective: 50% success at best. And of course sometimes the community will take things into their own hands and kill the predators.
But another solution is conditioned taste aversion. It involves chasing the predator(s) off the animal they killed and lacing the carcass with a compound such as thiabendazole, levamisole, or lithium chloride. If the predator comes back to eat the animal, the compound will make them nauseous and immediately condition them to avoid that particular animal in the future.
Wildlife Conservation Network—my previous non-profit employer—updated their web site last year. I only just noticed that they also changed the URL for their RSS news feed. Now I realize I’m one of less than a dozen people who probably still use a news reader to consume WCN news, but just in case anyone is searching the web for this info, the new URL is:
A friend of mine who is on the board of The Greater Sum recommends Giving Assistant over Amazon Smile. It works with thousands of online stores including eBay, Macys, and Home Depot, and it generates on average about 3% (vs ½% for Amazon Smile). Granted, ½% is better than nothing so I don't see a reason to give up Amazon Smile. But definitely get your most passionate supporters to sign up for Giving Assistant. The downside is that it requires all ad blockers be disabled. 😕
Amazon Smile is a program that allows Amazon shoppers to designate a certain 501(c)(3) non-profit and have ½% of their purchases go to that org. It’s certainly a nice sentiment, but there are a few things wrong with it:
People need to remember to go to smile.amazon.com in order for it to work. If they forget and order on the regular Amazon site, the non-profit won't get the money.
Amazon is the entity making the donation, so they get the tax credit for it and the non-profit only sees Amazon as the donor. No matter how much a particular person generates through Smile, the non-profit will never know their name or magnitude of their contribution.
The savvy non-profit is a member of the Amazon Affiliate program, and they encourage their supporters to use their affiliate ID rather than Smile. It will generate nearly 10✕ the money for your org.
To be sure that every single order they make benefits you, you should create a help page that shows them exactly how to install an Amazon affiliate extension for their browser (like these for Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari) and add your org’s affiliate code.
Update: I’ve learned that if Amazon feels you are earning "too much" from your affiliate link, or if you are marketing it too heavily, Amazon can cancel your affiliate account. Best bet is to judiciously reach out to a few donors and get them to use your affiliate link, but for the masses push the Smile program.
Many have tried to fix the problem of dirty, unhealthy, and unsustainable cooking fires used by so many people around the world. This article does a good job of summarizing the efforts to date as either too expensive to be sustainable, or too cheap to be reliable.
Inyenyeri—a company in Rwanda—is trying to change that by moving to the razor/blades model of giving away a high-quality stove (the mimi moto) and charging for the fuel it burns. It's a much better model for their market as it requires no large initial capital expenditure to get started. And they even have a firewood trade-in program, and the wood they receive can then be turned into pellets that burn with 2–3✕ efficiency compared to firewood.
There are still growing pains, the biggest of which is getting a large, reliable supply chain going for the pellets. I hope they have enough capital runway to get there. I'd love to seem them succeed in Rwanda so they can expand to other countries.