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June 23, 2007

Web Tools for Citizen Science Organizations

While at the conference, it's become clear that a directory of cool web tools might be helpful. Here's a number of free and low-cost tools available online that can be helpful for citizen science groups, especially for building community. Please add your own suggestions to the comments!

Docs and Photos

• Flickr - THE photo sharing service; includes an API for accessing photos, so you want to look at this before going down the long hard road of bulding a photo uploading system of your own. Check out and join the Citizen Science Group on Flickr to see one way of sharing files.
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets - free online software for creating documents and spreadsheets; allows you to give others access for editing documents collaboratively.
• What is a Wiki - brief introduction to Wikis. A wiki is a collection of web pages where users can edit and create pages themselves. Wikipedia, a user-driven online encyclopedia, is an example of a huge wiki. Here's the Wikipedia page on wikis.

Communication and Project Management

• WordPress - blogging software (for creating weblogs). If you aren't already using some other system, consider using WordPress...free, open source software with a strong community behind it. (CitizenSci.com is not currently running on WordPress, but will be in the near future),
• Yahoo Groups - use this if you just want to set up a basic discussion group. Allows users to choose how often they'll receive emails (when sent, daily digest, or read on the web only) and allows several moderation and membership options.
• Google Groups - very similar to Yahoo Groups.
• Del.icio.us - (Pronounced "delicious") Social bookmarking software. Allows you to create bookmarks and tag them with keywords and descriptive text, then share them with others. Would be an interesting way to collect bookmarks of interesting sites. I maintain a del.icio.us account for my CritterGeek.com site and you can see a list of those bookmarks here.
• Evite - Evite is useful if you want to host and event and get RSVP's.
• Basecamp - hosted project management software. Use this if you have a specific project with milestones, need to share files, create to-do lists, and have discussions around these things. Much easier to use and much more appropriate for most small projects than a full-fledged software package like MS Project.

Marketing and Physical Collateral

• Cafe Press - print-on-demand tshirts, bags, hats, stickers, and other items. Upload your artwork and create a variety of items with it, set up a free store front, and then people can buy exactly the items they want (and you don't have to deal with collecting money, shipping, etc.). You have an option to add an amount to items so you could raise funds, but the real value is in giving your volunteers a way to proclaim their identity as a member of your group. (Here's an example of shirts our hawk watch team made one year.
• Moo Cards - Moo cards allow you to use your Flickr photos to create lovely little business cards. They're launching stickers later this month also.
• GotLogos - for $25 you can get a basic web logo created for your project. The quality of logos is very good for this price.
• LuLu - print-on-demand books; very similar to Cafe Press, but for books. If you want to create and sell a publication without a lot of hassle, take a look at this.
• Upcoming - submit your events to this and similar online events systems to help get the word out about your events.

RSS/News Feeds and Podcasting

• What is RSS - an overview of what RSS and RSS feeds are. Weblogging systems create RSS feeds automatically for you.
• Bloglines - a web-based RSS news reader. This is a good place to start if you want see what it's like to subscribe to RSS feeds as a way of keeping up with posts from your favorite web sites. Other web-based feed readers include Google Reader and My Yahoo.
• Feed Blitz - allows people to subscribe to RSS feeds by email, so they don't have to have a feed reader. Feedblitz lets you create a sign-up form to add to your weblog so users can sign up to get your updates by email automatically.
• Odeo - aggregates podcasts. Podcasts are simply audio (or video) shows that people publish to their web sites. With Odeo, you can upload audio and share it through a podcast without having your own web site to post it to. If you do post it on your web site, you can add it to the Odeo podcast directory.

Posted by terrie at June 23, 2007 07:23 AM

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