Becky Wiegand's blog

Just like any good tech geek, I've been reading reviews and jealously drooling all the photos and videos of upcoming products shown at this past week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The annual Las Vegas tradeshow reveals the hottest new technologies, coolest gadgets, and flashiest concepts for all the geeky gear I hold dear. Most of the products either haven't hit the market yet or are at pricepoints out of reach for most average folks — and especially out of reach for many nonprofits, libraries, and public service organizations.

This post was originally published to the TechSoup Blog and was authored by Kami Griffiths. 

Please join us next Thursday, January 14 at 11 a.m. Pacific time for our next free TechSoup Talks! webinar. We will be discussing website accessibility with Jane Vincent from the Center for Accessible Technology.

Implementation of web accessibility can seem excessively complicated. In reality, the best accessibility practices dovetail with good overall usability and are easy to implement via standard tools such as templates and cascading style sheets (CSS). This hour-long session will cover topics such as understanding the difference between various accessibility guidelines, avoiding common accessibility errors, when (and when not) to rely on automatic accessibility checkers, and unexpected populations that benefit from accessible websites.

This free webinar is best suited for individuals with some knowledge of HTML coding who are involved with ensuring that their organization's website is accessible. Space is limited so register today!

If so, check out the Adobe Special Donation Program. Thanks to Adobe, we've been able to lower the admin fees by approximately 50 percent on the following products:

• CS Design Premium 3.3 Mac (Retail value $1799): Admin fee was $136, now $69

• CS Design Standard 3.3 Mac (Retail value $1199): Admin fee was $92, now $45

• Photoshop CS 3.0 Mac (Retail value $649): Admin fee was $51, now $25

• Photoshop Extended CS 3.0 Mac (Retail value $999): Admin fee was $76, now $38

This post was written by Laurie Sanchez, TechSoup's Director of Customer Experience. It originally appeared on the TechSoup Blog and is being updated daily there throughout our holiday break.

Greetings! This is my first blog post and I'm excited to talk about customer service at TechSoup.org. With this post, I want to provide information that will explain steps we've recently taken to focus service efforts on our highest priority: qualifying nonprofit organizations and public libraries so they can take advantage of the technology offerings available through the discount and donation programs TechSoup has available. My full update is below but know that you can check out our FAQ page and contact information to learn more and ask (or answer) questions in our helpful Community Forums.

          PLEASE NOTE: TechSoup Offices and Customer Service will be Closed from December 25, 2009 through January 3, 2010.

The Center for Accessible Technology (CforAT) and California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) named TechSoup Global one of three winners of the 2009 California Digital Inclusion Program Award. The award recognizes nonprofits, government agencies, and corporations responsible for raising awareness of and improving web accessibility for Californians with disabilities.

Enter our contest! Read this post, take two simple actions, and complete a quick survey! Read on for more info.

Part 1 of this series listed the 5 actions we recommend that you take to reduce the power use of your computer. This post (part 2) explains two of those actions in more detail and tells you how to complete these two actions. Parts 3 and 4 will offer more detail about how you can make the other three changes.

Reduce Your Energy Use at No Cost and Save Money Instantly

1.    Set power management on your computer(s)

Light green: easy individual actions

All major operating systems released in the past ten years come with power management built in, but not necessarily turned on. What is power management? It's the ability to set your computer and monitor to automatically go to sleep or shut down after a period of inactivity. Climate Savers Computing are the experts at this and have all the information you should need to accomplish this task. They even have step-by-step guides. We urge you to sign up for CSCI membership either as an individual or affiliate: it's free and it's a way to build momentum for IT energy conservation. They can keep you informed about the latest ways to reduce your IT footprint. They even have a wonderful, searchable list of energy-efficient hardware and software products that help with IT energy reduction.

Whether you're a regular TechSoup for Libraries user or haven't heard of us til now, we've got a free webinar coming up that will likely show you something new about how you can get more out of the variety of (free) services we offer to nonprofits and libraries.

Learn How TechSoup Can Help Your Organization

Join TechSoup.org content creators, community leaders, and customer service support on November 12 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Pacific for a tour of how your library can use all that TechSoup has to offer to improve your technology and help reach your mission. TechSoup, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is working toward a time when every nonprofit, library, and social benefit organization will have the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential.

We'll walk you through the process of registering and requesting donated and discounted products from more than 35 donor partners like Microsoft and Adobe. We'll also take you on a virtual tour of other resources in TechSoup's tech arsenal including;

Welcome to TechSoup GreenTech's Unpower Yourself! campaign. We're having a contest to encourage you to reduce your computer's energy comsumption. Read this post, take two simple actions, complete a quick survey, and you'll be eligible to win!

Global warming is happening because of a buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, most of them produced by power plants that burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Information and communications technology consumes a good deal of electricity, much of which is wasted as heat, consumed by computers and monitors needlessly left on, or used to cool hardware that is not running efficiently.

More than half the electricity used by IT is outside the data center and it is very easy for you to make small changes that will have a significant positive impact on both the environment and your wallet. It's not always easy to get a significant number of individuals to take these easy actions, but we can reach more people with your help.

Here are five things you can do quickly to decrease your IT energy use:

As many may know, Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system became available last week worldwide and through TechSoup's Microsoft Donation Program. Our customer service representatives have been plowing through the donation requests, helping nonprofits and libraries register and place their requests, and answering questions about whether to upgrade and how to do it. They're working as hard as they can to meet the demand and overflow of queries, so please be patient if you've called or emailed since they have a lengthy queue (even with additional staff support). Our community forums have also experienced a flurry of discussion on the operating system and lots of questions are being answered there.

To help bring some of the more frequently asked questions to the forefront (and hopefully answer some of your lingering questions), we've compiled this short list of Q&A to help you navigate.

TechSoup is a nonprofit that partners with corporations to distribute software and hardware donations to nonprofits and libraries. You may already know about our donation programs that can save nonprofits and libraries approximately 90% on Microsoft products and Symantec's Norton Antivirus donations but did you know we offer a typing program, discount on Flickr, and more? Attend this free webinar at 11 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday, October 28 and learn more about TechSoup for Libraries and how we can help you offer more to your patrons and staff while saving money.