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The Mayor presented the 2010 proposed budget to City Council on Friday, September 25. The City Council will conduct three public hearings taking testimony on topics including the Mayor’s proposed budget and proposed revenue sources. Hearing will be held on Wednesday, October 7, Whitman Middle School, Auditorium; Wednesday, October 14, Northwest African-American Museum, Legacy Gallery; and on Monday, October 26, City Hall, Council Chambers, Floor 2.

All hearings start at 5:30 p.m., but sign-up begins at 5:00, if you would like to speak. Some email messages received between 4:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. will be read aloud in Council Chambers at the October 26 hearing, so send your comments to budget@seattle.gov. All email messages are retained in a comment file included in the public record. Visit the budget committee site for detailed information.

Learn all about the candidates and ballot measures in order to make the best choices. Check out the Seattle Voters' Guide for the November 3, 2009 election. The Mayor, four City Council and City Attorney positions will appear on the November ballot, along with the Housing Levy Proposition 1.

To get information on county and state issues, go here. You'll learn about candidates' positions on the issues, measures on the ballot, how to request an absentee ballot, early voting, and more.

Bill Schrier

Seattle’s chief technology officer, Bill Schrier, was featured on the cover of the August/September issue of Public CIO, a technology publication for leaders in the public sector. The article addresses how information officers are struggling to manage today’s mobile workforce and the solutions to many problems. Schrier stresses that for Seattle, centralization and standardization are key to managing the complexity and costs of supporting a large mobile workforce.

Seattle’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT) supports 1,823 AirCards, 893 BlackBerrys and 3,000 employee cell phones used by more than 11,000 employees. Security can be a concern, especially with so many devices and employees to manage, especially concerning data loss. Bill Schrier works with Mike Hamilton, Seattle’s chief information security officer, who has developed a virtual team across all departments to secure mobile and desktop environments. For the complete article written by David Rath, go here. For more information on the Seattle’s information security strategies, go here.

Know a student who needs service learning credits? Puget SoundOff is offering a new and exciting way to complete required service hours by hosting a group and organizing a community service activity utilizing the tools available through Puget SoundOff. MetroCenter YMCA staff will provide you all the training, technical assistance and networking support needed to successfully accomplish your project using blogging, video production, photography, social networking and podcasting. Contact Bryan Gordon for more information.

Free cable broadband Internet service is available for organizations providing technology training to community members. The free service is offered within the Seattle city limits, based on the City's cable franchise agreements with Comcast and Broadstripe (Millennium). For more information and to download a short form to make application, go to our tech web. If you have questions, email Derrick Hall or call (206) 233-5061.

q&a

Don't miss Ask the Mayor on the Seattle Channel. It's a Q&A show featuring host C.R. Douglas and callers in local issues discussion with Mayor Greg Nickels. Next taping is October 13, 7:00 p.m. Email your questions in advance to askthemayor@seattle.gov.

sub/unsub

To subscribe or unsubscribe to Brainstorm, please email us, and we'll add you to our email notification list, or subtract you per your request. If you have ideas for future stories, please let us know and we'll try to accommodate them. We encourage you to visit the City of Seattle's Community Tech pages, seattle.gov/tech.

Derrick Hall and Sandra Mears show off their Day of Caring t-shirts.

"It was a wonderful experience!" "All the volunteers enjoyed it a lot and they are very happy that their time and efforts can make some difference to the local community." "I also would like to thank you for putting all this together! The whole event was greatly organized and went through really well." This was the general response from volunteers pitching in for the annual Day of Caring.

Digital Promise held a Day of Caring on September 11, sponsored by United Way, AHMA Northwest, Microsoft, City of Seattle Department of Information Technology and the Philip Evans Scholarship Foundation. Volunteers from these organizations as well as from around the Sound helped out in 12 computer labs and other venues, donating their time and skills to nonprofits. Some of the accomplishments include an upgrade to Office 2007 for 180 computers, operating system upgrades and general repair and cleaning.

For information on getting involved next year, contact Erica Ellis or call (206) 461-3644.

Accessibility options for Windows

Looking to make your lab more inclusive? Interested in better serving seniors and people with disabilities given your current technology constraints? The STAR Computer Center is now offering free assistive technology training to CTCs located in Seattle.

With support from the Technology Matching Fund in 2008, the STAR Computer Center developed a basic assistive technology training curriculum. The STAR staff has provided this training to senior centers and delivered it nationally to CTCs attending the 2009 Neighborhood Networks Conference serving CTCs in affordable housing.

The training consists of a one-hour workshop on site at your location. STAR staff will show you free and simple solutions to accommodate low vision, tremors and other disabilities. Learn how to provide keyboarding assistance, text to voice, and how to configure one or more profiles that automatically load the specific assistive technology software required for a particular disability.

Contact Jacque Cook at (206) 854-5604 or email to schedule your training session.

Should all 200 of your Facebook "friends" see your extensive photo series of Sparky looking miserable in his bumblebee costume last Halloween? If you have "friends" who you’d prefer not to see your photos or other personal information, what should you do? Instead of cruelly "unfriending" them, create a limited profile for yourself. Go to: Settings>Privacy>Manage>Profile. Underneath each piece of profile information is a link for Customize Settings, which allows you to type in the names of friends you don’t want to see photos of you, personal information, videos, status, etc. You can even create groups of people and limit their access all at once.

Similarly, when creating or editing a photo album, you can decide which friends can view the album. Edit album>Edit info>Privacy. Under "Who can see this?" click "Customize" to add "friends" to the "Except These People" list.

Don’t worry. No one gets any sort of notification when you limit access to you profile or photos.

Amy Hirotaka, our intern from the University of Washington Evans School, ranked neighborhood blogs, wikis and web sites from Level 1 (low) to Level 4 (high), using criteria like updated content, size (number of pages), and interactive features. She also looked at whether or not the neighborhood or community group is using more than one web tool. For example, some groups have a Facebook page in addition to a blog or web site, broadening the scope of their interaction with the community.

Seattle neighborhood groups have room for improvement in their web tool use. Out of the inventory of neighborhood web tools in use, most are still at a Level 1 and often have out-of-date content on their sites. Very few groups make use of free social networking tools like Facebook or Twitter. Amy is creating a guide to help groups improve their web sites and engage their neighbors effectively online.

This year, Friends of the Seattle Public Library is talking to neighborhoods to understand the value that new and renovated libraries are contributing to business, organizations and people who enjoy or depend on library services. SPL has 1,100 computers available for free and they have recently boosted the time for usage from 60 to 90 minutes. Computer classes are also offered in multiple languages. These are some of the improvements made based upon your input.

Please click here to participate in the survey. Some responses will be quoted, with approval, in the Neighborhood Report presented to city leaders and elected officials in coming weeks. For more information, please contact Sarel Rowe.

Salesforce Nonprofit User Group
When: Meets the third Wednesday of every month at 8:00 a.m. (Caffeine is provided.)
At the Npower Seattle office for presentations on new releases and features from Salesforce Foundation staff and third-party vendors, lively discussions and time for questions. Learn from your peers and from NPower database consultants about making the most of Salesforce for your organization.

Communities Connect Network (CCN) Seeking Partners
Deadline: October 16
CCN is seeking partners for round two of funding from the NTIA Broadband Technolgy Opportunity Program (BTOP), a part of the federal stimulus package. For more detailed information, please read the full description here and in our Dollars section.

City Council Budget Hearings
When: Wednesday, October 7, 5:30 p.m.
Where:Whitman Middle School, Auditorium, 9201 – 15th Ave NW, Seattle

When: Monday, October 26, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Northwest African-American Museum, Legacy Gallery, 300 S Massachusetts St, Seattle, 98144

When: Monday, October 26, 5:30 p.m.
Where: City Hall, Council Chambers, Floor 2; 600 – 4th Avenue, Seattle

word handling bug shoots down staroffice

Sun last week pushed out a set of updates designed to fix a flaw in its StarOffice and StarSuite office software packages. Problems in handling Microsoft Word documents by Sun's open source alternatives created a code injection risk. Users induced into opening malformed documents could wind up with pwned (owned) Windows PCs because of the bug, just the sort of thing hackers running targeting attacks might be interested in exploiting. Users of StarOffice/StarSuite 7, 8, and 9 all need to update their software here.

Check out the City's Information Security site for more security tips and sign up for their alerts.

web browsers

When it comes to Web browsers, most users don’t pay any attention to what they use. If the web site looks right, the question never comes up. There are many browsers available to use, ranging from the most popular Internet Explorer to the browser WorldWideWeb (The first browser). When browsing a Web site, it is good to understand compatibility. Some sites have features that only work with certain browsers. Most browsers support features such as Bookmarks, Passwords Manager, and Custom Tool Bar. Having these tools is great for when there are special applications or often visited Web pages.

Lab managers and administrators should always have two or three browsers in addition to Internet Explorer installed on their computers. This helps users who are more comfortable with other browsers, or when a user's needs to access a Web site that has features that are not compatible with Internet Explorer. Some less popular browsers have a certain amount of security built in that targets because malicious code.

For more info, check out these two web sites: Wikipedia Browser comparison and Consumer Searches Best Browsers.

Agree or disagree with me? Drop me a note: Derrick Hall.

2010 Neighborhood and Community Arts Funding
Deadline: October 27, 11:00 p.m.
The Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs supports creativity at a grassroots level, making investments in dozens of festivals and community cultural projects. Funded organizations receive $1,200 each to support public festivals and events.

Knight Foundation
Deadline: October 13
Grants totaling $5 million will be awarded for projects using open-source digital technology to distribute news in the public interest at the local level.

Department of Neighborhoods Outreach Fund
Deadline: Ongoing
The goals of the Neighborhood Outreach and Development Fund are to: 1) help neighborhood-based organizations increase their membership; or 2) provide leadership training and technical assistance to help enhance the skills of its members. The Fund offers established neighborhood organizations one-time awards of up to $750 for special membership expansion or leadership development projects.

Mashable: Subscribe to a news site about social software and social networking.

Multimedia software: Laura Quinn and others at Idealware, with some help from See3Communications, are putting together a multimedia production guide as part of an outreach manual for nonprofits. See what’s being recommended and add to the discussion on Idealware’s blog.

Save a little money using online coupons. There’s a world of them out there, some to print or show on your cellphone when you shop. Get started with Krazy Coupon Lady, the printable coupon database, Shop At Home, or find more searching for "online coupons groceries."

Digital Media and learning: video comments on digital media and learning by Cory Ondrejka.

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