INSIDE

Use of Social Media Tools
Seattle Communities Online
Code for America: Seattle
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New Web Scam
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Linkage

Governor Chris Gregoire is hosting an all day state broadband summit on June 15 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. The state is seeking input from stakeholders as it plans next steps in our state strategy. This event will include an update on the national broadband plan from the FCC, presentations on broadband and economic development, an overview of the state’s broadband map, and a poll of participant’s priorities. The event is $40. See more, including a detailed agenda, here.

Can’t make the meeting? You can still participate in the state broadband effort. There will be a couple other ways to provide input to state planning. First, you can contribute to the broadband map (See below). The State Department of Information Services will also be holding additional meetings around the state. Contact Angela Wu to make sure you get on her outreach list.

Post your speed and story on the state map. The new Washington State broadband mapping portal is asking for community organizations and residents to contribute. It’s important to get community technology centers and other community institutions on the speed map. People can provide input and feedback through the state mapping portal. Click on the Get Involved or Tell Us Your Story links.

Have you looked yourself up? "More than half (57 percent) of adult internet users say they have used a search engine to look up their name and see what information was available about them online." The Pew Center for the Internet and American Life has released it’s latest report, Reputation Management and Social Media by Mary Madden and Aaron Smith. The report also found that young adults are more likely to manage their identity settings than older users. See all the Pew latest research at their latest stats page, which includes use of government online, and their Teens and Mobile Phones reports.

The Seattle Channel, in cooperation with the Mayor’s office, is working to develop a system for streaming events live on the web from remote locations. Using a standard City laptop with a USB 3G/4G transceiver and Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, the Seattle Channel was able to successfully live-stream two Mayor-Council Finance and Budget Public Hearings from remote locations in Seattle. Both hearings were live-streamed on the Mayor's and Seattle Times websites.

According to Seattle Channel’s Daryl Peck, "So far, the main drawback is getting enough bandwitdth for usable pictures. The upload speeds which the channel depends on are only a fraction of the advertised download speeds for 3G/4G. 4G coverage is still not strong enough to use from most locations."

Overall, the Seattle Channel is pleased with the success of live-streaming events from remote locations, and will continue to work to improve the tools and process that make live-streaming possible.

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 Mike McGinn. Next taping is June 10, 7:00 PM. Email your questions in advance to askthemayor@seattle.gov.

Back issues of Brainstorm including techtips and linkage are now available in our online archives. Previous TechTips and Linkage are also available. Click to revisit all previous issues.

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.

Rite of Passage intern, Joe Deng, and teacher.

The Center Park Resident Council embarked on a new project this year to increase digital inclusion for post high school youth. For more than a decade, Center Park has housed an Assistive Technology (AT) computer lab in their low income housing facility, the STAR Center, that has primarily served adults and seniors with disabilities.

Lara Harding, a key STAR Center volunteer saw an opportunity to expand their services and for adults living with disabilities to help youth in the “transition” ages from 17-24. At this stage in life, many young people with disabilities complete high school and other training programs and begin their transition to community living. Unfortunately, most of the time these young people do not have assistive technology as part of their independence plan and face challenges about coordinating the services provided by many different programs. Center Park secured a grant from the Technology Matching Fund for the Rite of Passage project to begin to address these gaps.

Partnerships have been key to enabling the STAR Center to broaden its reach. Center Park hosted an Advocacy Camp in cooperation with the Alliance for People with Disabilities to introduce youth to STAR Center resources, electronic voting and other aspects of civic engagement. They also collaborated with the Seattle Public Schools. Six youth from the district’s Special Education Career Choices class came to the STAR Center for internships. The students gained technology skills with the guidance of STAR Center volunteers and contracted special ed teachers. The project also offered many opportunities for project staff to share internet-based resources with other teachers in the Career Choices programs to expand the circles of students who benefit from the project.

With City funds, Center Park also purchased eight new state-of-the-art computers running Windows 7, and is in the process of upgrading the various assistive technology tools they support.

To celebrate these 2009-2010 successes, the STAR Center held an Open House on May 20 with City of Seattle, Seattle Housing Authority, Seattle Public Schools and many volunteers and community supporters attending. For more information, contact Oscar Escalante.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project’s report on social media and young adults reveals that 47 percent of online adults of all ages use social networking tools, which has grown from 37 percent in 2008. When looking at social media use by young adults, ages 18-29, the numbers become much larger. 72 percent of young adults who use the internet use social networking tools, and many have more than one account, such as both Facebook and Twitter profiles.

Is your neighborhood or community group interested in attracting more participation by young adults? Consider increasing your online presence, and check out Seattle Communities Online where you’ll find curriculum for setting up and using online social networking tools. Visit our blog for more information and tips, and to share your questions or advice. Also visit Neighborhoods on the Net, where you can find online communities all in one place. We've made a list of blogs, wikis, websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds associated with Seattle communities and neighborhoods.

Seattle has been named as one of the first cities that will participate in a new fellowship program to develop new applications for government transparency and participation. Seattle and the other applicant cities’ proposed applications "reflect a deep understanding of the power the web as a platform can bring to cities, according to Code for America’s Jennifer Pahlka. "Each of these applicants demonstrated not only cutting edge thinking and a willingness to invest in long-term change, but also a fantastic idea for a web app that will make their city (and any other city that wants to use it) more efficient, transparent and participatory." See more here.

Upgrading your version of Microsoft Office Suite? Need to get staff up to speed on desktop publishing? Creating a social media strategy for your organization?

Did you know that in addition to our public training classes, NPower offer private training? Private training empowers your organization to tackle technology issues through customized training content, style, and class length – all on a schedule you choose.

This may be a private session of a class from NPower's Training Class Catalog or a customized curriculum. Our lab is available for up to 12 people to attend training or we can come to you. The group rate is $105 per hour for members and $150 for non-members. This is a time efficient and cost effective option, tailored to meet your organizations needs.

Contact Leah Ankeny, Manager of Training Services to find out more!

This was written by Michael Cheek on Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 10:43: A researcher has found a new method for carrying out phishing attacks "that takes advantage of the way that browsers handle tabbed browsing and enables an attacker to use a script running in one tab to completely change the content in another tab," according to ThreatPost.

The attack, discovered by Aza Raskin of Mozilla, relies on users visiting a controlled infected website. When the user visits the infected website, it reads what other tabs the user has opened in the browser and changes itself to look like a selected page.

Raskin actually demonstrates it on his website in which the page alters to appear as the login page for Google. The system could also be used in the case of banking web sites, etc. to steal login and account information. "As the user scans their many open tabs, the favicon and title act as a strong visual cue—memory, is malleable and moldable, and the user will most likely simply think they left a Gmail tab open," Rashkin writes. "When they click back to the fake Gmail tab, they’ll see the standard Gmail login page, assume they’ve been logged out, and provide their credentials to log in. The attack preys on the perceived immutability of tabs."

For more security tips, check out the City of Seattle Information Security home page.

Countywide Community Forums
Countywide Community Forums is a nonprofit program whose mission is to ‘make democracy more user-friendly’ by scheduling neighborhood meet-ups around King County. Volunteers sign up to lead hyperlocal discussions of issues in homes, coffee shops, or other convenient places for a gathering of interested citizens. If you live or work in King County, sign up online to participate as a host or attendee before June 13. Meeting sites and times are set by volunteers like you. Click on the link above to get involved.

Social Media for Building Community
Learn how Social Media can support the communication of your organization and advance its goals through NPower Seattle.
When: June 23, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m.
Where: NPower Lab, 403 23rd Avenue S., Seattle
Register here.

Idealware Training Opportunities
For more information on the trainings listed below, and to register, go here.

Comparing Google Apps with Outlook
Google Apps provides a compelling set of email and calendaring features that gives Outlook a run for its money at a fraction of the cost. We'll demo Google Apps, talk about administrating it as an organization, and show how it compares to Microsoft Outlook.
When: June 23, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. eastern time

How to Build or Edit a Website without Technical Skills
When: June 30, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. eastern time
It’s important for you to be able to edit your own site! We’ll explore affordable options for content management systems - tools that allow you to easily update website text and images.

Best Buy’s @15 Community Grants Program
Deadline: July 1
Best Buy seeks applications from organizations that have current 501(c)(3) tax status and are serving a diverse population of young teens in the areas of learning, life skills, leadership or relationship development. Special consideration will be given to programs that:

• Serve a diverse population in local or regional communities
• Build social, academic, leadership and/or life skills in early adolescents (primarily ages 13-18)
• Show positive results against a demonstrated community need
• Reach at-risk children in working families

Department of Neighborhoods Small and Simple Projects Fund
Deadline: July 12
Provides awards of up to $20,000 to support community members in building community relationships around a project. Provides funds for improving your community. Activities may be physical projects as well as less tangible but equally significant educational, cultural, and relationship-strengthening activities.

Free click to donate rice and end hunger. More than 16 million grains of rice were donated last year, just by answering online word questions!

Find a list of 20 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed, brought to you by Mashable’s Matt Silverman.

Check out audiobooks from libraries. The Washington State Library has instructions and a list of libraries that provide downloadable audiobooks.

Take a virtual tour of Seattle’s watersheds, and enjoy the Cascade mountains.