Making the site

Here is the last update of 2007 on Helpalot

• Updated the frontpage. I removed some boxes on the right, since the boxes on the left already made sure the information wouldn’t ’stick together’. Also I flattened the search bar and added some color.
  
• We now have ‘view all’ pages for friends and support.
• I also did a lot of invisible work, creating documentation and such.

For next year the plan is..

For 2007 we had set a number of features that would consist of Helpalot 1.0. Almost all the features are present, but there is still a lot of work to do in creating static content and improving the lay-out of many pages.

While we are busy with the final details, we are also looking ahead. The main focus of 2008 will be on trying to get critical mass, at first in the Netherlands. My personal estimate is that Helpalot begins to be useful for people when there are at least 250 Dutch charity projects, after this it starts to become more relevant for new visitors.

So 250 Dutch charity projects will be the goal for 2008. A concentration of 250 projects of some other type (of one category for example) will also be good.
What you can expect in 2008:

• Online donation on the project pages
• Collaborations with (Dutch or international) organizations.
• More and better use of Google Maps
• Widgets and probably an API
• More types of information you can leave on your pages. For instance, you will be able to set what type of project you are, upload year rapports (PDF’s), etc
• Improved logo, slogan and some simple (online) merchandising like T-shirts and an Helpalot song with video clip.

I hope to see you on Helpalot, best wishes for 2008!

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/200

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time. Sharing the results of psychological experiments (and the story of the Santa Cruz Strangler), he explains how we are all born with the capacity for empathy — but we sometimes choose to ignore it.

A nice video, that has a section in it that relates to the new website I’m thinking of that has not yet have a name (a product social context website).

Supporters of US republican candidate Ron Paul collected 6 million in one day. You can see how the money was donated on this graph. I find it really interesting how straight the line of this graph is going:

http://www.ronpaulgraphs.com/dec_16_vs_nov_5_total.html
The last ‘money bomb’ ended at almost exactly 4 million, and it was as if supporters collectively (and subconsciously) decided that 6 million should be the new target.

(The relation to Helpalot is that it’s about the collective wisdom. Something Helpalot is trying to tap into, in order to make it easier to find trustworthy charity projects.)

More improvements:

• Improved ‘my overview’ page. You can do more from this page now (add news, edit project, etc). Also the lay-out has improved a bit.
• Improved system messages. A warning icon and a red color for when something goes wrong and visa versa for when things went ok.
• Flow improvements; when you just created a charity or project, you get a more useful page to see.
• Some lay-out tweaks, for instance on the ‘upload logo’ page.

We now have 190 personal profiles.

Help us get to 200 before 2008; visit Helpalot.org and join.