I’m proud to announce the release of No Tech Hacking from Syngress Publishing! I’m even more happy to announce that 100% of the proceeds will be going to charity. In fact, each purchase through this Amazon link will feed an African child for one month!

What’s the story with the proceeds?
It’s simple, really. My proceeds from this book are going to AOET (aoet.org), an organization that provides food, education and medical care to children left in the wake of Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic. More than an aid organization, AOET aims to disrupt the cycle of poverty and hopelessness in sub-Saharan Africa through empowerment programs and job training, enabling children and adults to be self-sustaining, restoring not only their health but their pride and hope for a brighter future. A single book purchase made through my Amazon associates account (linked from any of my websites, or though http://tiniuri.com/f/Xpc) will generate enough income for AOET to feed a child for an entire month. Other retail purchases (which generate half as much income) will provide either medical services or educational supplies and funding for a single child through a donation pool set aside for those purposes. Why bother? Because I am called to “look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27), and I know from personal experience how mutually transformative it can be to take that calling seriously. Hamlet was onto something when he wondered, “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

Shmoocon is coming, and we’ll be well represented. I will be speaking on the closing plenary panel (tentatively titled “hackers for good”), we will be a recipient of proceeds from the T-Shirt sale (along with the EFF and OLPC), and we’ll have a drop-off for our “Swag for Charity” campaign right next to the registration desk. So if you, or someone you know is attending Shmoocon, load them up with swag (especially pens, pencils and bags) so we can get them to kids tha need them. Thanks forall your support!

Here’s the announcement for the T-Shirt sale:

You’ve got your share of con shirts, but how many of your con shirts have made a difference in the world? The Shmoocon T-shirt drive lets you do just that. Pay your money, get your shirt and toss a chip to the charity of your choice. On Sunday we convert the chips back into Hamiltons, and three great causes find out we’ve got their back. This year we’re supporting One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the EFF, and Hackers For Charity. OLPC aims to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves through the use of low-cost (”$100″) laptops. EFF (http://eff.org) is the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world. Hackers For Charity (http://ihackcharities.org) provides hackers with job experience while leveraging their skills for charities that need those skills.

So whether or not you care about being all altruistic, stop by and grab a cool shirt. Your kind nature can be our little secret.

AOET has had a lousy site for quite a while. The original site was nice enough, but it hasn’t been maintained, and now the mail server’s getting flaky, and oh, by the way, other than the blog (that we installed!) they’ve had no way to update the site.

This is an interesting request. It’s not technically difficult, but it requires basic WordPress experience (not too hard, really) and a tad of HTML. This is going to be like data entry, or cutting and pasting, combined with a little bit of reorganization.

We’re migrating them to WordPress. Why WordPress? It’s simple to maintain, easy to use and configurable enough that they can take over complete administration with little trouble.

Right now, the main AOET site (http://aoet.org) forwards to http://aoet.org/blog, which is our simple blog. The original site, available from various links, can be seen at http://aoet.org/icomission.php. All of AOET’s info is sitting here, and I’ve started to create a WordPress site to replace it, and have even put together a site that shows a suggested organization here: <link kept private>. This site, hosted on my server temporarily, is what their new site might look like. It includes an active front-page blog, and all the info from the old site, all in one place. This would be the starting place for your work, and you could build upon that.

This work is a critical last step in getting them away from their quickly deteriorating web site and getting them onto a stable platform that will help them spread their message.

If you are interested in helping out, please email me directly at johnny@ihackcharities.org.

It’s taken a ton of planning and much more logistics than I counted on, but our first shipment of “swag for charity” is headed to AOET in Uganda, Africa to help AIDS orphans under their care. This is quite a cool story, and many players were involved in making this happen.

Before I get into details, let me first say that this shipment would not have been possible without the help of Matt Wagenknecht, who provided us with deeply discounted shipping through FedEX. Without his help, this package would not have been sent and we would have been without a shipping mechanism meaning NO packages would be sent! Thanks Matt! Also, Dalien Talbot (http://daltonic.blogspot.com) and his supporters from SecondLife make a $L22,000 (Linden Dollar) donation, which will be used to offset the shipping charges. Thanks, guys!

	First, there’s the USB drives from CelleBrite. These kind folks were kind enough to donate nearly 50 (!) of these drives (all 64MB) to our cause in order to replace the floppy drives being used in the offices, the clinic and (later) the school lab. These will be so much nicer and infinitely more durable than the floppies that are in use now.
	Next, there’s 500 (of the 1,000) pencils donated by Jim Kelly. Each of these round wooden pencils sports the URL www.AOET.org. What a great, practical donation for the kids!
	Then we have two older Kodak digital cameras which were donated by Jethro Taylor as part of a large donation that included several laptops (covered in this post). These are perfect cameras for Uganda because they take great pictures, they use standard AA batteries, they are very durable, and they don’t look too expensive (which makes them less of a target for theft). The only problem was that I didn’t have cards or cables for them. So instead of buying cards and cables, I put out an APB to the volunteer list, and several people (Brian Smith-Sweeney, Tom Stripling and Eugene Kogan) stepped up and donated Compact Flash Cards and/or USB Multicard readers to go along with the cameras. What a great team effort!
	Brian Bourne over at Sector.ca donated twenty of these awesome cooler bags to our cause, and two of them made it into this shipment. These are really high-quality bags, and although they’re perfect for a six-pack of bottles, they’ll serve all sorts of more practical purposes in Uganda. They can be used for food, medicine, all sorts of things. What a cool donation!

Along with all this, we also sent 50 pens (38 standard and 12 premium), five zippered totes, three SD card readers, two aluminum flashlights (and no partridges in a pear tree) all donated through the Swag For Charity campaign.

I’m so excited about this shipment not only because it’s our first, but because it was a real team effort that paves the way for doing more good. This is a small, tangible example of what our community can do when we give of our time and effort. Together, we are helping children a world away lead better more empowered lives! Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

This is the first in a series of CFV’s aimed at the new child sponsorship system. We need someone to do a code review of Paul’s PHP-based system. A qualified volunteer will be able to review his code, making active suggestions about potential weaknesses in the code and offering alternatives. This is meant to be a learning exercise for Paul, who is currently one of our star volunteers, so “social” (email) skills are a definite plus. It’s important that our lead coder learn and grow as this project progresses to the next phase. Please drop us a line if you are interested!

Once we stage the system to the server, we’re going to break it. (I know, I know… this is work?) The system is written in PHP, accesses a MySQL database and sits on FreeBSD and Apache.  So we’re going to need code reviewers, application testers and pen testers to take a whack at our staging system. This sounds like fun, but please remember folks– we’re still doing charity work. This is no playground. This system is saving kids, and we’ve got a pair of hostile level 70 overlords keeping an eye on things , so be nice. Interested, click “Join Us” above for more info.

With Paul M slinging PHP and MySQL, the AOET child sponsorship system is really taking off! At his request though, the system needs a visual makeover. So one CFV and an hour later, Seba takes the reigns as the system’s front-end designer. Once we settle on the look and feel, we’ll move to the next phase: code review and application assessment.

Standing up Simple PHP Blog was a real no-brainer. Plus, it provided instant results, freeing AOET from the long web silence imposed on it. But slapping up a blog is the easy part. Making sure it’s not chock full of holes is a bit harder. AJ Dexter stepped in and ran an application assessment against the blog. Continue Reading »

AOET’s primary goal is to sponsor children. But their existing child sponsorship process was completely decentralized, causing a serious administrative bottleneck. Translation: more children could be sponsored with much less work. Continue Reading »

www.AOET.org hadn’t been updated in a very, very long time. So after talking with them, I realized that what they really needed was a front-page blog. Nothing fancy, just a blog that allowed image uploads and user-authenticated updates. Oh, and it couldn’t use a database, because it was transitional and the current web host made database access… difficult. So I posted a call for a programmer and a code reviewer/app tester. Two hours and multiple volunteer responses later, Continue Reading »