Not all of us have an easy time getting to know the people who live above, below, or next to us. When you've only exchanged brief hellos, it can be tough to ask your neighbours for help or advice. Just like Facebook facilitates connecting with far flung friends and family, social network Nextdoor, which launched in Australia a few weeks ago, makes it easy to be connected to your community.

Even if Twitter finally bans the Nazis (lol yeah right), there will always be boring, stupid, annoying and bad people on the internet. And sometimes they will find what you put online, and bother you about it. How do you deal with them without feeling like crap? We got some advice from Eli Yudin, CollegeHumor's community manager, whose whole job is talking to strangers on the internet.

YouTube has wanted to be more than just a home for your videos for a while now. Now, the company is branching out in a less Google+-y way. Certain channels now have a Community tab where creators can post text and pictures.

Most people don't buy art by budget, but if you live near an art school or a university with an art department, you can explore interesting and unique work from the students there, find something great and buy their (often affordable) work to support your community and foster a love of the arts.

In the last few days, I've heard New York City described as a tale of two cities: one city of people who were drastically impacted by Hurricane Sandy, and another of those who were merely inconvenienced by it.

In a write-up of neighbourhood-oriented service Topix and Nextdoor, Wired writer Ryan Tate hits upon a point that's perhaps not obvious to anyone who's ever wondered why they don't know people they've lived next to for years: the most efficient organiser is a common purpose.

The internet gives us all a platform to make our voices heard. That's incredibly powerful, but with that power comes responsibility. That's right, like any citizenship, your internet privileges carry with them responsibilities. "But I'm no troll," you say. That's not enough; there's more to being an upstanding citizen of the internet than just not trolling. Here's how you to embrace the responsibilities of your citizenship and become a model internet citizen.

Free public Wi-Fi is still a relative rarity in Australia's major cities, so how is it possible to make it viable in a town with less than 400 people? Newstead offers some interesting lessons about Wi-Fi, the National Broadband Network (NBN), open source and how to manage community projects.

Prizes is a new service from Google that allows users to create or enter contests with real cash prizes. The service connects to your Facebook or Twitter account, and from there you can enter contests or create your own.

Got a graveyard nearby and a GPS device? Then you can help out with a global scientific project designed to track the impact of climate change and pollution.

Tap into the wisdom of the crowd for your health with community web site PatientsLikeMe. Using the site, you can read all about the experiences of other real people who are afflicted with certain illnesses as well as share your own experiences. The purpose, then, is to allow users to interact with one another, track how treatments are working for other members, and explore the side effects patients are seeing with certain treatments. The site's motto is "Patients helping patients live better every day," and it provides a tonne of tools to help you do just that. If you've given it a try, let's hear your thoughts in the comments.

US-centric: Get detailed city demographics for any zip code in the United States with ZipSkinny, a site that serves up information based on the last U.S. census data. Just type in your zip, and you'll get back general info, social and economic indicators, and how your town compares with neighbouring boroughs. Want more? Try checking for bad >> neighbours

So you've always wanted to pump out that great American novel but never felt you had the time or motivation? Got brilliance bottled up inside of you just waiting for an outlet? It's time to put those words to paper, because November is National Novel Writing Month (aka, NaNoWriMo). NaNoWhatMo?National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Whether you've walked the NaNoWriMo path in the past (like our very own Gina Trapani) or you think you might want to give it a try yourself, you've got exactly one day to prep yourself for the start. If you're a NaNoWriMo vet, share your experience in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago Wendy posted a number of ideas on how to save a life with your computer. It was a great idea and a great list of ways you can use your computer or the net to make a difference in someone's life. It inspired me to throw in my $0.02 worth on the topic, and mention some worthwhile Aussie ventures you can support online as well.