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My Best of 2008

December 30, 2008 in Administration, Featured, For Fun, Gadgets, Software, Web with 0 Comments

2008 was a big year for me and tech. It seems like a lot of the tools that I use everyday were not part of my workflow a year ago. Not all of them were new in 2008, but they became part of my everyday life this year. Maybe they can help you too.

  • Twitter – Love it or hate it, this has become a great tool for communicating, building community, and having fun. It’s by far my favorite social network.
  • Skype - Definitely not new, but I have started using it more than ever.  Communicating with co-workers, or family when I’m away from home it’s great.  I think it has one of the best video chats out there.
  • iPhone – This is another one you either love or hate, but I love it.  I didn’t jump on the bandwagon when they first came out because it didn’t work with my exchange email, but now that it does, I think it’s one of the best smartphones I’ve used, and I’ve had a lot of them.  
  • Evernote – This has become an indispensable for me when it comes to gathering information and keeping synced to all my devices.
  • WordPress – Another one that wasn’t new in 2008, but I really starting digging into it, and I think it’s the best blogging platform out there.  It powers this blog and it’s definitely part of my everyday life now.
  • YouVersion – I just love having the versions of the Bible I like to read with me where ever I go.  I still haven’t found myself using a lot of the tools it offers, but maybe in 2009.
  • Hulu – This one doesn’t really have anything to do with work, but I have found there are many shows that I enjoy watching that I just catch on Hulu whenever it works for me.  There are a number of these tv streaming sites popping up, but Hulu is still my favorite.
  • Dropbox – I almost didn’t put this one on, but when I stop and think about it, I use it everyday to share files or keep them synced over multiple computers.
  • Mozy – Nothing about backup is exciting, but I feel a lot better about my data since I started using it.

What was your best from 2008?

Chris

ChurchMetrics.com

October 28, 2008 in Administration, Featured, Software, Web with 0 Comments

I saw this on the twitter stream this morning, and thought I would pass it along. The folks over at LifeChurch.tv launched a new free service this morning called ChurchMetrics.com to help track attendance, giving, and other key indicators of how things are going.  It looks pretty cool, I haven’t had a chance to create an account and dig into it, but it looks promising.  It’s all online and the interface looks super easy to jump in and use. It’s also mobile friendly, which I love.  It kinda looks like Google analytics for your church (and that’s a good thing).

Check out this link for more info: www.churchmetrics.com/features.


Introducing ChurchMetrics from ChurchMetrics on Vimeo.

Backup

September 24, 2008 in Administration, Featured, Software with 0 Comments

I know this isn’t one of those exciting topics.  Listening to people talk about backing up your data is about exciting as listening to your mom tell you to eat your vegetables, but recently I was reminded about how important it is.

My wife had planned a night out to go scrap-booking with one of her friends, and really wanted to work on our sons baby book (he’s 4 now, so we are a little behind here).  It was my job show her where I keep the pictures on the computer so she could upload them to Costco to get printed.  Problem, the folder with the pictures from the month my son was born had disappeared.  No problem I thought, just go to my backup.  Now where are those back-up disks I made so long.  Not in my desk…not in our fire-safe…not in the box of random disks I cleaned out of my desk because I didn’t have room.  My heart sank, I couldn’t believe that I lost those pictures.  This really made me evaluate my backup strategy.

So what did I come up with to make sure this didn’t happen again?

  1. Time Machine – I’m a Mac user, so luckily I have this as an option.  I picked up a cheap external drive plugged it in and told it what I wanted to back-up.  It does it automatically, and I don’t have to worry about it.  Recently I’ve heard of some people saying their time machine backups hadn’t ran in a while, so if you’re using Time Machine just watch the date of your last backup from time to time to make sure it’s running.  PC users, don’t have this built in, but many of the external drives now come with backup software that work similarly.  So that may be a good solution.
  2. Mozy – Time Machine works great, until your house burns down or your external drive dies (this happens more often that you think) so it’s always good to have a backup that not at the same place as your computer.  Think of it as a backup for your backup.  I’ve chosen to use Mozy for this.  It’s a great solution in the “cloud” (meaning you backup across the Internet to Mozy’s servers).  Their software works great, and you set it up and it runs automatically. They have a PC and a Mac version so they have you covered.  Super Easy and secure.  Unlimited backup is only $4.95 a month, or they have a  free version that gives you 2 GBs of space.  I would recommend the free version just to try it out and backup your ultra critical data, and it’s free. Try it HERE.

Bottom-line, is that really protecting your data is going to cost you, but it’s better than loosing it.  And I did find my backup disk by the way and recovered the pictures, but I feel a lot better now that I have a better plan in place.

How do you backup your data?

Illustration Gone Bad

August 26, 2008 in Administration, Featured, Fun, Software with 0 Comments

We’ve all had illustrations that didn’t quite work how we thought, but I’ve never ended up at the doctor because of one.

Do you have an illustration gone bad story? Share it in the comments, and our favorite wins a download of RaceThis 2 from Simply Youth Ministry.


Dan’s Back from Jason Mitchell on Vimeo.

Thanks to Rick Lawrence of Group Magazine for the tip off.

Email is for old people

August 8, 2008 in Administration, Featured, Web with 2 Comments

Every time I ask students if they got my email, they tell me they never check it. They might check their facebook or myspace, but even that is it or miss trying to communicate with them. The one thing they all seem to do is txt message, and they do it a lot. If you’ve ever wondered how you could use text messaging as a way to communicate with your students, here’s a little video demonstrating a new service from Simply Youth Ministry. I stated using this a little while back and it’s super easy. I’ve also found that my students are actually getting my messages now.



If you want more information, go to SimplyYouthMinistry.com/TXT. They even have a free 30 day trial you can sign up for.

Delicious Library

August 5, 2008 in Administration, Featured, Mac, Software with 0 Comments

Here’s the question: Have you ever been looking for a resource and couldn’t remember who you lent it to? That is the task set out to be remedied by Delicious Library. This is at its heart a library cataloging program, but with the polish and beauty you expect from mac developers.

I’ll confess, I’m not the most organized person, but this is a tool I was able to get my head around to help me know where I have left my stuff, or at least where it should be.

The most daunting idea of using one of these programs is the initial data input. That is not nearly as tedious with Delicious Library because of its revolutionary webcam scanner interface. All your resources are entered by holding the product’s bar code up to the camera on your computer. Delicious Library then downloads all the information including an image of the Book, DVD or CD Cover or product image of the drill, microwave, or toy from Amazon’s product database and then places them on the shelf in your virtual library. You can then search the items and check them out to friends that you create in the program. As I was entering my own quirky collection, I found the scanner to be about 85-90% on being able to locate the information without me having to enter title, etc manually, but came up with no blank places in Amazon’s database.

The library is not only available on your computer. Once created, the program will allow you to export (and upload) a beautiful album to mobile me, iweb, a ftp server, or a folder on your computer in both a full-web and iphone versions.

The usefulness of this program is paralleled only by its beautiful implementation. For the typical unorganized youth minister who has a problem keeping up with what is still in their office and what is in the hands of their volunteers, it is a priceless tool, a crutch really, that makes up for deficiencies in a way that is both easy and interesting. Maybe I’m projecting a bit there, but for the super-organized person this can be an incredible way to keep detailed information on everything for which you are responsible.

This is of course only as good as the consistency with which you use it, so if you decide to drop the change also decide to let it do its job and actually check your resources out as you give them away.

It is currently Mac only. You can test drive a demo version that allows you to import 25 items for free that even comes with a demo library for you to play with before you take the time to import all your own resources. As far as I’m concerned, Delicious Library is probably one of the best $40 an unorganized (or super organized) youth minister can spend.

This is of course only as good as the consistency with which you use it, so if you decide to drop the change also decide to let it do its job and actually check your resources out as you give them away.

It’s all about SPAM

April 22, 2008 in Administration, Software with 0 Comments

I ran across a few items today that made me think about SPAM, one was useful, one was funny.

First the useful one:

YouthMinistry.com posted this article with some tips to deal with it:

And finally, how I would rather see SPAM dealt with:

Originally posted at: iGlimpse.com

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