In honor of Martin Luther King:
My Favorites from 2009
Well 2009 is officially over, and I was thinking about some of the tech that made it’s way into my world during the year. Here’s some of my favorites:
Software:
Mozy – I committed to online backup this year having deciding that my time machine wasn’t enough. Mostly because if something happened at my house the chances of losing both were pretty high. I went with Mozy, and after having a harddrive crash while on a trip and I was still able to access my data, I’m sold. It’s definitely worth the $5 a month it costs.
Dropbox – This has become a tool I use daily. Great for online storage and sharing. And it’s FREE!
Teleport – This little bit of software allows you to share one keyboard and mouse between 2 macs without any extra hardware. It’s really cleaned up my desk and I love the way it works. Price: FREE
Hardware:
iPhone 3gs – This is so much more than a phone to me. It allows me to be away from the office but still take care of quite a bit of my daily tasks. I love it.
MacBook Pro Uni-body – My old Macbook Pro was great for almost 3 years, but my recent upgrade to one of the new Uni-body models has been a great one. The power is awesome. To compare, my old machine took 90 minutes to export the SYM podcast that I produce each week, and the new laptop does the same video in 35. I love it. Although if you are thinking about upgrading, I would wait to see if there are any upgrades early in the year.
Flip MinoHD Camcorder
Kindle 2
- Battery life
- Amazon Store – so many titles, and great prices.
- Always connected – I can download books where ever I am, and it doesn’t cost any extra
Web:
Gdgt.com: Great new gadget site. I do a lot of my gadget research here. I also really enjoy their podcast.
LIVE Curriculum: I think most of you know, I am the web manager for Simply Youth Ministry, and one of the big projects I worked on this year was this online curriculum. I am really proud of what we put together, and when I think of 2009 it was a huge part of it.
Now on to 2010.
Top 100 Kids’ Online Search Words for 2009
There is an interesting article over at churchrelevance.com about the most popular words searched by teens. This is good insight for youth workers.
Here’s what they deemed as “bad” in the top 100:
BAD SEARCHES FROM THE TOP 100
by boys and girls (ages 18 & under)#4 – Sex (#4 for boys & #5 for girls)
#5 – Porn (#5 for boys & #24 for girls)
#32 – Boobs (#17 for boys)
#82 – Pussy
Here’s a little of what they found:
You can learn a lot about someone by what they search for online. These top search results paint a pretty clear psychographic picture of the priorities, preferences, and habits of online youth.
Kids and teens are obviously learning and experimenting with adult content much sooner than many parents, kids’ ministries, and youth ministries realize. As Time magazine reported early this month, 40% of adolescents have intercourse before ever talking to their parents about safe sex, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Parents often dread giving their kids the sex talk(s), but studies show that kids want to learn from their parents. Instead, many kids learn about sex through friends, the Internet, and experimentation.
I find it really ironic that in the top 100 is a search on how to disable one of the more popular internet filters that many parents use thinking they are protecting their kids.
Read the article: Top 100 Kids’ Online Search Words for 2009
Original research from: OnlineFamily.Norton
Backup and Portability Made Easy with ChronoSync
I have had an idea/problem that I have been percolating on for a while now. The basic idea was that I wanted to have copies of several specific folders on specific, different external storage solutions so that I could have them with me when I needed them. Complicating this problem is the fact that I am lazy.
Of course, I could copy my documents folder the the thumb drive every couple of days, my video clips to my external HDD every time I added a new clip, and my seminary files to the small thumb drive each night before I went to bed, but that would take both time and discipline. The only thing I have less of right now than time is backup discipline.
That is how I ran across what is hands down the best Mac sync utility I have found: ChronoSync. It does the standard things like let you schedule a sync or backup with a drive every X number of hours/days/weeks/etc. But it has one incredible function that sealed the deal for me. I can schedule a sync to happen whenever the target drive is mounted. Now, whenever I plug in one of the aforementioned devices, the specific files on my computer I want synced with that device automatically get updated and update the external storage. This, of course, reinforces my confidence in the idea that if I wait long enough, I will find a way to allow my computer to make up for my laziness.
But that is far from all the features of ChronoSync. It will make bootable backups, lets you specify a range of methods for the sync process including ignoring deletions so that an accidental deletion in one location does not eliminate the file across all your storage. It will create archives (think time machine) and connect to almost anything you can think of from webdav servers to all the computers you can “see” in the finder. For those of you who really want to geek out, it has incredibly detailed filtering that will let you specify exactly what you want to backup.
The only con I could find is that the interface is not as intuitive as it could be. For instance, several of the options at the top of the screen (trial sync, schedule, etc.) are grayed out until you save the sync you are creating. Similarly, several of the terms they use to describe the options are unclear (mirror, sync, blind) but explained well in the documentation. All that being said, the program’s power and overall ease more than make up for the UI, and ChronoSync is well worth the $40. There is a demo downloadable here.
How To: iPhone Band
Here’s an update to the post about the iPhone Band. Josh posted an update listing out the apps used (all links open iTunes):
Guitars: (Electric and Bass)
Pocket Guitar ($.99)
Piano #1:
Virtuoso Piano Lite (Free)
or
Virtuoso Piano
Piano #2:
Pianist ($3.99)
Drums:
DigiDrummer Lite (Free)
or
Digidrummer ($1.99)
A few other things to keep in mind:
- If your students are using an iPhone have them put it on Airplane mode, so they can still get to apps without having to receive phone calls.
- Also turn off all notifications in the settings app on itouches.
- If you do the bit with the phone call, make sure the one person getting the phone call has their phone set to receive calls. Also, the person calling has to be in another room because the sound system will echo through the phone and the main house.
This should give you everything you need to do your iPhone band.
Some Christmas Freebies
There’s a lot of Christmas Freebies floating around this year. I thought I’d let you know about some before it’s too late.
- Free Media from the Simply Youth Ministry Media Store
- Free Media from Centerline Blog
- Free Training from Cadre Connection
- iTunes Holiday Sampler
- Appvent Calendar – Free iPhone games
- Free Christmas PowerPoint Game
- Free Christmas Backgrounds
- Free Christmas Message – “The Christmas Killers”
Some of these are daily or every couple days. Even if you missed a few of them, there’s still a lot of freebies left before Christmas.
Carol of the Bells – iPhone Band
I just saw this over at Josh Griffin’s blog. They opened their high school service this weekend with a rendition of Carol of the Bells played by an iPhone band. Really fun.
Word Fun with Wordle
While I was skimming the latest issue of Group Magazine, I found a great blurb by Lyle Huddlestun about a website called Wordle.net. When you create your wordle, you can either input a bunch of text, input the url of your blog or your del.icio.us username and it generates one of these interesting images(The above image was generated by auto-scanning this blog). The size is based on the word’s frequency, and the colors, word orientation, and font are set by you. If you don’t like the first shot, just have it re-layout until you see one you like! And, if you like it all, but want to delete one misspelled or embarrassing word, just click on it and remove it.
What’s even better, you don’t have to sign up to make them. It’s totally free! From volunteer encouragement to cool covers for the material you are writing/borrowing, this tool is worth taking a look at.
btw… I have been a bit silent lately as we just had our second child (Hannah-Claire0 and are finally getting adjusted to the chaos and lack of sleep. (Pics)
The Decade According to 9-Year-Olds
Wow, this makes me feel a little old. The answers the kids gave is fascinating on so many levels. I especially like their answers to the technology questions.
The decade according to 9-year-olds from allie garcia on Vimeo.
Extending the Life of an Aging Computer
My main computer that I use for all my day to day work is pushing 3 years old, and it’s really starting to show it’s age. I realize that 3 years doesn’t sound like that long, but it’s the longest I’ve used a computer since the 386 I built my freshmen year of college. But in these economic times I’m sure most of us aren’t able to replace our computers as often as we would like. I find myself in a constant battle in keeping mine from crashing and losing hours of work. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but is there anything we can do that can help prolong the life of our aging machines? Here are a few things that I have found that has helped:
1. Hardware Upgrades: Sometimes over time we can develop some hardware problems that are easy to tackle ourselves. Two upgrades we can do that make a huge difference are RAM and Harddrive. If you find your aging computer slowing down, make sure you have the maximum amount of RAM your computer can handle. If you don’t know the maximum amount for your machine head over to Crucial.com, and run their memory scanner and they will tell you how much your computer can take. You can also buy the upgrade from them, and their prices are some of the best around. Another upgrade that can make a big difference is upgrading your hard drive. Chances are your computer came with a small, slow drive that upgrading can make a huge difference. If you drive is too full it can slow you down, also upgrading to a faster drive can make a big difference in performance.
2. Clean up the hard drive. You may not feel comfortable swapping out your harddrive, and if you have a laptop it may not be easy. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. You can defrag your drive to help speed it up. I would also clean off unneeded programs and files to free up space.
3. Clean install. This is much more drastic, but often times using the system restore disks your computer came with reinstalling everything often helps fix problems that can be difficult to find and fix another way. Now if you feel you need to take this step make sure you have a good backup and all the install files for your software because this will result in erasing your hard drive back to the way it came from the factory. If you are planning to upgrade your computer to the latest operating system (Windows 7 or Snow Leopard) this can be a great time to do this.
4. Find a New Use For It. You may find that your old computer is just not worth upgrading or fixing so you do take the step to get a new one. That doesn’t mean the old computer is now completely useless. You may be able to turn it into a home server to keep your photos or music on so you can share them with other computers in your house. Or maybe that old laptop will be perfect to your spouse, parent, or child. I find often times other people in my life don’t have the same requirements that I have, and while my old computer may not be great for editing video anymore, it may be perfect to check facebook or playing webkinz.
What do you do with your old computers? How old is too old?
