OK, there’s much excitement in our house about Star Wars Angry Birds in our house.  It’s a mashup of two of our favorite things. After playing it for a few days, we are still just as excited. Who doesn’t like an Angry Bird with a light sabre slaying though evil storm trooper piggies.
If you are interested you too can enjoy the fun and games. Â It’s available on just about every platform out there.
May the Force be with you!
At SYM we are in the midst of app development, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Â Why are there so many apps out there? Â Do we really need another one? Â The answer to these questions for me is: 1) Apps make people’s life easy, that’s why there are so many, and 2) Yes, see answer 1.
There’s a great post over at YouthMinistry.com from Matt McKee about mobile apps and why your church or ministry may need one. Â The article points out that these mobile devices are not just for the geek anymore, but they are part of everyone’s life from age 2 to 90.
Here’s his list of why you may need one:
- It gives you another access point that your local community can access.
- It allows you to be location sensitive. You can send messages to a certain zip code if you want.
- It can integrate social media so that people can help spread your message across the Internet.
- It helps you get past a Sunday or Wednesday only mentality, and let’s people interact with content on a daily basis.
- It makes your message 1 or 2 clicks away.
- It makes your content more convenient, and the more convenient the more it is used.
- It makes your message more broad-reaching than just your local community.
- It can help drive people to your church building for special events or weekend services.
- It can make special announcements such as community wide prayer requests.
- It can stream your message in audio or video format.
- It makes reaching a new demographic even easier.
- It will differentiate your vision and values from others.
- It will create different engagement than your Web site.
- It drives loyalty.
- It puts your branding in front of potential guests before they walk in the door.
- It provides a new way to collect feedback.
- It can be a new place for people to contribute to your church or ministry.
- It encourages people to share your message with the people around them.
- It can reduce the cost of mailings and the frequency of mailings.
- It can highlight new books or resources that go along with current teaching series.
- It creates a buzz that you message is relevant in today’s culture.
Read the entire post here:Â 21 Reasons Your Church or Ministry Needs a Mobile App | YouthMinistry.com.
Do you think your ministry needs an app?
YouVersion.com calls itself a revolutionary online Bible, and I it definitely lives up to the claim. It’s part social network and part online Bible. At the base of it, it’s an online Bible that allows you to post your own notes and thoughts on a passage. You can use this to organize your own study notes or even links and pictures, but the real power is you can share it others. This is where the social part comes in. You can have “friends” that you can share your thoughts and notes with. I haven’t really gotten into this yet, but it’s really cool. (My user name is crd55 if you want to be my friend)
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It’s no secret that Apple’s new iPhone 3G will be available this Friday around the world. And I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to get one. There are a lot of factors to consider, but this post isn’t about my personal gadget journey. Even though I’m not in the iPhone club, I do have an iPod Touch, so I can pretend, but I know a lot of youth pastors that do have iPhones so I thought it would be good to highlight some of the iPhone friendly sites that I use most or think are helpful:
1. Hahlo.com – a really nice twitter client
2. Facebook.com – I think the Facebook iPhone interface is better than the real thing. You don’t get everything, but it gives the basics in a really usable way.
3. YouVersion.com – I think this is best online bible for iPhone. A great mix of translations, and access to the notes that others have made on the passages. Plus, they are planning an app for the iPhone as well.
4. Evernote.com – I’ve been using Evernote for a few weeks to organize and capture little bits on information. It really deserves it’s own post, but their iPhone version is really nice.
5. YouthMinistryGeek.com – That’s right, this very site is iPhone friendly. Maybe you are enjoying that feature right now.
What are your favorites?
