Some new articles to recommend

Here are some highlights of what I’ve been reading around the web…

• Facebook Updates Groups: What’s New
  Posted: April 27, 2011
  From: Mashable!
  Facebook's new "groups" feature could be just the thing for small group ministries.
• 10 Ways To Leverage Mobile Technology For Marketing
  Posted: April 27, 2011
  From: CMO.com
  Here is a good summary of ways to use mobile technologies. It's not just mobile websites and apps!
• Let’s Figure out the Value / ROI (Return-on-Investment) of Social Media
  Posted: April 27, 2011
  From: Christian Web Trends Blog
  Is social media worth the effort? Check out the poll here.
• The Curation Economy And The 3Cs Of Information Commerce
  Posted: April 27, 2011
  From: CMO.com
  Are you a content consumer, curator, or creator? Or maybe even one of the elite?
• For Students, What Is the “Facebook Effect” on Grades?
  Posted: April 27, 2011
  From: Mashable!
  Interesting study on how the use of Facebook affects grades. Students want to collaborate, but they need discipline and direction.
• Facebook Community Pages and Church Social Media Strategy, part 1
  Posted: May 24, 2010
  From: Kingdom Strategist
  Good post from Kevin on the problems with Facebook's new "Community Pages".
• Quitting Facebook is pointless; challenging them to do better is not
  Posted: May 24, 2010
  From: danah boyd | apophenia
  danah makes some great points abut Facebook. Interesting...and long!
• How Non-Profits are Using Social Media for Real Results
  Posted: May 3, 2010
  From: Mashable!
  Some good insight into using social media by non-profits.
• 5 Reasons Google and Search Won’t Dominate The Next Decade
  Posted: May 1, 2010
  From: Mashable!
  Another article about the demise of search...
• Google’s Nightmare: Facebook “Like” Replaces Links
  Posted: May 1, 2010
  From: Mashable!
  Something to be thinking about...will SEO be replaced by FLO ("Facebook Like Optimization")?
• YouTube’s First Video Uploaded Five Years Ago Today
  Posted: April 28, 2010
  From: Mashable!
  Can you believe YouTube is only five years old?
• Plugin by C. Murray Consulting

CWC 2011 has something new

If you haven’t heard, the 2011 version of the Christian Web Conference is coming next month. Check out the website now while I wait… OK, so now that you’ve read it, you’ll see that we’ve added something new this year: hands-on tutorials. “What?” you say, “if I come to the conference I’ll actually get to CREATE something for my ministry?” That’s right, you will.

I am very excited about these hands-on workshops because it will provide direct value to ministries by giving them the opportunity to add something to their ministry or church right there at the conference.  These workshops will be led by experts in their respective fields, including three Biola professors! The five hands-on tutorials are as follows:

• Lights, Camera, Action: Capturing Effective Video for Your Ministry (John Schmidt)
• Beginning Social Media Marketing (Dave Bourgeois)
• Editing and Presenting: Preparing Video for Your Web Audience (Gerald Fisher)
• More Than A Profile: Social Media Strategy (Scott McClellan)
• Free Apps and Resources For Your Ministry (Brandon Donaldson)

For a full description of these sessions, see the schedule page of the conference. If these sound like the kind of skills and resources you would like your ministry to have, come to the conference! Register now for only $79! I hope to see you here.

Tags: CWC 2011

Need a new home for genesys11

So my web server company (aplus.net) seems to really have problems hosting my TYPO3 based web site.  I am using the “Web Empowered Church” for my site, and it is having yet again a problem with “out of memory” (even though I have allocated 256mb of memory, which is more than enough). Looks like I need to move my host to another site. Most likely I will move to “Vine Hosting”. Vine is the for-profit arm of the nonprofit “Web Empowered Church” group – their hosting site is customized to support WEC specifically. For those thinking about using WEC as their CMS, I highly recommend getting hosted at Vine.

So why does this blog still work? The blog is in WordPress, which runs easily on aplus.

Tags: typo3, vine, wec

The Lord giveth…

Many of you know that I was in a bad car accident about 18 months ago. I survived what looked to be an unsurvivable accident, but my classic 1968 Mustang did not. For the past few months I have been looking for a “new” classic Mustang to replace it. I monitored several Craigslist listings using a custom Yahoo pipes feed that I created and finally, a few weeks ago, found the exact car I wanted. For those who want details: “A” code 289, pony interior, a/c, power steering. I really feel that the Lord led me to this car and its seller, a young man working in youth ministry at a nearby church. We made the deal a few days ago and I now have my new car. While nothing can ever replace my old car with all its memories, this car is a new adventure that I plan to keep and drive as long as I am able.

I just want to use this post to publicly thank the Lord for this blessing. And to thank my wife as well for supporting me in getting this car. And yes, I will let her drive it.

Tags: accident, Mustang

Survey closed

The Internet Ministry Survey is now officially closed. I will now begin using my trained monkeys to analyze the results!

Tags: internet ministry survey

Warning: survey closing

Oh my it’s been a long time since I’ve posted! Got sidetracked during spring break and busy with other projects. Well I’m back and will get posting again.

Warning: If you kept meaning to take my survey on Internet ministry but have not yet, take note:  I will be closing the survey tomorrow! Go to the survey here. I am going to begin working over the data starting next week.

And if you haven’t registered for the Internet Ministry Conference yet, get busy.

Tags: internet ministry conference, survey

Poll on the three categories of Internet ministry

The Church Marketing Sucks blog has just completed an online poll on the three categories of Internet ministry that I posted about a couple months back. Interesting post and results…I’m still trying to figure out what the 5% people are replacing.

Tags: categories of internet ministry, church marketing sucks

Internet Evangelism Day is coming…

Internet Evangelism Day is coming on April 27th. According to the IED website:

We wish to communicate the outreach potential of the Web to the worldwide church. The site has a twin-track purpose:

• to explain the strategies needed to use the web for evangelism, along with showcase examples, and demonstrate the many ways you could be involved. One surprising fact: you do not need to be technically gifted to do web evangelism!
• to enable you to communicate these truths to others, by providing free downloads: PowerPoint, video clips, drama scripts, handouts, etc. These enable churches and other groups to build a web evangelism focus program into a service or other activities.

One of the most interesting tools the site provides is a checklist for your church website. This checklist includes 55 items that you can use to “score” your church website and then, based upon your checklist entries can generate a report to help you understand what needs to be fixed on your site. For the most part, I like the checklist and feel it provides some really good ideas for what makes a good church site. I will be using it as a way to help evaluate the redesign of my own church’s website.

Tags: internet evangelism day

TurboTax:Important Information About Your 2007 Tax Return

So I have been doing an intermittent series on using technology to improve your life. Here’s a case where relying on technology could seriously mess you up…

I received a free CD from TurboTax in the mail with their latest software. Pretty cool idea: it’s free until I decide to file. I used TT last year, so I figured that I would go ahead and use it as I wanted to get started on my taxes early to do some planning for our finances. So I start working through it and filled in my income, investments, etc. It then takes me to the “Federal Review” and tells me I owe a freaking large amount of money! I am trying to figure out what happened when I realize that I never entered in any of my deductions! We have several big deductions include mortgage interest and charitable giving, so I’m figuring I somehow missed it. After spending an hour or so looking for it I cannot find it! I finally gave up and sent an email to TurboTax support.

Today (a week later) I got the email shown below with the subject line shown at the top of this blog post. I don’t know how widespread this was, but this was a huge blunder by a very well-known company.

Dear David Bourgeois:We have important information about your 2007 tax return.The TurboTax Home & Business software you installed did not include some of the functionality designed to help you with your deductions and credits. We’ve corrected the issue, but you must update the software next time you use it in order to ensure you claim all of the deductions and credits you deserve.If you have not yet finished and filed your Federal return, please update your software and complete the Deductions and Credits section: Step 1. Go to: (specific URL here) Step 2. Follow the instructions for a One-click Update. Step 3. Click on the Deductions and Credits tab: Step 4. Complete the Deductions and Credits section and finish your return. If you have already filed, please call (888) 777-4160 at your earliest convenience. We’ll walk you through the process of amending your return, if necessary, and answer any other questions you may have. We are committed to helping ensure that you receive every deduction to which you’re entitled. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Sincerely, The TurboTax Team

Did anyone get caught by this and actually file? This could be a huge black eye for Intuit!

Tags: deductions, turbo tax

“Your Google account has been suspended”

Can you even imagine seeing those words? They send shivers down my spine. danah boyd over at her blog tells the story of a friend of hers who had this happen: mail, calendar, documents, social network (Orkut)… All because the person accidentally gave out some information to someone they shouldn’t have and had their account hijacked.

A couple of lessons to learn. First, if you (personally) use an online email/calendar/document management tool (such as Google), are you prepared if, for some reason, they block access to your account? Second, if you as a ministry use a vendor-supplied web site or an ISP, are you prepared if, for some reason, they block access to your account?

This gives a whole new meaning to backing up your data! I, myself, have always thought that I was rather smart for using an online email system such as gmail (and on online calendar and document tool) because then I can get to my stuff from wherever I want, as long as I can get a net connection. After all, Google is never going to die, right? But I never thought about the idea of Google canceling my account for a reason outside of my control.

Of course, there are several solutions to this problem: you can set up a mail client to keep a copy of all your mail and sync your calendar with a client package. Or you can even have one mail account forward all messages to another. But it is much more difficult to synchronize all of the customizations you have made (labels, categories, saved searches, etc.). Several interesting solutions to this have been suggested over at Lifehacker, so if you are interested, check them out.

Tags: danah boyd, gmail, Google account