This has a lot of applications. For YMX, I’d like to see our members help us just tell their blog readers about what’s getting published currently. But this could also work well any blog as it places easily on just about every blog and social networking platform out there. It’s called "widgetbox." Widgets are a big part of the Web 2.0 movement.
In our leadership group at the church and on YMX, we only launch things when we’re pretty sure it’s a homerun. First impressions are pretty much everything in my world. If someone walks into Romeo and their first impression is that we are disorganized or unfriendly, that’s how they will feel about Romeo until we prove them wrong. But chances are… a bad first impression will lead to them not coming back. The same thing applies with the website. If someone comes to YMX and the site is down or the site is hard to navigate or understand… chances are that person won’t come back.
Enter Wal*Mart’s new downloadable video store. The worlds largest retailer and the nations largest private employer launched their service that is supposed to compete with Apple’s iTunes. This launched today… obviously they weren’t ready. Not only are they entering into the download video world very late, now they’ve done this. 
This wasn’t the first impression they intended to make. It will take them some time to prove this one wrong.
This is the 2nd or 3rd year in a row that Romeo has canceled school the day after the Super Bowl. It would be irresponsible of the school district to schedule classes the day after the Super Bowl in 2008. I don’t know what they should call it, but it’s clear that the administration, students, and everyone else anticipated that just about any weather phenomenon would lead to schools being canceled.
Legitimate
That said, it’s currently -4 F at our house. (Not inside) That’s just about as cold as it gets around here. I don’t want to be that old man who says, "When I was a kid I walked to school in snow waist deep, uphill, both ways, with no shoes on." Nah, but they didn’t cancel school in South Bend very often. (They are today) And if we did have school when it was this cold I didn’t have to walk to school because someone would give us a ride.
It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but here are the next 10 tunes on my ipod. No cheating, just hit the shuffle button and this is what pops up. (The stars are my personal rating… yes, I have all 2000 songs in my library rated)
It’s been a couple of days now, but our forum community now knows what the “big announcement” is. (And with close to 300 posts in the speculation thread, no one saw this coming.)
Youth Ministry Exchange Announces Membership in Gospel Communications AllianceYouth Ministry Exchange is proud to announce its acceptance into the Gospel Communications Ministry Alliance. Gospel Communications International (http://www.gospelcommunications.org/)
is a non-profit Christian organization devoted to spreading the Gospel
through film, the internet, and other media, and its online presence is
perhaps most recognizable by its websites, Gospelcom.net,
Biblegateway.com, and ThinkChristian.com.The Alliance is a
community of more than 200 Christian ministry websites, ranging in
topic from Bible Study to Church History to Missions and, of course,
Youth Ministry.Because of the Alliance’s history as a
prominent voice and “gathering place” for the online Christian
community, the owners of YMX have full confidence that this alliance
will be a symbiotic one where we will enjoy the benefits of an
increased visibility among that internet ministry community and the
Alliance will have its outreach to Youth Ministries the world over
enhanced by the creative output of our online community of youth
workers.Over the coming weeks you will see some minor changes
to the site as we come into full compliance with the Alliance site
requirements. Rest assured that this alliance will add tremendous
benefit to the Youth Ministry Exchange community with minimal impact on
current users.Adam McLane
Derek Tang
In the eyes of Derek and I… this is a big deal. We’re really excited about it. The funny thing to us is that we see what a huge impact it will have and the general population of the site has been, well, unimpressed.
There are all sorts of urban legends out there. There are local ones and international ones. Interestingly enough, they are very powerful.
An urban legend tells us a story that is what we want to believe, so it is often more powerful than the truth.
The former principal of Romeo High School never really chased a kid, caught him, and fought him. But students wanted to believe it so it was true… hence he earned the nickname "Action."
Al Gore never said he invented the internet. But people wanted to believe that the Washington DC liberal was out of touch with reality. People believed it and it may have cost him his chance at being president.
You don’t get sick because you go outside with wet hair or without a jacket. (They are called viruses, diseases, and bacteria!) But people want to believe it’s true… so it might as well be true.
The phrase "80% of all statistics are made up on the spot" is used to destroy people’s sound arguments using research. Of course, there’s never been a study on that and it’s impossible to measure. But people believe it, so it is true.
Urban legends make or break a lot of people. They are part of the reason why some people succeed and some people fail. What people want to believe about a person or a church or a sports team or a book or a website or an mp3 player is often far more powerful than anything else that can be said.
Here’s something I’m learning: People make decisions about things not based on anything factual at all… they make decisions about people, churches, sports teams, books, websites, and mp3 players based on how those things make them feel and how they feel associating themselves with that thing.
What are the urban legends about me? What are the urban legends about things that I care about? I have no control over that… but it is interesting!
Last night’s talk from Acts 16 was interesting. It’s an interesting concept to think about God being glorified when He upsets a local economy. To think that God actually take great pleasure in revealing Himself in the midst of messing up manmade economies.
I think the problem last night was that I was in such a rush to get people talking about it that I don’t think I did a good job of describing the types of economies that students experience that God could upset. Oops.