Category: Web/Tech

  • YouVersion Alpha Test

    Alpha2
    I’ve gotten a sneak peek at Lifechurch.tv‘s new Bible resource called YouVersion.  (To see full-sized screenshots, click on the images) Just in my initial look at their alpha test there are some features that are absolutely going to revolutionize how some people read/use the Bible online. As a Web 2.0 junkie… let me highlight what I mean.

    It’s a Bible homepage, not just a place to look stuff up like on Biblegateway.com. (Which is an amazing Web 1.0 site) Alpha1

    • Obviously, you log in and have an account.
    • One panel is the Bible with a search feature, multiple versions, etc
    • The other panel is what makes the whole thing cool.
      • When you click on a verse, the community tab shows you public comments, audio, sermon texts, videos, and other stuff.
      • When you click on "my version" you get a list of all the stuff you’ve posted publicly and privately.
      • When you click Journal (not ready yet) you can obviously blog/journal about passages or whatever.
    • The top menu bar isn’t active yet, but there are tons of cool things coming.
      • The dashboard seems to be your one-page look at everything you’ve ever done on the site. All your tags, starred verses, etc.
      • Favorites for stuff you really like
      • Contacts for having friends, etc in a Facebook kind of way
      • History for seeing what you’ve looked at over time
      • Groups… not 100% how that goes.

    Alpha3
    The thing I kept thinking as I gave this a first look… (I’ll be back to do more testing over the next few weeks too) is that a church is doing this. Not a major media player or even Gospel Communications… a local church. Granted, Lifechurch.tv isn’t your average ordinary church. But still, this is like taking on the Gutenberg Bible project as a local church only to give it away. Yeah… this seems like it’s going to be 100% free.

    What’s missing?
    Well, loads and loads of content will make this an unreal resource for small group leaders, pastors, and people interested in knowing what others think about certain passages of Scripture. All-in-all, I think this is going to be a web addiction for a lot of people for a long time to come. Bravo Lifechurch.tv. I can’t wait to see the beta test, and of course the production version.

  • Pet Peeve: Church websites that don’t have addresses

    I spend a fair amount of time on a monthly basis looking around church websites. Such as, if I am looking at someone’s blog and I don’t know them and they have a link to their church… I’ll click on it.

    Here’s my pet peeve: Put your church’s mailing address somewhere easy to find! You’d be surprised to know that most churches don’t tell visitors what state they are located in.

    Come on, get with the program. If you work at a church stop right now and please make sure that within 2 clicks a person can find directions and your location.

  • Pfttlwbwbwbwbwb… and things that change the game

    It’s been one of those weeks. And I still have mountains of stuff to do for this weekend.

    Yesterday I talked about goals and benchmarks. It was funny because I worked hard on a benchmark thing that will make the new RomeoChurch.com mucho better than the existing church website. Unfortunately, that benchmark took more than 8 hours when I had hoped it would take less than 1 hour.

    Web 2.0
    As I’ve mentioned before here… Web 2.0 is changing the way the internet works. From an end user perspective you see what you want to see which often leads to that weird feeling of seeing a Coke in a Pepsi machine at the mall. Those two things don’t go together do they? Web 2.0 has really started to change "who owns what" and "what does it mean to ‘own’ something that exists digitally?" Getting to see the the internet the way that you want to see it simply changes the game. And any time the game changes… users tend to benefit. For example… DSL and Cable internet changed the ISP game. While there are still loads of people on dial-up, many more now pay very little for unlimited, wireless, high speed internet. That changed the game and created a whole new market. Web 2.0 is doing the same thing. Now that content doesn’t "live" on a site forever because it can go anywhere… this has changed the game.

    What that means for web developers (Which I don’t really claim to be but get a bird’s eye view of a lot) is that people collaborate now when they wouldn’t have before. Just yesterday I was working on this "benchmark" for RomeoChurch.com and I ran into a wall. I couldn’t get the thing to work! I scratched my head. I tried it a bunch of different ways. I even had to talk a walk around the building to clear my head and pray for an idea. Just then, literally in that moment, a person from YMX contacted me about a website problem he had with his youth group site. I said, "Sure send me a link." When my AIM screen flashed my jaw dropped as I could see he was working with the same exact code he was working on! And he was having the same problem and had been banging his head against the wall for 2 days.

    So, we did what anyone living in a Web 2.0 world would do. We contacted the guy who published the code to ask for help. Within an hour both of us were smiling as our websites were now doing something we had long hoped for.

    In a Web 1.0 world, that collaboration wouldn’t have happened. Certainly not for free. But Web 2.0 changed the game. Now you see loads of novice developers having access to experts as we all share ideas.

    Which leads to the question the church has to deal with… "How will the church adapt to a Web 2.0 environment?" How will the church be the authority when we can’t even control content anymore? Is there biblical justification for collaboration? And what about churches who refuse to collaborate?

    Anyone have answers? Let’s here ’em.

  • I’ve been busy today

    What I’m about to say won’t sound too impressive.

    But I’ve spent most of this week, today especially, moving church websites to our new webhost. Here are two that area completely on a new host. I’d tell you to update your feed readers… but no one had subscribed to them.

    RomeoKids.com
    LightForceministries.com

    If you’ve been to those sites in the last 2 months you’ll know that not much has changed. I didn’t say this was a big sexy (no reference to our church van) move, but I did move all the data and where the domains are pointing. It’s a nice improvement and I can now put that on my list.

    As I was doing this today I decided I’m going to add a feature to YMX Hosting. For $25 I’ll set-up a Word Press blog, customize a template, set-up the site feed, and pretty much get it ready to "just blog."

    (more…)

  • 3 Free Tools for Your New Website

    3freetools
    “I just signed up for hosting, now what do I do?” This is a
    common question that we receive at YMX Hosting, so we’re happy to help
    you turn your dream of a self-hosted blog or youth ministry site into a
    reality. The best thing is that if you are willing to learn you can do
    most things for free.

    Unlike free website options like Blogger
    or WordPress, a self-hosted site is much less limited. You could use
    web publishing tools like Frontpage or iWeb, or you could use one of
    the many Open Source programs that are quickly dominating the web
    world. (Open Source translates practically to “free.”)

    For novice users, we strongly recommend choosing from this list of free tools.

    (more…)

  • My only iPhone post this month

    Iphone_and_jobs
    I promise to not talk too much about the iPhone. It’s got some pluses and minuses. And the simple fact is that while I would love one if it were free, I will never make enough money to justify getting one. (Unless it were for resale alone.) That said, I do know one person in my life who is desperate to get one. He will remain nameless. Wink wink.

    Here’s a funny iPhone diary that came from the New York Times. Yes, the New York Times did something funny. Write that down.

    Seth Godin has an excellent post on how Verizon screwed up the marketing of the iPhone release as well as what they should have done. I like the fact that Seth isn’t just smart enough to articulate why a marketing campaign sucks, he also takes the time to let Verizon know how they should have turned this into a positive.

    Here’s the best argument I can make against lining up to buy a $600 cell phone:
    – I already have a smartphone that I like. It’s too big, but so is the iPhone
    – I already have an iPod nano that I like. It’s not like I want my big old phone strapped around my neck when I’m moving the lawn!
    – I already have a laptop. It’s not like I could use the iPhone to do web administration or open up PhotoShop or upload via an FTP client to my web server.

    With those 3 factors, there is no sensible reason to get a phone like that.     I do predict that it will be good for Apple and it will be good for the cell phone industry. But in 12 months, AT&T will still suck because they always have.
    I also predict that the first generation iPhone will look like a massive brick in 12 months compared to the new, smaller, colored iPhone to come up Christmas 2008.

    That said, when people do buy the iPhone and it breaks. I suggest sending it to PodDrop and not Apple. You’ll get faster service and it’ll be reasonable… and it’ll get done faster.

    HT to Billy for the video

  • Lappy go poo poo

    It finally broke. The little connector thing that connects my laptop to the wall busted. I tried to repair it and it ended up shattered in several large chunks. $42 dollars later at the Dell.com store and I’ll have a new one in the next 24-48 hours.

    And yes, I said this to Paul and he politely told me, "Daddy grow up."

  • New stuff is in the air

    There must be something in the summer air that has got me going… but there are all sorts of things swirling around my head.

    Sometimes I pray "stupid prayers" to God. I asked Him to take what I’m doing and blow it up for you. Maybe that meant "destroy" or maybe that meant "make it cooler than I can imagine." But He’s God and He is in the process of blowing some stuff up in my life.

    Let me narrow it to two categories.

    1. Light Force. I’m not satisfied that we are missing close to 3100 students from the schools we’re supposedly trying to reach. I’ve been praying about that a lot lately and seeking Godly counsel. I’ve come to a simple conclusion that flows directly out of what I taught for the last 28 weeks in Acts. We need to get busy spreading God’s virus in a dead and dying world without Christ. All that to say… in the coming weeks I plan on exploring a lot and meeting with a lot of people to talk about developing a new "foyer" environment for 7-12th graders in Romeo.
    2. Website-o-rific. Holy cow… I’ve made a lot of websites in the last few weeks. Most of them are still "shells" for what is to come. In the coming weeks I’ll be completely moving all of the churches sites/subdomains from fbcromeo.org to romeochurch.com. In the process of doing that I’m launching several brand new additions to the church’s family of sites. So there will be loads of cool new things to look at as we develop sites for our leadership teams, kids ministry, student ministry, young adult ministry, married couples ministry, and even our main church site. Holy cow… that’s a lot!

    As I  reflect back on 6 weeks ago… I was completely worn out and exhausted. I’m praising God that with a little rest and time away, I’m feeling charged back up… more creative and carefree than ever.

    God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
       his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
    They’re created new every morning.
       How great your faithfulness!
    I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
       He’s all I’ve got left.

    God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
       to the woman who diligently seeks.
    It’s a good thing to quietly hope,
       quietly hope for help from God.
    It’s a good thing when you’re young
       to stick it out through the hard times. Lamentations 3 (The Message)

  • Seen this? UnSpun by Amazon

    There is a lot of this ranking stuff popping up on the web. I love this use of technology. Very cool… web 2.0 strikes again.

  • Still don’t have gmail? More reasons to switch

    Here

    Too bored to read? Watch this.