December 2011
1 post
Goodbye But Not Farewell
Dear friends,
For 10 years I have focused my career on working with churches to help them communicate creatively and use technology effectively. I have had the great pleasure of working with dozens of churches, ministries and non-profits. I met many creative and passionate individuals along the way whom I am honored to have worked alongside.
Last week I worked my last day at Henderson Hills...
November 2011
1 post
4 tags
Evernote for Pastors – A Better Way To Do Ministry
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Ben Stroup. Ben and Ron Edmondson have put together an eBook called, A Guide to Evernote for Pastors. Friends, I love Evernote. For the uninitiated, Evernote is awesome. Evernote is also a web-based note taking tool that works on almost any computer and mobile device. Read more about how to use this great tool for ministry below.
Sermons.
...
August 2011
1 post
3 tags
Scout Books: Little Books for Big Ideas →
Recently a friend introduced me to these rad little books called Scout Books. In a nutshell, they’re small notebooks made in the USA from recycled paper and they’ve got style. Your style.
See, these little books can feature your cover design or even custom designed interior pages (up to 32). I can think of a few great ways to use these:
Camp booklets
Ministry brochures
Branded...
June 2011
1 post
3 tags
Signboard Update
Just a quick note to let you know that Signboard (the affordable DIY digital signage solution for churches) has been updated with support for time zones and DST. This was done to help insure that the time offset for events coming from Google Calendar stay correct throughout the year.
The updated files are available for download now. The specific file that was updated is left.php (which parses the...
March 2011
1 post
3 tags
Free Digital Signage from MediaSignage.com →
I like digital signage. I enjoyed coming up with a solution for HHBC last year (check it out at getsignboard.com) and I’ve been dreaming of putting more time and resources into further development but I just haven’t gotten to it.
Now it looks like I might not have to.
The very talented designer and fellow Oklahoman, Brandon Knight, just made me privy to MediaSignage.com....
January 2011
4 posts
5 tags
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Vimeo Plus now supports uploads up to 5 GB →
Good news everyone! Vimeo’s bumped up their file upload limit from 2GB to 5GB! Perfect for when a sermon goes a tad too long.
4 tags
A Cheap (and fast) Way to Display Live Texts «... →
Using a custom WordPress theme and TextMarks, The Chapel’s Cleve Persinger whips up a cheap and fast way to display live text messages. Nice!
6 tags
The Opportunities Boomers Provide
For Christmas my in-laws got me a subscription to Entrepreneur Magazine. In addition to the issues I have to look forward to, they mailed me a collection of back issues and while thumbing through these I read an article about the aging Baby Boomer generation and the opportunities for business that they provide. Consider these stats:
77 million people were born between 1946 and 1964, which is...
December 2010
3 posts
6 tags
Mobile Giving Options for Churches →
Lauren Hunter has a great writeup at Church Tech Today about ServiceU’s new mobile features for giving. This is a great addition to a well established service. If you’re not moving your church into the mobile space, now is the time and with tools like these, you’re running out of excuses;-)
3 tags
Evernote introduces Sponsored Accounts! →
Well I guess teams is the name of the game in tech today! Evernote has announced sponsored accounts for groups!
What’s a sponsored account? In a nut shell it means that your employer pays the bill for your Evernote account. Then you can create a corporate Notebook or any other sort of shared notebook to stay in colab with everyone you work with. Nice!
2 tags
Dropbox for Teams! →
Dropbox has announced Dropbox for Teams! This is welcome news for design teams like ours! We’re always needing to share files with each other and have access to files while away from the office.
Dropbox for teams includes shared quotas (nice!), centralized administration for managing users, adding administrators and billing, plus the security and versioning you already enjoy!
Pricing...
November 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Understanding Bounce Rates Infographic | Think... →
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Eventbrite iPhone App Gains Barcode-Scanning... →
October 2010
2 posts
1 tag
8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity and Stifle... →
“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts the moment you get up and doesn’t stop until you get into the office.” — Robert Frost
3 tags
We Need More Tools Like Missionify « MEDIA SALT →
It’s like About.me but for people on mission. Awesome!
September 2010
2 posts
1 tag
September Webcast: 7 Principles for Effective... →
Terrell Sanders of MinistryCOM was kind enough to invite me to join him in a webcast where we discussed 7 Principles for Effective Communications.
Whether you are new to church communications, or a seasoned veteran, these principles will help you plan and prioritize better. They can also help you educate your leadership (and staff) on some fundamental concepts of church communications.
Check...
4 tags
Stop Ripping and Editing DVDs
Over the past eight years, I’ve been asked dozens of times to rip a DVD and re-edit parts of it. I’ve made montages of Braveheart, edited the dirty bits out of Fight Club, and taken the swearing out of The Matrix. The request I get most often, however, is to simply reorder some scenes on a time line and burn to a DVD for easy playback of a few clips.
That’s illegal in a gray...
August 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Vimeo Releases Universal Player →
Oh yes! This is what I’ve been waiting for. Now I upload to Vimeo and my content is delivered to mobile and desktop browsers looking all rad and stuff! I wonder, do I really need my own media server at this point?
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Could the Sony NEX-VG10 Spell the End for HDSLR... →
The Sony NEX-VG10 is a $2000 large sensor camcorder that supports SLR lenses. So if you’ve been drooling over all the swank video shot on HDSLR’s over at Vimeo but you just can’t see yourself shooting video with a still camera, this might be a solution for you.
Take note, however, that this camcorder leans pretty far towards the consumer end of “prosumer” with...
4 tags
Snipplr: Code Snippet Repository →
Whether you’re a cut-and-paste coder, student or just need to keep track of all your bits of HTML, CSS, Javascript and more, Snipplr.com is for you.
1 tag
Live Video Production Training from Buckhead... →
I recently started serving on the production team at People’s Church in Oklahoma City and was pointed to Buckhead Church’s production website which includes some great video training resources for those looking to volunteer in live production. Check it out!
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10 Secret Code Phrases to Get What You Want from... →
July 2010
2 posts
4 tags
MojoMotor : The Publishing Engine that Does Less →
EllisLab, creators of the always impressive ExpressionEngine CMS, have released a new, light weight (as in feature set) CMS called MojoMotor. My first impressions of MojoMotor is that it would be perfect for small church or business websites that need the ability to change content easily but can do without more robust features like blogs, calendars, etc.
However, perhaps the coolest thing about...
3 tags
Free and Simple One Page Church Websites →
A few weeks ago, Terrell Sanders at MinistryCOM suggested that a lot of churches would be better off with simple, one page websites with just the basics rather than not have a website at all.
I agree, so I’ve come up with a solution for small churches who wish to follow Terrell’s advice.
I call it OnePageChurch.com and, in a nut shell, it lets users create simple, one page sites...
June 2010
1 post
4 tags
Why You May Not Need a Mobile App →
May 2010
1 post
Textingly Lets Companies Manage Their Text... →
April 2010
5 posts
1 tag
More Digital Signage →
It turns out a colleague down the street created his own digital signage as well and it looks rad!
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Sugar Creek Baptist Releases Open Source iPhone... →
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The iPad, A Staggering Work of Obviousness →
Sometimes I come across a blog post that is not only informative and inspiring, but also just plain well written and entertaining to read. This is one such post.
4 tags
Keep your Mac Tip-Top with OnyX →
Have you heard of OnyX? It’s a free utility that lets you maintain and tweak your Mac to keep it healthy and squeeze every drop of processing power from it.
In their own words:
OnyX is a multifunction utility that enables you to verify the startup disk and the structure of its system files, to run miscellaneous maintenance and cleaning tasks, to configure parameters in Finder, Dock and...
3 tags
twistori: Twitter Visualization on Your Desktop →
Ever wish you could put cool looking animation of tweets about your event or organization up on the screens for everyone to see? Now you can with twistori Desktop Edition!
I saw this sweet screen saver while visiting the Element Fusion offices a few weeks ago.
For around $14 you get an app that lets you search twitter for keywords, filter out the naughty stuff or other things, and display them...
March 2010
7 posts
3 tags
Get a Facebook App for your Church!
A couple weeks ago, Henderson Hills Baptist Church, with the help of Terrell Sanders and Adam White of Main Street Enterprises launched a new feature on their Facebook Fan Page. If you visit the HHBC Facebook Fan Page and you are not yet a fan, you’ll be presented with a customized page via a custom Facebook App.
On this custom Facebook App you see items from the HHBC RSS feed, service...
1 tag
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Free NAB Registration for CTD Readers
I just got an email from someone on the NAB Show Team letting me know of a couple of exhibits at this year’s show that might be of interest to some of you.
The Technologies for Worship Pavilion offers comprehensive training for house of worship staff and technical volunteers and is the focal point for all things related to worship technology at the NAB Show. In addition, you may be...
3 tags
animoto Releases API →
I love animoto like I love Apple. It just makes things easier. Now they’ve released a developer API! I’m looking forward to seeing what people do with that!
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Editing a Multicam Program Shot on Canon 5Ds →
If you’re into digital photography or videography you may have heard that shooting video on your HD capable DSLR is all the rage. This post from the ProVideo Coalition provides a great case study in how using these cameras to shoot an entire program can work. I need to get me one of these cameras!
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Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: The End of... →
There’s been a lot talk about the publishing industry and how eBooks and other technologies will change things. This brief article from Joe Wikert, GM at O’Reilly publishing, has some interesting thoughts on what the step beyond eBooks might look like and a company you may be familiar with that has been doing it for years. Thought provoking stuff.
2 tags
Less Framework: An HTML5-powered CSS framework for... →
Looking to build a mobile website? Hoping to take advantage of huge screen sizes without leaving out the little guy? Check into Less Framework. It’s pretty cool!
February 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Facebook Launches Zero, A Text-Only Mobile Site... →
With mobile sites being all the rage, don’t forget your visitors who, like me, are still rocking their non-iPhones and non-Androids and whose mobile browsers are limited by speed, rendering and bandwidth issues. If the group of mobile browsers in this situation is big enough for Facebook to consider, I’ll bet it’s big enough for your church to consider.
Don’t have the...
3 tags
ProPresenter 4 is out for Mac (Windows version on...
I got a welcome email in my inbox this afternoon. ProPresenter 4 has been released and with it a bunch of very excellent features that, in my opinion, keeps this app firmly on the throne as King of Presentation Software.
Even more interesting is Renewed Vision’s announcement that they are working on a Windows port of ProPresenter. I know a lot of PC users who will be happy to hear that.
...
January 2010
7 posts
4 tags
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MediaCore: An Open Source Media Publishing... →
MediaCore is a free open source video, audio, and podcast publishing platform. It is built for organizations who wish to distribute media in a variety of formats on their website while maintaining the ability to control the user experience.
The purpose behind MediaCore was to make a central media library that could pull media from any source, track statistics, enable commenting, and provide a...
5 tags
Roll Your Own Digital Signage 2.0
A while back, I wrote a series of posts detailing how I created a digital signage solution of Henderson Hills Baptist Church using modified AppleTV.
While the hacked AppleTV worked well enough, it was not quite as robust as I wanted, could not play video well, and would not auto-scale for different display sizes. So I’ve been working on a new solution.
Now I have something ready to show....
4 tags
Introducing Stage Time (or How to Reign in Those...
Tired of the announcements dragging on at church? Need to give the guest speaker a subtle hint that his turn at the mic is over? If you’re looking to manage your stage better, check into Stage Time from the same mind that brought you Countdown Maker!
Stage Time is an app for Macs that let’s you create a “show” consisting of a list of elements that will be happening on...
4 tags
Vimeo to get 1080p and Mobile Support →
It’s been discussed before that Vimeo is a fantastic deal for churches looking to offer video online on the cheap. Now, if you’re a paying customer ($60/yr.) you can expect support for 1080p and mobile playback (as in, your Vimeo content on an iPhone). That’s a pretty sweet deal!
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Church Community Builder Introduces Twexting!
Oh tight! One of my favorite ChMS companies and the one I use at my home church has released a rad new feature that smashes together Twitter ans SMS text messages into one, rad communications tool! Here’s the release from their website:
CCB’s Twext™ feature combines the convenience of Text Messaging with the reach of Twitter™ COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, JANUARY 4, 2010—Church Community Builder...
4 tags
What The Church Can Learn From Canabalt
If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might have noticed me tumbling to my death or being blown into a fine mist every now and then. The source of my destruction is a very simple game called Canabalt. In a nut shell, Canabalt is a game where the goal is to jump from roof top to roof top for as long as possible before dying. Only one button is used to jump. That’s it.
...
November 2009
4 posts
3 tags
VideoLobby.com: Custom Webcasts →
This could be cool. VideoLobby.com lets you bring your own streaming video provider and helps you smash together a slick looking website that delivers your video content and integrates Twitter and Facebook and facilitates moderated comments. Awesome! It’s also free.
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TruthCasting: Free Online Sermon Broadcasting →
I’m not sure how all this is free, but it’s worth looking into. TruthCasting is a:
sermon broadcasting service that is free to the church and free to the viewer. We specialize in automated delivery of sermon video, audio, and written resources.
That sounds like a good deal! They can also create an iPhone app for your church for a one time fee (not sure how much) that lets users...