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.
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 defined as the baby boomer era (U.S. Census).
- By 2015, those aged 50 and older will represent 45% of the U.S. population (AARP).
- By 2030, the 65-plus population will double to about 71.5 million, and by 2050 will grow to 86.7 million people (U.S. Census).
Holy smokes, that’s a lot of people! Now you might be thinking that this would be a great time to start that consulting business where you send an army of patient techies into the suburbs to walk the Boomers through Facebook, connect their printers and program their universal remotes. But before you bounce to Craig’s List, consider the following:
- One-third of the 195.3 million Internet users in the U.S., adults aged 50+ represent the Web’s largest constituency (Jupiter Research).
- Two-thirds of Americans age 50-64 use the Internet (SeniorNet).
- Email is the most popular online activity among 50+ users, followed by web browsing, research, and shopping (ThirdAge and JWT Boom).
- 72% of baby boomers have broadband Internet in their homes (ThirdAge and JWT Boom).
- By the end of 2007, the number of mature social networkers is expected to top 20 million (Deloitte).
What’s it mean? Unlike my grandparents (I’m 29) my kids’ grandparents are online, sending email to their friends and family, surfing the webs, and using social networks like Facebook. A large majority of them are doing it at home with broadband connections. So while your market for your consulting business may have diminished, this still presents many opportunities for your church.
What’s This Mean for the Church?
If your congregation is of the more mature variety, there are some ways you can be using technology to connect with and minister to them.
- Email Newsletter
Email is the most popular feature of the internet used by those who are 50+ years old. Not web browsing or RSS. Why not offer an email newsletter to keep those who prefer email engaged. Take your message to where they are! I like ConstantContact.com but many other options are available. Not ready to face the cost of another web service? Give RSS to Email subscription services like Feedburner.com a try. - Video on Demand
Friends, 2010 was a big year for internet video. Hulu went plus, Netflix got mobile and Apple’s AppleTV sold a million units (not bad for a hobby). I’m predicting the next year to be bigger for video. More content, more devices, more viewers. As Boomers enter into retirement, you may find them stuck at home due to health issues or (hopefully) enjoying their new freedom and traveling. By making sure your video content is being podcast or accessible via a Roku set-top box, you’ll continue ministering to those who are unable to make it to weekend services. Speaking of Roku, those things are cheap (starting at $69). Wouldn’t it be cool if a group of people from the church raised enough money to buy several Roku boxes and then visited members of the congregation who were home-bound, installed the boxes and showed them how to get teaching and worship services on demand? I think so! - Facebook
Is your mom on Facebook? She may be soon. Boomers are flocking to the social network. If you don’t already have a Facebook page for your ministry, now is the time, there are lots of reasons to have a presence on Facebook.
What ideas do you have for reaching Baby Boomers with technology? Are you doing the above? Are you trying something new? Please, let us know in the comments!
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 area of legality that I don’t wish to traverse. All of it. And I don’t do that stuff anymore.
So what’s a copyright law abiding pastor to do? Well, I can’t help you with montages of 300 or editing the cuss out of Pulp Fiction. But if all you want is to show clips from a movie in a specific order, ProPresenter has your back.
You might already know that ProPresenter can play back a DVD from within the app. But did you know that you can create a playlist of clips from a DVD for playback later? It’s easy! After setting a few in and out points you can construct a list of clips from the DVD and play them back at your convenience. For more detailed instructions and some screen shots, visit this ProPresenter Help document.
NOTE: Even though playing back DVD clips in this manner does not break copyright law, you still need a church video license from CVLI to display clips from many movies. Also, I’m not a lawyer.
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?
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 interested in Destination Broadband - the newest broadband-centric exhibit at the 2010 NAB Show. It will be featuring technologies like online video platforms, streaming video, mobile video distribution, and much more.
Technologies for Worship Schedule: http://ow.ly/1fCqd
Destination Broadband: http://ow.ly/14hgA
Check out that first link. Looks like some informative and fun stuff!
Want to get into NAB for free? Save yourself $150 by visiting http://nabshow.com/register and using promo code A913
MediaCore: An Open Source Media Publishing Platform
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 high degree of control over the presentation and administration.
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. We’re using this solution at our Edmond Campus and it’s been received well. The video below shows it working:
Here’s a graphic that shows how everything works.
I’ve created a website to help your church do the same thing with DIY digital signage. Check it out at http://www.getsignboard.com
Introducing Stage Time (or How to Reign in Those Announcements)
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 stage. Each Element gets a predetermined amount of time which is counted down on an external display (your confidence monitor). The idea is that the person on stage will be able to keep track of how much time he has remaining on stage before the next element takes place. Your show might look like this:
- Announcements - 5:00
- Tithe - 5:00
- Worship - 20:00
- Prayer - 5:00
- Sermon - 30:00
- Closing Prayer - 5:00
Every time an element goes over its allotted amount of time, the clock turns red to let the people on stage know they’ve gone over and by how much time they are over. Once an element wraps up, the show is advanced to the next element with a click of the mouse or using an Apple Remote. The clock then displays a countdown clock for that element, and so on.
Shows can be created and saved for later. There is even a handy notes pane in case you need to insert specific instructions for your friends in the tech booth.
Stage Time also displays a clock at the bottom of the monitor to show the time. It’d be wicked cool if somewhere else on the screen, you had the option to display the total minutes behind or ahead of schedule the entire show is.
For more information about Stage Time or to download a trial, visit http://www.tastefulworks.com.
[Full Disclosure] The guys at Tasteful Works and myself have been working together on a soon to be released iPhone app. This is not a paid review or anything, just trying to help them out with some promo.
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!
