Today is #CyberMonday and to celebrate the holidays ChurchCrunch is giving away 3 new Magic Mice from Apple!
So pretty.
Want one? To enter all you have to do is comment below sharing how your Thanksgiving went! If you tweet it you’ll get an extra “ticket” into the drawing.
Oh, and if you’re a Windows user don’t worry; there’s apparently a way for you to use it too!
Thanks for being a part of this growing community and look for big “things” happening this coming year!
It’s that time again…! Sunday’s a good day to take it easy.
I’ve decided that on Sundays I’m not going to do any blogging except for a very simple post series called “The Sunday Special” where you get to ask me anything.
You can ask about me about web technology, WordPress, blogging, what I ate for breakfast… whatever.
I can’t promise that I’ll answer all of your questions, but feel free to answer each other’s questions as well.
I’ll try to answer all the questions throughout the coming week.
Simple enough, right? Go.
[Image from gshok]
About half-way through High School I distinctly remember telling myself (and a few others) that I wanted to program video games for a living. It was my dream, and I was going to do it.
I enrolled in a University that I thought could take me there and I thought I already had the chops to make it big since I had a background in software development and web design.
Reality set in very quickly as I found even the basic elements of “serious” programming difficult, arduous, and somewhat boring. I didn’t want theory or all this other “stuff” that I felt didn’t directly apply to my hopes and goals; I wanted to program video games now!
The thing is that I wasn’t interested in putting in the time, dedication, and sweat to learn about programming, I just wanted to taste of success, or at least what I thought “success” looked like.
Anything that’s worth doing takes time, practice, and a whole lot of patience. I find this particularly applicable in blogging.
“One step at a time” they said. It’s true. But, it doesn’t have to be an un-calculated step. It can be strategic as well.
Success, for blogging, simply starts with pushing that “publish” button. When was the last time you did just that?
[VIDEO WAS TAKEN DOWN]
Watch the above video for a brilliant use of Facebook to market an initiative/campaign.
Love it. WTG IKEA. Your furniture is great but your use of social media is awesome.
[HT: CNET]
Here’s something I learned very recently and I can’t believe I didn’t know about it…!
Dreamhost, a great and simple hosting provider that I’ve recommended a number of times, actually offers free hosting for 501(c)(3) non profits!
You can check it out here. Who would have thought.
Otherwise, it’s a great solution anyways for the person starting out (and even for those who aren’t “new” to the scene).
Anyone else know of any other good hosting providers who offer free services for non profits?
A few weeks ago Church Community Builder announced a series of upgrades to their core ChMS offering (Church Management Software). These upgrades include improved internal communication between users, event management, check-in capacity management, and more.
One particular upgrade of note for me was their “Historical Involvment” upgrade, which says:
CCB’s Involvement View has always been a tremendous asset when trying to understand how well a person has connected to the church. Historical Involvement adds the ability to see how that connectedness has evolved over time. Now you can see all Groups and Volunteer Positions that a person has belonged to or filled in the past, including their start and end dates.
The Benefit: Leaders gain an immediate, real-time perspective on current and past member involvement within the organization.
I found this to be quite interesting and it would definitely be interesting to see someone’s historical involvement overtime, especially if you had particular goals for your members and/or spiritual growth initiatives.
I’m not too savvy about all the ChMS’s out there probably because I simply haven’t been overly-impressed with anyone in particular thus far. Am I missing something?
[HT: Lauren Hunter for the heads up]
iPhone apps are all the rage. The problem is that for most ministries it’s just a little out of reach in terms of financials.
But, TruthCasting.com aims to make it easier (at least for the first 100 signups…!) by offering a one-time fee of $1,995.00. This whitelabel service can help you get your content online and out there with little to no hassle at all:
The best news is the price…a one-time fee of $1,995 is the total cost. All the church or ministry does is send in video content and TruthCasting handles everything else.
The potential is limitless and developing a quality, functional stand-alone iPhone app of this nature from scratch can range from $20,000-$30,000.
We are offering a 90-95% savings for the first 100 churches/ministries that sign up.
Neat.
Go here to sign up and learn more about the opportunity. You’ll also want to check out this PDF document covering a lot of the material and information to get you started.
If that wasn’t enough, here’s a video as well:
I know that there are a number of ministries that are using Livestream.com to service their online campuses and ministries and I’m sure they are already aware of this new offering that was launched a week or so ago.
But, for those that are still weighing their options, this is definitely a value prop to consider, especially since it is included in their already great package:
Livestream is the first to offer a turn-key streaming service that uses the new H.264 HTTP live streamingfunctionality included in the native QuickTime player that Apple has pre-installed on the iPhone. This means that Livestream producers do not need to obtain iPhone App Store approval to launch their own iPhone live streaming channel, nor do their viewers need to install any application. Streams are viewed using the iPhone’s Safari browser.
There is only going to be a greater need for mobile-ready devices for streaming services live and sim-live in the near future and having a service like Livestream offer it natively is a great way to save some money (and time/development, etc).
What services are you currently using? Are you doing everything you can to save a few coin?
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and as we all know our minds tend toward things that we’re thankful for.
So I ask you dearest reader of this technologically-minded blog: What technology are you thankful for?
Here’s my list for this Thanksgiving:
What about you?
This is a guest post by Tom McFarlin.
One of the nice things about the modern web is that after you’ve secured your domain and your host, it’s relatively easy to get started publishing some content online.
Well. Sort of.
For some people, it’s a matter of building the website and launching it into cyberspace. For others, it’s just another place where more decisions have to be made. But we don’t have that kind of time. We need some software that will do the heavy lifting for us. Luckily, there are a lot of free tools out there that can help ease our pain.
We’ll take a look at a few of them after the jump. Continue Reading…
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