ChurchMag

The #1 Resource for Church Technology and Creativity

Web Hosting

Jeremy Smith

ChurchMag / Archives for Jeremy Smith

Having Manners, Even With Technology


by

I just finished having a conversation with my 6-year-old son about having good manners. But his generation offers a unique concept. He was making fun of a girl's writing on a video and his comment was "she can't hear me." Now take this to the next level of text-based communication or video gaming. If you are playing single player and clearly dominating easy mode, can you mock them? What about robots or Alexa, should we say please and thank you to them? ... Read More

Christian Gaming Streamers


by

You probably have heard by now that online gaming is a big deal. It honestly has been for over a decade starting way back with World of Warcraft. Recently with streaming on YouTube and Twitch as well as the ability to monetize it, we have seen a surge in gaming where people are able to make it their full-time job. A couple of years ago, I had talked about how we could become online missionaries, literally raising money from Christians to be able to preach the Word of God to people online. ... Read More

Helping Families Connect Online Safely


by

For those who are technologically inclined, I'm going to assume that is nearly all of our audience, you hold a special place in the Church. Because of your knowledge, you have experience that can help support the Church as well as the families that attend and lead. Whether you are church tech volunteers, the youth pastor, or an elder who knows a lot about phones and the internet, I want to call on you to share your information. While you know all the right things to do and say, hopefully, ... Read More

2018 Year-In-Review, Via Google Search


by

Ready to get nostalgic in the last year? Google has put together their top trends of what was searched in 2018 that remind us what happened this year. It has been a year of national and international worry and frustration, amazing Marvel movies, weather disasters, and a royal wedding. If you want to see the set of lists, check it out here. You can actually narrow down the search to specific countries if you want to see what happened in your own nation. I'll obviously be talking about the United ... Read More

Infinadeck – A VR Treadmill [Video]


by

Virtual Reality is changing the game when it comes to media. Whether connecting with people online like could be done through Ready Player One, the online gaming that is already here, or even experiencing the already existing VR Church app on the Oculus, VR is on its way and I don't think it's a fad. For those who game, a medium which VR developers already see a huge area of growth, one huge limitation is how to get around. Right now you either have to stand still or use your controllers to ... Read More

Christmas Nostalgia From Home Alone [Video]


by

If you are a kid of the 90s, you know that Christmas time means seeing a ton of kid Christmas movies coming back. Well, Google has tapped into this whole nostalgia hype train that we saw from Stranger Things and Fuller House. We see how Google Assistant and home automation could have made Kevin McCallister have an easier time at home. Enjoy! And what other 90s media needs to make a return in a fun commercial? ... Read More

Darth Vader Teaches A Masterclass [Video]


by

Masterclass groups are all the rage right now. There is even a website going big right now with huge names attached to it to show you how to do their profession. Whether you want Malcolm Gladwell to teach you how to write gooder or to learn from Gordon Ramsey on how to cook, they have a lot of stuff. Honestly, it looks like an expensive webinar series. But what if you could learn how to do branding and marketing from someone that has developed a brand the entire universe has heard of? That's ... Read More

Is Learning Without Internet Fair? [Video]


by

While I do not agree with the theology and philosophy of a lot of what SoulPancake says and does, I love the questions they ask. So what if we look at knowledge within the disparaging socioeconomic climates we have in America with regards to learning? Here's what they say about the video they present below: In the age of technology, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before. We partnered with Sprint to explore what advantages (and disadvantages) students have thanks to the ... Read More

Did You See What Justin Beiber Did?


by

If you have been living the offline life for the past two weeks, you missed a lot of fun online. Justin Beiber, singer and (former?) teen heartthrob was caught eating a burrito completely wrong. Haven't seen it? Here's what I'm talking about. ... Read More

Improving DNS Security and Speed


by

1.1.1.1 is a public DNS resolver that makes DNS queries faster and more secure. So, what is a DNS resolver, for all of us n00bs? When you type in ChurchMag into your URL, the Internet Protocols do not actually look for that website address, but the IP address that is associated with your website. This makes it easier and faster to connect you to the web server that hosts our website. So DNS resolver is simply the conversion from ChurchMag to the IP address. So why would you want to use 1.1.1.1? ... Read More