Category: FREE

Zac Browser

This is a cool example of finding a way to make things work – when there’s not (many) other options available.

From USA Today:

John LeSieur is in the software business, so he took particular interest when computers seemed mostly useless to his 6-year-old grandson, Zackary. The boy has autism, and the whirlwind of options presented by PCs so confounded him that he threw the mouse in frustration.

LeSieur tried to find online tools that could guide autistic children around the Web, but he couldn’t find anything satisfactory. So he had one built, named it the Zac Browser For Autistic Children in honor of his grandson, and is making it available to anyone for free.

The browser is geared towards kids with autism but looks like it could be a good way for other kids to learn the web and computers as well.

Download the software here.

FREE: Videos now through Christmas

WorshipHouse Media is giving away a FREE download every weekday until Christmas! That’s right… every weekday. Go HERE and click on the “Daily Freebie” ad to go to each day’s freebie.

Stock up on some videos for your church for 2008 or for this Christmas.

Hat tip to Church Video Ideas

More changes to SSL

Got around to setting up accounts with del.icio.us and twitter over the last few days. So far I’m liking them both. Don’t know why I’ve been putting it off. They may mean I’ll cut down on some of my usual blog posting, but I don’t know.

You would think that I would have jumped on these bandwagons a long time ago, but I put them off until seeing them really utilized by folks like Thomas and others. Even various organizations and companies are getting on the bandwagon to easily share links within their organizations or to clients.

For example The Sunlight Foundation sent me to their del.icio.us page a week or two ago to show me all the articles and information I might ever want on their new Google Earth layer. Rather than e-mailing me a list of a few articles, I was sent a link and it had loads and loads of links and information.

Also several presidential campaigns are running del.icio.us pages and twitter pages as folks follow the candidates around.

If you’re not familiar with the two services, del.icio.us allows folks to save bookmarks for websites, videos and misc. that are of interest and that they want to share with others. As you’ve probably noticed a lot of my posts are simply links to other sites and articles I want to share with others. Now with del.icio.us that’s done in one easy to follow place. I’m working on trying to set it up so it will automatically post one blog entry with all the links for the day – but I’m still working out the kinks on that one. Until then, you can visit http://del.icio.us/jdblundell to see the various links.

As for twitter, the service allows users to keep others posted throughout the day & night about their going ons. It’s like a simplified report or re-cap of the day – 24/7. Don’t know how often I’ll be using it or updating it. We’ll see. It can be updated form the website, my cellphone or IM and it also updates my Facebook status too. My twitter status will update on the right hand side of SSL, right under the calendar or on my twitter page.

Crazy stuff going on around here – who knows where it will all lead.

UPDATE: With the pending shutdown of Delicious sometime back I jumped ship and moved to Pinboard.in which has far more features and benefits than Delicious ever did. I highly recommend it. You can see my links there at: http://pinboard.in/u:jdblundell.

Church surveys

A couple churches have shared surveys they’ve given their congregations over the last couple months.
National Community Church and Granger Community Church have both shared their surveys online.
Also, Willowcreek Community Church in Chicago recently announced the findings of one of their recent surveys and admitted that they’ve been wrong in their way of thinking and doing ministry.
That’s a bit jaw dropping but can you imagine what might have happened if they never surveyed their congregation and kept doing “business as usual.”
I’m working on a survey for the community groups in our church and wondering if any other churches out there have surveyed their congregations or specific groups and ministries within their church. What have you found? What did you change? Where did it lead you?

FREE: Moby mix

Moby re-did a mix of his song Porcelain for a gig he had over the weekend and (for a limited time I’m sure) you can download the new mix on his myspace page. Just don’t tell the suits. They might get a little angry.
From Moby’s blog:

oh, before ‘degenerates’ on thursday i realized that i didn’t have any remixes of ‘porcelain’ that i wanted to play(although the extant remixes of ‘porcelain’ are good, they’re just not energetic enough for a big room set), so i quickly made a remix of ‘porcelain’ that worked well at ‘degenerates’.
i’ve posted it on myspace if you want to download it and play it when you dj.
hopefully the man won’t get upset with me for giving away music, but it’s
just a simple little remix.

In related news, I’ve been working on a new show/podcast for OrangeNoiseRadio. I’d love to have a mix of all sorts of stuff but it will probably start out with a mix of house/drum&bass/ambient music. The only downside is that for it to be a legal podcast, the music needs to be copywrite free or under a creative commons license. So it’s taking a little longer to find the music.
If you’ve got any great creative commons music you want to suggest – feel free to drop me a note or a link.
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