Category: techno

Notes from The Idea Camp – #icdc

Watchin the Idea Camp today #icdc

I wrote about The Idea Camp a while back. I had hoped to have a local viewing party, but it never quite panned out. Instead I’m watching online physically by myself, but what seems like I’m right there with everyone thanks to technology.

Thanks to free online streaming and Twitter I’ve been watching and listening to a majority of the conversations taking place this weekend in DC. So far its been great.

I’ve been twittering my notes, so for those who haven’t been able to keep up, and for archival purpose, here are some of the notes I’ve taken through the pre-session and the first breakout session…

Hopefully these notes will spark creative ideas and innovation within your own groups.
Continue reading Notes from The Idea Camp – #icdc

Social media hacks for your website

Getting on a little bit of a technology bent lately…

There are tons of plugins you can get for your website or blog that allow your readers to share your posts on a number of social network sites. But my experience has been that often those plugins can cause havoc on your servers for one reason or another – or bog your site down in general.

But there are alternatives to using plugins — and these will work for WordPress site, or anywhere on any site that utilizes PHP.
Continue reading Social media hacks for your website

#myfavoritebiblestory

sunday school 1960 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/therenniefamily/2409907031/

Not sure who started it, or where it came from, but found out about the #myfavoritebiblestory Twitter meme last night at dinner.

The basic gist of it is “What’s your favorite Bible story” but complete with irony and sarcasm.

What’s really interesting is to see how folks have responded. While many of the tweets have come from one or two people, they’ve been retweeted and added to by a number of folks. And I would say the irony of these stories highlight some of the real issues people have with the Church and Christianity today.

So the question is, do we ignore it by calling it offensive, or do we start working to fix it?

Hope no one takes offense, but these are some of my favorites….
Continue reading #myfavoritebiblestory

Customize Disqus WordPress plugin with CSS

I’ve recently added the Disqus plugin to two of my WordPress blogs/sites – encounterthis.com/blog and somethingbeautifulpodcast.com.

Unfortunately I found out Friday morning that the default CSS styling makes reading the comments almost impossible if you’re using a dark/black background. I did a lot of searching and saw suggestions to add a Javascript command to the header file, create an entirely separate CSS file and more. None of them seemed to work for me. I just wanted an easy/non-Java option.
Continue reading Customize Disqus WordPress plugin with CSS

Buy our house video podcast (episode 1)

Thought we’d try a little short “video podcast” to highlight some of the great things about our house. We’ll try and post one at least once a week until the house sells (so in reality, we hope this will be our only one).

I shot this on my Blackberry Curve 8900 last night and pieced it together a little later. Its just a quick easy video podcast that will hopefully draw some more attention to our house.

But to begin with, we would love your advice on how to better stage our dining room. Watch the short video and then share your thoughts in the comment section below or via e-mail: house (at) casadeblundell (dot) com.

Find out more here.

Let us know what you think – both about the question we raise in the video – and about the video podcast idea.

Social media’s impact and the Church

Saw this video over on Jonathan Brink’s site…

Social media continues to have a HUGE impact on the world around us — but I’m not sure it’s having the same impact on the Church. It seems that most people are still reluctant to share their online lives with their church body. There may be some folks within our faith communities with whom we’ll share things with — but overall I haven’t seen folks sharing their lives with everyone within the community.

In other words, folks may be willing to share their thoughts, pictures etc with me (which is great) but they don’t seem willing to do the same with pages that are more public and available to the community as a whole.

I wonder if our community is simply asking the wrong questions, not educating our peeps, or if people are just scared to share their lives and experiences with their church community in general.

When folks are open and sharing — I’ve seen relationships improve and grow tremendously. But when we remain behind walls (online or offline) its hard to imagine any relationship growing as it should.

No matter what, I don’t think any community should be solely dependent upon online sharing. The online must go offline as well. But I think the online world can truly expand and improve the offline.

But what are you seeing? Are you seeing your faith community really growing online? Are your peeps taking part in Twitter, Facebook pages, Flickr etc.?

Share some insight.