Category: techno

AcademHack

“Please on behalf of those who will listen to you, stop using PowerPoint, or at least stop using PowerPoint the way that it is commonly used.”

Just found AcademHack – via research on my last post about Twitter. The presentation above is from them. Wish I had one of Brian’s weekly PowerPoints – they’re usually right on with this idea.

AcademHack has some great stuff! I’m not in the classroom but there’s some great stuff here that could work for those in any type of leadership/teaching position… including community groups.

Twitter peeps

So you’re browsing SSL and you see this box on the right hand side that says Twitter updates.
Currently (as of 8:26 a.m. on Jan 29) it shows:

  • what happens when you live alone and die alone > who picks up the pieces? http://tinyurl.com/yto2or 21 minutes ago
  • Listening 2 this american life podcast podcast on the bus about an hour ago
  • Cant find my keys about an hour ago
  • The new Casa de Blundell is live :: http://tinyurl.com/27cyj2 about an hour ago
  • time to take out the trash and head off to work… now where’s the dog at? about an hour ago
  • Getting my morn caffeine fix while checking email about an hour ago

Wait, you haven’t noticed this yet? Well go check it out. We’ll wait for you….

OK now that we’ve all seen it, you’re probably asking, OK so what is it? It’s my Twitter feed. The feed displays everything I add to my Twitter account throughout the day.
Now explaining Twitter might be a little bit harder.

Twitter.com is another one of those fancy Web 2.0 sites that is built around community and 140 character text messages. The site asks the basic question, “What are you doing?”

Users then respond throughout the day with their own activities, thoughts, notes and what not. There’s even a channel set up for things people overheard in their day-to-day lives. You’ll find all sorts of things happening, or being mico-blogged about on Twitter.

ESPN has a feed that alerts people with the latest NFL news. College professors are Twittering with their students. Folks are sharing their insight from the Sundance Festival. Reporters are sharing insight on the presidential race and MacRumors abound.

So what’s the big deal? Well once you sign up for your free Twitter account you can follow any of these feeds, including mine, to can get the updates from your own Twitter page, via txt message or e-mail. And what amazes me is the community that’s built around Twitter. I’ve mentioned this before, but thanks to Twitter and his blog, I know more about Thomas and his life in Scotland than I do about my friends and family that live within 20-30 miles. That’s good and bad — but for this blog entry, we’ll go with the good ;-).

We’re also starting to use Twitter for encounter. We’re posting info on upcoming events and hope to start using it for prayer request notices as more encounter peeps get on board.

Kevin Hendricks over at CMS has more suggestions for Twitter as well (who by the way kept me entertained/informed last week on living life without a furnace via his Twitter feed):

The main thing to keep in mind is that Twitter is just another medium. It could be a volunteer coordinator or an evangelism tool. Experiment and see what works:

  • Ask questions: Sermon research, who’s coming to an event, what people might be interested in, etc.
  • Share insights: Maybe it’s a quote from a sermon, maybe it’s a sudden insight from a Bible study.
  • Highlight content: Point people to blog posts, articles or resources on your church web site.
  • Hype events: Remind people of events and give a glimpse of what they’re missing.

So that’s about it. Now go for it. Twitter away.

digital analog camera

crazycam.jpg

remember the days of analog cameras? you’d fill a full roll of film, never quite knowing how it would turn out – until you developed the film. sometimes you’d be thrilled, sometimes sadly disappointed.

but what if you could return to those anxious days without the cost of film developing? that’s the idea behind the Eazzzy! cam design. no lcd screen, no viewfinder, but also no waiting for film to develop. just plug it into your usb port and go.

another option that i’ve had fun with is basically the same idea – just continuing to use a digital camera with a broken lcd screen.
we’ve set it out at a few parties and gotten funny looks but the pictures are some of the more random fun photos of the night.
you could do the same thing i spose by taping over the screen and viewfinder as well.

Nerd olympics

A Minnesota tech company is hosting the F1 Overnight Web Site Challenge, where teams of geeks will create fully functional web sites for Minnesota nonprofits in only 24 hours.

One part nerd Olympics, one part community service project and one part race-against-the-clock — Sierra Bravo’s F1 Overnight Website Challenge will partner deserving Minnesota non-profits with teams of talented web developers for 24 hours of fun collaboration culminating in a fully operational website for each participating non-profit.

Love it! CMS suggests this could work for churches too. I agree. What non-profit website would you upgrade/change if you could?

re: Social networking and the church

Here’s some more Intranet/Social Networking info from across the pond:

Robin Farr, editor of the employee intranet for the provincial government of British Columbia, is humanizing the way it communicates with its employees.

She does this by continuing to transform the government’s intranet from the neglected, dull afterthought it was less than two years ago into a living Web where 30,000 employees can see themselves talking about their jobs, find ideas to make their work easier and more fun, shop for bargains, buy and sell personal items, send e-cards to colleagues for a job well done, and more.

Farr has done all this with a staff of three, including herself. She does most of the writing, and until recently did it all. She manages a videographer and one Web administrator.

The employee response is spectacular. The site averages 170,000 hits a month—a 2800 percent jump in traffic—among the 30,000 province employees.

How did she do it? In hindsight, it’s simple. Conversing with employees like ordinary people through video and even archived content.

Read the full story

MacBook Air

Won’t lie – I’m not a huge Mac fan (and I won’t lie that I was “secretly” thrilled Laurie tossed her Mac for a PC) but Apple does have an eye for design…

and the new MacBook Air is just plain cool!

Ok. Back to my Dell laptop for work – which I’ve had for more than a month and already has more power and features than the MacBook Air :-).