Archive for 'Technology'
Your ministry needs an app!
Posted on 29. Nov, 2011 by Kenny.
My friend Matt McKee just announced something incredible. It’s called 1000 apps for Christmas. His company, ROAR, is offering 1000 free apps in the next 30 days. That means if you want an app for your ministry, they’ll build it for you for free. All you’ll pay for is the hosting. This is an incredible deal. I’ve seen places where you can get apps for cheap, but in most cases, you get what you pay for. ROAR is different. They build quality apps that are fast, stable and current technology. So, if you’ve been thinking about getting an app for that ministry or program… now’s the time!
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Searching for the perfect check-in kiosks
Posted on 28. Nov, 2011 by Kenny.
I’m on a search for new check-in kiosks. A few months ago, we permanently moved our Middle School program to an are we call the Garage which is a great environment for the teens. To accomodate check-in, I just brought in two of the stations we weren’t using for kids. They’re nice looking kiosks (we use them all over the campus), but they have a serious design flaw. They’re made of laminated particle board. We just wheel them in and out of the Garage every Sunday, but going over the door frame and caused one of them to cave in already (another design flaw I’ve found… but I won’t go into details). So, I’m looking for new kiosks for the teens that looks good and is a little more rugged.… Read the rest
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Web Security
Posted on 31. Aug, 2011 by Kenny.
I’m no expert on internet security, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts about security as a resource to the readers here at CMO. The truth is that most people have lousy security for their online accounts and having something more secure can actually be pretty easy. I was prompted to write this recently as I decided that it was time to change up most of my passwords. I’d been using my primary pasword for several years and I know that you’re supposed to change your passwords on a regular basis, so I figured that it was time.
So, here’s what you might need to know. In 2009, a gaming site was hacked and thousands of accounts were compromised. A study was conducted and here is what was discovered:
- 29,000 compromised accounts used the password 123456 (seriously)
- Many other accounts used a string of consecutive numbers like 111111 or 333333
- The fourth most popular password was the word… password (come on!)
- Lastly, thousands of passwords consisted of first names or simple combinations of abd123
When you hear about hacked accounts, it’s usually because of this.… Read the rest
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Add Spotify to your Ministry tool chest
Posted on 03. Aug, 2011 by Kenny.
About a month ago, Spotify became available here in the US and invitations for use were going out here and there. I think I’d gotten one, but by the time I sat down to try it, I couldn’t find it. I bit the bullet and paid $9.99 to sign up for the monthly subscription. After just five minutes I have this advice for you.
Sign up for Spotify.
Sam Luce wrote a great article about his impressions of Spotify right here. One thing he said is that having Spotify gives you an opportunity to preview music before you buy it. He was referring to the free version. I’d take that a step forward and say, if you subscribe to Spotify, you never have to buy music again (kinda).… Read the rest
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Systems, Processes and the great F1 outage of 2011
Posted on 31. Jul, 2011 by Kenny.
So, if you use Fellowship One, you know that there were significant issues with Check In today. Even if you don’t use F1, you might have seen the traffic on twitter about the issues. I know that for some churches, the slow-down was crippling. Most of the morning, I was watching the twitter stream and saw all kinds of tweets. Most were encouraging, some were certainly frustrated. I thought that it was interesting that today happened the way that it did because I’m in the process of finalizing my outline for a workshop I’m leading at the Kidmin Conference in Chicago and the subject of the workshop ties into what happened today.
Here at Gateway, check in was as fast as it always is… maybe even faster.… Read the rest
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Do you use Things?
Posted on 26. Jun, 2011 by Kenny.
I don’t mean to confuse any of you with the title. More than likely only some of the Mac users understood my question right away. I’m wanting opinions and thoughts on the task management software – Things. I remember hearing many say good things about it in the past, but I wanted some details. Anyone using it now who swears by it? Is it worth the money? Why is it better than Remember the Milk or other similar systems.
I just finished a good book on productivity and I want to take my to-do list to the next level and it looks like Things could help me do what I need it to do (with tags and such).
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!… Read the rest
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Wired goes iPad all the way!
Posted on 25. May, 2011 by Kenny.
I love Wired magazine. It’s one of the few magazines I read and probably the only one I read cover to cover. The problem with me is that I’m just not a big fan of magazines anymore. The media I take in is almost 100% digital now. I read my books on my iPad, I get my news from blogs and watch TV and movies through Hulu, Netflix and other services. Someone tell me, why are we still printing magazines? Oh yeah…. so we have something to do on airplanes when we’re not allowed to have electronic devices on.
Well, about a year ago, Wired Magazine began publishing their magazine on the iPad. It wasn’t just scanned images from the magazines, but actually additional content as well as videos and links… the way an iPad magazine should look like.… Read the rest
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Exporting contact info from a VCard
Posted on 22. May, 2011 by Kenny.
Last week someone sent me a VCard with a group of contacts. If you’re not sure what a VCard is, click here. Essentially, someone was sharing with me a group of contacts that I needed their contact info from, but I didn’t necessarily want to add them all into my general address book. So, how do you get all the contacts off of a VCard into something handy… like a CSV or spreadsheet? Here’s how I did it (sorry, I’m a Mac user, so if you’re on a PC, I’m sure there is a way… I just don’t know how).
I initially tried to import the VCard (which has a file extension of VCF) directly into excel. That didn’t seem to work.… Read the rest
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Navigating changes in Gmail & Google Apps
Posted on 10. May, 2011 by Kenny.
If you have a gmail account as well as mail accounts through Google Apps, you might have recently encountered issues with logging into your various account. I have three separate gmail accounts, one through Gateway, a long-time personal gmail account as well as an account for this blog. Last week I got notifications about migrating some new updates through my Google Apps account. The idea behind this update is to give Google Apps users the same access to services that gmail users get. What I didn’t realize was how in one browser, I could only be logged into one account at a time. Typically I’ll have one tab open for each of my email accounts, but with the migration changes, you can only log into one account at a time.… Read the rest
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How are you using QR codes?
Posted on 25. Apr, 2011 by Kenny.
Only a few months ago I wrote posts about both Microsoft Tags as well as QR Codes. Today I flew from Austin, TX to Atlanta, GA and have seen no less than a dozen QR Codes and one Microsoft Tag. They’re everywhere. Even on Saturday, I posted a video where in the video there is a guy holding a giant QR Code and if you scan it, you’ll get a bonus video.
They’re at restaurants, in magazines, on billboards and everywhere else. Right now I feel like these things are like twitter in the early days. They’re really cool, but I’m not sure if they’re going to stick around or if they’ll die out.
Regardless of their longevity, how are you using them right now?… Read the rest
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