There’s probably no way I can write this post without coming across as a little bit of a jerk… so I apologize and the front end. This isn’t directed to any particular person… but just multiple encounters I seem to have on a weekly basis.

It seems that almost everyone has a smart phone today. That’s probably thanks to the iPhone where a very friendly mobile internet is available to all. With our phones, we have access to almost anything and everything. It’s an amazing time in which we live.

My pet peeve comes from when people with these amazing tools to access almost infinite knowledge ask me questions that no longer seem necessary any more. Obviously, if its something I should know that you don’t know, then ask me. But if it’s one of those things that very few people would know… then for goodness sake, look it up. Google it. Map it.

I know some people with a smart phone that rarely if ever have opened up google maps on their phone. Sometimes they ask me for directions and my response is almost always the same. Don’t you have google maps on that phone of yours? I get asked how to spell stuff all the time. I’m a horrible speller. I think people don’t realize how easy it is to look up a word, even on google. You could probably get the correct spelling faster than asking me, even if I was a good speller. Nine times out of ten, when someone asks me a question like this, I end up looking it up on google. Why? Because I have a smart phone with access to the internet.

Oh, so do you. You’re paying $30-40 a month to have google in your pocket… look it up.

Actually, my wife has gotten very good at this. We talk about all kinds of random topics every day. There was a time when the answer to 6 out of 10 questions she would ask me was “Google it.”

Now we’ll be talking about something random, like who won the oscar in 2003 for best actor and we’ll both reach for our phones at the same time and I’ll say, “Am I looking it up or are you?”

Sorry for being a jerk. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk. But if you just need answers to simple little questions, go talk to Google.

A few days ago I came across this new ministry site called churchboost.com. Sounds fun, right? It’s currently a blog with plans to become a full-featured site. The idea behind it is to harness technology to boost the quality of ministry we have for kids. I love it.

I probably wouldn’t normally endorse a site that has not track record. I don’t know the people behind it, although I do know some of the people they know and I have a lot of respect for them. However, I just love the idea of this site and I really hope that it takes off and that there is more content than I have time to devour. I love technology and ministry to kids, so I’m a fan of anyone writing about both.

So, this site only has two posts and one of them is for an App called team viewer. I haven’t personally tried it out yet (although I will this week), but Church Boost did. Read it here.

Oops.

So, I figured I’d take a look back and see what I think now that the newness has worn off.

Positives:

• I still think it’s pretty incredible. There are some great conversations happening on the wave right now. There are some things I’m thinking about right now that were initially inspired by a resource list on a wave.
• I’m hearing voices I don’t always hear… and it’s refreshing. There are some people who are very active on the waves that either don’t blog or don’t blog very much. Certainly a blog is a great way to get into someone’s brain, but not everyone is game for blogging. On wave I’ve been able to learn from those people.
• It’s a big win for collaboration. I’m seeing so many people helping each other and it’s never been easier.

Negatives:

• Not everyone’s on. It’s a walled garden. I may write a blog post and a few hundred people read it (although I’ll probably only get 2 comments) becasue it’s indexed well and people are coming from all over. With Wave I probably have a higher level of participation, but the only people who can view my thoughts are the people I invited. Not the bigger crowd I can get from a blog post.
• It’s buggy. This is a preview version, so I’m not going to give them a hard time, I’m just grateful I’ve been able to benefit for so long from a program that isn’t officially released.
• It didn’t replace email. One of the ideas behind Wave was that it would reinvent the way we email and even replace email. At this current point, I just don’t see that happening.
• Out of site, out of mind. Google Wave is not connected to my gmail account so I don’t get any notifications of new waves or responses. Literally, I forgot and a month went by where I didn’t check my waves. Maybe they’ll integrate this later, but this isn’t good.

Overall, I’m still a big fan. I jumped on the wave tonight and caught up on all the conversations. I think I have a way to be a little more involved in the future though. I found this last week. It’s a addon for Firefox, a Google Wave notifier. So now I have a little Wave icon in the bottom right corner of my screen and when new waves come, I can quickly click on the link. I haven’t had much time to try it, but I’m betting this will help me stay connected even better.

In case you didn’t know, last week was CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. This annual event is the Mecca of gadgets and gizmos. It’s where the latest and greatest gadgets of the future are revealed. For the past several years, CNET has done an award show recognizing the best of CES. Seriously, there are thousands upon thousands of products on display at CES, but CNET has narrowed the best and brightest for us to see. Click here to watch the 20 minute video and see the winning products.

The grand winner of the show was the Panasonic VT25 3D Plasma TV. Yes, it’s one of the first 3D TV’s to go to market. In addition it does all the other cool stuff you’d expect like connect to Pandora, Netflix and twitter. Also, it should have the capability to attach to a webcam and use Skype to turn the TV into a video conference machine. If money were no option, I’d be a lot more excited… but it is, so I’ll wait a few years until this is something I’ll spend money on.

The other winners that got my attention were as follows:

Intel’s Wireless Display
Intel’s WiDi essentially lets you send whatever is on your computer to your big screen TV, wirelessly. Yes, it’s an answer to one of my prayers.

Eye-Fi’s Pro X2
Didn’t I just write about Eye-Fi last week? Yes, I did. I love where they’re headed. They’re upgrading their service to all cards. No longer will it just be an online app, but an adobe air app that will allow me to access pictures uploaded while offline along with other new and unique features. The Pro X2 card has a feature I want so much. It’s called endless memory. As my card beings to fill up, it will begin deleting the older pictures that have already uploaded to the Eye-Fi servers. Eye-Fi, I love you.

LG BD590 Blu-ray player
I wrote about this the other day as well. I don’t really need a Blu-ray player, but all the accessories are going to be what sells me. This Blu-ray has a 250 GB hardrive. It will connect to online services like Pandora, Netflix, Picasa and others. It will also stream music for other computers on the network. Pretty cool combination of features.

So, have I geeked out enough yet? I think after seeing all of the videos and pictures, I’ve decided that at some point in the next 10 years, I’d like to attend CES.

Now I’m a big fan of Wired magazine and really appreciate the insight on technology and culture. After reading the article myself I would have to say that I agree. Blogging is so 2004.

However, the true question is, “am I ready for change?”

I don’t know that I am… yet. I think Steven is absolutely right. The Christian bubble is always 10 steps behind what is happening in the rest of the world. Since I entered the blogosphere about 18 months ago, I’ve been incredibly blessed. What an amazing community, and it is growing (but it doesn’t seem to be growing as fast as I would have expected it to).

Other than a select few, I don’t read magazines anymore. They’re almost dead to me. I get my information mostly from blogs. Rather than read an article from certain church leaders whenever a magazine has them write, I can hear their thoughts without the buffer of a publisher.

I’m just not convinced we’ve totally seen what’s next… but maybe I need it a little more spelled out. I twitter and find it to be an amazing tool for connection. But it’s not exactly replacing blogging. Neither is Facebook. So, I’m still looking. I think I’m willing to make a change, but maybe not until the next platform is a little more established… or visible. But that’s just me. I’m an early adopter, just maybe not the pioneer.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

But, I’ve found that I’m just no good at doing all of these… at the same time. I’ve not written a word in two weeks on this blog, but in the mean time I’ve been making many updates to my other blogs. Sorry to neglect, I’ve got some things to discuss this week, so I should be regular week again.

Okay, here is my favorite web app of all time right now. It it literally changing the way I prepare for church and even has some great application for personally use. The program is called Folder Share and it free. I think it used to be called file taxi or something, but Microsoft bought them out and they seem to be running the show (don’t let that scare you off yet, the application is really cool).

Folder Share is about replicating data to folders on different machines. I was first introduced to this idea of data replication when we first went to the multi-site model here at Cross Timbers. Rather than have one server stored at one campus with all the files on it (and everyone on the other campuses would have to connect remotely to it), the IT director installed a server on every campus and every server has the same directory structure and set-up. The IT team then installed some kind of replication engine that synced all the files from every server to each other. Now, when I go to work, I only access files on my local server. However, when I make any changes, my local server sends those changes to the other servers in the background. That way fellow staff members can access what I’ve modified or created.

Folder Share is the same thing but on a much simpler scale. You can go to their website and create a free user account and then download the program on your machine. Then you tell Folder Share what folder you would like to share and with whom. If it is someone else, then it sends them an email asking them to sign up, download the application and then their machine begins downloading files. As the originator of the folder, you can determine what rights those who you share with have… whether they can only look at files, whether they can add files or whether they can delete or modify files.

Oh, and one last thing. It works like bit torrent technology. The more people you have sharing, the faster files transfer. So if I have 3 or 4 people sharing the same files and I invite a new person to share, the will begin downloading from all of us rather than just one of us. (I’m not even going to tell you how you can remotely access all your files from the main website… but that comes in handy too)

So, here is how I have used this already. I had some people who attended a mission trip and they all wanted to share photos. In the past I’ve had an FTP and everyone uploaded to it… but for some that was complicated. Instead, I shared my picture folders (over 2 gigs) and within 12-14 hours (overnight) the files had replicated to those who were online. I also have my presentation machines at church on folder share. That means I can create my powerpoint files and save it to my local folder. The files will then be pushed to the machines at the church so that when I’m ready to use them, they are there. The way I use it personally is to share my music/iTunes. I currently have three computers. I used to just have iTunes loaded on one of them. Now I have the whole music foder shared on all three machines and all three machines are registered to my iTunes account. So, now when I buy a new song off iTunes, the songs are available on all my machines within a few minutes.

This stuff is great!

The first one is Simplify Media. It adds great new functionality to your iTunes. Unless you have multiple computers at home running iTunes or you work in an office setting where you would be with many other users who may have iTunes running, you may have noticed that you can see other people’s iTunes library. In the preferences, you can set up music sharing for yourself and tell your iTunes to look for others as well. You can also tell iTunes what folders you are willing to share. (Unfortunately, you cannot listen to someone’s music if they bought it from iTunes, thanks to DRM. However, if they put the music on their computer by ripping it off a CD, happened to buy non-DRM music or if they have actually activated your computer to listen to their music… by entering their user name and password… then you can enjoy their music)

The downside has been the iTunes only lets you share music over a local network. We use VPN all the time at Cross Timbers. I can be home and VPN connect to the office and to everyone else in the office, I appear to be in the office as well. All our campus sites are connected by a VPN link so that people at other offices appear to all be at one place. However, iTunes library sharing doesn’t work over a VPN connection… you have to actually be there. Not anymore… thanks to simplifymedia. Once you install simplify media on your computer, you can invite other people (up to 30) to share your library. If they accept, their library will show up in your network regardless of where they are and what network they are on. Now that I’ve installed it, I always seem to have 2-4 other library’s in my network. Now I can enjoy other people’s music when I’m tired of mine.

I’m sure you can incorporate this into ministry use somewhere, but I’m using this more for fun… and it seems to me that my happiness affects my ministry and all that I do.