Ministry Vault
Tech for the Local Church
Does Google Hate Christians? Do Christians Hate Google?!
Nov 9th
Answer: NO. And some.
But if you were to believe some vocal Christians complaining about Google changing their policies, you would think that they do hate us. Google used to give away the Education version of Google Apps to all non-profit organizations, including churches. Now they do not. You can still use google apps for free, but they limit the service to 10 email addresses / accounts.
To be honest, I was sad to hear the news, too. But we cannot assume that this is because they have a low opinion about faith-based non-profit organizations. The laws that protect churches registered as non-profits are also under attack – specifically the tax laws. We should not be surprised by government or business that wants to remove financial advantages that churches have enjoyed for years. And to go further, I don’t think we should make assumptions about the motives behind these changes.
What I do know is that Google provides a great value for churches who want to use their services. If 10 email addresses isn’t enough, I suggest you pay for the service – its $50/year per seat. If you have an IT guy on the payroll who is managing Exchange server, you would save money to retire the server and use Google Apps for email/docs/calendar/contacts and dropbox.com to share files.
That is my advice and I am sticking to it.
VIDEO STREAMING BASICS
May 7th
I recently received this question:
My church wishes to livestream our morning worship service on our website. Our webmaster does not know how to live-stream. What hardware and software do we need to do this inexpensively but professionally and how does our webmaster need to do to our website?
VIDEO STREAMING BASICS
ustream.tv is FREE, but will display ads.
watershed.ustream.tv is the PAID version w/o ads. More >
10 Killer iPhone Apps: #9 WordPress
Apr 11th
WordPress for iOS is only for those who are fortunate enough to have wisely chosen WordPress to power their website. I have been fairly neutral about the CMS (content management system) choices out there, but the silence is over.
More >
iPad 2 Ships March 11th – The Second Coming.
Mar 2nd
iPad2 just announced by Steve Jobs. I will own one soon. The payoff of not being a 1st gen adopter.
iPad 2 Features
- Rear and front camera.
- HDMI video output!! 1080p out with cable!!
- Dual Core.
- Records 720p video.
- Graphics are 9x faster.
- Gyroscope.
- Thinner. 1/3 thinner. 8.8mm thick. Thinner than iPhone4.
- .2 pounds lighter.
- White iPad 2 now available.
- AT&T and Verizon will both carry it.
- 3G only still. No 4G.
- Same battery life – 10 hour battery life.
- 16GB, 32GB, 64GB.
- Same pricing. – $499 – $829. Ships March 11th.iPad2 -
- Charging while using HDMI out, even.
- Apple puts magnets inside new ipad… corners the iPad2 case market. Ouch.
- Same display resolution.
- GPS only available on the 3G iPad 2
- Facetime. PhotoBooth. iMovie. GarageBand.
- iOS 4.3: Apps now available on AppleTV, essentially, via 2-way streaming of media and apps from iOS devices and TO iOS devices.
Tech Specs on all models from Apple.com
Real-World Discussion of Google Apps vs. ChMS
Feb 14th
We recently received this question in our comments on a previously posted article: Is Google Apps Church Management Software? They were great questions, and we hope others can chime in on this discussion: More >
10 Killer iPhone Apps: #8 Dragon Dictation
Jan 11th
Dragon Dictation
The verbage from their website says it best…
Dragon Dictation, powered by Nuance’s world-renowned Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, allows you to stay connected all the time, even when your hands are busy.
10 Killer iPhone Apps: #7 GoodReader
Jan 9th
GoodReader does magic with PDF files. It does a lot more, as its description in the iTunes app store mentions…
Quick summary: super-robust PDF reader with advanced reading, annotating, markup and highlighting capabilities, excellent file manager, TXT file reader and editor, audio/video player, Safari-like viewer for MS Office and iWorks files.
I attend Metro Calvary, and our pastor, Richard Cimino, posts his notes in their entirety each week. They are, essentially, manuscript sermons. We used to post the notes online after the sermon audio was posted, but people began to ask for paper copies of the notes to follow along during the service. People saw others with the printed notes and before long, we were photocopying over 100 copies of the notes – sometimes over a dozen pages each! Before long, the folks with smart phones asked to have the notes available BEFORE the service on the website. That was good, but when you are used to handwriting notes on paper, or highlighting certain sections, reading text online doesn’t satisfy. More >
10 Killer iPhone Apps: #6 Google Voice
Jan 1st
Google Voice – Super-powered VoiceMail and Texting
Step 1: Sign up and get your new FREE Google Voice phone number HERE.
Step 2: Assign ANY phone(s) to ring when someone dials the new number. Change the destination as often as you like.
Step 3: Let it ring. Get transcribed messages delivered to your inbox. The audio file is there too.
Step 4: Texting is free, so you can do what I did… cancel your regular text message plan and save some dough. More >
REVIEW: 5 Killer iPhone Apps
Jan 1st
We are reviewing the Top Ten Killer iPhone Apps – the quintessential tools for a pastor (or anyone) armed with an iPhone. To catch you up on where we have been, here is our current top five:
- Bible: God’s Holy Word
- Dropbox: Magical Cloud Storage
- Instapaper: Stuff you want to “Read Later”
- Elements: Dropbox Powered Text Editor
- Simplenote: Sync your notes to all devices
theVault 007: Chris Maxwell. author. speaker. survivor.
Nov 4th
Listen: 
Subscribe Here or Here.
Chris shares his story of epilepsy and how he uses tech to face the challenges of his limited short term memory. More >
BETA: Slides4Sermons – FREE Presentation Backgrounds. No Strings.
Oct 30th
Presentation Slides for FREE. No Ads. Not Kidding.
SLIDES4SERMONS offers a few images for FREE each month. These images are intended to be useful for the local church in their announcements, sermons, slideshows, bulletins, and web sites. We want to help the church volunteers around the globe SAVE TIME and raise the quality of their work. There are some simply amazing photos (like the one above) of California taken by my friend, Rob Macklin. It is worth dropping by just to get those! We are just getting started. We would love your feedback.
10 Killer iPhone Apps: #5 Simplenote
Oct 30th
Simplenote is a simple text note app that syncs your notes to your iPhone, mac computer and a website. It is free with ads on your phone, but you can buy a $4.99 upgrade to remove ads. There is also a premium version with some extras for $11.99 a year that adds some extra features. For me, the free version is plenty.
Why do I need this- I have Notepad?
Wherever possible, I have abandoned any apps that lock my data into the phone and apps that require syncing with a cable to get the data to my computer (I am talking to you, iTunes). More >
iPhone 4 Tripod Mount Gets Crowd-Sourced $122,000! 5 Days Left to Get Yours
Oct 28th
Glif is a dream in the making. Its also the best designed iPhone tripod mount I have ever seen (and this is a guy who has researched this topic and tried to design his own). Basically, these two guys designed it and put it on Kickstarter.com – a place where good ideas get pledges and if they meet their goal, they make the product. The goal was $10,000. They have 5 days left and they have been pledged $122,084. You read that right. $20 of that money is mine. You have 5 days to get your – GO! Video after the break… More >
MediaShout 3.5+: The Old Has Gone; the New(er) Has Come!
Oct 27th
In the twinkling of an eye, a transformation occurred. I was discouraged and disgusted with MediaShout 3.0, but now I’m officially a fan-user of MediaShout 3.5.b742 (get it as a FREE legacy-upgrade with any registered copy of 3.0). And the early returns suggest that I will be at least as happy and productive with 3.5 as I was disappointed and stressed-out by 3.0. Not only did I find out that my October 17th changes to the default template settings had been saved, but I was even able to edit them with some other improvements which came to mind during the service. Our MediaShout upgrade is not only working well on our system, it’s working very well with no lock-ups. Twinkle, twinkle …
I even tried to lock it up …
dlvr.it – A One-Stop-Shop Social Media Publisher
Oct 27th
dlvr.it - FINALLY! A One-Stop-Shop Social Media Publisher
I build websites for a living and the requests for Social Network Integration have risen over the years. I publish on WordPress exclusively, but never really found a great solution. Today, I have found my solution: dlvr.it – and the great part, is it will work for any website or service that published an RSS Feed (that’s everyone, Folks). I signed up, added in Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, and Buzz. Although it wasn’t obvious at first, I was able to add additional Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. SCORE! The icing on the cake: Analytics. I am hooked.
Trick Out Your Facebook Profile Pic
Oct 27th
Maximize your Facebook Profile Pic! While most people upload a small image, Facebook allows you to use an image with a dimension of 540 X 180 pixels. This is FREE REAL ESTATE, and can help clear out some of that above-the-fold Facebook sidebar clutter. VISIT MY EXAMPLE FANPAGE. I included the thick border in my example to help outline the image, but if you use a white background (see below), you get an even cleaner feel. Read on for more details and examples… More >
Love Gmail? Mailplane makes Gmail even better.
Oct 24th
Mailplane, the native Mac app for Gmail and Google Apps email, has been updated to version 2.2, adding several new features and improving on others. Version 2.2 is a pretty significant update despite its minor numerical increment. You can download a 30-day demo from Mailplane’s website. If you decide to buy, it’s US$24.95. Naturally, you can always use Gmail in a browser for free rather than spending money on an app like Mailplane. But Mailplane is very actively developed, with new features regularly being added. Having a real Mac app for a mail client is well worth the money for anyone who spends a lot of time in email. If you manage multiple Gmail or Google Apps email accounts, the easy switching alone makes it worth the asking price. Read a FULL REVIEW here and here. Video fter the break… More >
10 Killer iPhone Apps: #4 Elements – Dropbox Powered Text Editor
Oct 24th
Elements – Dropbox Powered Text Editor
Elements is a beautiful, versatile text editor for iOS. Elements allows you to view, edit and share plain text documents on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. All of your data is stored in a folder on your personal Dropbox account so that it’s accessible from any device you have. Whether you are a pastor, a church volunteer, or a member taking notes during the sermon, this is a great app that will help you write long documents, or capture short lists. The Dropbox sync is the killer feature, but read on to see the rest… More >
Interface Transformation: Things to Come “As the Ruin Falls”?
Oct 23rd
What will we call them when portable computers aren’t really meant to be “laptop-centric” anymore (as in that point in the near-future we can call ‘a week ago, last Thursday’ — last February, actually)? That “when” has already arrived, of course, but the ‘future-then’ was just a hint at the reality of the ‘future-now’.
Several of the particulars covered in our first podcast went well beyond my personal experience and technical expertise, but they were all things I’m glad I learned more about. Actually, the subject of “bringing your tech-friend to church” was especially interesting to me, in part because it’s a geek-factor game for me to guess what tech might be like in in the future-soon.
Now, here comes engadget.com with their usual, ahead-of-the-competition, insider-esque reveal of a game-changing development in the hardware we’ll be using to make precious little bits (and bytes) rain down on us from our connection(s) to The Cloud.
Up Next: No Screens is Good Screens. The story goes like this …
Tech-Buying Tips: Stewardship of Time, Energy and Expense
Oct 22nd
This short, straightforward article, “Small-business owners might need outside help with tech,” by Laura Petrecca of USA Today is loaded up pretty heavily with good advice and practical guidelines for her target audience, and I think it’s similarly suitable and potentially helpful for the Ministry Vault audience– people in ministry who are also into tech-tools as vehicles for ministry. In particular, those of us who are over-committed, under-funded and tech-savvy more by intuition and stubborn persistence than by formal training and programming certification.
The bullet-basics of the most relevant info touch on …
- cost — just because buckets full of money can be poured into tech upgrades doesn’t mean that they should be … especially now that so much is shifting to the cloud.
- security — data back-up and access-authorization controls are all too often loved “in word in tongue” but no so much “in action and in truth,” and it is essential to know the word, security, and not merely listen to it, but “do what it says.”
- social networking — more and more prospects (as much for flock in the fellowship as for stock on the shelves) are being “moved” by way of micro-messaging in webs of personal interconnections. It’s nothing to question or disparage– it just is, and we need to make it work for our mission.
The cut-to-the-chase suggestions are copied after the jump.
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