Tech for the Local Church
Tutorial
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 >
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 >
Facebook Fan Page Design – Part 3: Photos
Oct 20th
ANOTHER PIC IN THE WALL
iPhoto announced TODAY (October 20th) that iPhoto 11 has new integration with Facebook. If your friends leave comments on your photos, you’ll see them in iPhoto. iPhoto even shows you all of your Facebook photo albums, including the ones you published using another application. You’ll always know which photos you shared (or didn’t share) on Facebook, because iPhoto keeps track of that for you.
Facebook is currently on a tear to loosen its restrictions and gain some good faith with its users. There are other photo services and software that allow you to post to your wall – even iPhone apps. My only advice is: FIND ONE AND USE IT. I, personally, use the iPhone Facebook App, as well as Posterous.com to pass pictures to my wall. Posterous even has a new iPhone app that allows you to automatically broadcast all your pics, tweets, even videos to ALL your social media services. But I digress … More >
How to Stream Your Church Service: Lights, Camera, Live Action!
Oct 12th
You might be tempted to think that offering video of your church service “LIVE as it happens” is way beyond your technical ability … but, if you thought that, you’d be wrong! You can do this. Since there are so many ways to do this and some people really get bogged down with all the choices, I am gonna lay down some ground rules:
- BE OS-NEUTRAL. Are you a Mac or PC? The people watching the video don’t care!
- SIMPLICITY IS KEY. No unnecessary complexity allowed.
- NO HD FOR YOU! Streaming true “HD” is not realistic. SD video will still look good and reach your audience.
- PHONES MATTER. iPhones and iPads matter now. Live with it. Choose wisely now and avoid headache later. More >
Facebook Fan Page Design – Part 2: Create a Micro Site
Jul 14th
In part 1 of our series, we covered adding the FBML (Facebook Markup Language) application to our Fan Page. It shows up as a tab and accepts some basic HTML. One great example of this from Part 1 is here. Now we will move on to a more advanced technique that allows us to hide and reveal different sections of our page to mimic a micro site – a webpage within a webpage. More >
Facebook Fan Page Design – Part 1: A Custom Look
Jun 3rd
You can’t live with them. You can’t live without them.
While privacy concerns continue to grow, I can’t ignore the power of Facebook. The Google Analytics reports on all my church client websites continue to convince me that Facebook should absolutely be a part of the online arsenal of the local church. So, for now, since I can’t beat ‘em… I will EDUCATE the masses and, well, I’ll join ‘em. More >
How To Delete Broken Links From iTunes
Mar 9th
When you’ve been using iTunes for a while and perhaps had the odd machine crash, rebuild, virus then you’ll almost certainly have broken links in your iTunes library. Though the iPod simply skips the tracks (in fact I don’t think the empty stubs even transfer over) the broken links do mess up the play lists and searches.
I’m not sure why but Apple have not made it simple to find these broken files but it took a lot of searching to find a process to find and delete them. More >
Guru’s Tutorial…
Oct 15th
One of the most creative designers I’ve crossed paths with is Barton Damer (Alreadybeenchewed.net)
At Guru’s conference Barton did some fabulous tutorials that are now online.
Here is a tutorial he did at the Echo conference…
BartonDamer-Tutorial 1 from Echo Conference on Vimeo.
Death to Jott, Long Live Dial2Do
Feb 13th
I was a big support of jott when it came out [see previous posts]. However, they have slowly transition from having all of their features for free a year or so ago to offering no features for free today. Not smart…
So I have been looking for other free solutions and along came Dial2Do.
And it kicks the snot out of jott. Not only does it have all features that jott has, but it also can read your calendar, email, weather, news feeds to you. All commanded by your voice! Sick! And did I mention it’s FREE!
Simple Tip: FlashDrive Labeling
Apr 8th
LifeHacker reader Jill submitted a simple tip to help increase your odds of recovering a misplaced flash drive (thumb drive, key drive, stick thingy, etc.).
By simply adding a small file to the main folder on your drive, your name and phone number will be displayed as the drive’s name when plugged into the finder’s computer. The whole process could be done in two or three minutes. Get the full “how-to” on LifeHacker.
I like simply, handy tips.
PhotoShop Tutorials
Feb 7th
Need help with PhotoShop?
Mashable had collected 20 great sites that give you step-by-step video tutorials on using Adobe PhotoShop.
Check them out and let us know if these helped you and why?
Social Networking In Plain English
Jun 28th
Commoncraft, the folks who brought us “RSS In Plain English,” have now produced “Social Networking in Plain English.” It stops of little short of explaining what all the hype of social networking is about, but gives a solid overview of the processes behind the tools.
Relationships drive social networking. Given the importance of relationships in ministry, you can’t afford to completely overlook the possibilities.
Review: RSS & Readers
Jun 15th
If you are not using a RSS you should be! Here is a great video explaining what RSS feeds allow you to do and how to use them.
Video is provided by John Piper’s son, Abraham Piper, over at DesiringGod.org
Pinger
Apr 5th
Need to leave a message for your whole staff or team? Use Pinger! A friend and Youth Pastor at a Mega-Church showed me how this works. He told me, “I’m in love with Pinger! It will change your life.” Here is two videos that will explain it better.
User’s Explain How They Use Pinger:
Creator’s Explain How to Use Pinger:
PDF with CutePDF
Mar 19th
CutePDF Writer is software that installs an imaginary printer that actually allows you to convert any document into a PDF (Adobe Reader/Acrobat) file. A PDF file is extremely valuable because it cannot be altered only viewed/printer. Another great attribute is that you can post files that are already formated to printer (ex- bulletins, by-laws, etc.) to the web with little effort. The best part is that this program is free! Instead of having to play hundreds of dollars for Adobe Acrobat Professional. They are not equal in ability, but CutePDF gets the job done for me and for most ministry/churches.
Here is a short tutorial on how CutePDF Writer works?
Video is provided by Church2.0-the Blog.
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