Wired Parish Blog

Two Great New Apps

1. Church Relevance points us to a Procrastinator's Clock. It runs anywhere from 1 minute to 15 minutes fast--but you don't know how far ahead of actual time it's running. Keeps procrastinators on their (our?) toes! It can run either in a browser window or on your desktop.

2. Neil Clayton directed me to an AMAZING new free app at Jott.com. Short version: Call a toll free number to record a voice mail of 15 seconds or less. Jott transcribes the message and emails and texts it to you or to any other contacts or groups you've set up through their site. The upshot: You're driving and remember you need to pick up dry cleaning on the way home. You don't want to drive and try to write yourself a note. Send yourself a Jott, and you'll get a text and email reminder. Oh, ho, ho! That's nice!

Church 2.0 Podcast Seminar

Church 2.0 is a new podcast available on Wired Parish. It's a six-part seminar focused on leveraging emerging technologies for effective ministry. If you're a pastor or ministry leader, check it out. It covers subjects such as:

• Balancing Technology and Mission: Making Sure Mission Is Steering the Ship
• Why Podcasting Your Sermons Is a Bad Idea and What to Do about It
• Why You HAVE to Blog If You're a Pastor
• MySpace and Your Church: How Social Networking Sites Are Changing the Face of Church
• Pastor Hacks: Web 2.0 Applications for Ministry

One other note: We also launched The Best of Wired Parish which features series that have rotated out of our archives. Series from Brian McLaren, Reggie McNeal and Kyle Johnson are currently available.

recommendations

1. you gotta check out blue merle. great band that sounds something like a convergence of coldplay, the counting crows, and dave matthews. was introduced to them while in seattle for the revolution conference. exceptional band.

2. the fo (who is on sabbatical with the lego edward james olmos) sent me an email of this from voltaic systems. expensive? yep. but IT'S A SOLAR POWERED BACKPACK! COME ON! HOW COOL IS THAT???

backpack

thankks to a tip from kent mckeaigg, we've started using backpack around the wp compound. it's a personal productivity tool (call it a gtd if you want to look ultra-hip) that allows for sharable task lists, calendars, notes, and files.

if collaboration and information sharing is important to your world, you gotta check this out.

firefox

this probably falls into the category of 'everyone knows this,' but in case i'm wrong:

if you're not using firefox to manage your rss feeds, you're missing out. (i'm assuming you're using firefox . . . you are, aren't you???)

here's the skinny:
1. add a blogs folder to your bookmarks toolbar.
2. click on the pretty orange rss feed icon in a blog's address bar (virtually all blogs have one).
3. add the url to your blogs folder.

all you have to do then is click on the blogs folder. you'll get a dropdown that lists all your feeds. as you scroll down to look at each feed, you'll see the title of all listed posts. just click on one, and it's game on.