Wired Parish Blog

YouVersion.com: I'm Sold

I posted yesterday about YouVersion.com. Had lunch today w/ Bobby Gruenewald who blogged about it yesterday on the Life Church blog. I was really interested to get more detail on the project.

(I was also interested in trying the fried green beans he ordered, but he didn't offer, and I didn't want to risk a fork in my hand by reaching across the table to grab one.)

Short version: What I thought it was going to be and what it's actually going to be were miles apart. I thought it would be really cool. Um, it's not. It's aaaamazing. Incredibly ambitious. Freakish.

Bobby will say much more about it in the coming weeks, and I won't attempt to steal any thunder. My take? It's the most creative and broadly useful Scripture-based web tool I've ever seen.

Consider this: The iPod wasn't new technology. But the iPod reshaped existing technology and pushed the envelope of the MP3 market in a profound way. The iPhone appears to do the same thing with cell phones.

Looks like YouVersion is doing the same thing. No new technology per se, but it is using existing technologies in a way that will dramatically re-form how Scripture-centric projects utilize the web.

He answered the questions I raised in my blog post very clearly, and I was thrilled to hear the level of thought that's going into the process. In particular, I was curious how it compared to eBible.com, and as we'll see in the coming months, it's just not the same sort of thing.

But our conversation raised a more serious concern--that I'll spend an inordinate amount of time on the site.

As I re-read this, I realize I sound like a total fanboy. Hey, the LifeChurch.tv name still drives me nuts. :) But I gotta tell ya . . . They're hitting the ball out of the stadium on this one.

Bottom line: I'm completely sold.

YouVersion.com: A New eBible?

Life Church announced the upcoming launch of YouVersion.com today. From visiting the site and reading the blog post, it appears that it will be similar to eBible.com with more substantial community features (the ability to upload digital files, for instance).

I'm interested in this for several reasons:

1. Virtually everything Life Church does is done really, really well. I expect this to be no different. I'm sure it will be a blowout service.

2. Launching any kind of social network is intensely difficult from the standpoint of generating a sufficient user base to get real traction. Life Church has a significant built-in potential user base simply because of the size of their church. I'm sure that will go a long way to getting traction--not to mention other ministry leaders who pay close attention to what Life Church does.

I have no doubt of their capacity to make it happen, but I'm sure they recognize the enormity of the task.

3. Given the parallels with eBible and the fact that eBible has an open API, I'm curious as to why they didn't simply piggyback on what eBible has already built. I'm sure there are good reasons. I'm just curious as to what they are.

4. This sort of project raises some incredibly interesting questions about the intersection of church and business.

Consider this: Suppose YouVersion has 100,000 users within a year or so. That's not just a cool service. That's a pretty valuable asset.

Of course, churches have owned assets for years in the way of real estate. But if a church owns real estate, it doesn't necessarily have to do anything for that asset to appreciate. Not so with a web property. Software upgrades, maintenance, etc. are all labor intensive--they require expenditure of financial and human resources.

But this is a service--a real ministry. Nothing wrong with devoting time and money to development and upkeep. A huge percentage of the user base will likely not give anything back to Life Church.

Unless it sells.

Of course, I have no idea whether or not Life Church would ever have any desire to sell YouVersion if it exploded and had massive traffic. Knowing their strong disposition toward giving stuff away, I would be surprised if they did.

But suppose it did sell (or suppose it was monetized through ads or sponsorships). Shareholders wouldn't benefit because there are none. But stakeholders would. Additional staff could be added. New facilities could be built. New web properties could be developed. Heck, it could fund Life Church Labs--a division of the church staff devoted to building new web properties. (I like the sound of Life Church Labs, by the way. That's catchy.)

Here's my takewaway: This feels like a business embedded in a church. Even if that's a million miles from the intentions of Life Church, it's a VERY short putt for other churches to get there.

The implications range from 'that just feels weird' to 'will the IRS be okay with that?'

Am I being overly sensitive? Am I out to lunch? I have mixed feelings--great idea; scary idea. Can anybody help me see this more clearly?

Productivity: HiTask is Out. 30 Boxes Is In.

I mentioned HiTask.com as a productivity tool a few days ago. Great tool. Really. Calendar, to do lists, etc. Very easy to use. Graphically cool. Sharp program.

Two problems:
1) No text/email reminders that I could find.

2) Logging into the site was nearly impossible. I take it I have some sort of conflict on my computer somewhere, but 95% of the time logging in resulted in . . . nothing. Just a refresh of the login page.

I sent 3 different emails over 4 or 5 days requesting help, but received no response. Ouch! I would have been fine with a 'we have no idea. We'll look into it.' But I got zippo. Granted it's only $15/year, but I was ready to subscribe!

However, this morning I was pointed to 30boxes.com. Not as pretty as HiTask, but I can actually login and it has text reminders. Sweet!

It has sharing features so that I can see multiple calendars and tasks--a must in our world.

Check it out. So far I'm impressed.

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Digg for Sermon Illustrations

I mentioned CoRank.com yesterday. Thought of a new use you might find helpful . . .

A hub for sermon illustrations for you and your pastor/teacher compadres.

Find an interesting story or article? Post it to your CoRank site so a) you'll have it filed away and b) your fellow teachers will have access to it.

Again, the voting mechanism comes in extremely handy here.

iTunes and iPods Break Up

Well, sort of. Turns out you no longer need an iPod to use iTunes.

LifeHacker.com points to a free download that syncs iTunes with any MP3 player that shows up as a letter drive in Windows Explorer (virtually all do).

Have fun!

Private Version of Digg for Your Team

You definitely need to check out CoRank.com. It's like your own personal Digg.com.

For the uninitiated, Digg is what's called a social news site. You find articles, links, etc. you like and you post them to Digg. Other readers can 'look over your shoulder' at what you 'Dugg' and vote on what they like (and vote against what they don't).

The voting mechanism is important because it pushes the most popular content to the front of the line so that readers can quickly find the most popular submissions without sifting through the site for hours.

CoRank functions exactly the same way, but YOU get to create your own social news site.

So suppose you wanted your ministry team to have a site where they could dump pertinent links for the rest of the team to view. CoRank makes that possible.

Or maybe you want a central hub where members of your church can submit content they find interesting. Set up a CoRank site for your church.

Heck, what if you're working on a project with a specific time frame that involves a fair amount of research? Set up a CoRank site that's project specific, and the appropriate team members can compile their web research in one location, voting the most helpful material to the front of the line.

You create the categories. You determine how open or how private the site is to other viewers and posters. You control the look and feel. The whole deal. Takes 3 or 4 minutes. Super fast.

Oh, and did I mention CoRank is free? Very cool.

Subscribe to Wired Parish. Your kids will think you're hip.

HiTask - Backpack Killer?

Bob Hyatt at PastorHacks.net points us to HiTask. It's a BackPack-esque app that's about 1/4 the cost of the already inexpensive BackPack.

I'll start experimenting with this in the next couple of days, but after watching the tutorial videos on the site, I must say I'm WAY impressed so far.

One thing I hope it has (and I'm sure it's coming if it's not already available): Txt and email alerts of upcoming calendar events. LOVE this feature of BackPack. If that's a feature of HiTask, I'm sold.

Outlook on iGoogle

Dig this: You can now add Outlook to iGoogle (your Google homepage).

I'm still playing around with it to see if it actually improves productivity, but at the very least, it's amazingly cool.

(If you're a Firefox user, you'll need to install the IE Tab add-on to use it. Boo!)

Incidentally, if you're not using iGoogle, you should. It's free, and if you had the Art of the Day module installed, you could see 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' on your homepage today.

Bosch's bizarre painting was a catalyst for my Pentecostal friend Ginger dropping Art History in high school.

Notetaking Apps

WebWorkerDaily.com has a list of 7 web-based notetaking apps.

I've never really gotten into notetaking apps, although I've experimented with Google Notebook and Stikkit. I'm not sure what my hesitation has been--other than I'd just rather keep using Word rather than integrate a new app into my world.

Of course, the tagging features of most of the apps listed are helpful, I'm sure.

Anyone have any thoughts on advantages of these kinds of programs that I'm just missing vs. using Word or Google Docs?

Google Gears, Google Reader and Newshutch

Newshutch is my default RSS Reader. It works just fine and dandy for me, and I've never spend any time looking for something better.

But with the Google Gears Beta release and its interface with Google Reader, I thought I'd give Google a try.

The benefit to using GGears with GReader is that you can actually take your unread posts with you offline. So if you are about to jump on a plane, you can catch up on blog reading while you're in the air.

This, of course, is glorious. GLORIOUS.

However, I gotta stick with Newshutch as my default reader.

If I'm headed away from WiFi for an extended period of time, I'll fire up GReader, but
Newshutch--and this is going to freak you out--is just cleaner than GReader.

Here's the thing:

When I mark an article as 'read' in Newshutch, it disappears. With GReader, it grays out but stays. Since I keep track of 60+ blogs, and since I get a grand sense of satisfaction when I'm up to date on a blog, this feature in Newshutch is REALLY helpful.

As far as I can tell, GReader doesn't allow for this.

(Am I right about GReader not having this functionality? If it does, I could be persuaded to switch, even though Newshutch's interface is cleaner and prettier.)

So for now I'm sticking with Newshutch and using GReader out of the bullpen when I'm away from WiFi.