Oopsie!

Google messed up! They usually change the Google logo for the holidays and this is what they had for Valentine’s Day:

Unless that stem is supposed to be a letter, it looks like they forgot the “L”!

Happy Valentine’s

Devotionals 2/12/07

Our passage for the week.

“Since this new way gives us such confidence, we can be very bold. We are not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so the people of Israel would not see the glory, even though it was destined to fade away. But the people’s minds were hardened, and to this day whenever the old covenant is being read, the same veil covers their minds so they cannot understand the truth. And this veil can be removed only by believing in Christ. Yes, even today when they read Moses’ writings, their hearts are covered with that veil, and they do not understand.

But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

Therefore, since God in his mercy has given us this new way, we never give up. We reject all shameful deeds and underhanded methods. We don’t try to trick anyone or distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest know this.” (2 Corinthians 3:12 - 4:2, New Living Translation)

Confessions of a Non-Techie — Part 4

Welcome back!

When we use technology in the right way it can be a tremendous blessing. This, too, is an “opinonated” topic, but I tried as best I could to find aspects that were solidly postive that even I couldn’t refute. Here’s what I came up with. Read more >>

Devotionals 2/5/07

Sorry for the delay!

This is Philippians 3:7-11 from the New International Version

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Phil 3:7-11 (NIV)

Link Roundup Feb. 8

ZANPT on Convio/GetActive: Convio and GetActive had a conference call yesterday. It looks like Open APIs may be in the future. This is great news for ministries. It appears they are moving to a world where clients can use any CMS (Content Management System) they want.

Fundraising Innovation on Integrated Marketing: A good look at what “Dual Channel Donors” mean to an organization. It is a report from Convio, so it is not shocking that groups who are managed with an eCRM (Electronic Constituent Relationship Management) fared better.

simplelog: New weblog software, sure they are a dime a dozen, but I’m only pointing out one. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m sure I’ll install it at some point and then never use it.

Ars Technica on Google Apps: Google Apps for your domain has been a big boon for smaller ministries and businesses. It has been free, but it appears it won’t be free for long. I would guess a reasonable fee with some sort of scaled down free version. Any other bets?

TechCrunch on Yahoo! Pipes: The name comes from Unix, so I’m sure you are all familiar A “pipe” is the “|” character. On the Unix or Linux or BSD command line you can link commands together with the pipe. It is basically like saying take the output of one command and use it as the input of the next command. What this new service from Yahoo! lets you do is to “pipe” data from RSS feeds around the web. It must be popular because I can’t log in and try it! Look for a full review and ideas on how ministries can use it sometime next week.

IMified - Use IM for work

IMified is a new service that launched earlier this month. It has the easiest signup process ever, just send an IM. Once you’ve done that you have an account and what can you do with that account? Right out of the box you can setup reminders, to-do’s and notes. All of this is done via IM with IMified prompting you for information.

However, the real power of this tool is when you mash it up with services that have Open APIs. I linked my IMified account with the Silas Partners Basecamp account, now I can create To-Do’s and messages right from IM without even logging in.

IMified links up with a number of services include Google Calendar, Wordpress, Blogger and Salesforce. The sky’s the limit with open APIs, so I’m hopeful that this service will only be getting more helpful.

More WordPress Powered Sites

I’ve been a little busy at work lately, and the reason for that is because we have just launched three brand new sites: Westminster, Calvary Chapel Grass Valley, and Christian Management Association. Woot!

Each site is built on the open source platform WordPress, and while I certainly did not do all the work for each site (there’s a team for that), I did write and implement a bunch of customizations that are specific to each site, in addition to the template WordPress customizations I had mentioned in an earlier post. I think our team did a wonderful job with these three sites and they really showcase the kind of great work we do. So feel free to hope over and do some exploring, and if you’re doing some web building yourself, take a peak at what’s possible with just a few tweaks to WordPress

PS: This post was cross-posted from TanTanNoodles. So everybody, click here to read this post all over again.

Confessions of a Non-Techie — Part 3

Welcome Back!
I think it’s tough to argue “negatives” about technology, but I think all would agree that, like most things, technology can be misused. When I thought about misuses and their consequences I came up with a lot of things but chose just a few ideas in different categories. Read more >>

Link Roundup, Feb 1

CivicSpace on Demand: Hosted open source CRM software. I found CiviCRM a few weeks back, but this Monday they launched a hosted solution. While we are big fans of open source here at Silas, I’m not quite sure the open source products in the CRM space are quite there yet. Most people still want someone they can yell at when it doesn’t work right. This is a promising move, and as always we have a weather eye on it.

Campaign Monitor on Offline Permission: I know many of you are headed to NRB in a few weeks. Campaign monitor comes through with a great suggestion about how to be within the law as you collect email addresses the old fashion way, by hand. And remember explicit permission means having people drop cards into a fishbowl to win something and then signing them up for newsletters is a no-no.

Molly Holzshlag on IE: Molly Holzshlag has been the head of WaSP the members of which are rather militant in their laments on Internet Explorer. The fact that she is going over to work with Microsoft is a good thing all around. Hopefully with a web standards person on the inside IE will move in a direction that doesn’t require web designers and developers to build two versions of every site.

Pew on Tagging: The Pew Internet & American Life Project is a great source for more scholarly research on Internet trends. This reporting on tagging is especially interesting since many ministries are starting to ask us about “the wisdom of crowds.”