Is your child searching for porn?
According to Symantec (note: they produce internet filtering software), the top 5 search terms for children seven years of age and under are:
Read my full article over at Sydney Anglicans.
I’ve been a bit quiet here the past couple of weeks, and that’s because I’m getting married this Saturday.
Good times ahead!
I’ll be back online in mid-February, and looking forward to connecting with you all again then.
If you’re looking for some spiritual nourishment, I can commend to you sermons by Francis Chan at Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley. Recently I’ve particularly been spurred on by the ‘Living for that moment’ series. You can subscribe for free in iTunes, by searching for Cornerstone Simi Audio Podcast.
In my latest post at Sydney Anglicans, I contend that Australians (and any other nationality!) don’t really want better technology.
Read the article here.
According to the American Dialect Society, ‘tweet’ was the word of the year for 2009, and ‘google’ is the word of the decade. Twitter hasn’t taken off in Australia as much as in the U.S., but wherever you are, it’s hard to imagine life without Google. I think it deserves its place as word of the decade – what do you think?
In another vote (I’m not sure which vote has more prestige!), ‘unfriend’ was named word of the year in 2009 by the New Oxford American Dictionary. Unfriend, as in the process of quietly removing someone from your friend list on Facebook or Twitter.
And finally, Macquarie Dictionary has opened votes for the word of the year. There are some interesting words in the Internet, Communications and Technology categories.
It’s interesting how social media is impacting our vocabulary.
Thanks to Wayne for giving me a call while driving (I’m sure he was using a hands-free kit!) to let me know about this interesting news. On a completely unrelated note, you might also like to check out Wayne’s useful site – Macintosh How To.
I’m getting married next week, and I’m putting together an order of service. I’ve created it in Pages (I haven’t installed Word on my new MacBook Pro) and I have the order in 6 A4 pages, laid out in portrait. However, I want to print it as a booklet (where the pages are printed on landscape, and folded in half). Perhaps you’ve had the same need with other printed materials – I know I have in the past! If you use Microsoft Word, this is a relatively painless process. I couldn’t work out how to do this without Word. Until tonight.
Thanks to Check 1-2, I discovered CreateBooklet. It adds an option to ‘Create booklet’ when you print a file on your Mac. It’s a little tricky to explain, so I’ll leave that to the guys at Check 1-2. Thankfully, the developer has also released an update for Snow Leopard. And, it’s free. I’ve got a lot of respect and thanks for people who develop free, quality apps. Thanks Christoph.
If you’re not using a Mac, an online application that does the same thing is Booklet Creator. Here are some instructions about how to use BookletCreator, including explaining how A4 PDFs are turned into A5 booklets.
My guess is, most people are still using Microsoft Office. However, if you’re not using Word, or you have a PDF that you want to turn into a booklet, you might find these tools to be quite useful.
At my church this year we are running ‘The Marriage Course’ – it’s a course developed by a couple at Holy Trinity Brompton in the UK, and has been used by churches around the world. I’ve been doing some thinking about how to promote the course, and have enjoyed looking through the marriage-themed artwork on the Church Marketing Lab stream on Flickr. I thought I’d share some of my favourite concepts with you.
This concept promotes the same course that my church will be running (click on the image to enlarge, or view on Flickr here):
This is a clever concept, that is perhaps a bit dated (when did the Lord of the Rings trilogy finish up?!), but I think still has legs (view on Flickr here):
This concept promotes a sermon series, but would also work well in promoting a marriage course (view on Flickr here):
And who wouldn’t want a ‘smokin’ hot marriage’?! (view on Flickr here)
This concept taps into the ‘prevention is better than cure’ idea (view the front and back of this postcard on Flickr)
I also discovered this video that had been created to promote an upcoming sermon series on 1 Corinthians 7:
Marriage Matters [series trailer] from Grace Church on Vimeo.
And finally, this video was created by another church that is using the same marriage course. I like the angle they’ve taken – reminding us that a good marriage takes time and effort, and a short course is worth the investment:
The Marriage Course from Coton Green Church on Vimeo.
Have you seen any good concepts for promoting a marriage course, retreat or sermon series?
