Archive - Links & Tips RSS Feed

Top 5 posts of March 2011

5 (useful) links #19

Five websites and online resources to inspire, inform and enthuse.

  1. Tweet to beat cancer. Great example of the simple power of Twitter.
  2. 50 things that are being killed by the internet. Which of these resonate with you?
  3. 10 ways to make the most of Facebook for your business. Steve Fogg suggests these principles equally apply for churches.
  4. PDF to Word. Convert a PDF into an editable Microsoft Word document.
  5. Six useful books on writing. What other resources have you discovered that have helped you write better?

Check for dangerous typos!

Can you spot the typo?

Screenshot_Typo

As you can see, typos can create a very different meaning! Sometimes it’s more embarrassing than others, but regardless of the embarrassment, typos (I think) always make you look unprofessional and (I also think), impact the way in which the reader perceives and receives what they are reading.

So, before publishing to the web, do a spell check.

Once you’ve published to the web, you can use tools like spellr.us to check for any existing spelling errors.

However, as you can see from the example above, a spell check wouldn’t have picked up on the typo, so there really is no replacement for a good old-fashioned human once-over!

But who knows – perhaps one day online spell checkers will be able to do contextual spell checks too!

Update

Here’s another typo I came across whilst visiting a restaurant website. Less dangerous, still embarrassing (it’s not a hard word to spell correctly!). If you see any other typos, take a screenshot and send them in!

Screenshot_CommingSoon

5 (useful) links #18

It was over a month ago when I last shared a list of links – I’ve got a bit carried away writing about the Jesus:All About Life campaign, sharing links about the media’s reporting on the campaign, along with resources on suffering and the existence of God. It was a busy month!

Here are five more websites, blog posts and online resources to inspire, inform and enthuse. Want to share a website you’ve come across? Add it below in the comments or contact me.

  1. Thoughts on using Facebook well for ministry groups. Great reflections from Mikey Lynch.
  2. Gospel Coalition gets a new homepage. A beautiful and functional site. They’ve taken on board the reality that your ministry site should look good!
  3. Note&Point. “A gallery devotes to making your PowerPoint and Keynote presentations look that much better”.
  4. 27 online tools for new church website designers. I haven’t used most of these tools (apart from the brilliant Wufoo (see 3 posts I’ve written about Wufoo here, here and here) but I’m always keen to try discover new tools.
  5. Media helps Muslims see Christ. “Research has shown that mass media is poor at persuading people to consider other religions, but it is effective at identifying people who are in the searching mode”. h/t @dylanmalloch.

Tool for calculating years between dates

I led the service at church on Sunday night, and I had prepared a spiel to introduce our declaration of the Nicene Creed. The creed was written in 325AD and whilst I knew that was a long time ago, I wanted to know exactly how many years. I discovered that Wolfram Alpha is a great tool for these calculations.

I typed in ‘years between 325AD and 2009AD’ and this is what came out:

Screenshot_WolframAlphaYearsBetween

Pretty nifty, don’t you think?

Wolfram Alpha has many more useful applications:

5 (useful) links #17

Five websites and online resources to inspire, inform and enthuse.

  1. 20 simple productivity tools for bloggers. I’m a fan of TextExpander and Fluid.
  2. Bible events seen from Google Earth. “The images…use real satellite imagery to achieve the incredible effect.”
  3. Free album download. Phil Wickham offers his album ‘Singalong’ as a free download. h/t Hayley Neal.
  4. 20 non-preaching websites for better preaching. Most are US-specific, but not too hard to find a local equivalent where necessary.
  5. PhillipJensen.com. The Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral gets his own website!
Page 1 of 41234»