1. 7 creative Easter marketing concepts.
2. Brainstorm: 7 more ideas for Easter marketing campaigns.
3. An Easter newspaper advertisement.
4. A pre-service video to introduce newcomers to church.
5. 10 reasons I use GQueues for task management.

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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?

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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!

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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.

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

Pretty nifty, don’t you think?

Wolfram Alpha has many more useful applications:

• Check out a visual gallery of examples.
• Check out examples by topic.
• Learn what Wolfram Alpha is all about.

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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!

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If you find these kinds of lists interesting (there’s nothing wrong with that by the way – I love them!) then you might want to check out a couple of other related lists on the TIME website:

• 25 best blogs of 2009
• Best inventions of 2008
• Best websites of 2008
• 25 best blogs of 2008
• Best websites of 2007
• 5 websites you may not know

UPDATE

50 Best Websites 2010

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1. The Twitter Guide Book. A comprehensive guide from Mashable.
2. How President Obama spends his time. If you missed it, this relates to ‘You’re busy, but are you productive?‘
3. 11 ways to use images poorly in slides. Some lessons for churches here?!
4. 100 online tools for non-profits. Which of these does your ministry use?
5. Why use royalty-free music. Good article, following the recent discussion on copyright and churches.

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Over at Sydney Anglicans this week I’ve been running a competition. Five people who commented on ‘Don’t mess with conventions‘ were put in the draw to win a copy of Steve Krug’s (not Steve Kryger’s!) book ‘Don’t make me think‘. Here’s how I selected the winners – you can click on any of the screenshots to enlarge them.

1. I collected the names of the people who had commented on the post and put them in a spreadsheet, and assigned each commenter a single entry number. I did this because some people commented on the post more than once and I didn’t want to give multiple commenters a greater chance of winning.

2. I opened up random.org – a website that generates random integers.

3. I set the boundaries – smallest value = 1, largest value = 26, and asked that 5 random integers be generated:

4. I clicked ‘Get Numbers’

5. The website generated 5 random numbers in the range of 1-26:

6. I then matched up these numbers with the corresponding entry numbers in my spreadsheet:

7. The winners are being notified!

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1. Here are my hands. A cool concept for a video clip for a new Christian song.
2. John 3:16 in Pop Culture. A photo gallery by TIME magazine.
3. 8 ways Twitter can benefit the Christian. h/t Tim Challies.
4. Memorise a verse of Scripture for each letter of the alphabet. Daggy website, great idea.
5. Top 10 regrettable emails. A series by TIME magazine.

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