Tag Archive - web apps

Plot Bible locations with BibleMap

November 12, 2009 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

I’m in the middle of preaching two sermon on Amos, and I’ve never studied Amos before. As with most (if not all) of the Old Testament, there are many names of people and places that are unfamiliar to 21st century readers. For example, in Amos 1 alone we read about: Amos, Uzziah, Jeroboam II, Tekoa, Israel, Jerusalem, Carmel, Damascus, Gilead, Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Tyre, Teman, Bozra, Ammon and Rabbah! This is confusing for many readers, yet, we know that we need to understand the context into which Amos spoke then, in order for us to understand how God continues to speak to us through Amos today. So, in my search to learn about these people and places I discovered BibleMap. Here’s how it works:

Visit BibleMap and enter the passage you would like to learn about (e.g. Amos 1). An interface similar to Google Maps appears, plotting each of the locations mentioned in the passage:

Screenshot_BibleMap1

A colour code explains what each of the coloured markers mean – e.g. cities, locations inside cities, regions, etc.

Screenshot_BibleMap4

Clicking on the coloured marker that plots each location will display details of that place, and other mentions of that location in the Bible.

Screenshot_BibleMap2

You also benefit from some of the other Google Map features, such as viewing the map as a map, or as a satellite image, or as a combination of both. It’s a simple tool, serving a simple but useful purpose. It served me well in my sermon preparation, and may prove useful for you too.

Are you aware of similar tools for getting a better understanding of Old Testament contexts?

Web apps for ministry – what do you use?

November 11, 2009 in Christian Living, for Churches, Pastors

This Saturday I’ll be presenting two seminars at the Create conference and I’d like to ask for your help. One of the seminars I’m presenting is entitled “I’m not cheap, I’m entrepreneurial”. At it, I’ll be sharing free or cheap tools to assist with ministry. I’ve got lots of ideas for apps that fit into this category (and I’ll be sharing 2-3 per category, plus some surprises!), but I’d like to hear your ideas. Below are some categories and examples – what tools do you use and recommend?

What does Google know about you?

November 10, 2009 in Christian Living, Pastors

Google has released Google Dashboard – a one-stop shop to see most of the data that is associated with your Google account.

It’s just as well Google launched this – I’d forgotten how many Google services I use – 14 in total! Some I use regularly, like Gmail and Google Alerts. Others I haven’t used in years, like my Blogger account, but I haven’t got around to deleting. Now might be the time.

The Sydney Morning Herald and Mashable have also reported on this new service.

It makes me wonder – how many accounts do you and I have out there on the world wide web, for products and services that we haven’t used in a very long time? When you have some time spare, it could be worth your while trawling your email for all those confirmation emails that you receive when you sign-up for a new service, and if you no longer use the service, delete your account. There’s no point keeping an account active that you no longer use.

I’ve done this in bursts at various times – and discovered how difficult it can be to delete some accounts. For example, Mecanbe.com never answers my emails, and Plaxo continued to send emails after I’d deleted my account!

Will your church join LA city council?

November 5, 2009 in for Churches

Most churches and ministry organisations have two core technology tools – email and word processing (I’d add calendars to this list too, but most ministries and people in ministry probably aren’t using online calendars – yet!). Most churches and ministry organisations would use a desktop email client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail), and Microsoft Office for word processing. Not only can these tools be expensive, in need of regular upgrading and specific to particular operating systems, there are some real benefits to using online tools for these tasks.

Last week, technology blogs Mashable and Cnet that the Los Angeles’ city council is about to start using Google Apps. For those unfamiliar, Google Apps is a set of tools provided by Google to assist organisations with communication, collaboration and publishing.

How does it work?

Most churches and ministry organisations will already have their own domain (e.g. www.stanglican.com). You can keep this domain and use Google to manage these common tasks:

  • Email – use Google’s email tool (Gmail) to manage your email. Your email address will remain the same (e.g. steve@stanglican.com), but there are added benefits such as awesome spam filtering, access to email wherever you have internet access, and a dedicated team working behind the scenes, 24/7/365 to make sure your email is always available. Here’s some more tips and benefits to using Gmail.
  • Calendars – use Google’s calendar tool (Google Calendar) to manage your schedule and collaborate with the schedules of others in your team/ministry/church. There are many benefits to not using a paper diary, but one of the most compelling for ministry is collaboration. Google Calendar will allow you to create multiple calendars, see who has what on when, allocate resources, find common meeting times, and publish (where appropriate, of course) particular calendars online for anyone to access. That’s a very brief sell – check out a tour with more of the features.
  • Documents – use Google’s document creation/management tool (Google Docs) to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can import (eg. from Word/Excel/PowerPoint) and export to the same formats (and others) – i.e. you can maintain most of the benefits to using Microsoft Office and open documents others send you. Again, one of the key features is collaboration – Google Docs is a great platform for sharing documents and allowing others to work with you on particular documents, without the issues associated with emailing these around and hoping you’re working on the most current version. And importantly, you don’t need to be connected to the internet to access your documents.

There are other tools and benefits provided by the Google Apps service – all available free for non-profits (i.e. churches and most ministry organisations!) Learn more of the features of Google Apps, or sign-up.

Will your church or ministry organisation join LA city council?

5 (useful) links #19

October 19, 2009 in Links & Tips

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!

October 8, 2009 in for Churches, Links & Tips

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

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