Church IT RoundTable

As you read this I will have finished work 3hrs ago, be on the road and fast asleep and I won’t be back for 9 days. Well at least that’s the good lady’s plan. I have to go home, have some breakfast (or in my case dinner), hitch up the caravan, have a shower and then [...]

Cindy asked a question in a comment on yesterday's post that bears some discussion.  She had the grace to apologize for linking to a post of mine last week on some great new resources on fair use.

Here's my take.  In the world of blogging, links are LOVE.  I don't think it's ever necessary to ask to link to a blog post.

When linking to a resource like the fair use guides, the author obviously wants them distributed.  Further, you are probably going to reference the source in your copy, anyway.

In the case of Cindy's link directly to a resource I recommended, a shout out or a hat tip are kind of customary in the blog world.  So thanks Cindy!  'preciate the LOVE! 

And, by the way, Cindy has a pretty cool blog herself, where among other things, you can find our once and for all whether crap is really a swear word, right here!

And, lest I be accused of not following my own example, HT to Craig and crew from the Swerve blog for kicking off this little conversation.

Nothing fancy here just a way to export your General Ledger Chart of Accounts (COA). This shows you some basic relationships between GL tables as well as a creative way to make your report smart enough to look at the current fiscal year only. Download COA.txt Note: Free reports are offered "as is". I have no formal relationship with Shelby Inc so please don't ask them to help you with one of my reports. You...

Alright so I am still alive and in Edmond. I’m currently writing this from my “new” iPhone.

Really liking it so far. With this new wordpress app I may actually write more but no promises.

Go check out http://www.tulsaloop.com

I was chatting in the SMUUG (Southwest Missouri Unix Users Group) IRC channel from my favorite IRC client irssi, and someone posted a link to vimpress. That’s right, I can now post my WordPress blog entries directly from vim, my favorite editor and yours.
Now if that ain’t geeky enough for you, I don’t know what is!

Dear [No Subject] Email, Why do you frustrate me so? Why must you arrive in my box without your subject on? Don't you know that I am easily offended? How is it that you ever managed to escape without a subject? Didn't you look in the mirror before leaving this morning? Don't you know that the subject is what makes you memorable? It is what makes you easy for me to find later in my...

Our Zones Account Executive, Nathan, tipped me off on this event… I don’t think we are planning to attend since the price is way too high, but if you were near Vegas this might be something to check out.

This is the 200th post I've strated on Typepad, but it is no where near the 200th post I've published. You see I have this habit of starting a blog post and then deciding it isn't fit for public consumption. I've started categorizing those into: I'm a wimp That was a stupid idea I bit off more than I can chew I have a dark side I'm not willing to show the world My wife...

There have been a couple of interesting discussions online regarding plagiarism and the use of creative material, with and without permission this week. One involved a church who recently discovered that their web site had been jacked by another church. Ripped off. Like even using the same stock photos. Amazing! I don't think anyone would disagree that is just flat wrong. Sometimes, though, the line is not quite so clear.

Over at the Swerve blog, Craig Groeschel asked the question about when it's appropriate for a pastor to use material from another pastor's sermon, and when credit should be given.

Lots of interesting responses in the comments.

Here's my take, for what it's worth.

Reference. Footnote. Attribute. Always. Every time. Without fail.

Why?

Because if you don’t, it will be discovered, and that has the potential to harm the cause of Christ. It’s SEEN as inappropriate.

Some folks questioned whether this is a thinly veiled attempt to seek credit. I don't think so. Attribution and credit are not the same thing. Even when credit isn’t sought, attribution is still appropriate.

Use of material unattributed can be a huge barrier to the reception, and ultimately the emotional and intellectual integration of that message by the person hearing it. It doesn’t diminish the message, or the messenger to acknowledge where material has come from.

When you setup a network interface(s) for a Virtual Machine (VM) you must assign a MAC address to that interface.  Much like an IP address, you must insure that the MAC address you assign does not conflict with any MAC address on your network.  For a home network, it is simple enough to check the MAC address of each device, but in a larger environment with a large number of devices the task can be much more difficult.

For either situation, there is an easy solution.  A reserved range of MAC addresses exists, much like the reserved range of IP addresses for private use.  It is technically referred to as a Locally Administered Address, or LAA.  Where a MAC address is comprised of a 6 octet address (in hexadecimal form), the LAA range has the second LSB (Least Significant Bit) set to '1'.  So valid ranges for LAA in hex form are:

x2-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
x6-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
xA-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
xE-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx

You can assign your own value for 'x'.  Of course, it must be in hexadecimal form, so valid values are 0-9, and A-F.  Examples of valid LAAs are:

02-ab-cd-ef-12-34
d6-22-33-ff-ee-1a
etc...

Something to think about:

As you assign these address to your VMs, you want to be organized about your distribution model.  For your home office, it is less relevant, as the number of MACs you will be assigning should be small.  However, in a corporate office you need to interface with a large number of other users that may be attempting to do the same thing.  You IT department would be responsible for administering and assigning these addresses.  I would assume you are probably a part of your IT department if you are reading this, so let me make a suggestion for a methodology to follow.

I prefer to use an identifier of the individual, such as their phone extension, and then let them assign their own address for whatever VMs they create.  For example, if John Doe is at extension 12345 (or his DID number ends in 12345) then I would assign him the MAC range of 22-01-23-45-xx-xx.  He could decide his own designation for xx-xx.  This would ensure that if conflicts arise, it will only be with his own system.

On the server side, I prefer to identify the VM itself.  I select one of the IP addresses that is assigned to the VM (assuming the IP address is static - for a server, it should be) and include that as part of the MAC address.  For example, if my VM has an IP address of 10.123.234.222 it's MAC address would be aa-12-32-34-22-2x. x would then be assigned, one to each interface of the VM.  As long as the VM did not have more than 16 NICs installed, it would be no problem.  For the rare system with more than 16 NICs, I would change the first octet to 'ba', and follow the same approach for an additional 16 available addresses.

To clarify, note that I selected a 'primary' NIC of the Virtual.  It doesn't matter which one.  For me, when installing a system for the first time, I usually only have one NIC that is installed in active to get the OS loaded and setup.  I'll then add additional as needed.  That is the NIC/MAC/IP combination that I refer to as my 'primary'.

 

Of course, make sure you have all of this information centrally documented, just as you would for your static IP addresses.

Well just a little … Last week I wrote about my lack of exercise basically causing me to put on weight. In it I stated that I can’t shed my excess weight by dieting because I don’t overeat and nor do I eat badly. For sure I have blowouts and there are times I eat too [...]

The 1970's musical "Godspell" ... which has arguably exposed more people to the Gospel stories recorded in Matthew than any preacher or evangelist in history... is headed back to Broadway.

Interesting. The music is amazing. Lots of songs you'll be humming for days after seeing the show. They may be a bit dated, although there was an update done to the score in 2000 or so. The show is often set in a junkyard, but I've seen it done on a playground, and with a very minimalist set of colored blocks. Real fans know it was the musical banned from Bobby Hill's school on "King of the Hill."

My question: Moving a show to Broadway is big bucks. So is this another piece of evidence that our culture is more curious than ever about all things spiritual?

 

This past week I received a call from one of our staff members who reported that every key he pressed ANY key on his keyboard he heard a beep. He couldn’t type since everything displayed as strange characters and the problem didn’t go away after rebooting.

When arrived he showed me the symptoms he had described. I first thought that it had something to do with the laptop docking station, and removed the laptop from the dock… All was well.  So next we deleted the hardware profile and rebooted the laptop… and all was well.. for about 30 seconds and the problem started again.  None of the keys were stuck in the down position, but it appeared that the control key was stuck.  At the login page you could press alt-del and the login page displayed, if you pressed ctrl-alt-del the machine just beeped.

So for a few minutes I thought about the problem and suggested we get an external keyboard to see if that allowed us to use the laptop.  Quickly the user says “I have a keyboard right here under my desk, and its even wireless”.  On a hunch I suggested he press the ctrl key on the wireless keyboard while I press the alt-del keys on the laptop… sure enough the login prompt displayed.  The wireless keyboard had been left on and ‘connected’ to the laptop while under the desk.  Sometime during the day a small cardboard box fell over under the desk pressing the ctrl key.

Lesson learned: remove your batteries from your wireless keyboard when you aren’t using it!

{This Story was shared with the permission of G. Webb}

One of the people who was on my original blogroll a few years back popped back up today!  BJ Bergfalk was one of the first voices speaking of an emergent, missional faith that I found. His self-imposed sabbatical from blogging is now over.  Do yourself a favor and add Naked Religion to your daily reading list today!  Now if we could just get Terry to use more than 160 characters at a time, life would be sweet again!

For all things Church IT related, check out CITRT.org

Events Ahead:

• August 7, 2008, 10:00 PM: Church IT Podcast
• August 22/23, 2008: Church 2.0 conference with Greg Atkinson at Perimeter Church
• October 7, 2008: Pre-roundtable Tour of North Point Church, Alpharetta GA
• Way ahead - Oct 8-11, 2008: Fall 2008 Church IT Roundtable, Charleston SC

Well, because of some staffing changes, my office was recently rearranged. During the "move", I gained some desk space. At the same time, I also setup a new computer. The fast workstation I now have under my desk will be used for a Virtual "Test Lab", server staging, and (eventually) a network monitoring station. Here's some pics of the new layout:

Here's the hardware I'm working with:
1. IBM Thinkpad T43: Centrino 1.86GHz, 2GB RAM, 2x HDD (160GB total), removable DVD burner.
2. Custom Built computer (outside of pic): Core2 Quad Q9450, 8GB RAM, 300GB 10k boot disk, 1.3TB of usable disk space (1TB RAID-5 and 300GB RAID-0 array), Dual Nvidia 8600GT, Logitech Z4 speakers and a DVD burner.
3. Displays: 2x Benq G2400WD on an Ergotron Monitor arm, 1x Acer AL2216WBD attached to an Ergotron Laptop/Monitor combo mount.

The 2 Benq LCD's and the Acer are currently all hooked up to the Quad-core rig, and I'm using the Thinkpad stand-alone (although I sometimes use the Acer with it).

Software I work with everyday:
ACS People Suite
Microsoft Office 2007
Mozilla Firefox 3
Mozilla Thunderbird
Putty
UltraVNC
VMWare Workstation 6.0
Winamp

I'm thankful that I've got such a great setup of tools to use every day.

This is an interview of the author of The Shack on the Today Show today. He as some real bold things to say about religion and Christ. It is worth watching. I haven't read the book personally but I hear that it is changing people's lives.

Great post and reminder from Tony Morgan yesterday.  If you're reading blogs (and if you are reading this, you are!) you should be using a blog reader.  Yes, this may be basic for lots of folks, but let's not assume!

I have a tremendous amount of stuff I need to stay current on every day. Lots of that input comes from the web. Much of that is available on a blog, or as what is called syndicated content.  What's that, you ask?  Simple. 

When you go to a web page, you're PULLING the content to you.  How cool would it be if the web page PUSHED new content to you whenever something you are interested in is updated? That's what syndicated content and blogs do when you use a blog reader!

Anytime you see this symbol, there is content that can be pushed to you on that page.  It's so much more convenient than visiting dozens of websites every day!  You set up the blog reader to go get what you want and deliver it to you neatly!  I'm using Bloglines right now, but a switch to Google Reader may be in the works.  Give it a try.  I guarantee, it's addictive!

Had to teach Mason a new trick today. They're doing the penny drive for missions at the VBS on our NoMi campus. It's boys vs. girls and it's a weigh in. We carefully separated the silver from the copper. We'll change the silver to copper tomorrow and make sure we get the most weight.

This past weekend our network administrator, Jeremie Kilgore got married to the wonderful gal who he affectionately calls “lady”.  See Erin’s user name on their wedding blog as shown below.

While at the Wedding I snapped some photos to share.  Of course I emailed these to JK on his phone before they were even out of the church…  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take a shot of them running thru the bubbles and email that to them before they got in the car… Sorry Bobbi.

So here are some photos of Jeremie & Erin’s Big day.

Jeremie Assessing the situation

Communion

Announcing Mr & Mrs Jeremie Kilgore

A Sweet Ride (What doe he do for a living??!)

Dave B and others waiting to “do the bubble thing”…you pull the top and toss whole container right?

Mel and Alex checking the car over.

Jeremie being a gent

Jeremie made the cake that Erin and he cut, and I am glad because the test cakes were tasty office treats!

This photo was placed on the tables at the reception, WOW I think I might have been too scared to hire JK if he still had hair like that…. Talk about a guy you wouldn’t want to mess with. Note to self… if you ever need a bodyguard, have Jeremie grow his hair long again….

Congrats Erin and Jeremie!!!!

I’ve had a few inquiries regarding how I setup BIND as a DNS relay for my remote offices. It’s really not as complicated as it sounds. I’ve standardized all my Linux stuff around Ubuntu LTS, so these instructions may need to be tweaked somewhat if you’re on a different platform. The BIND9 configuration stuff should be the same, but the location of the configuration files may (and probably will) differ.

I started with a clean install of Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS inside a VMWare virtual machine. During the installation, I selected the “DNS Server” option and proceeded. Once the install was finished and the virtual instance had rebooted, I ran “apt-get update” and installed all updates and again, rebooted. If you already have a working Ubuntu system and want to add BIND, it should be as simple as typing “sudo apt-get install bind9″ on your terminal.

Now, here’s the good stuff. Open /etc/bind/named.conf.options in your favorite editor and make some adjustments. Here’s what my basic configuration looked like:

options {
directory “/var/cache/bind”;
allow-query { any; };
allow-recursion { any; };
query-source address * port 53;

forwarders {
172.17.0.5;
};

auth-nxdomain no;
listen-on-v6 { any; };
};

Make these changes to the config and restart BIND. Test that the lookups are being properly forwarded to the upstream nameserver. Once you verify it’s working, you can make additional changes, such as implementing a BIND access control list (ACL). Add something similar to this to your /etc/bind/named.conf.options file:

acl my-subnets {
172.17.0.0/16; //headquarters
172.18.1.0/24; //office01
172.18.2.0/24; //office02
};

Once you’ve added the definition for the ACL, change your allow-query and allow-recursion to the name of the ACL:

allow-query { my-subnets; };
allow-recursion { my-subnets; };

As usual, restart the BIND service and you’re all done!

Copyright and the church and copyright law is one topic guaranteed to kick up a cloud of dust. Lots and lots of confusion out there.  Some people still think that churches get a pass on copyright issues, just because they are a church.  Not so, but we'll leave that discussion for another day.

When the whole subject of video media in the church comes up, things get even more confusing.  Yes, you should have a CVLI license in place, but it doesn't cover everything.  And, what about this whole concept of fair use?

The Center for Social Media has a couple of great resources on the topic of fair use.  They've put together a HIGH POWERED panel of attorneys and legal scholars to create a statement of Best Practices in Fair Use for both online media, and for documentary filmmakers.  There's a lot in here that applies to our use of video and other copyrighted works in the church.

Both give real world examples, and boil down complex legal concepts to a place where normal folks can get a handle on them.  Both are worth taking 15 minutes to read. 

Well.. Hillsong Conference 2008 is slowly fading into the distance. It's only 2 weeks ago that Conference started, and we were finalising the setup of the Internet Cafe, and the cabling of the Expo hall.

Pastor Brian and Bobbie very generously gave all the staff Monday and Tuesday off last week. I'd put in leave from the Tuesday for the rest of the week, so I could reconnect with these strange people I call my family. After being surrounded by, trampled on, buffeted by, and
pummelled by thousands of people, I needed to get away to be as "by myself" as possible. And after the almost constant noise, I wanted quiet, and lots of it.

Several years ago, when it was just Lyn, Tim and I, we went away to Bindo Creek Cabins for a couple of days. Unfortunately, Bindo Creek was fully booked, and so we stumbled across Melaleuca Chalets. Oh my goodness, it was perfect. So peaceful, so quiet, so much space, so few people. Aldo and Mary were the perfect hosts, making sure that you had everything you needed, and left you alone to enjoy it all. Lovely!

We knew that we Lyn & I were both going to really need the time off, so we tried to be as clever as possible with regards to meals. I cooked a yummy stew, and a potato-and-leek soup to take up with us, with the makings for all the other meals. The stew heated gently in the oven while we unpacked the bags, and settled the kids. I made some mashed potatoes to fill it out a bit, and we relaxed around the fire and just caught up. A couple of glasses of red helped stave off the cold as well. :)

We made excessive use of the barbeque, or should I say I did. Yummy bacon, eggs, and mushrooms were the order for breakfast. Yum!! Thick slices of wholemeal toast, big mugs of "Blue Mountain" blend coffee, and glasses of juice just rounded out the experience. The wind had died down, and the sun was making a valiant effort to keep it warm so we deceided to have breakfast out at the picnic table (in the picture above). The crunching of the frost underfoot was a very bizarre counterpoint. As soon as we were finished eating, the kids just wanted to RUN! Lyn stayed and had some much needed quite time, reading her bible and journalling, while the rest of us went exploring. We found a mob of kangaroos on the property, and if you take a look at my Flickr stream, you'll see the results of my 14 year old suddenly turning into David Attenborough.

The rest of the time away was pretty much the same. Enjoying simple yet beautiful meals together, then wandering around the property or cuddled up on the lounge watching some kids videos in front of the roaring fire.

Bliss! Utter Bliss! I love my wife.. and my kids.. and we're recharged enough to be prepared for the next little season.

Don't get me wrong! I love people.. I just need space AWAY from people to unwind and recover.

Where's your favourite getaway place? How do you rest and recover? Please post in the comments.

"Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye."

 

Don't know who said this, but it's really rolling around in my mind today.  I love the dichotomy of the wild mind and the disciplined eye.  Here's what I've been thinking, though. Both are impacted by junk and clutter and a lack of white space.  Is it even possible to maintain consistent creativity in the midst of chaos? 

Checklists, process and SOP are all tools tools of the concrete and sequential.  They're certainly not intuitive to me.  I'm learning more and more to use them. Here's why. I think they're tools that can be used by creatives like me to manage our worlds. 

That creates more space. White space.  More margin.  That allows our minds go off on wild goose chases. And it increases the likelihood that we can capture the connections between those random pieces of experience that make up our lives.

Those connections, I think, are critical.  It think that it's in these connections where creative thought and expression live and breath. 

HT to Jon for the quote.  Have a great week!

Last Wednesday my little girl, Brady, was brought into this world - 12 weeks prematurely. There were some complications with the pregnancy and it was the overall best action to take. I’m sure I’ll have some friends and/or family looking around here, my personal blog, for updates on her health. Her mommy and I have [...]

I was in the Church yesterday showing something to my son when the pastor asked if he could have 5 minutes of my time. I don’t know about you and your pastors, but it’s never just 5 with mine! Anyway, he says to me “if we had the money, what is your wish list within IT?” [...]

Looking for graphics, audio or visual resources to spice up your next series?  This is my current list of sites that provide materials for ministry, some free and some may cost a bit.  Let me know of any sites that I have I missed in the comments.

• AngelHouse Media
• Big Puddle Films
• BluefishTV.com 
• Church Media Community
• Church Media Design TV
• CreativeMYK.com
• Creative Pastors
• GoodSalt
• Highway Video
• ImageVine
• MediaThatMinisters.com
• Midnight Oil Productions
• Muddy River Media
• NewSpring Ministries
• North Point Resources
• Northside Christian Church Creative Resources  
• Open | LifeChurch.tv
• Outreach
• Saddleback Resources
• ScreenVue
• Seacoast All Access
• SermonSpice.com
• SermonView
• Simply Youth Ministry
• The Church Box
• The Source
• Willow Creek Association
• WingClips
• WiredChurches.com
• Worship House Media 
• Worship Films
• Worship Photos
• WorshipScapes
• Vine Resources
• Visual Reality

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Today while on vacation my family and I went to the movies and saw Get Smart. It was SO good! If you're a movie goer, this one's a must see. It's very funny and pretty family friendly!

The movie ties nicely to the old TV series, but not obnoxiously so... just enough to draw a good connection. It's a well done screenplay that stands on its own and may be the best movie I've seen in a couple of years! We laughed so much and so hard!

Earlier this year I wrote about a Group Policy book that I really liked. I’m happy to discover that it has recently been released again in what is equivalent to its “fifth edition”, but now as two books instead of one.

Rather than repeat what the author has posted regarding the reason for two books, I’ll simply point you here. Suffice it to say that I’m even more of a fan with these latest releases! They really explain Group Policy in a way that’s easy to grasp, and provide you with all the ammo you need to use GP effectively. I have only just started the second book, but I’m confident it will be just as useful as the first! An added bonus is that they completely cover the GP changes and enhancements that have arrived with Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Highly recommended for any AD admin that is just starting out learning Group Policy and those who want to know just about everything related to GP.

   Over a year ago we launched the latest version of our web site, www.stonebriar.org . I say we, but in fact I mean Jason Reynoldsand Andrea Bagwell. They along with a few vendors really created a far above average site. Jason has moved on and is the CIO of a large church in Florida and is doing some mighty work down there. Andrea remains here and continues to make fresh changes and updates that keeps our site well ahead of the crowd, IMHO.

    A few weeks ago Andrea pointed out to me a church website in the mid-west. I looked at it and I thought it looked great, well I would as it was essentially our site. They did change the colors around but it was clearly our site remade. They even had a pull-down in the exact spot of our unique Ministry Index, except theirs didn’t work. Maybe the worst part, in my opinion is under the section ‘Get Connected’ they used our page word for word. They even used they same photos we paid to use. If you looked at the source of the ‘Get Connected’ page you can even see the Stonebriar.org name throughout. Some of “their” photos actually were even  being pulled from our page! Andrea attempted to contact them and no one responded until just a few days ago. They seemed to be cooperative and we will see what they will do. They still have not changed anything yet.

   A few days after we found the other church website, another website was brought to our attention. This time it was a technology company in the south. Their version of our site even had the exact same colors and exact layout. Every page still had Stonebriar.org references in the source on every page. When Andrea contacted them the responded very quickly and within a day they even took their page completely down. Right now they they have a simple apology up and zero content. They say the company they hired to do their page is now out of business.

   In both case they lay the blame at the developers feet. In the case of the church their vendor says the church signed off on the content and they are not to blame. Andrea’s and my boss wisely said to inform our developers and the offending sites and we would not pursue anything on the legal side. All in all is it really a bad thing to copy a good site? It does show a lack of integrity I’d say. I think the people who have gotten hurt the most is the developers and designers. Essentially they did a lot of work and were paid for it by us, and someone else just came along and cut and pasted their work.

    We use the TYPO3 content management system. At it’s core it is open-source and a community so by default ideas are readily shared. However just to cut and paste what someone else has done seems wrong to me. I think Andrea has been awesome with all of this. Many times in the past some group will call up asking us to share some element of our code for a page. She is always generous and will share any and everything we have. She only asks they not just duplicate our page.

    The nice thing is that with the level of exposure our church here has, it is very unlikely a copy of our site will go unnoticed. I know web developers face this issue every day and it is nearly impossible to combat it. The old saying comes to mind, “Imitation is the sincerest form or flattery”. In these cases I think sincere is the wrong word. I purposely left off the actual websites as I would like to take everyone at their word that these were just mistakes. I have a feeling we could drive ourselves nuts finding more of these pages out there. I think it is very possible to see elements of your page that you may have “inspired” on other pages. But when they don’t even bother taking your name out of the copied code…..

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No time for a long post, but Pandora.com with a radio station based upon one of my favorite bands, Toad The Wet Sprocket, resulted in an awesome playlist for lunch today.

As I mentioned earlier, Pandora is the killer free iPhone App Store download in my opinion.

Can't wait to see what happens when I put Crash Test Dummies in.

It's Friday.  Time for monkeys.  These ads are from the Super Bowl a few years back. The first one is my personal favorite!

Have a great weekend!

There are many flavors of Linux out there in various forms. Some have cool names some have cool branding. I started out with RedHat. Then I moved to their Fedora distro. Now I am using Ubuntu and now they are my go-to-guys for two major revisions. I use ubuntu because there is a plethora of detailed of instructions sets for step-by-step instructions with screen shots and complete command line examples. I'm a gumby when it comes to Linux and I know that. It's been nice; all I need to do is add ubuntu and a description of what I want to accomplish in a search bar and I'll find newbie instructions so I can do what I want.

Linux is a great tool (OpenSource, Yeah!) since it can run on outdated hardware and there are no licensing fees associated with it. Some people use it to run everything from testing to full production.

I know why I chose Ubuntu but it makes me wonder why people choose their specific flavor of Linux. Am I missing out on some great gem or going about Linux entirely the wrong way?

Ever since I was exposed to OpenOffice in 2003 I've been keeping an eye on it. My interest was initially sparked by an article that indicated the City of Houston was moving away from MS Office to a hosted product called SimDesk. That got me looking around and I came across OO. I've used sporadically on  personal level but haven't thought much about moving our organization to it until now. We have a volunteer that is a trainer and he is willing to help get our church offices converted. I plan to meet with him and iron out some of the logistics but needless to say I'm very interested. I've said it before but I'll say it again, Non-profit pricing models are great but OpenSource pricing is hard to beat. This is really possible especially since the OpenSource applications have gotten so good in the recent years.

I'm interested if any other organizations have scrapped MS Office for an openSource package like OpenOffice.

As a follow up the City of Houston is no longer using StarOffice as far as I can tell.

Many churches send weekly and/or monthly reports to board and committee members on a weekly basis about attendance, offerings, etc. Those reports are usually expressed as merely numbers, but could easily be turned into charts. Well, there's a new website that posts your charts on the web, does it nicely, and it's free!

I learned about this from the Mr. Excel Podcast, episode #805. It's 2 minutes well spent that may really help you get the information out in a way that communicates very well! Check it out!

Hey... I noticed last week that Google Feedfetcher had edged into the lead as the most popular feed reader among the literal dozens of folks who read this blog.  Question!  What do you like about FeedFetcher?  Have any of you made the switch from Bloglines to FeedFetcher?  I'm a Google fan, and I tried FeedFetcher quite a while back. Not too impressed then, but I'm sure that like all things Google, it's improved with time. What do you like about it?  

Related Posts:

• Contemplating the iPhone 3G (4)
• Apple’s iPhone Getting Exchange ActiveSync! And Google does Outlook Sync, too (2)
• Crunch. I Finally Own Something From–Apple! (2)

We were on the road for a couple of weeks so I wanted to make sure we had our bases covered when it came to tech gear. Some of the churches we visited are savvy and have everything we could need, others not so much. This is what I ended up taking along:

• Canon VIXIA HF100 HD Camcorder w/directional mic - for recording our adventure.
• Bogen 785 Tripod
• Fender P-10 Passport Portable Sound System - We use the mic for larger meetings and hook it up to the laptop for showing videos.
• Our trusty Canon SD300 Camera
• Olympus WAS-331M Digital Voice Recorder
• Toshiba TDP-S25U SVGA 1800 Lumen DLP Projector
• Canopus ADVC110 Converter - Analog audio/video conversion to FireWire.
• HP 8510W w/Pinnacle Studio Ultimate installed for video editing.
• IBM ThinkPad T42 - For general group use.
• WD Passport HD - for offloading pictures, audio and video.
• HTC Touch with USB Tether for mobile (EVDO) Internet.
• APC Power Inverter - for 110v power on the road.
• Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 - for live streaming and video conferencing.
• IPEVO Skype Phone - Easy to use, portable, high quality alternative to the earphones/mic option.
• Apple Airport Express - portable wireless access point for sharing that single wired connection in hotels. Also handy for transporting audio to a distant sound system.
• Various Ethernet switches and cat5e cables.
• Magellan Crossover GPS - Navigation for both the US & Canada. Wanted the Dash Express GPS but it wasn’t in the budget (we already owned the Magellan) and it doesn’t support Canada yet.
• E-ZPass - Electronic tolls are a huge time saver.
• Google Video and a WordPress.com Blog

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